Strategic growth advisor to marketing agencies and professional consultancies
Helping businesses grow sustainably, profitably.
Services
I help start-up & scale-up founders, CEOs and MDs achieve their vision of success and overcome business growing pains.
Drawing on 30 years of experience driving sustainable and commercially sound growth at marketing agencies and professional services consultancies, living and working in the UK/EU, US and APAC, I deliver specialist, implementable advice that helps growing businesses transform and thrive.
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This advisory work brings clarity as to why an agency exists and for what purpose. Eg:
agency positioning, specialism / expertise
value proposition - the value the agency brings to clients - and staff
what makes the agency stand out (differentiation vs distinctiveness)
target market/s and ideal customer profile/s
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Support for agency MDs can be strategic to tactical, including, but not limited to:
Growth / BD planning
Marketing and sales strategy, value selling
Customer engagement, retention and ‘organic’ growth
CRM tools and customer data
Intermediary services
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Gaining customer insight is the foundation to informing business strategy and organic growth.
As a neutral third party, I conduct interviews with clients to get feedback that helps agencies better understand the working relationships with their clients, the challenges and opportunities that present themselves.
Acting as an independent consultant, clients open up and provide more candid feedback than they would do to the day to day team or agency SLT. I extract the key themes from across all client interviews and present the findings back in a logical and constructive manner, designed to support the agency with it strategic planning and growth objectives.
Acquiring customer insight to help inform future growth strategy
Understand clients’ knowledge of agency services and proposition
Discover why clients choose to work with the agency
Seek feedback for improvement and growth
Understand clients’ challenges and what they need from agencies
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I help independent agencies find the right creative, technical and geographic partners to drive growth in the UK and globally.
Having spent 16 years working in the US and APAC, I have a strong international network of personally vetted agencies.
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Growing pains and unexpected problems are an inevitable part of an agency lifecycle.
As an external, non-judgemental advisor, I support MDs to find solutions to any and all challenges.
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I support MDs and CEOs to address common commercial issues such as:
Late or non-payment of invoices
Weak agency-client agreements, eg contracts, SOWs
Pricing, pricing elasticity
Low margin or loss-making clients, over-servicing / scope creep
Contract negotiations / re-negotiations
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Every agency founder has a vision for their business but often the end goal is not defined.
Whether or not an agency may want to sell their business, I work with owners to get their agencies ‘match fit’ for potential M&A, from the very beginning. This encompasses all the services outline in this document.
I have relationships with all the marketing services groups. I understand what buyers are looking for and what an agency needs to do to stand out.
Introductory Consultation
If you are an agency founder / CEO, I offer a complimentary discovery consultation to find out more about your objectives and challenges, and for you to understand if my experience and skills are a good fit for you and your agency.