February 2021 at Agency Hackers

IT’S NOT ME, IT’S YOU: Why It’s Important to BREAK UP with Tricky Clients

One bad client can make you hate your job. One bad client can make you not want to come to work.

Putting up with difficult people is all part of the job – but when things start to negatively impact you and your team it’s often necessary to resign them.

This is a discussion all about the negative impact of tricky clients, how you approach firing a client, and the red flags to look out for in the future.

We have some people already lined up to contribute – but we’re expecting you to chip in too. Join us!

⏰ 11.30am, Wednesday 3rd February 2021

WARM WELCOME: Levelling Up Your Virtual Onboarding Process

When you’ve hired someone new, how do you introduce them to the team and integrate them into your culture – without an office space in which to do it?

Daniel de la Cruz, founder of Polymensa, has been conducting some interesting research into virtual onboarding. We’ll be chatting to Daniel about the three main takeaways of a new report he’s about to release:

• How to create a ‘best in class’ virtual onboarding process
• Insights into the ‘pre-boarding’ stage, and how elaborate this can be
• What other things agencies can do to help new employees integrate remotely

⏰ 2pm, Tuesday 9th February 2021

SINGLE SOURCE OF TRUTH: How Can You Transform Your Data?

Data used to be an asset – but now it increasingly feels like a BURDEN.

Do you worry your agency don’t have a “one version of the truth”? Instead, are you managing several ‘islands’ of data?

“Data is a problem in pretty much every organisation,” explains Helen Tanner, founder and CEO of Data3. “You tend to have lots of people messing around with an Excel spreadsheet trying to manually patch things together.”

In this session, Helen will help you finally start to get a grip on your agency’s data.

⏰ 11.30am, Thursday 11th February 2021

PLAY NICELY: How Do You Manage Inter-Agency Collaborations?

Increasingly, clients are avoiding putting all their eggs in one basket. But how do agencies plan for and manage inter-agency relationships on the same project?

How do you manage the dynamic of working with other agencies?

This is a discussion for Agency Hackers members to share
how this collaboration has worked for them, how it can benefit your agency, and how best to work alongside specialist agencies on the same project without being at loggerheads with each other.

⏰ 11.00am, Tuesday 16th February 2021

Buying Success: Building an Agency Collective

When you run an agency you face a choice: build or buy?

Like a lot of agencies these days, Daniel Andrews, CEO of The Tree, decided on the latter.

“By acquiring complimentary agencies as part of a collective, it will accelerate growth for us even quicker – and ultimately have more impact on our clients.”

Is building an “agency collective” something you should be thinking of too?

We’ll be talking to Daniel about his collective’s vision and goals, the kind of agencies he’s looking to target next, and how he has managed to continue his success despite working from home.

⏰ 11am, Friday 19th February 2021 

SHARP FOCUS: How Creating a Strong Brand Proposition Helped My Agency Thrive

“We were just another ‘high-end’ design agency. We didn’t have a point of differentiation“ says Joe Perkins, managing director at Chaptr.

“We thought our work alone was enough to win us a deal.”

However, Joe started to find it harder and harder to justify their price point in competitive pitches. He realised that what they needed was a brand proposition.

“The sales process has been completely different, and it’s so much easier to talk about. Now, we feel confident we can justify a premium price point.”

Joe will be talking to us all about owning what you do, making sure you and your team are on the same page, and how a strong brand proposition helps to create tangible marketing strategies and win competitive pitches – even if you’re more expensive than your competitors.

⏰ 11am, Tuesday 23rd February 2021

Maintaining Agency Culture in a World of Zoom

A happy, thriving agency culture is vital. But when everyone is confined to video calls, how do you keep the happy juice flowing?

“People are losing their identities as employees of a specific company,” says IIH Nordic boss Steen Rasmussen. “They only see their colleagues briefly online, and an online meeting is much more merciless. People join at the last second, they leave abruptly when they have another meeting – the social aspect of meetings has disappeared.”

We’ll be talking to Steen in more depth about the changes his agency had to make to keep their office culture alive and kicking, adapting a people-centric approach to the digital world of remote working, and how they continued to be successful during the pandemic.

If you’re struggling to keep your team happy and motivated third time round, this is the one to join.

⏰ 11.30am, Thursday 25th February 2021