Operations, prof dev, and delegation: Agency Office Hours Q&A with Karl Sakas

We discuss growth strategy, bizdev, team structure, and more in the April 2021 episode of Agency Office Hours with Karl Sakas. Click below to “jump” to a specific segment:

1. BUSINESS DEVELOPMENT: Can we scale without a full-time salesperson? [starting at 1:50]
2. CONTENT MARKETING: How can we create high-quality content in less time? [starting at 3:45]
3. GROWTH STRATEGY: When should we choose to slow-down our sales? [starting at 5:09]
4. HIRING: Should we hire ahead of demand, or wait to close the new business first? [starting at 12:44]
5. OPERATIONS: When should our agency hire an Operations Manager? [starting at 16:49]
6. TEAM STRUCTURE: How do we structure a Director of Client Services role to oversee account management, project management, and client strategy [starting at 20:11]
7. PRODUCTIVITY: Where should we troubleshoot if employees aren’t getting things done? [starting at 32:03]
8. PROFESSIONAL DEVELOPMENT: Should managers be responsible for training their direct reports? [starting at 34:18]
9. BILLABLES: Why do agency leaders and managers have lower targets for billable hours? [starting at 35:34]
10. DELEGATION: How can we get better results when we assign a task to an employee for the first time? [starting at 38:14]
11. PRE-MEETINGS: Why the much-maligned “meeting before the meeting” is actually a smart idea. [starting at 43:05]
12. TEAM MANAGEMENT: What should we do if a team member feels overloaded… but it’s not clear why? [starting at 45:10]
13. ACCOUNT MANAGEMENT: What should we do when clients are disorganized or unresponsive? [starting at 47:24]
14. STRATEGY-FIRST: What should we do when clients micromanage our strategy work? [starting at 49:57]

Top resources from the live event:

1. Check whether you lean toward Lifestyle (moderate growth) or toward Equity (high growth) on Karl’s agency Growth Style continuum.
2. Hitting a bottleneck around Client Onboarding? Check out Karl’s on-demand training on the topic, for tips on how to fix things.
3. Are the leaders creating *excessive* continuous improvement?
4. No more Content Delays: 7 ways to finally fix the problem.
5. How to reposition yourself as a “strategy-first” agency.