No person will make a great business who wants to do it all himself or get all the credit. – Andrew Carnegie I remember my first day as General Manager of M&S Systems. I called all my direct reports in for a staff meeting to try to understand the business. I immediately noticed that I…
Articles on Strategic Planning Uniting Your Team, Charting your Future As a leader, it’s your job to define your agency’s future. To do that, you need a point of view about what’s happening in the market you serve. What threats are out there? What are the opportunities? You need to be able to predict the…
Improve your Sales Process REDUCING UNCERTAINTY, SOLVING PROBLEMS Selling creative services is not like selling widgets. When you’re selling creative services, you’re never really sure what your client is buying, and they’re never really sure what you’re selling. In short, there’s a lot of uncertainty. Your sales process should be focused on reducing uncertainty and…
Using a Budget and KPIsto Improve your Agency Performance. Don’t get caught driving without a dashboard. Ever tried driving a car without a working dashboard? I hope not; it’s dangerous. For your agency, your budget and Key Performance Indicators (sometimes called KPIs or OKRs) are like your car’s dashboard. They give you the information you…
Articles on Positioning & Specialization Figure out who you are, then tell the world A well-positioned firm is clear about who they are for and what difference they make in the world; their ideal client sees and feels this immediately. When you’re clear about the services you offer, who you offer them to, and why…
Articles on Pricing Strategy BILLING FOR VALUE rather than time Pricing should be strategic and reflect the value of your team’s unique expertise. When you price your services higher, you communicate confidence in the value you create. It tells your clients that you know you can make a big difference for their company. And who…
Improving your Team Performance Thriving together as a Team Your team should be more than 1+1 = 2. Coordinating, managing, and motivating your team often eats up time that could have been spent getting work done. It starts seeming like having a team makes work more complicated rather than easier. So how do you create…
Improve hiring for your Agency INTERVIEW BETTER. HIRE SMARTER. There’s nothing that does more for company performance than hiring great people. Yet, for many agency owners, hiring feels like a black box. You spend a ton of time and resources selecting and interviewing candidates, making offers, and onboarding new employees. Then, six months later, the…
Developing your leadership mastery Healthy leaders grow strong teams. The most powerful thing you can do to improve your business performance is to improve your leadership mastery. The next thing? Improve the capacity of others to lead. Leadership encompasses many skills – strategic decision-making, communication, time management, people management, relationship building, training, and so on….
I’m in the middle of a coaching call with an agency owner, and we’ve gotten down to the root of a problem that’s been plaguing him for a while. He now sees clearly what needs to be done, but it’s not going to be easy…he falls silent as he contemplates his choices. “I’m not sure…