Once your strategy is as crisp as it needs to be, it’s time to embrace change throughout your business.
Why? Because by consistently expressing your expertise and differentiation, you’re powerfully demonstrating clarity to all your stakeholders – from clients, prospects and investors, to press, partners, staff, and the wider talent market.
By considering every touchpoint as a proof of your value proposition, you’re creating the focus you need for efficient, sustainable growth.
Think holistically
The key watch-out here is to not equate ‘touchpoint’ just with visible assets. Of course, your everyday marketing tools will need updating, like your website, decks, and lead generation assets. So too more granular representations of your brand, right down to your team’s LinkedIn profiles, email signatures, and even comp slips (ask your Nan).
But marketing is just one facet of your agency’s customer experience. It also includes how you sell and price, your people strategy, your finances and operating model, and in particular, your culture and leadership style.
In all these areas, have your structures, processes, and decision-making been tailored to reflect and substantiate the differentiation you’ve chosen?
Taking sales as an example, has your thinking evolved on who you sell to and how you sell – not to mention who you walk away from, as well as why and when?
So, which of these building blocks should you focus on? As ever, it depends. There are two routes to consider – reviewing the whole or fixing the obvious.
Setting agency-wide priorities
To get your leadership team aligned on what changes to make and in what order, consider Co:definery’s Agency Transformation Roadmap (ATXR) process – a fast-paced assessment of strengths, weaknesses, and gaps across the following pillars:
- Strategy
- Leadership
- People & Culture
- Craft & Creativity
- Commercial
- Marketing
- Sales
The Agency Transformation Roadmap process delivers a co-created action plan through the collaborative identification and filtering of priorities. Your whole senior team is bought into exactly where to start, who’s doing what, and how long things will take.
Addressing urgent issues
In other situations, you may already know where to focus. If you’re certain that you’ll create an immediate impact by addressing one or more known issues, then you can choose a specific consulting sprint to get it sorted:
- Kick-starting growth – create a sales strategy that uncovers the right kind of leads
- Value-based selling – leverage scarcity to improve conversion, command a premium and shorten your sales cycle
- Optimise your SLT – accelerate growth by transforming team performance
- People strategy – win in the talent market by differentiating your end-to-end Employee Experience
- Start your M&A journey – as M&A options evolve, choose the best approach to sell, acquire or seek investment.
Best of both worlds
I said there were two routes to choose from. In fact, there’s a third that feel like the best of both worlds.
Sometimes you want strategic thinking, other days you just need fresh eyes on a critical pitch or client conundrum. In each case, it can help to have a safe, dedicated space in which to think, to be challenged and to grow.
That’s what our Growth Advisory model offers – regular support to help you focus on the 20% that creates 80% of the impact.
So whether you’re clear on where to start or yet to set your focus, for more information on accelerating change, do get in touch.