In April, I had the opportunity to attend the Agency Builders Retreat in Florida. This is the second year that I’ve been able to attend this conference, and it’s targeted towards agency owners and agency leadership. It’s a small group of 50 to 80 people, and most of us have some shared values around a common good besides our own agency. Being a part of this group last year and being involved with the Slack group over the last year has allowed me to build relationships that made this year’s conference even more meaningful. I want to share a few of the takeaways from the conference that I think are relevant, even if you don’t own a marketing agency. Number one, community is important. When you have an opportunity to spend time with peers in your industry or people who have similar experiences as you, there can be tremendous value in that time. The interesting thing about everybody in that room at the conference is that we all had similar problems and that some of us had solutions to some of those problems. Also, Also, we all carried the shared burden of leading our companies. Business leadership can be lonely, and being able to be with people who are like-minded and aiming towards the same goals helps you feel more confident in what you’re doing and helps you see solutions to problems that you might have that you haven’t thought about yet.
The second big takeaway is that AI is going to continue to change our world. Ai is already deeply affecting the marketing industry, and it will eventually affect all industries. Hearing from other agencies how they’re being proactive active about implementing it was really interesting. It’s given us a few tools to explore and some guidance on how to try to pivot to use those tools. We want AI to not replace the creativity or the work that our team does, but to make our team more efficient within their creativity. The third thing that I wanted to highlight is that sales is the lifeblood of any business. And so we spent some time thinking about how we can be excellent at the sales process. The speaker compared sales to sports. It’s as close as many of us will get to being paid to be in sports because what it has in common with sports is that it’s live, you don’t get a second chance, and you are dealing with a lot of competitive elements that you’re not necessarily aware of. And so we talked about how to have a really good sales process. I haven’t been able to get through my entire to-do list from the conference, but one of them is to build a sales playbook and increase my ability to close the leads that come into the company.
I know that revenue allows for good things to happen in the company, and if we make good business deals, we’ll have more revenue and more profit, which allows us to care for our people better and build a better product for our customers. Building an entire sales playbook is something that I plan to drill deeper into. Clarity is something that we have focused on before at Adelsberger Marketing. But it hit home at this conference that clarity not only brings power, but it is also kind. Having transparency allows everyone to be on the same page. It builds trust and allows for action and gives people a pathway to success. Forcing you to be clear on what the situation is and what the problems may be or what the solutions may be can really cut to the meat of the issue and move you to action. It’s really kind for someone to know where they stand in an organization and what they need to do to be successful. Another thing is, delegation should make things better for everyone. For me to delegate properly, I have to communicate what I need done. But, delegation also creates several side effects for the organization and the people that are being delegated to.
For example, it gives someone the freedom to focus on that thing. Any given day, I’m pulled in many different directions. If I’m able to delegate a task to someone that that becomes their focus for that period of time, it’s a win. It also gives someone an opportunity to grow, not only in that skill set, but in their effectiveness in the company. And then it gives me more time back to work on the things that are my highest value tasks and that I have to do to help lead the company. And finally, accountability is key. If you really want to grow, accountability is the thing you need. You may say you have a goal to run a half marathon, for example. But when the race deadline is coming up, it really does focus you on achieving that goal. You’re going to run a lot more the weeks before the marathon than you may have if you didn’t have that goal set. Having a weekly meeting where you go over the products that you’re working on or talking about what you’re supposed to be doing in front of the company forces you to be more honest and get more stuff done because you don’t want to report nothing in front of everybody else.
And we’ve seen that accountability helpful in our company when we’ve talked about our quarterly goals. But it’s been interesting to see how other companies have used that similar mindset to stimulate growth. I am thankful for groups like the Agency builders that give me a community to be a part of, where it is more about collaboration instead of competition, and being able to be friendly with people who do the same things that our company does, but just not in our local area or that we’re in competition with. And so it gives me a lot of insight in how to do my job better. I look forward to attending next year, and if you’re in the agency world, you should think about it, too. Thanks for listening to this episode of the Content Machine podcast. We’ll be back with more episodes, so be sure to subscribe and check us out on YouTube.
