Cris Rodriguez’s clients were trying to pay her account managers under the table.
Not for anything shady. They just wanted someone to follow up with their leads. GrowPro, Cris’s martial arts marketing agency, was generating more leads than the schools could handle, and the leads were going cold.
So Cris pre-sold a lead follow-up service before she had any idea how she’d deliver it. Today that call center serves about 200 clients and is GrowPro’s second most popular program. It’s a big part of how the agency grew to about $420K a month.
On the Seven Figure Agency podcast, Cris walked through how she built it and how she’s packaging AI services the same way. If your clients keep asking for more than you currently sell, this is how to turn those requests into programs.
Start With the Problem Your Clients Keep Bringing Up
Every service GrowPro sells came from a client complaint:
- “Cris, you’re generating so many leads. We can’t keep up.” That became the call center.
- “We know we need video content.” That became on-site videography.
- “We keep hearing about AI employees. Can you help us?” That became their AI program.
The definition of entrepreneurship is finding a problem and solving it at a profit. The best place to find your next service isn’t a trend report. It’s the questions your clients are already asking your team.
And this is exactly how you move from being “the Facebook ads person” to being a growth partner. The mix of services will change. What stays constant is that you’re helping clients grow.
Why Lead Follow-Up Is One of the Best Services You Can Sell
Here’s how Cris explains it. “I can generate you all the leads in the world. But what most business owners do is they call the lead once, they have some automations firing, and then the lead goes into the black hole of leads that are never gonna get followed up with again.”
Fortune is in the follow-up. If your clients aren’t calling leads fast and often, your ad results will look worse than they are, and you’ll get blamed for it.
A follow-up service fixes the problem where it actually lives. It raises the client’s return on your marketing, which makes them stickier. For GrowPro, it’s now so valuable that some clients hire them only for follow-up. They have plenty of leads from organic or their own ads and just need someone to work them. So GrowPro sells it as a standalone program too.
How GrowPro Built the Call Center (The Messy Truth)
Cris is refreshingly honest here. “You build the wings as the plane is going down.”
They pre-sold it first
GrowPro sold the service before they knew how they’d run it. That’s the right move. It proves demand and forces you to build.
The first setup failed
GrowPro was fully in-office then. Cris built a small call center room in their new building. After the first week, none of the agents could hear prospects on the phone because they were all talking over each other.
The tech stack took about 18 months to figure out
GrowPro’s clients use HighLevel, so the first plan was to follow up inside each client’s HighLevel sub-account. Then they found out how much time agents lost switching from one sub-account to the next.
They’d also promised clients that every lead would get a call within five minutes. So they had to figure out how to actually prove agents were hitting that. It took roughly a year and a half of trial and error to get the tech right.
They had to dial in the call cadence
GrowPro calls prospects on behalf of its clients, so being overly aggressive would hurt the client’s brand. Finding the right number and timing of calls took time too.
Growth stalled until the right person owned it
This is the lesson I’d underline. The call center was stuck around 80 clients for a couple of years. Then Cris promoted Marina, the second agent she ever hired, to concierge director. Marina took the department and ran with it.
Now they’re close to 200 clients, with 22 setters working seven days a week, 9 AM to 5 PM Eastern. A new service line needs an owner who wakes up thinking about it. Until it has one, it will plateau.
Packaging AI Services Clients Will Actually Buy
Every agency owner I talk to right now is trying to figure out AI offers. Cris had a big lesson on this one this year.
GrowPro launched an “AOS” program, short for AI operating system. It included AI employees, but they didn’t market it that way. It didn’t land. “AI employee” is such a buzzword that you have to use it, so they’re rebranding the program now.
Her takeaway is worth writing down: a naming problem doesn’t mean you scrap the program. Put your marketing hat on and figure out how to brand it so it connects.
Here’s what’s inside the program:
An AI QA reviewer
The AI listens to recorded calls and gives instant coaching feedback, trained on the client’s own SOPs. Cris thinks this is one of the most popular things you can offer, because nobody has time to listen to their team’s calls.
