THE DIGITAL AGENCY

Predictable
Income
Checklist
Turn Your Business into a
Reliable, Automated
Revenue Engine
Intro

Pop Quiz

What’s the difference between a business that is wildly

successful, creating wealth for the founders and
employees, and a business that struggles just to get by…
causing the founder (you) immense amounts of agony?

Answer: Predictability.

When you don’t know how much money is going to be

coming in or where it’s going to come from:

• You can’t plan

• You’re stressed out
• You have too much risk
• You can’t confidently hire the best people

Stack all of these up, and you’re in for a rough ride.

So what’s the solution? How do you make your business

predictable?

The answer is simple, but it’s difficult: Do more business.

I know what you’re thinking: “Ok… but how do I do that?”

That’s the purpose of this checklist.

This isn’t a book. It’s a checklist. You should be able to read
the entire thing in one sitting, get the ideas in your head,
and then work on each step in sequence.

If you already have certain steps nailed, great! Just go to the

one where you are the weakest.

Here’s the promise.

If you fully implement all of the ideas presented here, you

could more than 5X your revenue.

How?

I will show you exactly how in the sections ahead. Well,

let’s get on with it.

Here’s the list:

1. Define what you’re selling

2. Fill in the Ideal Client Matrix
3. Build your lead generation pipeline
4. Become a master of the follow up

Let’s quickly go through each one in detail.

1. Define What You’re Selling

For some reason, this is one of the biggest sticking points

for many businesses, even after they’ve been in business
for a while.

Let’s keep this simple.

Fill out the following Simple Business Statement:

My business helps (type of client) __________________________________

(key result) _______________________________________________________________
_____________________________________________________________________________.

Here are a few examples:

“My business helps real estate agents get more highly qualified
leads.”

“My business helps young medical doctors launch their first

practice.”

“My business helps small service businesses write legal

contracts for their clients.”

We’ll address the first part of the question in step 2. Steps 1

and 2 are a bit intertwined, so you may need to go back and
forth a bit.

Ok. How did that go?

Were you able to fit your answer onto the lines? Here’s a
rule of thumb:

Keep it short, but not too short.

Each of my examples had three words for the client type

and 4 to 6 words for the key result. This isn’t an exact
formula, but I think it should be pretty typical.

If yours is shorter than that, you’re likely not being specific

enough. If it’s a lot longer, you may be overcomplicating
things.

Defining Services & Packages

When my wife and I bought our first car, the first thing we
had to do was pick the brand and model we wanted. Once
we did that, we had to choose different levels of interior,
which sound system we wanted, 2WD vs 4WD, and etc.

Once you define what you sell, you need to break your
overall business down by two categories:

1. Individual service offerings

2. Tiers or packages within each service

At the top of a sheet of paper, write down each of your

services as column headers (e.g. “UX design”, “Frontend
development”, etc.)

Next, under each one, list upgrades that you could

potentially add. Is there a basic version? What does a
premium version look like? Can you add value with more
frequent communication or reports?

Once you have all of this, you can develop a price sheet.

Congrats, you now have a clear picture of what services

your business sells with tiers and packages.

If you already had that, fantastic. You are ahead of the

curve. If not, you’ve just taken a big step in the right
direction.

Now that you know what you’re selling, let’s look at who
you’re selling to. Remember, you may need to circle back to
step 1 again once you do step 2.

Action Item #1
Complete your Simple Business Statement & create
your list of service offerings.
2. Fill in the Ideal Client Matrix

Take a look at the following graphic:

This is a hypothetical matrix for a small digital agency that’s

helping service businesses run ads. We’ll come back to this,
but keep this in your mind.

In the last section, we started by making a very simple

statement about what your business does.

I suspect that many of you ended up with something like:

“I help SMBs grow their businesses.”

The Ideal Client Matrix will help you narrow down what
you do even further, and it will help you define who you
are going to do it for.

Despite looking like a spreadsheet, this isn’t a scientific

process as much as it’s a creative process. You can and
should modify it to match your scenario. Mine is
intentionally simple.

On the left side, make a list of the things you could help
businesses achieve.

If you did the exercises in the first section really well, this
might just be your list of services. Otherwise, forget about
everything else for a minute and just list problems that you
can help businesses solve.

Next, on the top, make a list of industries or types of

businesses that you might help.

