How to go from freelancing to your agency

2024 Author: Malcolm Clapton | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-17 03:44

About internal barriers and fears, about where to look for clients, how to increase profitability and where to move on.

First fear

Almost no one talks about this, but in business and self-employment, the most difficult thing is to overcome your own fears. Breaking down barriers within yourself.

First, it's very difficult to take everything and quit. It's hard to take a step into the void. A freelancer does not depend on anyone, nor does a director of any company. You can get money only when you actually earned it yourself. You will not come out to wipe your pants on a chair and wait for you to be paid for the time you spend in the office. Thought "If there are no clients, then I will have nothing to eat?" haunted every day.

I was very afraid to leave my last place of work. My future partner and I worked together at an Internet agency in Yekaterinburg. And at some point we realized that we had to leave: due to the fact that both of us were simply poorly assessed as specialists. His salary was cut in half, and after university I was too young and impudent to work for 20 thousand.

The "lucky chance" helped. The directors noticed that my future partner began to lead projects (ours) “on the side”, and they fired him. And I was given responsibility for his part of the work. Before that, I ran 25 sites in the company, now there are 50 of them, and the salary was still 20 thousand rubles, which is why I left after three days.

I don't know if I could have overcome this fear in a different way, without a strong external factor.

How it all started

At first there was almost a joke: "Let's make our own web studio?" - I said to my future partner over the phone. Even the thought flew past that I had blasted some stupidity.

At the last place of work, there has been a large percentage of old clients churning out over the past few months. And all because of internal changes: the policy of communicating with clients changed (now managers did it) and the average check grew strongly. Unfortunately, the quality of services even fell due to the fact that the projects began to be led by new guys who did not understand much of their specifics and of IT in general.

A gross mistake of the management in the agency was that before all these events we were allowed to communicate with clients. This built trust between us (professionals and clients), so we just offered to work with us privately when they started leaving. And they liked it.

When my partner and I were gone in that agency, the company lost another part of the clients who followed us. Basically, these were those who out of their ears heard that the leading specialists of the promotion department had left to go about their business, and the company now does not have such a department at all.

Light dumping and personal involvement played into the hands: the client was happy that now his project is fully monitored on a daily basis. The price also became slightly lower.

The partner took over the search and maintenance of clients, setting up advertising for them. I took up projects: from copywriting to programming and promotion.

Client search

About three months after the fighting enthusiasm for "We're cool guys freelancers", a slightly sad thought came to mind: "What if the clients run out?" We didn't want to take customers from freelance exchanges. Simply because there is a lot of competition, fierce dumping (newcomers just work for food) and clients with a desire to save money and cheat you, throwing in additional work.

All of our clients came exclusively through word of mouth. Since my partner and I had been working in IT for several years and had little experience in business before that, we understood that this would not give the company the growth we were dreaming of. We wanted to work with cool clients, to conduct large projects on an ongoing basis.

Having monitored the market a little and studied various advertising channels on the Web, we decided to discard this idea and not use such tools. First, ads are not guaranteed to hit our target audience. We tried to work with large projects, and for this, cold sales are more effective, when you directly call the person who makes the decision. Secondly, it is very expensive. In our niche, effective contextual advertising costs from 20 thousand rubles per week. The young company could not afford it, and the risk was unjustified.

Creation of a sales department

Therefore, we decided to organize a sales department. First, we thought about the remote format. We found one salesperson on the job exchange - unsuccessfully, he was not interested and “burned out” after the first project. Then there was a manager from an old agency, also unsuccessful. He constantly tried to deceive us and demanded up to 70% of the profit. But I had to endure him for a long time, because at least a little bit he brought profit and new clients. Then there was my partner's best friend. Everything is completely sad here: they quarreled and, it seems, will never communicate again.

During these two months I have learned two lessons. First: you never need to invite your friends to the business, quarrel over money. Second: without experience anywhere. The remote sales department turned out to be not such an easy option: people "burned out" quickly, because we, in fact, could not offer anything cool for motivation. Managers have little interest in the result, do not want to work for a percentage, but want a salary. It is impossible to control them without an office, even your own CRM did not help, and the reporting turned into a farce. We ourselves had no experience in cold sales, creating a department on our own seemed almost impossible.

Because of all this pain, we took drastic measures: we offered an old acquaintance (the head of the sales department from the company where we previously worked) a share of the business. The idea was that he sells, forms the sales department and deals with all the commercial part.

So we got a commercial director who was motivated 10 times more than any incoming manager. And later he encouraged all of us to take new heights: “I need an office, otherwise where to put the manager? Where can I bring clients for a presentation?"

Second fear

Fear number two in the lives of many people, which interferes with development: to receive less than now.

Within six months, we needed an office for five people with the prospect of replenishing the staff up to eight. The office is the face of the company, so it must, first of all, have a normal renovation and be located in a business center in the business part of the city. Secondly, it must be spacious and with the ability to equip a meeting room.

The office also needs new furniture (tables, chairs, hanger, wardrobe) and computers. The expenses were high, and this despite the fact that we brought two personal computers. I'll run ahead and add that after two months we hired a sixth employee (programmer), and he also cost money.

