Agency Leaders: Grow Your Business by Knowing Your Worth and Creating Value
Posted on Apr. 28, 2015 / Subscribe 0
For anyone running and growing a business – public relations agency leaders included – you must be able to recognize and express your worth and the value your firm brings to clients. If this is unclear in your mind or you are not able to communicate it effectively, you run the risk of giving things away instead of growing a successful business.
Tap into your inner CEO to identify your worth and make the money you deserve by following these tips:
Understanding Your Worth
As the leader of your firm, your time is extremely valuable – and it’s your most precious resource. In your industry, time is literally money. Do you know your worth and is your firm set up to help you realize it?
Let’s imagine you want to have a personal annual income of $200,000 – that means you value your expertise at that amount. Now multiply that by three, and $600,000 is roughly the amount your firm should be billing to support your desired income. Further calculations, including taking into account all of the business expenses associated with servicing clients, will lead you to a solid understanding of where you should set your billing rates so your perceived worth becomes a reality.
Also, take a good look at how you and your firm are spending time. Is every activity, every networking event, every volunteer opportunity, even every client, ultimately contributing toward the goal of making what you’re worth? If not, consider how you can delegate or even suspend tasks and activities that will distract from achieving that goal.
Creating Value
Once you have a firm grasp on your worth, the next step is being able to communicate that to a client or prospect so that you don’t give away your time. Giving away your services is the quickest way to slow or reverse your business growth. You have something of value – do not give it away!
When working to create value for your agency, it’s critical to understand that people buy the why and the results. The why means that when you meet with prospects, you need to clearly articulate why they need your services, why they should work with you and your firm, and why they need to get started now.
The results means you clearly express to prospects what kind of results they can expect if they work with you – this helps to create value in the prospect’s mind. However, this does not mean you should sit with a prospect and give him or her a bunch of ideas for free. Instead, share examples of results you’ve gotten for other clients so they can understand the types of results they can expect if they hire you. You want to clearly illustrate the ROI you will bring the prospect without giving away your valuable time and ideas.
Knowing your firm’s worth and creating value so you can get paid what you deserve are two essential keys for unlocking business growth. Here’s to bringing out the CEO in you!
About the Author:
Juliann Nichols is the CEO of Focus On You Strategy. She combines an open and welcoming personality, contagious sense of humor and astute head for business that has propelled her to be consistently approached as an expert in personal and business branding and being the CEO of you. She can be reached at (813) 609-2223 and [email protected].
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