The Agency Growth Blog - For Owners Who Want Growth

I’m part of an agency owners community and their monthly email had an article titled, “It’s Poaching Season” along with a picture of Bugs Bunny and Elmer Fudd. The title resonated with me and in a few of my cohorts we've been discussing this practice. 

It seemed like a topic worth writing about because if you haven’t had anyone poached, it's just a matter of time. 

This always seems like someone else’s problem until it becomes yours. What’s worse is that when someone leaves, there is a good chance other people will leave too. Turning over team members and especially losing client-facing people is one of the fastest ways to lose clients and revenue. 

Protecting your team from poaching might be the smartest thing you do this year.

Hiring Consultants Is Risky, Don't Make A Bad Hiring Decision in 2020

A lot of agencies are growing and that means hiring. But hiring the wrong person can set you back months. Even worse, hiring someone who is mediocre can put you in this weird position where they are too good to fire, but not good enough for you to be 100% comfortable that they’ll take wonderful care of your clients.

Both of these conditions are bad for your agency.  In this article, we’ll talk about how to avoid this.

The digital marketing industry is booming, and professionals with skills in digital marketing are in high demand. A 2018 survey by LinkedIn reported a shortage of 230,000 people with marketing skills in the 20 largest metro areas polled.

With a limited number of amazing candidates and a high risk for making a hiring mistake, what should you be looking for in 2020 when hiring new consultants for our digital agency?

Besides the 30 or so agency owners I’m actively working with right now, I talk to roughly another 10 to 15 agency owners each month who reach out with basic questions. The time I spend with them gives me insight into the specific challenges facing agency owners today.

Anyone who has talked to me in the past or has taken the time to get to know me is aware that I’ll give any agency owner 30 minutes to talk shop, help them with challenge and share any insights I’ve gained over the past 17 years running Square 2.

Working with other agency owners is one of my passions. Over the past few months, I started noting the questions people ask and its crystal clear to me that everyone has very similar challenges.

I often look back through old blog article to make sure that I’m always covering new ground and writing about new topics, but this topic is so common and its been almost three years since I talked about strategies behind hiring, that it seemed like a good starting point for 2019.

Today a lot of agencies are growing. I’ve spoken to several agency owners recently who shared with me, they’ve grown from $300,000 to $600,000 in the last year or from $700,000 to $1.5 million over the past 18 months. A lot of agencies are growing so their obvious question is, “as we grow, who do we hire, in what order and into what role?”

When it comes questions this one is the most asked of them all. When and who do I hire? I think this is most challenging to inbound agency owners of small shops because the fear of making a mistake is petrifying. I do understand that. Hiring is a big commitment, a responsibility and one that puts someone else’s personal future on the line. No one wants to hire a new team member only to have to let them go in 30 days.

But the fear should be put aside. Fear can’t rule the day. No decisions are permanent, especially hiring decisions and yes, it would be difficult to let your new team member go, but everyone would get over it and move on—if it came to that. So, moving forward now. Let’s not “make it hurt” let’s stop this silly “boot strapping” entrepreneurial guidance we’ve all heard from experts. If you’re too busy to work ON your business it is because you’re working IN it every day, all day. You need help. You need a new team member.

Hiring, team building, and resource management is such a hot topic for inbound marketing agency owners there are over 10 different blog articles on this site alone that address related topics. With all that, what we’ve learned about staffing an inbound marketing agency has changed dramatically over the past 12 months and I’m wondering if these articles are even relevant anymore.

We’re all in uncharted waters here, so it’s not surprising that what worked last January might not be working today. We’ve changed our approach to building our team and we’ve changed the way we deliver services. It seemed like a good time to share that with all of you.

Six Areas Inbound Marketing Agency Owners Need To Focus On Next Year To Make 2017 Your Best Year Ever!

I wanted to let everyone know how grateful I am for all the warm wishes and wonderful feedback all the agency owners have provided me over the past year or two. Many of you have worked directly with me on your agencies in one form or the other and the progress you’ve all made is wonderful.

To give back, I’d love to be able to give all of you a gift on this holiday season. Obviously, that would be a logistical challenge as well as setting me back financially. However, I can give you the gift of knowledge and here’s a little chance for me to give you what I wish I could give you and let you know why these are the most important gifts you should be giving yourself this season.

I recently got a puppy and we’ve been diligently training him to handle all the obvious commands. First and most important, he needs to do his business outside. Next we want him to be controlled so walking next to us on the leash, stay when directed, come when requested and down if necessary. Just the basics, after all, he’s just a puppy. We can’t expect him to do everything on day one.

That got me thinking about how we train new inbound marketing agency team members and how similar some of the experiences probably should be, yet how different they are in reality. I’ll preface this by saying I think we could be much better at training new team members. I think in general it’s a lot of, “your smart, figure it out.” I’m pretty sure that’s not the right approach.

Here are a few techniques to consider when you’re getting new inbound agency team members up to speed.

When it comes to hiring people to take care of your clients, most of you with agency experience lean into the idea of the traditional account manager. It kind of makes sense right? Let’s get people who are good at taking care of the clients.

However, the inbound marketing agency isn’t taking care of clients in the same way a traditional agency is taking care of clients and inbound agencies have a responsibility to get clients results, so there’s a fairly significant shift from the skills account managers leverage in a traditional agency to the skills your marketing consultants are going to need in an inbound agency.

Earlier this month I spoke at Inbound 2015, HubSpot’s annual love fest for everyone who knows anything about Inbound. One of the topics I spoke about is hiring people for your inbound agency. Today, I’ll spend a bit more time talking about how important it is to hire and how hiring (or not hiring) might actually be holding you back.

If you read anything about running a small business or entrepreneurialism, one of the first things you lean is about boot strapping and making it hurt before you add expenses to your business. It makes sense on paper, but maybe not so much in the real world.