How often do you look at your agency's churn rate? Do you know the lifetime value of a client? What are your client retention strategies? Do you dedicate time to client retention like you do to client acquisition? It all starts with monitoring the right metrics, understanding what clients really want, and being proactive in client services. Today’s guest is an agency sales and client service expert who manages end-to-end sales activities for a white-label agency. She shares the key metrics you should track and tips to help you master client retention. Kushbu Doshi is the VP of Sales and Customer Service at E2M Solutions, a white-label agency with clients around the world. She is a customer service specialist with a passion for strategizing, making realistic action plans, and following up on their implementation to get real results for agencies. Kushbu has been on the show before to talk about how to improve your customer service. In this episode, we’ll discuss: How to calculate client retention rate. Questions that lead to better client retention. Dedicating time to retain existing clients. Important KPIs to improve agency-client relationships. Subscribe Apple | Spotify | iHeart Radio | Stitcher | Radio FM How to Calculate Your Agency's Client Retention Rate The team at E2M Solutions has created metrics meant to track their performance in terms of client retention. The most important step to start getting a sense of how your team is doing with client retention is establishing your client retention rate. You can figure this out by establishing how many clients you have at the start of the quarter (S) and at the end of the quarter (E). Client Retention Ratio = (E ÷ S) x 100 So basically, if you have 100 at the start of the quarter and 80 at the end of the quarter, your retention rate will be 80%. Ideally, your client retention should be above 75%. Any number below should be something you address with your team to find out what’s not working out. Effective Ways to Master Client Retention Client retention starts with the sales conversations and setting the right expectations from the very beginning. There are many things you could start doing at your agency to increase retention level. For instance, after calculating your retention rate, you can appoint a client service person to start tracking client success. E2M decided client service has to be a stand-alone role instead of something handled by the project manager or the team working directly with the client. This person ensures the client is happy and the agency is matching client expectations. They have keynotes for every client containing their goals for the next 1-3 years. These details help the agency determine how to work with the client, what may not work, and how to upsell or cross-sell new opportunities to extend the relationship. Additionally, they also do periodic calls in which they go over expectations and progress. Basically, it’s about keeping an eye on your clients and staying curious about their plans for the future. Are they open to expanding services? What kind of niche do they want to target next? Ask Bold Questions and Improve Client Communication Kushbhu's team is trained to ask bold questions in the sales call to find out why clients want to be associated with their white-label agency. What are the major pain points her team will solve? If you can get clients to talk about their whys, you’ll come out confident about exactly what they want. Many times these conversations help reveal what the client thinks they want is not actually what they need. Additionally, in most cases, clients are pleasantly surprised to receive this type of personalized attention. This type of action helps win trust and mutual respect. Do You Dedicate Time to Retaining Existing Clients? Kushbu strongly believes the time spent getting more leads should match the time spent retaining existing clients. After all, if your churn rate is high then what’s the point of just focusing on ge