Starting & Scaling An Agency On SPP.CO – An All-In One Agency Management Software- Centralize Projects, Accounting and More...

Today I'm talking with Dan Fitzpatrick, Head of Agency Success at SPP, he helps agencies scale and productize their business. Everyone at SPP has a passion for helping agencies tackle those accounting and project management issues. SPP is a software platform that basically takes care of all of your accounting from beginning to end. It is a very advanced system that is actually simple to use. It works with agencies from just getting started all the way up to a multi seven to eight-figure agency. This platform is amazing.

As you know, I've talked to a lot of agencies, and most of them talk about feeling like they're on an island at times. That is why the information in these podcast are so important.

Takeaways From This Episode:

How does SPP help an agency get started?
How does it help more established agencies?
What are the top 2 things SPP can help them improve?
Explain how SPP platform has the ability to standardize your product line and deploy across multiple clients.

Dan starts off with what he thinks is the most important thing when you're thinking about getting started. And, that is you probably want to concentrate on getting some sales first, to actually getting your business up and running. So often he has businesses who come to him, especially new business owners wanting to sign up but they are just not ready. They haven't really built a solid foundation of a business yet. He and I talk about getting your business going and then when they're ready give SPP a call. Dan is very honest and tells it like it is. He wants to see agencies succeed.

How does SPP help an agency get started ?

If you want to scale a business, then you need to think about scaling the client base. That's really where I think a new business and where SPP can come in. Once that client base is established, and the sales are actually rolling in, then it becomes more apparent that you need a system in place to help you.

One of the reasons Dan is so good at his job is because he is so honest. He wants the best for agencies. He talks about agencies getting started and making a big rookie mistake. They open up and then start signing up for 50 different platforms thinking the platforms are going to magically work for them. That's not how this works. If you are just getting started, SPP has wonderful blogs and educational content for you. So go ahead get some of those free resources. They are phenomenal.

To summarize what I heard there from Dan, if you're just getting started, get a few clients, get some money coming in the door, get some deals first, then at that point, as soon as you get those few clients it is time to start looking at systems to replicate yourself. I think it becomes pretty clear when you need these systems. It gets so complicated so quickly and that’s where something like SPP makes sense. It’s all consolidated, everything's in one place, and you're not having to deal with all of these different systems. It's all about getting that business up and running first before you start thinking about what systems you might need in place.

Ok, how does it help more established agencies?

Starting with the agencies that are losing things in the process, because they have a lot of different team members involved. Someone doesn't get a notification about something or something gets lost in the pipeline. What SPP does is makes everyone aware of what's going on, at any given time. Things like not having to chase payments from customers or all of these little things that slow an agency down. SPP makes you more efficient and then leads to lots and lots of time savings.

In so many cases there’s a lot of time wasted on what we call the “non revenue” generating work. SPP comes in and takes care of those time wasting activities so you can spend time delivering work for your customers. And, if you are ready and wanting to build a scalable business or agency then you take my productization model and apply it to the SPP platform. Hear how putting all of this together is critical to understanding your profit margins, understanding scope creep, and keeping your clients happy and billables. It really is that simple.

How you can get your product line in there and then deploy it across multiple clients?

Dan talks about what he finds really interesting and that is the number of agencies they come across that are actually already offering a kind of a productized service. But they don't actually realize it. Having a solution like SPP’s platform helps agencies define what and how to productize their service. It helps them realize that there are a bunch of things they already do, or a bunch of services they already have for customers that follow these very similar, same kinds of workflows. Now from making that initial sale to collecting information from the customer, delivering the work, reporting upselling, all of this stuff, once you start putting this into a system, it kind of takes you out of your normal, day to day working bubble. It helps you realize that you can apply this kind of thinking to a bunch of product lines, processes, or even individual parts of your process. Like some of their most successful customers, they have actually taken a really slow and steady approach.

That potential for learning is just massive. It means that you can get something working before you move to the next product line and then bring that into the system. Dan talks about how it's really just taking the things that you're already doing as an agency and putting them into a system.

One of the things that was always a nightmare for me was when you get into your project management platform, and you have your task list, and you have your product line but it never matches up with accounting. It is a nightmare the way traditional accounting platforms do it such as QuickBooks. It's all about categories, and you can get individual skews, but it's not a master skew. SPP is structured differently. The way it works is that you come in and it starts at the accounting level, you set everything up perfectly, and then it all bleeds down into the project management automatically. Everything is synced up perfectly. As an agency owner, hearing about this system should be very exciting, because you know how much of a nightmare syncing up accounting and project management can be at times. That bring everything full circle there. If that makes sense.

Shamless Plug

If you're interested in checking out SPP, they offer a 14 day free trial. They do not take in any payment details, they won't ask you for your credit card. So head over to SPP.co to check out the trial and feel free to reach out to them at any time. They are very happy to jump on a call with you to help you get started.