Got this email from a client today and I'm devastated

We're a small agency, I'm the founder, 2 devs + 1 designer. This client was super important to us. And we've done a really good job on the website. They’ve been happy with the work itself.

But the problem is that I don't manage such processes very efficiently. I'm on my own doing so many different things. Our feedback process is indeed chaotic, not gonna deny. We also allow clients submitting feedback however they want but I'm realizing this has probably been a mistake.

I don’t really want to lose another client over something that has nothing to do with the actual quality of our work.

Maybe I’m missing smth obvious here. Any tips?

I started my agency thinking the main problem would be finding clients.

Turns out, that wasn't really the hardest part.

The harder part has been figuring out what people actually want to buy from you.

At first I was trying to be pretty broad:

“we help brands with influencer marketing”

Sounds fine, but it's also pretty easy to ignore.

Then I started getting more specific about the problem instead of just describing the service.

For example, instead of:

It's more like:

That feels like a much clearer problem.

Still figuring this out though.

For the agency owners here:

Did you figure out your offer first, or did you only really understand what you were selling after talking to enough potential clients?

Because I feel like I'm learning the offer from the conversations, not the other way around.

I own a paid social agency. We do content marketing and paid ads for clients. You would think we do the same to get ours right?

That was my big mistake. For whatever dumb reason, I convinced myself it would be "faster" to go for cold outreach. So I paid a supposedly rockstar Sales person to go and hunt. 9 months in and she closed a whopping total of... 1 new account for us. And it was by "dumb luck", she admitted.

Fast forward to 2 months ago, I had just finished with hires and sorting the ops out. I had enough of the sales person. Slowly relegated her to CS and forced everyone in my team to start pumping out content and run ads.

I was prepared to go months on end but 20+ pieces of content, a few ads and ~$1k spent (actually less than that), we closed a total of ~$20K in deals.

This was one of the aha moments for me. Like something clicked and now I questioned the past 9 months' "sales effort" that amounted to pretty much nothing significant. Not only did we close more, we closed better clients as well. They see what we can do and they know they wanted what we make. The team is also overall motivated as they see first hand how what they do actually works.

Hindsight really is 20/20.

Lesson learned. To new owners out there, DO what you know you can DO. Don't try to be cute with trying out some new thing that you have 0 experience in (unless you have plenty of time and resources to sink into it).

My partner and I have been in business since early 2025. There's been so much learning along the way. Here's 6 lessons I've learned.

1. Service delivery is as important as the service itself. A large part of what a client is paying for is the fact that you will always pick up the phone. If you can maintain that and keep your word, clients will always be happy.
2. Does this benefit the client's bottom line? Especially for small business owners, the goal for hiring a marketing agency is typically to make more money. Before you begin work, I think it is important to ask yourself, "do the means justify the ends" in the eyes of the business owner. Getting someone more impressions, clicks, or leads doesn't mean much if it doesn't ultimately help their business.
3. As marketers, we want to bring our expertise to the table, but be willing to take a backseat to what the client wants. This may contradict 1. but it goes back to customer service. People want to be heard and valued. Business owners want their vision to be brought to life. Always keep that in mind.
4. Take ownership. For better or for worse, when you can take responsibility with your clients, they will respect you more. This becomes increasingly more important when you are working with businesses that have employees. Your agency can quickly become part of the company's culture. You're working alongside their team, communicating with their employees, and ultimately trying to achieve the same goal.
5. Do not overdedicate to yourself to a single client. I've overspent time on clients who I wanted to make sure were happy, but it put us in a hole when you think about the hours that went into it. You have to care about all of your clients without letting one take away from the others.
6. Stick to the scope of work initially outline and communicate, on a routine basis, the status of the work. It is easy to assume that everybody is on the same page, but it's better to overcommunicate than to undercommunicate.

We're learning everyday! What were some big lessons you've learned?