What’s the hardest area when running a business?

How to maximise the value of your agency #4

Media Corporate Finance Partners, Paul Winterflood and Dan Leaman, sat down with Chris Matthews, Principal at Sutherlands, to discuss how to maximise the value of your agency.

They focus on the drivers of value and how these key elements help to maximise the value of your agency to ensure it grows, increases profitability, and is ultimately in a position to sell for the maximum value in the future.

Transcript

00:00:00 Chris 

Which do you think, typically, companies find the hardest to get their heads around or hardest to understand? 

00:00:06 Dan 

It is different. I'd say there's no two businesses alike, right? And say for some businesses, it's the customer areas. 

00:00:14 Dan 

For other businesses, it's the people areas and some are stronger and others are weaker and operations etcetera, etcetera. Kind of depends on what they focused on and how much prep they've done to make sure their business is running well, because 

00:00:26 Dan 

all of those areas are needed to run a business, but most businesses do each of them well or weakly to a different degree. 

00:00:33 Paul 

I think probably when it comes down to it, in terms of what are the two areas where 

00:00:39 Paul 

that causes 

00:00:41 Paul 

agencies, not good agencies, not to sell. It's the two mentioned at the start. So yeah, those with bad value proposition. 

00:00:49 Paul 

And therefore don't attract enough clients, aren't winning new business, that has an impact on margin. And the second area is those where there's significant over owner alliance without 

00:01:07 Paul 

a training ground of new up and coming managers and leaders coming through the organisation to be able to enable it to grow as much 

00:01:19 Paul 

as anything. 

00:01:21 Chris 

If someone wants to do a 360, is it a long process? 

00:01:25 Dan 

The actual process is not long at all. 

00:01:28 Dan 

It's a half day workshop. Can be a full day workshop if you got enough people participating in it. And then shortly thereafter we'll produce a report and share it and discuss and debrief it. But for me the important thing to make it a worthwhile 

00:01:43 Dan 

exercise, is that is only the start of the process.. Having the pieces of paper that say some clever stuff is, you know, very nice. But again, unless that 

00:01:52 Dan 

is used and the strategy is then informed and actioned, 

00:01:57 Dan 

there is limited value in the process on its own. It's about the follow through. As with pretty much everything.