[Top Agency Series] How to Create a Smooth Onboarding for Your Company with Gray MacKenzie of ZenPilot
May 11, 2021
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Gray MacKenzie, CEO of ZenPilot, discusses the importance of a smooth onboarding process for agencies in this episode. They highlight the misalignment of expectations as a common onboarding roadblock and share strategies for smoothening it. The podcast also covers recommendations and productivity tools, preference for HubSpot, automating onboarding for new clients, and the importance of personal touch points. Other topics include the types of agencies they have worked with and the significance of having an internal champion.
Mismanaging the kickoff call can create onboarding roadblocks by misrepresenting expectations.
Training, clear communication, and standardization are vital for agency success and client satisfaction.
Deep dives
Streamlining Agency Efforts with ClickUp
Gray Mackenzie, CEO of Zenpilot, discusses how his company helps digital agencies grow and streamline their processes. They focus on using ClickUp as a project management tool to improve efficiency and deliver value to clients. Gray emphasizes the importance of a smooth onboarding process, including clear communication, setting expectations, and training the team. He also highlights the common mistakes agencies make when using ClickUp, such as incorrect hierarchy setup and underutilization of automations. Gray provides insights into their scorecard system, which assesses client relationships by tracking internal health and collecting client feedback through Net Promoter Score (NPS). Overall, Zenpilot's focus is on helping agencies standardize their operations, deliver value, and optimize their use of ClickUp.
The Value of Hiring an Agency
Gray Mackenzie shares a story of a Shopify development agency that initially opted for a cheaper ClickUp consultant but ultimately chose to work with Zenpilot. He explains the value that agencies bring by providing strategic expertise and a master plan, rather than just button-pushing skills. Gray emphasizes the importance of having a unified hierarchy setup in ClickUp to effectively track time and data for profitability analysis. He also highlights the benefits of agencies in terms of streamlining processes, ensuring smooth client onboarding, and delivering meaningful value. Gray encourages agencies to focus on delivering consistent value, optimizing client relationships, and leveraging tools like ClickUp to drive efficiency.
Key Metrics for Agency Success
Gray Mackenzie discusses the importance of tracking key metrics for agency success. He highlights their internal health score, which assesses client relationships and project progress on a weekly basis. Gray emphasizes the value of Net Promoter Score (NPS) as a leading indicator of client satisfaction. He also emphasizes the need to align internal and client feedback to identify areas for improvement and ensure client success. Gray suggests integrating these metrics into a comprehensive agency scorecard to track performance, client retention, and profitability. By analyzing these key metrics, agencies can proactively address issues and drive growth.
The Role of Training and Standardization in Agency Success
Gray Mackenzie emphasizes the importance of training and standardization in agency success. He highlights the need for clear communication, onboarding calls, and effective training to ensure team members understand the agency's processes and expectations. Gray also discusses the power of automations in streamlining agency workflows and eliminating manual tasks. He explains that agencies should focus on building consistent processes and hierarchies in project management tools like ClickUp. By standardizing and optimizing operations, agencies can increase efficiency, deliver better results, and improve client satisfaction.
Gray MacKenzie is the CEO of ZenPilot, an agency training business that gives digital agency teams the structure they need to grow quickly and sustainably. They've helped over 1,600 agencies over the past 10 years. ZenPilot enables agency transformations from chaos to clarity through a combination of hands-on consulting, analysis, community, training, pre-built assets, templates, and processes. They serve to accelerate and de-risk your agency’s journey towards growth.
Gray is also the Founder of GuavaBox, a company that helps B2B tech and SaaS companies build a better growth strategy by applying a proven process to the four pillars of growth: positioning, lead generation, sales, and pricing.
In this episode…
Your kickoff call can either create an efficient onboarding process or set off alarm bells in a client’s mind. One of the biggest onboarding mistakes your agency can make is mismanaging the kickoff call. How so? A common misstep is forgetting to restate expectations or misrepresenting them.
You can misrepresent expectations when your sales promise does not align with the deliverables you state during your kickoff call. Such misalignment of expectations is one of the many onboarding roadblocks. What are the other onboarding frictions, and how do you smoothen them out?
Listen to this episode of the Inspired Insider Podcast with Dr. Jeremy Weisz featuring Gray MacKenzie, Founder of ZenPilot. They talk about productivity tools for agencies, how to create a smooth onboarding process, and how ZenPilot is helping agencies grow. Stay tuned to catch all the insights.
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