Do you charge for strategy or give it away for free? Are your prospects aware of the value of your thinking and research? Charging for strategy benefits both the agency and the client but so many give it away. However, when you charge for strategy, you'll grow faster and easier. Instead of giving away value for free, you can improve your processes and offer a highly detailed offer and a productized option. Today's guest found himself in this situation as his agency started to grow. He feels one of his biggest mistakes was not charging for strategy sooner. Now his team gets paid for thinking as well as doing. Here's how you too can charge for your brainpower right now. Spencer Powell is the owner of Builder Funnel, a strategic marketing agency focused on helping design-build remodelers and custom home builders achieve sustainable business growth. With a combination of inbound marketing, software, and proven strategy, they shorten their clients' path to revenue and profit goals. In this interview, we’ll discuss: Why giving away strategy is a mistake. Agency and client benefits of charging for strategy. Giving your sales team tools for success.   Subscribe Apple | Spotify | iHeart Radio | Stitcher | Radio FM Sponsors and Resources E2M Solutions: Today's episode of the Smart Agency Masterclass is sponsored by E2M Solutions, a web design, and development agency that has provided white-label services for the past 10 years to agencies all over the world. Check out e2msolutions.com/smartagency and get 10% off for the first three months of service.   Why You Should Get Paid for Strategy Spencer’s journey in the agency industry started twelve years ago. Not knowing a lot about the business, he made mistakes early on. One of his biggest mistakes was not charging for strategy. Building a highly specialized offer and charging for strategy completely transformed the agency. So how did he turn it around and start getting paid for the thinking and the doing? Like any new agency, the first years are all about gaining clients’ trust and figuring things out. That is why giving away strategy didn’t seem like a big mistake at the time. A couple of years down the line, however, they became much more focused and experienced. Spencer realizes now they should’ve started charging for strategy. Their process includes looking into clients’ Google Analytics and putting together a custom game plan which took significant “thinking time”. So they add that time into the proposal. According to Spencer, it is part of the plan they present and it makes sense to include it in the proposal. He wants his proposals to have some element of customization to them. Adding "thinking" and research is a logical part of creating a really good plan. The Agency and Clients Both Benefit When You Charge for Strategy The shift to charging for strategy is fairly recent for Spencer's agency. It all started with setting the goal of becoming the best agency for remodelers and custom builders. They picked a very narrow niche and started working towards that north star. Spencer knows ensuring that #1 spot would take a lot of groundwork to create a sound strategy and great execution plan. As they listed all the things they should do to create the best possible plan, the steps kept increasing. It was a good opportunity to justify charging for strategy. When strategy is billable, they’re able to spend an appropriate amount of time on it. In hindsight, their free strategies weren’t customized enough. All their clients got similar steps to follow. Now, they take a few weeks to review a clients’ analytics and come up with a custom, detailed 12-month plan. Building a Sales Team and Giving Them the Tools to Success Two or three years down the line Spencer realized the need for salespeople selling custom marketing plans. But what level of knowledge and experience would his agency sales team need? Do they need to know the remodeling industry? How to sell and market within it? He was convince