Every agency I know has a desire to be profitable, experience reasonable growth and enjoy the fruits of their labor. That means less stress and in a chaotic industry where learning to stay ahead and even be a visionary to your clients can take a heavy toll.
I’m frequently asked by agency leaders, “How do I get over the hump; how do I get to the next plateau?”
They tell me their agency is stuck in neutral – and neutral is a bad place to be. While neutral is safe, it’s a zone where there’s no movement, in other words, the initial steps towards decline. The cause is lack of new business – not because you don’t know it – it just doesn’t get done.
While everything in the agency business has changed dramatically over the years, acquiring new business hasn’t.
Every agency leader knows new-business skills, so the problem of growth isn’t about knowing, it’s about the doing and taking persistent action. This is the huge differentiator: knowing versus doing.
Unfortunately, you can’t start the “doing” without being able to clearly voice and document what your agency is most singularly best at and how that emotionally benefits and transforms clients.
Once completed, and claiming your area of expertise and leadership, now comes the “persistent doing.”
There’s no doubt that getting to the next level is a challenge but having the trusted support of an advisory group of your executive peers can get you there faster, with less stress and friction.
CEO Stars is a next generation advisory group for select ad agency leaders. Together we are helping our member agencies successfully get to their next level through discussions focused on clarity of position, taking ownership of what they do best, target prospecting and collaboration of ideas.
Together, we put a focus on “doing” because if you’re not “doing” – you’re soon going to be done.
Joel Cohen is the founder of CEO Stars – www.ceostars.com – a unique concept with a community of over 105 ad agency CEOs. Cohen is also the founder of Dreamland, USA – ‘An Imagineering Community’ – that helps leaders accomplish their ‘impossible.’
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