Sometimes challenges feel endless for small business owners, but overcoming the obstacles is part of identifying them. As a small business CEO, here are the top five challenges I tackle every day to make sure my business grows and thrives!
1.) Commitment to new business. It's a juggling act of time, creativity, work, cash, and staffing, but going after new business is just as vital as maintaining your accounts, streamlining good work for clients, and keeping the pipeline full of new opportunities for them.
2.) Moving up the food chain to compete with larger agencies on bigger pieces of business. Small agencies shouldn't be afraid of going after massive projects or large accounts. There are concrete benefits in being serviced by small ad agencies, but it is a challenge to compete with big fish agencies. Internal agency branding is important as well - showcase expertise and project work and make it viral with social media.
3.) Being stereotyped as a particular type of agency. While hyperfocusing is already challenging, specialization can backfire and leave you out of big RFPs your agency can service. Try to avoid being the hi-tech agency, or the lifestyle only agency. Capitalizing on your expertise can help you leverage and win new business without being sterotyped.
4.) Getting the attention of agency search consultants who only pick from their regular flock of agencies. I face this challenge very often. It benefits businesses to look outside their list of regulars and be open to fresh new ideas, especially in today's ever changing environment. Getting your agency's name and message out there requires dedication, persistence and time well spent.
5.) The normal small business operations issues. Cash flow, staffing, time lags, client management, reporting, accounting are required daily operations that must be handled and managed well. Time management skills are put to the test with this challenge; for any machine to work, it must be well oiled and maintained!
As a business owner, finding a balance within the load of all the responsibility is key. It isn't easy, and there are always setbacks I have to manage. But, I keep thinking that by tackling challenges head on, I take the first step in overtaking them.
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Showing posts with label tips for small ad agencies. Show all posts
Showing posts with label tips for small ad agencies. Show all posts
3/18/10
Find inspiration in little things and meet challenges head on
A case study by Fuseideas CEO, Dennis Franczak
Every agency owner goes through a day, a week, or even longer where things don’t go your way. You might now win some new business, a client might decide to stop spending money, your employees might start feeling down, or someone might even decide they don’t need your services anymore…you get the picture. Having been in this business long enough, Dennis Franczak, our CEO at Fuseideas, realized that doing this is a marathon, not a sprint, and nothing always is perfect and how you deal with it tells a lot about your character, but also your agency.
As a small agency owner, you have to deal with the wide variety of emotions that it takes to run a successful business. When things don’t go your way, are you pouting in the corner, blaming factors beyond your control, blaming the client, or taking a real look at how you can make your business better for not only you, but your entire company? Dennis thought it would be beneficial to other small agency owners to share how met a recent challenge he faced at Fuseideas during the crisis:
“Last spring/summer, Fuseideas faced a real crisis. The economy was imploding, staff morale was down, our rent payments were too high and we weren’t winning any new business. Things seemed very bleak for us indeed. I remember the day when I bottomed out and finally decided I was going to do something about it. I had gone out the night before to commiserate with some friends about my plight and needless to say, had a little too much to drink. The next day, my wife and her neighborhood friends decided to go out for a day of shopping (of all things!) and I was left to not only try and watch my kids and the neighbor’s kids (10 of them) with a hangover, but also have to deal with the stress of being in a huge slump in my business.
As I laid out on the back porch with a splitting headache pitying myself, watching happy children beat me over the head with nerf bats and shoot me with squirt guns, I realized I needed to stop feeling sorry for myself and thank God for the positive things I had. My kids were laughing, happy, carrying on and I realized it that I owed it to them to do something about it.
I called my partner Rich over in Prague and talked about what we needed to do. He agreed. He had been having similar thoughts and that we needed to stop feeling sorry for ourselves and take control of what we could control.
So what did we do? We did the OPPOSITE of what people thought we would do. We stopped chasing tons of new business and focused on our current clients. We visited each and every client and told them how important their business was to us and how our partnership with them was helping us survive. During those conversations, they told us what they liked about us, what more they wanted from us and how we could help them. Those conversations turned into new projects which carried us through the summer and resulted in a profitable 2009.
