Partnerships: More than a catch phrase?

Does your agency feel like an extension of your business? Can you talk to them as if they were sitting in the next office down from you? If the answers are no you may be doing business with the wrong company.

Marketing agencies are great at marketing.

They know what to tell you during the sales process to hit all your pain points. You may feel during this phase that this is going to be the new agency that finally does everything right.

But 6 months in, your results are stagnant and you feel like you’re not getting enough attention. Promises aren’t being kept, communication is light, and your business isn’t growing as fast as it could be.

This is typical churn and burn. They’re great at telling you what you want to hear so you do what they want you to.

Ultimately we know this doesn’t benefit your business. The grass isn’t going to be greener if you start this cycle over and over again.

How to change the churn + stress cycle

First you’ve got to be able to admit that you’ve tried on several agencies for size and they didn’t work for you. Have awareness around your involvement.

Have you been pissed at a marketing company before, but refused to call them back?

Have you not given them ALL the insight and information you could for them to be successful?

Did you actually come into the relationship not trusting them? How did that affect your results?

I’m not blaming here, but it’s important to look at your level of involvement with agencies in the past to see how you can improve in the future.

Everyone talks about how they want a partnership these days, but what does that mean to you?

A true partnership is

So uncomfortable together that we’re bonded in triumph or failure

We can come to you and tell you “we messed up”

Or…

We can let you know you’ve got 3 CSRs that are god awful, and you’re losing our leads

A partnership is a two way street made of transparency and good will.

Think about whether you want the discomfort in growth of a true partnership. Or, whether you want a third party vendor relationship.

If you want a partnership to grow a home service business, you must be willing to say, “we have some work to do on our side”.

We open the veil and speak the truth- it’s how we do business. But we also expect our clients to do the same and trust that we have you best interest in mind.

If you have a couple CSRs that suck and you know it, tell us. We can help give you perspective when we go listen to phone calls to give you guidance and watch your back.

If your call board is slow, bad week, something weird affecting your goals, tell us.

A partnership isn’t the most comfortable way to do business because of how uncomfortable radical clarity can be, so it’s not for everyone.

There will be moments of being uncomfortable. Moments where you mess up. Or we mess up. Those uncomfortable conversations need to be had. Marketing isn’t all green arrows and perfect graphs. It’s up and down. So is growth.

But at the end of the day if we both feel like we’re acting in good faith moving towards that growth…

That’s what matters the most.

To YOUR growth,

Stephen Christopher