The last week
Why the month in your agency keeps ending the same way, what it costs you, and how you turn the monthly report from a burden into a product.
The last week
How your agency wins back the monthly report
Rowie Florencia
founder of ExeiBit
I have sat in your chair
For years I worked in a tool that promised to automate everything. Every day it cost me hours. Not on the work for clients, but on the work of showing the work. Reports. Overviews. Explanations of figures I still had to fetch myself.
The worst part was the rhythm. Not the amount of work, but the moment it came: always the last week. Always when the other work had to be finished too.
This e-book is what I wish I had read back then. It is short. It has six chapters, a few drawings and one question at the end. No theory, no promises I can't keep.
- Why the last week of the month is your most expensive week
- What a client really reads in a report, and what not
- Which of the four agency types you are, and what that type leaks
- How a report goes from export to sent, and which steps stay yours
- What you do keep doing yourself
Why the month keeps ending the same way
Look at your calendar for the last three months. Not at what was in it, but at when it was busy.
The monthly report is rarely the problem. One report is manageable. The problem is that you have to make them all at once, in the week when next month's campaigns also have to be finished and clients are already on the phone.
That makes three things happen. You put it off, because there is always later. You rush, because it can't wait any longer. And you deliver something you yourself think is mediocre, because there was no time for the one sentence that would have made the report good.
That last part is what it costs you. Not the hours. The impression.
Your clients × your hours per report = the hours that land in that one week.
hours in one week
Fill in your own numbers. They stay in your browser.
What a report really tells a client
A client doesn't read figures. A client reads whether you understand them.
In short: the campaign for the autumn promotion brought in number enquiries, change compared with September. The cost per enquiry: amount.
With every report a client asks four questions, in this order: What did you do? What did it bring? What will you do now? What do you need from me? A report that answers those four, in that order, gets read. The rest gets scrolled past.
A report that only answers question two, with chart after chart, leaves the rest open. That is why the client phones afterwards anyway. Not because the figures are missing, but because the sentence that says what they mean is missing.
It is also why you can't hand the report to the intern. They can make the charts. The sentence above them needs someone who knows the client.
Or a system that knows the client. That is what chapter 4 is about.
The four agency types and their leak
The quiz gives you one of four types. Each type loses time in a different place. Find yours.
You make the report yourself because then it's right. It costs your own hours, per client, every month. You know nobody does it the way you do, and that is exactly the problem: everything runs through you.
What you do differently tomorrow: Write the four questions from chapter 2 at the top of your report. Leave the charts in. See how much shorter it gets.
Your agency does good work, but the month ends in flames. Reports get made when everything should already have been done. Not because you can't do it, but because nothing is fixed.
What you do differently tomorrow: Set one fixed moment in week 3: the export. Only the export. The rest follows from there.
You handed it off, and that was smart. But the quality varies, you check everything anyway, and when that one team member is ill, the month stands still.
What you do differently tomorrow: Write down what a good report is, in four sentences. Then anyone can check it, not just you.
You have enough clients and you want more. But every new client means another report, more hours. Your growth is held back by the work that is supposed to prove it.
What you do differently tomorrow: Work out what a client costs you in reporting each month. Put that next to what they pay. That number decides your next step.
From export to sent in one move
This is the chapter you opened the e-book for. This is how it works when Bits make the report.
Step 1, yours. You export what you already export today: the ad data, the website figures, the social overview. Nothing new to learn.
Steps 2 and 3, the Bits'. The Analyst reads the export and writes the report in the shape of chapter 2: the four questions, with the source next to every figure. Code works out the figures, not the Bit. What is missing is marked “missing”.
Step 4, yours. You read it. You add the one sentence only you can write, because you spoke to the client yesterday. Or you change nothing.
Step 5. You approve and the report goes out, in your name. Your approval comes with a receipt: who approved what, when, from which source. That a Bit prepared it is stated with it; a Bit never pretends to be a person.
- No new tool you have to learn to work in
- No connection to everything; your export is enough
- No report that goes out without you
- No figures a model made up
How long steps 2 and 3 take depends on your export. We don't name a time we haven't measured.
What you keep doing yourself, and what you don't
The question every agency asks: what is left for us then? The answer: the part the client buys.
Yours
- The relationship with the client
- The strategy: what we do next month
- The one sentence only you can write
- The conversation when the report raises questions
- The choice of what goes in and what doesn't
The Bits'
- Reading the export and pulling out the figures
- Answering the four questions, with sources
- The layout of the report
- The difference with last month: code works it out, the Bit explains it
- Every report in the same shape, client after client
Look at what is in the left column: that is exactly the work your agency was started for. The work in the right column came later, because someone had to do it.
A Bit is never a person. It is always named as a Bit, in the report too. Your client knows what was done by whom. That is not a weakness in the story; it is the reason the story holds.
How the free first task works
We don't ask you to believe. We ask you for one export.
- You pick one client and send the export you are making this month anyway.
- The Bits make the report as in chapter 4. We make it together with you.
- You read it and compare it with what you would have made yourself. Honestly.
- Good enough to send? Then you send it, in your name, to your client. That is your first task, and it costs nothing.
- Not good enough? Then you say what is missing. We adjust or we stop. That costs nothing either.
After that you start with Starter. The subscription is the monthly report, every month. No price per report.
How many clients you report to tells you which plan fits. That is advice: everyone starts with Starter, and a higher plan opens after your milestone.
Within 14 days of your first payment you can ask for your money back, no reason needed. We don't want clients who stay because cancelling is a hassle.
Everyone starts with Starter. See the plans
Two ways to go on
The masterclass
The five steps from chapter 4, and then your questions.
Coming soonYour first task, free
One client, one export. You see the report before you choose anything.
See the plansWhich report would you hand off first this month, and why that one?
This e-book goes with the ExeiBit agency quiz. Haven't done the quiz yet? Do it here; then chapter 3 is marked for you.