We also fired clients. Yes. We fired clients. As a small agency, you need to focus on your good relationships and partnerships, not focus on trying to work with clients that don’t appreciate your efforts, or try to make you do work at the lowest prices, and in short, treat you like a vendor. In a struggling economy, you need to work with people that appreciate what you bring to the table. To that end, we made a concerted effort to prune our client list and focus our company on servicing the clients that we felt were true partners with us.
It was the best decision we ever made. Clients were re-energized with us, morale improved, profitability increased and all of the sudden the clouds cleared and we started winning new business again.
Not every single day is going to go your way. There are always going to be ups and downs. But I learned a lesson last summer that I will carry with me for the rest of my life. Take stock of the good things in your life, let them give you strength, so that you can make the tough decisions that need to be made to run a successful business so that you can provide for your family, your staff, and yourself.”
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Every agency owner goes through a day, a week, or even longer where things don’t go your way. You might now win some new business, a client might decide to stop spending money, your employees might start feeling down, or someone might even decide they don’t need your services anymore…you get the picture. Having been in this business long enough, Dennis Franczak, our CEO at Fuseideas, realized that doing this is a marathon, not a sprint, and nothing always is perfect and how you deal with it tells a lot about your character, but also your agency.
As a small agency owner, you have to deal with the wide variety of emotions that it takes to run a successful business. When things don’t go your way, are you pouting in the corner, blaming factors beyond your control, blaming the client, or taking a real look at how you can make your business better for not only you, but your entire company? Dennis thought it would be beneficial to other small agency owners to share how met a recent challenge he faced at Fuseideas during the crisis:
“Last spring/summer, Fuseideas faced a real crisis. The economy was imploding, staff morale was down, our rent payments were too high and we weren’t winning any new business. Things seemed very bleak for us indeed. I remember the day when I bottomed out and finally decided I was going to do something about it. I had gone out the night before to commiserate with some friends about my plight and needless to say, had a little too much to drink. The next day, my wife and her neighborhood friends decided to go out for a day of shopping (of all things!) and I was left to not only try and watch my kids and the neighbor’s kids (10 of them) with a hangover, but also have to deal with the stress of being in a huge slump in my business.
As I laid out on the back porch with a splitting headache pitying myself, watching happy children beat me over the head with nerf bats and shoot me with squirt guns, I realized I needed to stop feeling sorry for myself and thank God for the positive things I had. My kids were laughing, happy, carrying on and I realized it that I owed it to them to do something about it.
I called my partner Rich over in Prague and talked about what we needed to do. He agreed. He had been having similar thoughts and that we needed to stop feeling sorry for ourselves and take control of what we could control.
So what did we do? We did the OPPOSITE of what people thought we would do. We stopped chasing tons of new business and focused on our current clients. We visited each and every client and told them how important their business was to us and how our partnership with them was helping us survive. During those conversations, they told us what they liked about us, what more they wanted from us and how we could help them. Those conversations turned into new projects which carried us through the summer and resulted in a profitable 2009.
We also fired clients. Yes. We fired clients. As a small agency, you need to focus on your good relationships and partnerships, not focus on trying to work with clients that don’t appreciate your efforts, or try to make you do work at the lowest prices, and in short, treat you like a vendor. In a struggling economy, you need to work with people that appreciate what you bring to the table. To that end, we made a concerted effort to prune our client list and focus our company on servicing the clients that we felt were true partners with us.
It was the best decision we ever made. Clients were re-energized with us, morale improved, profitability increased and all of the sudden the clouds cleared and we started winning new business again.
Not every single day is going to go your way. There are always going to be ups and downs. But I learned a lesson last summer that I will carry with me for the rest of my life. Take stock of the good things in your life, let them give you strength, so that you can make the tough decisions that need to be made to run a successful business so that you can provide for your family, your staff, and yourself.”
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