If you’re just getting started, this could literally be a list of

industries or job types that it’s possible for you to serve.
E.g. accountants, law firms, etc.

If you know that you work in a really specific niche, these

could be very narrow. For example, if you only work with
realtors, you might have different types of realtors listed
across the top.

Finally, on the right we have size.

I want you to draw this out for yourself, defining your own
table, and then color in the rectangles in the following way:

• Red: Do NOT want to work with

• Orange: Probably don’t want to work with
• Yellow: Might work with
• Green: Would love to work with

At a glance, the digital agency in this chart does NOT want

to work with people selling software and they don’t want to
work in Real Estate at all.

It looks like they tend to like smaller companies, but are

somewhat open to bigger companies.
It also looks like they have more expertise in selling E-
books, and so they are more willing to work with bigger
companies.

This is obviously a trivial example that I just made up. You

want to tailor this to your own needs, and you will likely
have more columns and more rows.

The goal of this section is two fold:

1. We want to get you introduced to doing some basic

market segmentation for your own business
2. We want you to commit to who you are going to work
with and who you are NOT going to work with

The old saying is true: “If you try to make everybody

happy, you won’t make anybody happy.”

Take some time and try this exercise a few different ways.
Get creative.

In the next section we’re going to use the information we

generated in sections 1 and 2 to start getting leads for your
business.

Action Item #2
Design your own Ideal Client Matrix and fill it out with
the correct colors.
3. Build Your Lead Generation
Pipeline

Make sure you really nail sections 1 and 2 before going on to

this step. It’s critical that you know who you’re selling to
before you start generating leads.

Ok you’re still here—so you know who your target audience

is. Great!

For the sake of example, let’s take our made up digital

agency from section 2.

Let’s suppose they primarily help small to medium size

accounting and law firms generate leads and distribute
digital content (e.g. E-books).

How can they go out into the market and get new clients?

Many freelancers and small agencies experience “feast and

famine” cycles. For a little while, it feels like business is
great, then all of a sudden, everything dries up.

If you’re reading this, there’s a good chance you’ve

experienced this. After all, you’re looking for more
predictability.

How can you avoid this?

You need to build a lead generation pipeline and keep
it full of prospects.

The wording here is intentional.

When people experience feast/famine cycles, one of the

root causes is often that they do lead generation randomly.

They get random referrals.

They respond to random openings.

They send a few random cold emails.

And on and on.

To experience consistency in your business, you need to

systematize lead gen.

This doesn’t have to start off as anything fancy with

software and automation. It can be as simple as having a set
time everyday that you commit to doing lead generation.

As we’ll discuss more deeply in the next section, lead

generation for your business is a numbers game. You need
to be consistent.

Consistency of action has some strong benefits.

You can start to develop KPIs and conversion rates that you
track.
For example, you could know:

• How many cold emails you have to send before you land
a client
• How much you have to spend on Facebook ads to land a
client
• What percentage of clients typically give you referrals
• And etc.

Once you commit to taking action, the next question is

what action to take.

This is where sections 1 and 2 are so important. If you know

who you are targeting, you can fairly easily pick a couple of
channels and start doing outreach.

For instance, our example agency could start by:

• Sending cold emails to accounting and law firms

• Sending LinkedIn InMail to people at these firms
• Running Facebook ads with relevant targeting

Ok… but what should I say?

Here’s where the “pipeline” concept really comes in.

The average person will just send off emails or ads asking

for the sale. “Do you need _______ services?”

Don’t do that.

For each market segment that you commit to target, you

want to develop a high quality lead magnet.
This could be a simple guide (like the one you’re reading), a
report, a case study, or a number of other things.

The key is that it’s something quick and easy to digest that
helps them.

Something like:

Report: How this Law Firm Increased Revenue by 62%

This can be original data from your business, or it can be

something that you aggregate.

Once you have a lead magnet, you’re going to build a

pipeline.

Your pipeline has at least 5 steps:

1. Distribution channels
2. Lead magnet
3. Nurture
4. Pitch
5. Follow up

Distribution channels are places you can reach people: cold

email, Facebook ads, etc.

You’re going to offer people your lead magnet via

distribution channels in exchange for their contact info or
the right to keep in touch.
Here’s how that might go via cold email:

Email 1

Hi [name],

My name is [your name]. My company helps law firms get

more clients, and we put together a PDF that shows what’s
working best right now.

