Because it’s good to learn from your mistakes, but it’s cheaper to learn from others’, Davy Tessier, CEO and founder of Furious Squad, shares his experience, and that of others!
Managers and directors, here are the top 20 most common mistakes in managing an agency. We warned you!
The most common mistakes on the commercial side
- Not mastering the timing of the commercial pipe: dozens of tables, hours of meetings, litres of coffee, Jipé’s jokes, and yet still no insight… And of course, managing the planning at the last moment, otherwise it’s no fun.
- Not knowing the exact cost of a pre-sale in real time: it is however useful to compare it with the probability of gaining and to avoid Sylvie’s burn-out, which in addition will not bring in a penny.
- Not to record and analyse the reasons for losing a competition, while a simple graph shows quickly at the end of the year where you are not good. This is the base!
- Not tracking your transformation rate. This would however be useful. Because with a wet finger, there are often real unsuspected gaps (sectoral, customer, commercial or offers).
The most common mistakes on the production side
- Multiply the project management tools. Everyone has their own tool and method. As a result, it’s impossible to consolidate and see that things are going to go wrong before it’s too late… Ouch!
- Centralise the planning on one person. The traffic manager is often the one who ultimately does the planning for the others instead of settling conflicts. This creates a bottleneck that is often the cause of slowness, delays and a total lack of overview beyond the planning week.
- Not knowing the profitability of a project. Rarely can agencies say precisely whether they are gaining or losing money on their projects, and even less if they will or will not earn money in the case of pre-sales.
- Not monitoring production in advance (many agencies usually monitor it on the basis of invoicing). The result: real management discrepancies and a December which, coincidentally, is the best month of the year in accounting. #OnVousVoit.
- Not linking purchases to a project. This makes it impossible to know the real cost of a project, and therefore who is making money and who is losing money.
- Not monitoring the quality of projects. Few agencies think of associating qualitative ratings to their projects in an automated way (client surveys for example).
The most common mistakes on the HR side
- Who is here today? This is a sentence that is often heard in agencies and which testifies the lack of tools in the management of teleworking…
- Fear of reporting among teams. It is surprising to hear too often that teams are afraid of the deployment of a new tool because it could reveal unflattering things to the management. On the contrary, it is also an opportunity to highlight the effectiveness of those who are least heard.
- Connecting one person to several managers: this is the B-A-BA of managerial error.
- Not writing down and defining individual objectives. How many people in agencies do not have a clear objective assigned by their management? It’s quite useful to know where you’re going.
- Do not monitor employee satisfaction in an automated way. Who is asking their teams for their opinion on projects or working conditions? And how many managers learn (too late) about this opinion on Twitter or in an Instagram story?
- Not being reactive to the daily demands of employees to provide them with the right tools to work properly (equipment…). Besides making them more efficient, it also helps to reduce turnover, which is far too high in agencies. An employee who feels listened to is an employee who will want to stay.
The most common mistakes in finance
- Doing too much: accounting codes by type of project that require re-entries in all directions, for example, holding companies at every turn… SIM-PLI-CI-TY, we tell you.
- Not having any anticipation charts (cash, performance…).
- Not automating (invoicing, dunning, internal dunning). This avoids oversights, not to mention saving time.
- Not knowing how to classify clients (gross margin vs. profitability, dependency…).
You recognise yourself in some of these mistakes? Change your methods! The current period is the perfect opportunity to move the lines and processes, to question the organisation and to interact more with your teams and your customers.
This top was shared on Stratégies on 25 August 2020.
