Challenge
Skills gaps in key areas can hinder business performance. We have found that many agencies live with clear capability gaps, often in sales, finance and/or operations as their teams grow and become more complex. They procrastinate around when to bite the bullet and cover the area which slows their progress and limits their growth.
Seek your own personal guidance on these:
| Question | Why it’s important |
|---|---|
| Have you identified a skills gap in your team that’s affecting your business performance? | Skills gaps can significantly impact business performance. Identifying these gaps is the first step towards addressing them. Procrastination is your enemy – act quickly and decisively. |
| Are your finances and governance processes fit for purpose? | Strong financial and governance processes are essential for maintaining operational efficiency and profitability. Moreover, they are the levers by which you steer and navigate. What you measure gets better, and a focus on GP per head, or Staff Cost Ratio (SCR) will really focus you and the leadership team in the right way. |
| Do your operational controls drive efficiency and deliver sufficient profit? | Effective operational controls ensure that the business runs smoothly and profitably. Profit is the key here, double digit EBITDA is essential, >20% puts you into a top category, but you need to achieve and maintain that all the time. That takes constant engineering and focussed controls. |
| Does your sales engine deliver the pipeline and new business needed to exceed your growth targets? | A strong sales engine is crucial for driving growth and achieving business targets. This persistent challenge, is hard and difficult but when done well becomes the discipline that makes or breaks an agency. There are great ways of doing this differently, selling the impact and value you deliver for clients not the activities or work that gets you there. People buy value not stuff. Are you trying to sell stuff? |
| What changes should you prioritise and when? | Prioritising changes helps focus efforts on the most critical areas, ensuring effective use of resources. But what should you be fixing first, second or not at all? And when should they be timed? You can’t eat the elephant in one bite, so some reasoned thinking on when and what that is will be game changing for most agencies. |
Solution
Identify and address your skills gaps through some rapid assessment. From there deploy targeted process change alongside training and development programs.
Consider interim expert support to bridge these gaps, support your team members to embed the new ways of working into the business enhancing your team’s capabilities over the medium term.
Why it’s essential
Addressing skills gaps ensures that the agency operates efficiently and meets its performance targets. Interim expert support can provide immediate ready-made solutions helping you and your team to be complete and self-sufficient, as you build long-term capabilities within the team.
Waypoint can help you
Waypoint has a series of agency experienced skilled specialists who can rapidly address these gaps in a cost effective way.
