I’m sure you spend a lot of time thinking about your future agency and what it will look like, and your focus probably drifts to things like revenue, clients, and growth targets. Future growth does depend on servicing clients and earning new business, but the overlooked, critical part of that growth is your team.
If you ever look at agencies that grow and scale beyond what you’re doing, do you wonder, why them? What are they doing differently?
This is it.
Agencies that reach the big goals build a structured framework that supports the development of the whole team. Sales and service teams need strategy, structure, and ongoing training to stay current and grow.
Upskilling requires a commitment to building a strong and stable team for your future business model. We talked about this in a recent Goose community discussion, and here are highlights from that conversation.
Start with a clear picture of where you’re going
Before building your plan, you need a clear vision of the agency you’re building toward:
- your value proposition
- the kind of client experience you intend to deliver
- technology you’ll run on
- habits your people will carry
- skills your team will need
Describing your future agency with enough detail shows you the gaps between where you are and where you want to go. And when the gaps are obvious, that means they’re trainable.
Use the business model as your upskilling map
Scrutinize your current business model. Where are the gaps between what it requires and what your team can deliver today?
The answers point directly to where you need to invest, whether that’s training, documented processes, collaboration tools, new software, additional or different people, or a stronger accountability structure.
Use your business model to identify where your people need to grow to deliver the client experience you want.
Get the right people into the right roles
Growth starts by identifying and getting the right people in the right roles. Then, you can plan for the skills they need to thrive in those roles.
- Do an analysis of what tasks need to be completed to deliver your ideal client experience. Sort the tasks into ideal roles for your team.
- Conduct personality and skills assessments for an honest picture of how your current team structure matches your future agency’s needs. We use Kolbe and Omnia.
You may need to shuffle people around to fill ideal roles, hire new people, let someone go, or double up roles on a single person until there is enough work to justify splitting the duties among multiple people.
Once people are in the right seats, the question is how to keep them growing.
Growth looks different for everyone. Some want to take on new responsibilities, while others thrive by deepening their mastery and knowledge in a stable role. Just remember, learning shouldn’t stop for anyone, regardless of tenure or title.
Build development into the annual plan
One of the greatest responsibilities of owning a business is making sure your team’s professional development keeps moving forward.
We have built professional development into our Q4i Annual Planning documents at both the producer and personal (non-selling) levels. The professional development sections of those plans ask you to identify skill gaps and outline a plan to shore up the missing skills with training and a timeline.
Think of annual professional development plans as each person’s roadmap. This mindset inspires personal growth and a sense of accomplishment and motivation that can’t otherwise be replicated and becomes contagious across the team.
Create a cadence that keeps the plan alive
If you create a plan and shelve it for the annual review, it will be worse than never doing it in the first place. It becomes actively demotivating for your team members, serving as a sad reminder of what they could have accomplished but never had the opportunity to.
Turn your plans into live tools rather than a filed document. Build a schedule to ensure consistent progress.
- Hold monthly reviews at the leadership level.
- Get the team together quarterly to review progress and reinforce company direction.
- Have individuals do monthly check-ins to track their own growth.
Personal development only makes sense in the context of the company’s intentions. Team members need to understand where the agency is headed to connect their individual growth goals to something more than job performance.
Make professional development count. Commit to training, tell your team to make time in their schedule to use what they learn in their daily work, and reinforce new skills.
Peer groups: your most underrated upskilling resource
Talking through ideas, learning from peers, testing ideas in your own context, and adapting what works is how the best companies grow and learn to scale their operations.
Having a peer group with people from different companies coming together for a common purpose creates a space to discuss what’s working and not working in the business or with prospects and clients. Groups like this challenge, support, and motivate each other, breaking the staleness of institutional “how we’ve always done it” ways and offering fresh insights to bring back to your team.
Consistently participating in a peer group helps you gain different perspectives, begin integrating them into your thinking, and expand the range of what feels possible. For agencies working on long-term upskilling plans, that kind of ongoing exposure to outside thinking is one of the most valuable resources.
Upskilling is a leadership commitment
Agencies reach “future-ready” status because their leaders made consistent, intentional commitments to vision, structure, and ongoing development. The framework lies in consistent, deliberate steps taken with a clear picture of where you’re going.
Get started with these steps:
- Write a specific, detailed vision of your future agency and share it with your team.
- Organize your team into delivery-focused roles.
- Have everyone on your team complete an Annual Planning Guide.
- Schedule quarterly review meetings that will keep development plans top of mind.
Content originally published by Q4intelligence
Photo by rawpixel.com