Mistakes Agencies Make

Click here to watch Mistakes Agencies Make.

There's a Niels Bohr quote that I love: "An expert is a man who has made all the mistakes which can be made, in a narrow field." After ten years working as a development manager at web agencies, I feel like I've made more than my fair share. My talk would take a narrative approach to mistakes that I've either made or seen other agencies make in hopes that I might save my generous attendees the trouble of making them. In particular:

  • Define growth, and talk about when growth can actually destroy value
  • Debunk the American business myth, "Grow or Die"
  • Offer strategies for retention, and talk about why it matters so much
  • Discuss sales strategies for getting good clients, doing what you love to do, and making your work repeatable
  • Regale the crowd with epic tales of agency success and failure
Schedule info
Status: 
Accepted
Time slot: 
Wednesday, May 22 - 01:00pm-02:00pm
Room: 
OR 203 - Palantir
Session Info
Speaker(s): 
Track: 
Business + Strategy
Experience level: 
Beginner

Comments

Seth is definitely experienced, but this talk doesn't sound like it has a lot of focus/clarity. I would be really interested in a more detailed session on "Discuss sales strategies for getting good clients, doing what you love to do, and making your work repeatable" or one of the other points raised.

This sounds like it could be like this one (http://south12.webdirections.org/speakers-sessions#stop-your-agency-suck...), which I was interested to see but didn't.

Ryan makes a good point. Here's an article where I fleshed out the ideas I was going to talk about a bit more. I think it also gives maybe the flavor of the narrative approach I would likely take.

Always good to learn from others mistake.. looking forward to listening your's :)