An AI sales coach
Studios record their enrollment conferences (their sales conversations with parents) and get the same kind of feedback on how to improve.
Custom GPTs, moving to plugins
GrowPro built custom GPTs for clients and is now shifting to plugins as the platforms change. That’s the “always in beta” core value in action.
A Slack communication hub
This one is clever. To agencies, Slack is just another day at the office. But a lot of small businesses run their entire team through group text messages. GrowPro installs Slack for clients and puts the AI employees inside it. Just having channels for specific topics is eye-opening for many of them.
AI Dojo role play
Most AI tools act on behalf of the business. GrowPro built one that acts like the customer. Staff call a phone number and the AI plays a parent asking about classes, trained on the studio’s own scripts.
It covers the conversations that matter most in a membership business: appointment setting, sales, upgrades, renewals, and the dreaded cancellation call. As Cris puts it, “I don’t want my team, the first time having a conversation with a customer about cancellation, to be with the customer.”
They gamified it too, with usage counts, call volume, and scores, so teams compete to practice. Anyone who’s tried to run role play at a live workshop knows why this matters. Cris jokes that the moment she announces role play from the stage, 30% of the audience heads to the bathroom.
Stack Services as Upgrades, Not a Random Menu
All of this fits into GrowPro’s program structure: three core packages at $597, $897, and $1,297 a month, plus add-ons and down-sells, with ad spend on top.
Cris already believed in ascension programs from running her martial arts school. Every good business has upgrades: fries with that, leather seats, extra legroom. When she joined 7FA, program packaging was one of the first things we worked on, and it clicked. Some clients only need Meta ads. Others want Google ads, social, follow-up, or AI on top. The packages meet clients where they are.
One more thing about Cris’s approach: she has never white-labeled a service. “I’m not going to sell kung fu lessons if I don’t know kung fu.” Everything is delivered in-house. That’s slower to build, but it gives her control over quality and margin. You don’t have to follow that rule, but you should decide on purpose.
How to Add Your Next Service Line
Here’s the process I’d pull from Cris’s story:
- Log the requests. Have your account managers track every “can you also help with…” question for 60 days.
- Pick the one closest to your core result. Lead follow-up works because it directly improves the ROI of the leads you already generate.
- Pre-sell it to a few clients. Demand first, perfect delivery second.
- Expect the first version to break. Budget time to fix tech, process, and cadence.
- Give it an owner. Promote or hire someone whose job is to grow that program.
- Name it in the client’s language. If the offer isn’t landing, test the name before you kill the program.
- Fit it into your packages. Make it an upgrade path, and consider a standalone version for clients who only need that piece.
If you’re trying to figure out which service to add next and how to price it, that’s a big part of what we do with members. Book a free strategy call and we’ll look at your current packages together. You can also see how SFA Coaching helps agencies between $30K and $83K MRR build out their programs.
Frequently Asked Questions
Should a marketing agency offer lead follow-up services?
If you generate leads for clients who don’t follow up well, yes. It improves client ROI, makes your marketing look better, and increases retention. GrowPro’s follow-up service became its second most popular program and is also sold on its own.
How many setters do you need to run a call center for agency clients?
GrowPro runs 22 setters, seven days a week from 9 AM to 5 PM Eastern, for about 200 clients. Start smaller, promise a response time you can prove (GrowPro promises five minutes), and scale staff as the program grows.
How should agencies package AI services for small businesses?
Solve specific problems: AI call QA, AI sales coaching, AI role-play training, and a central communication hub like Slack. Use the language clients already know, like “AI employees,” even if it feels like a buzzword.
Should an agency white-label services?
It’s a choice. White-labeling is faster, but you give up some control. Cris Rodriguez keeps everything in-house at GrowPro, which requires constant learning but keeps quality and margins under her control.
How do you know which new agency service to launch?
Track what clients ask for. The best new services solve a problem your clients already have and connect directly to the result you’re known for.
