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Agency retainers are not a thing of the past
Retainers remain important to the majority of agencies, but agency leaders reported a change in clients’ attitudes towards them. The responses showed that while retainers are slightly less common than they were (and can be for shorter periods), typically agencies are not seeing a negative impact on revenues. Some noted the prevalence of a wide…
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What keeps agency owners awake at night?
During an Agency Sales Transformation workshop in 2019 (when I was at Waypoint Partners), led by Partner Lisa Mandell, we asked a dozen agency leaders what sales challenges were keeping them awake at night. We dealt with each in turn and started to explore ways of addressing them. All shared their ideas and thinking openly…
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When should I fundraise?
Raising funds, either seed for your start-up or for Series A, B or C, is distracting and time consuming. What’s more, it’s an activity that usually falls outside company founders’ area of expertise, which means they often try to defer or avoid it. Consequently, entrepreneurs often ask us “when should I be fundraising?” The answer…
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When a butterfly flaps it’s wings
About four weeks ago (Sept 2018) I bumped into Milan Lad. He was standing outside Cannon Street station handing out CVs. “I’m looking for a job in Investment Banking. Can you help?” he asked as people walked past. He was smart & well-spoken and, most importantly, was clearly getting off his backside to make something…
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You can’t help being negative
Do you want the good news or the bad news? The fact is that whichever you choose, it’s the bad news that you are most likely to remember and act on. That’s because we’ve evolved to respond far more strongly to negative experiences than positive ones. Our primitive selves needed to react to danger, or…
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How Founders become Leaders
5 ways founders need to change as leaders when their agency starts to grow. When you start a business with someone else you all tend to adopt roles. I don’t mean the tasks we pick up, I mean behavioural roles. We take on the role of “the optimistic one” or “the cautious one” or “the…
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Gens X, Y & Z – an ABC
You didn’t know we had a Generation Z now? Keep up at the back. We’re on our way back around the alphabet – that’s how far we’ve come in our desire to categorise broad cohorts of the population. So what? Who cares? Well, seemingly almost everyone I talk to: agency leaders bemoaning the entitled attitudes…
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My mind has gone blank
Years ago, when I was still a planner, I worked with a brilliant Creative Director called Sedge… He consistently nailed the brief and produced exciting work that made my job easy. I’d share his ideas with my clients and take as much reflected glory as I could. He was also the only creative in the…
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It’s good to talk
I’ve noticed a bit of a pattern in my last few meetings. Agency leaders don’t talk to each other. They chat, they discuss business, they make plans… …they hire & fire, they have meetings, they win & lose pitches, they drink together. Frankly, most of them seem to get on. But very few of them seem…
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5 things Norwich City FC can teach us about organisational culture
I recently came across an article about a lovely response a seven-year-old had received from Norwich City Football Club. The young fan had written a letter to apologise for not being able to attend her first match and to ask for a refund. A member of the Customer Service team, Emma, had handwritten a reply…
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Ignore your agency culture at your peril
A healthy agency culture is critical – so why do you neglect it? What came first, the culture or the foosball table? Was it the attitude of the founder that created an approach that spawned a business or once the business got going, did an agency culture evolve? The answer is probably yes. Founders have…
