On this episode of Word on the Street, we talk to Rory Spence. Rory is an Account Manager at The WOW Company and spends his time helping business owners grow, specialising in getting agencies to focus on increasing their profits, streamline their financial processes and be able to take more time to work on the business, rather than in it. But this episode is about a lot more than just number crunching! In this episode, the conversation covers pricing strategies, how and when to take on new business, the power of nurturing, the expectation of over-delivering for clients, and why you need to believe in your prices.

On this episode we talk about:

• Focusing on being profitable
• How to define your pricing strategy
• Balancing new business with how many clients you can serve
• Making sure clients are aware of your levels of over-delivery
• Understanding how to increase your prices to retained clients

Links & References

Katie Street: https://www.linkedin.com/in/katiestreet/

Rory Spence: https://www.linkedin.com/in/rory-spence-63023884/

Click here for the video that Rory mentions in this episode on ‘how to calculate a meaningful gross profit margin’.

Series 5 of Word on the Street is sponsored by Tanba, The Agency New Business Academy is a brand-new initiative aimed at equipping agencies of all sizes with the knowledge, content, partnerships, and opportunities needed to accelerate agency growth by optimising their new business ‘engine’. Tanba is an on-demand and affordable solution for agencies looking to upskill their team via training courses, content, and insights delivered by our panel of industry experts, leaders, and partners.

The academy is all about empowering agency teams to get noticed, attract opportunities, increase conversion rates, and reduce the costs associated with the sales process. Visit https://tanba.io/ to find out more and start empowering your agency.

“In terms of pricing, it’s so hard to know isn’t it” – Katie Street [14:01]

“Seeing your report showed that I’m massively undervaluing myself” – Rory Spence [14:53]

“If their pricing strategy and things like that aren’t right, and they don’t know where they sit next to their competitors or their market, then it gets really, really tough” – Katie Street [17:41]

“We’re all selling time for money, if you really break it down and be simple about it” – Rory Spence [19:22]

“If you can focus on the leading indicators, that you know, if you do these things every single week, every single month, you are going to have a healthy pipeline” – Rory Spence [21:09]

“We’re new business people, we know how important it is to make sure you’re doing it week after week, day after day” – Katie Street [23:55]

“Keeping on keeping on, I promise you now, is the best thing that you can do” – Katie Street [24:37]

“For us at WOW, our focus is really in the profitability, that’s what we ultimately want to help our clients with” – Rory Spence [28:55]

“That will create challenges, just good ones.” – Rory Spence [30:59]

“Make sure you’re tracking your gross profit margin in the correct way and that will give you a really good overview of how you’re performing.” – Rory Spence [33:44]

“See how other agencies price, however, you will just get that gut feel” – Rory Spence [41:33]

“If everybody is saying yes to you, that is not a good thing” – Rory Spence [42:25]

“We’ve got a real mixture of agencies and if I’m honest some I think don’t charge enough, some I think probably overcomplicate” – Katie Street [43:39]

“A huge part of your ability to basically deliver a project profitably is in how you scope it” – Rory Spence [47:34]

“Where we’ve kind of fallen down previously is over-delivering…” – Katie Street [53:20]