All these expenses were covered from personal funds, which we barely managed to earn in order to "lose" again. All this time, we were afraid to leave the comfort zone: to stay with a lower income than now, sleep less than six hours, work from 8 to 22, having no personal life. At that time, I came across a phrase from one businessman in social networks that helped me not to break down: “Sometimes you need to die in order to be reborn like a phoenix, a new person without fears”. Not literally, but this is how I understood it. Yes, sometimes you need to starve in order to earn a normal income later and not fall asleep with the fear that tomorrow everything will fall apart.

Correct packaging

I mean everything in the concept of packaging: from a commercial proposal to conferences at which you act as a speaker, and attitude to work.

All our clients came by word of mouth and with the help of the sales department. This required us to do 110% of the work so that the flow of recommendations did not stop.

We also needed a cozy office and delicious coffee to make our clients feel at home. The room was redecorated, certificates and diplomas hung on the walls. We thought of various little things: hangers, mugs, chocolates, music.

The commercial offer, unfortunately, is still not ready and changes every week. This is because the client needs to feel the individual approach. Let's be honest: preparing an offer for each client is unrealistically long, so we made dozens of blanks. Although it still takes more than a couple of hours to collect the proposal, it's worth it.

Increased income

The formed sales department made it easier to find new customers and increased the company's profitability. We consistently had two to five new clients per month. At first, this had a very good effect on the growth of the company, because one large project (or three small ones) covers the costs of maintaining the office.

The client cycle in an SEO agency usually takes four to six months: if the promotion does not work, then it leaves, leaving negative reviews. We had less than 5% of such "leaks", and this is due to the fact that the client pays at least (less than 10 thousand per project) and expects cosmic results. Although we warned him about everything and told him how events would develop further and what kind of check is needed.

To increase the customer cycle, we have introduced development hours into each project. The clients really liked this idea. For example, a person pays 20 thousand rubles, gets 10 hours of web development (which are tracked in CRM) and can implement some of their “wishes” on the site: change the design, create a personal account. Let's say the project doesn't need such work for SEO, but the client wants to do it. If the implementation is simple, he can ask to do it without paying extra. This approach helped extend the customer cycle by another four months. Increased customer loyalty to the company, resulting in increased profitability.

There have been changes in the sales department too. An employee appeared who is looking for website development through tenders or cold calls from clients. Yes, website development brings new difficulties to the company: here it is necessary to introduce project managers and increase the number of programmers. But on the other hand, the check is 3-5 times larger, and this money can be spent on the development of the company.

Personnel

Frames are everything. Finding clients is easy enough, but retaining them is much more difficult, and qualified employees help here. Therefore, we were always in search of new people.

There are few good free specialists in the IT labor market. There are a lot of students and people of the age who decided to take up IT, having looked at courses and thinking that there is a lot of money here. And if students work for small amounts of money and learn quickly, then problems begin with the second category: they immediately want a high salary with minimal knowledge.

Excellent specialists are divided into two types: some are afraid to change jobs, even if they receive less than they deserve in terms of their qualifications, and you offer a higher salary. For a year of work, I realized that in this case you just need to instill confidence in the company in a person. The latter simply ask for some kind of cosmic salary, although before that they themselves worked for 50 thousand rubles a month, doing the same.

Therefore, we took the most difficult path: training and tough selection. We were looking for a suitable programmer at such a pace for three months. But during this time they raised a good specialist.

In my CRM system, I created a section where I collected all the information on SEO and web development that I owned. I spent a month and a half filling out this section, but I can always send employees to read the documentation, where everything is described in detail with examples. If I don’t know something (and I don’t know a lot), then I suggest paying for courses on the desired topic.

Raising the average check

After six months of work, we needed to unload the specialists. We felt that a large number of projects were bad for performance.

We decided to raise the cost. It's simple, the main thing is not to be afraid. Take it and raise it. If you provide customers with a result and you have a normal service, then you simply inform that from the next month the price increases by n percent.

About 15% of customers will fall off immediately. Another 20% will not immediately pay more - but then they will either leave or will pay. The rest will survive this fact, and in an ideal situation you will not lose in circulation at all. From the pros: specialists are unloaded and the quality of service is growing. After such an innovation, all our projects grew by leaps and bounds for three months. I don't think this is a seasonal coincidence.

We experienced one check increase, and at the expense of those who paid more, we did not feel the loss of old customers. But new customers are already arriving with a higher average check.

Development ways

From a business point of view, you can't earn much on services: people make millions and billions from a product. We took a simple path and created templates for popular CMS that we sell on aggregators. This helps to cover some financial holes and sudden expenses.

There is a desire to develop your CRM, making it completely open. But while this is just an idea, this market is already filled with cool products.

You also need to pack the business further: change the site, update the blog more often than now, speak at conferences, refine the CRM system by making a personal account for customers, and not just for employees. All this forms the image, provides high-quality service and helps to win customers not only through recommendations and phone calls.