I Know, I Know. You Want To Grow Your Advertising Agency.

Here is an entertaining interview with Joe Koufman, CEO and Founder of Setup, an Atlanta-based agency and client “matchmaking” consultancy. Here is what Setup says they do to help y’all to grow your advertising agency. Man, I’d like to see more agencies be able to tell their story this fast. Very succinct.

“Setup™ (marketing matchmakers) ignites relationships between brands and marketing agencies. Marketers often require help from experts, but can’t always find them.”

Joe, a biz dev expert, and I discuss the core principles that deliver a strong sales pipeline and on to building wonderful marketing and advertising agency and client relationships. Ah, love!

Getting there includes having the right agency positioning (as one of my M&A specialists told me last week – this means telling the client exactly what you do and can do for them before they form their own opinion); understanding if the prospective client has a capacity or a capability challenge; having an information system; knowing how to do the best-targeted outreach; the critical importance of managing and building interpersonal chemistry; and the, yes, closing the deal. As an agency owner and consultant, Joe’s perspective and advice is right on.

Joe also talks a bit about having been on the scene of a few agency sales and mergers. As he says, some are great, some so-so and one was a kind of a failure.

Selling and buying a company isn’t that easy. OK, not that hard if you read my book, How To Sell Your Advertising Agency. (I had to get this in there.)

Here are links to Joe and Setup.

Joe Koufman.

Setup.