So often, agencies (and other services businesses) end up going in circles with messaging because they’re not aligned with one another:
👉 A new person in a leadership role wants to put their own stamp on things, but the team feel you’re losing who you are
👉 One Director wants to offer more strategic or innovative services, while others worry about ignoring the bread-and-butter work
👉 The founder wants to focus on purpose, while Head of Sales wants to focus on commercial outcomes
Agencies are people businesses, so your leadership team's values and team culture are essential to your positioning and messaging.
But the worst thing you can do is compromise and end up with something vague or confusing. And yes, direction comes from the top, but that doesn’t mean you should force colleagues to follow a vision they don’t believe in.
The way I help tackle this is to bring people together and look at the evidence:
🔎 Zoom in - who are your biggest, most profitable, and fun clients
🌍 Zoom out - how are you positioned in your industry
❓ Survey partners and clients to understand how they see you
❤️ Dig into your values, personality and point of view as a team
✨ Debate the issues in an honest, open way
By the end, you’ll have a body of evidence around the right direction, or a new direction may present itself.
More importantly, you’ll end up with everyone on the same page. And often, you’ll realise you were on the same page in the first place.
Sometimes, that’s all you need to solidify your positioning so everyone can get behind it. After all, clients will only believe in your positioning if you all believe in it first.
