How to write SOPs for your LGA so your employees will perform like rockstars

If you have more than 5 employees in your Lead Generation Agency, this playbook will help you sleep well at night and avoid burnout.

Eventually, you would love to move out of the agency, take the cash flow, and focus on other projects.

But guess what?

Different people do things differently. Everyone has his process of doing things.

That’s a nightmare for your business.

You must have standard operating procedures (SOPs) to let your agency run independently.

In this guide, I’m going to show you:

• How to create your internal knowledge base

• How to organize it

• And how to write your SOPs so everyone, no matter their education or skill level, can do an excellent job in their positions

 Let’s get started.

What are the SOPs?

As you already know, SOPs stand for standard operating procedures.

It’s essentially a set of processes and guidelines for your teammates to follow to complete specific tasks.

They are necessary to scale beyond the $25k MRR mark.

Not to mention that having a standard way of doing things will ensure that your delivery and client satisfaction are always consistent.

As an upside - you’ll also be able to completely move out of the operations, delivery, accounting, and later from your lead generation and sales.

What tool stack to use for SOPs?

Part of a great SOPs is choosing the right tools.

To be effective, SOPs must be quickly accessible, intuitive, and easy to write, edit, and publish.

What software you’ll pick for this depends on the tools you already use.

You can create SOPs in any tool, such as Google Docs, Asana, or even some note app.

However, not all tools are created equal for SOPs.

For example, my tool stack for SOPs in my agencies is:

• Notion as an internal knowledge base (you can also use Slite if you’re tight on budget)

• Airtable or Google Sheets for data collection and management (although I prefer Airtable).

Why did I choose these tools?

For starters, Notion because it’s easily accessible and intuitive. Organizing your internal knowledge base inside is a breeze. Not to mention that it has advanced automation capabilities.

On the other hand, I love Airtable because it’s a robust tool you can use for many things with a little customization, such as hiring, forms, and a custom CRM. Literally everything.

Choose your tools wisely initially because you’ll have difficulty switching to another service provider later. Just imagine migrating thousands of docs from one software to another.

How do you organize your internal knowledge base?

Let’s assume you chose Notion as your internal knowledge base.

It’s essential to have a clear structure that’s easy to follow.

I always go with a single page that links to all the other pages. This way, your teammates don’t need to find their way around Notion. Instead, they have everything in a single space.

I usually call this page “Home”.

I divide the Home page into different sections.

About & General Info

There are a few core pages:

• Meet the founder + how to work with me - not mandatory, but I like writing this doc and sending it to everyone I work with. It provides the other side with everything they need to know about me to ensure a smooth workflow and collaboration. It also makes life 10x easier.

• Team structure - basic hierarchy of the team

• Roles (info, rights, obligations, etc) - here, you have a separate doc for each role, covering everything - from what’s expected from them, what their job looks like, what they are responsible for, etc. It’s good for people to have written guideposts.

• Vacation policy - info on our vacation policy

• Request time off - sheet where they can request their time off.

• Promotions and bonuses per role - I like it when things are transparent. Here, I outline all the bonuses and promotions per role so they can clearly see their money-related goals.

Culture

• Core values - here, I outline the core values of my agency and what we stand for

• KPIs and Accountability for each role - I want everyone on the same page and hold them accountable. You can’t have A players on your team if they don’t hold themselves responsible for what they do. And you want only A players in your LGA.

• Milestones we want to reach - Here, I outline money-related milestones for my agency. I like to share the “dividends” and “fruits” of the agency’s growth with everyone. Hence, this doc helps me keep them on track of our own goals.

• Tips on working from home - It’s just a must.

General SOPs

General SOPs is a place for processes that don’t fit anywhere else, and they’re about the basic, day-to-day stuff we do at our agency.

• How to communicate effectively - this is also a must. So many times, we’ve made mistakes or performed badly because of bad communication. Here, I outline general tips for people on how to communicate effectively.

• Decision-Making Framework - you want people around you who don’t depend on you or anyone else. You want to raise young managers. Hence - they need to know how to make effective decisions.

• How to send your invoice - Simple SOP explaining to them how to get paid for their work.

• 1:1 Meeting rules - Do’s and don’ts on 1:1 meetings

• Standup Meeting rules - Same as above, but for weekly/monthly standup meetings

Operation SOPs

Now, we go into the technical stuff. This part might be different for you, depending on the tool stack you use and your operational processes and techniques.

But this is how I organize this part across my agencies:

In the end, my Notion internal directory usually looks similar to this:

I turned this Notion space into a template you can duplicate for your own agency.

Grab it here.

How to write proper SOPs [the best SOP structure]

Let me show you how to write SOPs that even your grandma can understand.

If you follow this practice, you’ll have documents to help your teammates do the perfect job every time. So you spend your nights in peace.

And this is not some structure I just came up with right now. I’ve spent years reading and researching how other agencies optimize their operations.

I tested different things and structures across my projects, and this one has proved to be the best.

How do I qualify it to be the best?

A few things:

• It’s easy to follow.

• It’s easy enough for me and my team to write all the SOPs and publish them

• It’s easy for my teammates to understand what they need to do and how to do it

• The job is done

So let me show it to you.

The important elements of each SOP

For the best results, each SOP you write should follow this structure:

• Headline of the SOP

• The objective: what are we going to discuss in this doc

• Requirements:

• What does a completed job look like? - briefly explain how it looks when they complete their job.

• The step-by-step guide

• Next action (if needed)

Let me paint this to you. This short SOP from my internal knowledge base shows people how to prepare the spreadsheet with prospect details for the outreach campaign.

Example SOP

• Headline: Creating a spreadsheet for prospecting

• Objective: In this doc, I will show you how to create a spreadsheet for outreach. You’ll need this spreadsheet to fill in the data about the prospects.

• Requirements: To complete this task, you must have a company Google account and email. Preferably, you can also have a prospect list in LinkedIn Sales Navigator, but it’s unnecessary.

• What does a completed job look like? If your sheet looks like the one below, you'll know you completed this task.

1. Create a spreadsheet by going to your Google Drive and clicking “new spreadsheet” on the left.

2. Name the client by following this format - [Client Name] - [Name of the campaign] - [Date]. For example, Acme Inc - Test campaign Los Angeles - 11.11.2023

3. Create the following columns: firstName; lastName; email; linkedinProfileURL; websiteURL; company name;

Your task is completed if your sheet looks like this:

Next steps: Add the prospect data (URL of the SOP on how to add prospect data).

That is how you write an effective SOP that people will follow and execute correctly.

The bottom line

Keeping your internal knowledge base takes time and effort. But it’s mandatory if you want to have a healthy & growing lead generation agency.

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