meetings & webinars

Online Workshop Presented by Tim Williams of Ignition Consulting Group

The agencies winning the battle for talent aren’t just those with the best reputations, but rather those with the most innovative business models. The high-profile defectors from the senior ranks haven’t jumped from one traditional agency to another, but from agency to technology company; agency to media company; agency to consultancy. The most talented people in the business aren’t just leaving your agency, many are leaving the agency business.

The Great Resignation has been fueled by factors that are now very familiar to most agency leaders – the pandemic, the economy, and the accompanying need for flexibility. But these are largely temporary dynamics that will eventually turn themselves around. The central cause of the problem—the key driver—is the agency business model itself.

More specifically, agencies are lacking a revenue model. Whereas most other modern businesses have a dynamic, multi-faceted pricing structure, agencies simply have a schedule of hourly rates. They have a self-limiting inventory of hours they sell to their clients, which places a self-imposed ceiling on both income and profits.

In this new workshop, Tim Williams of Ignition Consulting Group shows how agencies can replace their current cost-driven compensation approach with an actual revenue model; a variety of ways they can price their services based on the value they create rather than the costs they incur. The result is a profit margin that will allow agencies to compete more effectively with other businesses for top talent. Key people in the firm will have a more promising, rewarding career path, armed with the confidence that the firm can pay them what they’re worth.

Beyond healthier salaries, adopting a modern revenue model can produce a host of other beneficial effects for the organization. This provocative workshop shows how:

1) Reframing agency services as solution sets creates an inherently more valuable offering to clients. Many existing agency competencies can be reimagined as programs or products, which are more scalable, more repeatable, and ultimately more profitable than labor-based services.

2) Moving away from the labor-based compensation approach means senior people can deploy their talents without the constant worry of being “billable,” which results in a higher degree of professional satisfaction.

3) A focus on providing external value (instead of just conforming to internal guesstimates) provides the right kind of healthy, purposeful internal incentives and allows professionals to flourish.

4) Overwork can be avoided by moving to a revenue model where there is clear alignment of economic incentives. In this model, an effective campaign can enjoy a long life (as it should) and the firm can benefit financially without having to constantly log hours against a project.

Specific topics include:

• Developing a revenue model, not just a cost structure.

• Cultivating a diversified pricing portfolio.

• Selling solutions instead of services.

• Building a business that’s easier to scale but harder to duplicate.

• Removing your self-imposed profit ceiling.

• Monetizing what you know, not just what you do.

• Selling, tracking and managing outputs and outcomes instead of inputs.

• Trading utilization for effectiveness.

• Institutionalizing pricing (not costing) as a core competency.

To win the talent wars, agencies must move away from the “work a million hours, earn a million dollars” compensation structure and instead build a revenue model that allows the organization to scale its talent, expertise, and intellectual capital the same way other types of business do.

In this workshop we’ll roll up our sleeves and identify specific ways to create the financial breathing room you need to invest in new talent, develop new offerings, and create sustainable new revenue streams.

---------------

About the Presenter

Tim Williams leads Ignition Consulting Group, an international consultancy that helps agencies and other professional service firms create, deliver, and capture more value. Tim is a noted author, international speaker, and presenter for industry associations and business conferences worldwide.  

His work has taken him literally around the world, working with organizations in North and South America, Europe, Asia, and Australia/New Zealand.

He is author of two books, the latest of which is Positioning for Professionals: How Professional Knowledge Firms Can Differentiate Their Way to Success. Tim is also a frequent contributor to leading marketing publications including Advertising Age, Adweek, and Communication Arts in the U.S., and Campaign, Admap and The Drum in the U.K.

Based on his expertise in business models and pricing strategies, Tim has been interviewed and  quoted by The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, The Economist, The Guardian, National Public Radio, Toronto Globe & Mail, Australian Financial Review, Huffington Post, Bloomberg News, Marketing Week as well as radio talk shows, televised interviews, and podcasts. Tim writes the popular blog Propulsion and contributes regularly to LinkedIn, where he was invited to serve as a global LinkedIn Influencer with several hundred thousand subscribers to his posts.

As a consultant to advertising and marketing firms, Tim has worked with hundreds of agencies and other professional firms ranging from mid-size independents to multinational networks, including all five of the top agency holding companies. Before forming Ignition Consulting Group, Tim was president of several independent agencies after having worked for global agencies including Ogilvy and Burson-Marsteller in New York and elsewhere.