Posted: April 25, 2018 by Robert Craven
Over the last 24 months some agency owners have said that they would like a little more clarity about exactly what we at The Directors’ Centre have been doing with Google Partners and the digital agency ecosystem. As the start of another Google programme is imminent (I board Eurostar to Belgium on Thursday) I thought it was about time to write this article…
Some four years ago I was involved in the creation of a business development program for digital agencies which has subsequently been rolled out across some 34 countries. This was an extension or a revision of the various pieces of work I had been doing at Cranfield and Warwick Business Schools with their various Accelerated/Business Growth Programs. This was all about the characteristics of high-performing agencies and businesses.
The Google Coaching and Elevator programs I run work with digital agencies that are part of the Google Partners program. It focuses on the non-technical aspects of growing an agency: strategy, marketing and teams as well as the more subtle subjects of pricing, negotiation and so on. It provides the missing link that many agencies were looking for: the knowledge and skills to grow the agency.
As with all my previous work, I have been focusing on identifying what the high-performers do differently from the ‘average’ firms, what the ‘average’ needs to do and, most importantly, how to help and support the ‘average’ to move closer to the high-performers in terms of turnover and profits.
While I am no advocate of silver bullets or revolutionary secret steps to unlimited wealth, we have witnessed that agencies that follow through on the program’s ology see a remarkable uplift on performance. The one big number is that net profit, of agencies we have followed, more than doubles year on year.
Our body of evidence grows as I have now run programs in the UK, Belgium and Romania and each cohort sees similar results in both hard and soft measures.
Alongside the business growth/coaching program, I have been invited to deliver a series of keynotes to the crème de la crème of Google Partner agencies from Amsterdam to Athens, from New York to Singapore. Amazing conferences, amazing people and a remarkable commitment to growing the agencies and their clients.
Alongside the work with Google Partners, The Directors’ Centre runs a series of different activities for digital agencies from one-to-one coaching and mentoring to mastermind groups and conference facilitation. As we say in the office, “All things digital”.
The thread that runs through all this work is an obsession to help agency owners and directors to run the agency they want to run so that they can live the lives they really want to lead. It is as simple as that!
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