Would you like me to send it over?

Best,
[your name]

Email 2

Great! See attached.

Also, we write quite a bit of content like this to help our clients.
Would you like to be added to our internal email list?

I can’t guarantee that either of these emails will work

perfectly for your audience. The idea is to show you the
flow.

Once you get people on your email list, you need to do a bit
of nurturing—sending helpful content on a consistent basis
so they get to know you and see you as an expert.
Finally, once you’ve gotten them to know you, you’re going
to need to make a pitch, and you’re going to need to follow
up.

The pitch can look like asking if they’d like a free

consultation, offering an ad account audit, and all sorts of
other things that fall into the category of “introductory
project.”

What do you have that makes the most sense as an “easy

pitch”? Or, what’s a small thing that you could pull out of
your typical work to offer for cheap or free?

For example, in software development, you could offer a

simple project roadmap to help them get started.

Find that thing, and once you have gotten people to know
you a bit, offer it to them.

Once you pitch them, it’s time to follow up. Let’s talk about
that in the next section.

Action Item #3
Come up with your own lead magnet idea, list a few
ways you might be able to distribute it, and plan a
specific amount of time every single day to do
outreach. Then start reaching out.
4. Mastering the Follow-up

Here are a few staggering statistics for you:

• 80% of all sales happen after 5 touch points with the

customer
• Only 2% of all sales happen on the first contact
• 92% of sales people give up after 4 touch points
• Replying to business inquires within 5 minutes can
increase conversions as much as 900%

If you’re like most businesses, you are leaving the vast

majority of opportunities on the table. From the first point
alone, if you’re not following up, you are losing at least 80%
of your business.

That means with better followup alone, you could 5X

your business.

How you follow up depends on what exactly you are

selling.

If you’re selling a $50 E-book, it isn’t practical to do cold

calls. You’d probably retarget people with ads and/or send
email sequences.

If you’re selling a $25,000 service, you probably need to get

on the phone a few times.
Assuming that you are selling higher dollar services, the
important thing is to create two types of systems:

1. You want to have automatic messages that go out via

text and email the moment someone submits their info
in one of your forms
2. You want to set up a system like Hubspot or Pipedrive
where you can move leads along through stages.

You want to set up stages in your sales system that function

as checkpoints or goals (Hubspot comes with a pre-made
template).

Then, you want to have a predetermined number of

followups that you do to try to move a lead to the next
stage.

Here’s what I mean.

Suppose you have a stage called “Submitted request for

consultation”, and you have another stage called
“Consultation scheduled”.

If Susie gets added to the first stage, how many times do

you plan to follow up to try to get her to actually schedule?

You should have a system for that. Again, not all systems
are technological. That could just be standard operating
procedure that your team has written down.

However, you will likely want to use technology to keep

track of how many times you’ve followed up.
In the next section, we’ll look at one last bonus item that
you need to learn to really get to the next level.

Action Item #4
Decide now—up front—how many times and when you
will follow up with leads. Research a few CRM systems
and see which one makes the most sense for your
process.
Bonus: Qualifying Leads

Once you’ve been at this for a while, you’ll realize that most
of the people you interact with aren’t qualified to buy your
services.

This is especially true when you start running ads.

You’ll waste many hours on the phone if you don’t build a

lead qualification system. I certainly did.

One way to qualify leads is to ask key questions ahead of

time via the forms you have people fill out on your website.

However, stacking up a lot of fields on your website forms

can decrease conversion rates substantially…

On another note, one thing that we’ve discovered is that if

you architect your funnels properly, “unqualified leads”
can actually make you more profitable.

They may not be able to buy your main service, but they
might buy something else from you like an E-book.

If you set up your lead qualification funnel properly, you

can offer them the right thing at the right moment based on
how they answer questions in your forms.

All of this is pretty tricky to pull off though.

Introducing Leadjetty

We developed a tool that can do much of this automatically

and help you take your business to the next level.

You can automate followup, streamline your sales pipeline,

and digitally qualify leads using our logically enhanced
smart forms.

If you’d like to see it in action, head over to leadjetty.com.

You can try it free for 14 days to see how it can help you
upgrade your business.

If you have any questions, don’t hesitate to reach out at

stephen@cst.work.

We’d love to hear from you.

Leadjetty is a software product by Central Standard Tech

Made in Chicago
© Leadjetty 2020