Building your senior team depth determines your agency’s future success
BUILD KNOWLEDGE AND EXPERIENCE TO WIN NEW BUSINESS AND GROW.
Why developing your senior team depth is the key to your agency’s future.
The growth potential of any agency is defined by the depth and capabilities of its senior team. You need experienced talent to successfully drive leads, develop client pitch strategy, lead a pitch team and instill C-Suite confidence at crunch time. Then you need leaders who can deliver to clients program strategy and implementation on budget.
The more senior leaders you have who can execute the new business and client strategy processes, the greater your firm’s revenue growth potential. Are you as owner taking every step possible to build a leadership pipeline? Is your current team fully prepared today to excel at these critically important functions?
To fuel agency growth and enhance the value of their firms, thriving agencies have a process (and performance metrics) for the consistent development and management of the next generation of senior talent.
Important considerations in building a leadership pipeline.
Agency owners need to consider:
Is your agency’s value proposition well defined and understood by your team?
Is your value proposition supported by proprietary intellectual property (process, products, thought leadership platforms)?
Are your agency’s senior team and organizational structure designed to effectively and efficiently service and sell your agency value proposition?
Does your firm have a consistent methodology for overall client service delivery (data, strategy, content, program execution, channel-agnostic delivery and back-end analytics)?
Does your agency have a process for lead generation and reputation building? How central are you personally versus your team for success in these areas?
Does your agency have a consistent best-of-breed new business qualification and pitching process?
Does your agency have a thorough professional development program built around your client service delivery process, proprietary intellectual property/products and new business process?
What level within your firm drafts client and new business pitch strategy documents? Is your mid-level talent involved?
Does your current leadership team have clear and aligned roles, success metrics and incentives?
Does the staff have career roadmap documents detailing skills and accomplishments necessary for outstanding performance?
Does your agency have a thorough and timely process for handling staff reviews, promotions and salary increases?
Do your current recruiting, selection and hiring processes consistently garner A-level talent?
Obviously, building a leadership pipeline is a highly complicated and important process. It requires thinking through many aspects of agency life and incorporating this into a teaching process. It should include formal training, informal mentoring and, at the right time, you letting go so the team drives major clients and new business pitches with little or no involvement from you. Success will bring greater revenue growth and a much larger valuation for your agency at exit time.
Daunting? It doesn’t have to be. It just requires some planning, focus and a commitment to sharing your wisdom and experience with others. It’s key to your future.
We’re here to help.
Prosper Group exists to help the owners of independent marketing communications agencies achieve their ambitions and maximize the value of their life's work.
Our team of former agency leaders and owners focus their deep experience on implementing proven proprietary methodologies across our three practices of agency performance, owner exit planning and M&A transactions in order to drive owner and agency success.
Developed by Alex Halbur/Partner & Managing Director