agency-operating-system

Agency Operating System

For agency owners: profitable retainers, clients that renew, and accounts that expand. — built in-house by Skill Me.

Reach for this when you run an agency on retainers and the margins, renewals, or expansions keep slipping. It installs the operating system: positioning that escapes the generalist trap, per-client economics that expose which retainers actually make money (and the fire-or-fix threshold for the ones that don't), a communication cadence that prevents surprise churn, the monthly report that renews retainers by leading with client outcomes, QBRs that expand accounts on schedule, and a save playbook for the at-risk clients your comms signals flag. One worked example - an 8-person marketing agency with 11 retainers - threads through every skill so the margin math composes.

Install

• Claude, ChatGPT, Codex, Cursor (connector): install the whole pack from skillme.dev — one connection, then ask for any skill by name.
• As files for Codex, Cursor, or Claude Code: npx @skillme/cli add retainer-economics-calculator agency-positioning client-comms-cadence agency-monthly-report agency-qbr-upsell client-churn-save statement-of-work-writer client-onboarding-system sales-proposal-writer --target all
• With the skills CLI: npx skills add SkillMedev/agency-operating-system
• Manually: copy any skills/<slug>/SKILL.md into .agents/skills/, .cursor/skills/, or .claude/skills/.

⭐ If this is useful, star the repo — it's how we gauge what to build next.

Skills in this pack

• Retainer Economics Calculator — Compute per-client and agency-wide retainer profitability for a team-based agency - loaded delivery cost including account management time, gross margin per client, team utilization, and the fire-or-fix and sales-stop verdicts - with a runnable Node calculator.
• Agency Positioning — Reposition a generalist agency around a vertical or service specialization, write the "we're the agency that X for Y" statement, and design a paid-audit entry offer backed by aligned case studies.
• Client Comms Cadence — Design an agency's client communication operating system - a channel contract per client tier, the weekly pulse / monthly report / quarterly QBR ladder, same-business-day response SLAs, the no-surprises rule for bad news, and internal escalation triggers.
• Agency Monthly Report — Build the monthly client report that renews retainers - results-first structure with business outcomes before activity, the metric-that-matters-to-them rule, work-completed as evidence rather than headline, and a next-month plan with one client-action recommendation.
• Agency QBR Upsell — Run agency quarterly business reviews that expand accounts - the four-part QBR agenda (results retrospective, goal re-alignment, roadmap, expansion proposal), an expansion trigger inventory, land-and-expand sequencing, and price-increase timing.
• Client Churn Save — Detect at-risk agency retainer clients early and run the save - a ranked early-warning signal list, the diagnose-before-prescribing save-call procedure with a word-for-word script skeleton, the re-scope-down-not-lose rule, and the 90-day post-loss win-back window.
• Statement of Work Writer — Writes a dispute-preventing statement of work with explicit inclusions and exclusions, a 2-revision-round limit, acceptance criteria, a 50-percent-upfront or milestone payment schedule, and a change-order clause, from a full template with [FILL] fields.
• Client Onboarding System — Runs a first-14-days client onboarding procedure - kickoff agenda, asset and access collection checklist, a written communication contract, and the first-quick-win rule of shipping something visible in week one.
• Sales Proposal Writer — Writes a B2B sales proposal or SOW that restates the buyer's problem in their own words, quantifies the cost of inaction, presents price as anchored options, and drives one dated next step.

License

MIT — see LICENSE. Skills are portable SKILL.md files; the canonical copies live in the Skill Me catalog.