Whilst people are not popping the Champagne corks just yet, the market is reasonably stable. We have over 500 agencies using Traffic and have had two go bust in the last year, one about 9 months ago, and the other about 2 months ago, but they have  since reformed as a new company.

Lets be honest, these statistics are alot better than we thought. Some of it maybe that we have a self segmented group who manage their business well with an agency management system, but overall the signs are encouraging. Agencies are not going bust.

Are agencies laying off people?  When the October headlines hit last year we saw very little movement in staff numbers. Agencies had legacy work and staff numbers in the main stayed pretty static. From about April to July redundancies seemed rife as the work slowed down and businesses adjusted size to cope with the new world. Recently things seem pretty stable.

We have just launched a business confidence survey, so as soon as we here more we will let you know. Why not take the survey and tell us what you think? http://www.surveymonkey.com/s.aspx?sm=1RoJlrI3pct8LzRD43eMrQ_3d_3d

Finally we have just launched a new version of Traffic today that incorporates benchmarking, so as soon as we have enough clients on the system to be statistically meaningful, we will let you know. If you would like a hint as to a quick win, we can suggest you look at markup on 3rd party costs. These range from nil to 40%. If you thing 40% is ridiculous, please don’t shoot the messenger – plenty of agencies charge it.

Jeremy Rudge, Chairman

Your rules for running a creative business are no less important – you will have them – it’s just that perhaps they haven’t been defined or listed for everyone in the business to agree. Traffic as an award winning management system is principally based on a set of rules. So what are the rules that we regard as key in getting to the top of running a successful creative business.
We believe that you should have rules for estimating and project management.

Firstly, every piece of work no matter how big or small should be estimated and given a job number before any work is done on it. No job number no one works on it, simple one really.

Always make sure we define who the relevant client or suppliers are for each and every job.

Hold all the correspondence from a client or supplier in one area – whether it be emails, briefs, estimates, specifications or suppliers quotes.

Also make sure all project mangers / account managers or designers who work on a project put all notes in the same place – so you have a full history that anyone can pick up at any time.

Make sure you move a status of a project or job forward. When jobs are progressed they are either pending / accepted / closed or billed.

Another key set of rules should cover estimating practices – all project managers should use simple stages such as Design, Artwork etc. And all descriptions should be listed.

When we set up a job we define a deadline, we always have a team leader responsible for a project, jobs are set up with Job types and every job should have a brief. Once a job is set up we must define which staff will work on what.
The rules for the studio are even more important.

Every member of the studio must enter 7.5 hours of timesheets per day. Timesheets should be entered everyday – and in preference more than once a day. Everyone must take responsibility for time – and if you feel that a job is overrunning then contact the manager and let them know so you can start to do something about it before it overruns.

The key rules in Management are about making sure you have in place the catch all processes. A Monday morning meeting – where are we on jobs. An overrunning jobs meeting – where are we on these? And key a job status meeting – what is open, what’s to be billed etc.

The rules are simple rules. Everyday a Sohnar we speak with creative businesses who are fantastically creative but, no matter how creative – if you don’t adhere to at least the basic rules, and these aren’t lived by every person in your creative agency then the business can only fall short on its delivery to clients, staff and on projects. If you live by your rules and continue to grow with them you will prosper.

Last month we talked about the importance of sales and new business to drive your creative company forward, and how this needs to be more than just relying on word of mouth.

Sell, sell, upsell

Part of ensuring the growth of your creative business is going beyond new sales and actively getting more business from your current clients.

Once you get to know a client, you’ll understand their needs and requirements. You’ll become familiar with how they work, what pressures they are under and the style of the team and their business.

For this reason upsell should be easier than new business activity, but in most instances we don’t give it as much focus. You need to get a good rapport – remembering birthdays, facts about their family and other personal details makes your client feel that you care and that they are your most important client.  It’s often that you know this – but if it’s recorded and kept in one place then everyone else can know it too.

It’s just as important once you have a client to pitch ideas – these should be costed and you should take the initiative.  If you are given a yearly budget, put forward a plan.  Your CRM system needs to be robust – you should save as many details as possible about the client team – you never know when someone gets promoted or moves to another area of the business or maybe to another business – your knowledge may prove vital.

Track targets

Now we come to the key part of tracking sales targets, these need to be split between new business and current clients, and also planned and non-planned expenditure – it’s often that you have an activity schedule for the year, for a client – but the real skill here is adding things onto the menu.  It’s about land grab – doing more – over and above the clients initial budget. You can often add another 30% on top of budget by pitching great ideas. For additional spend on activity, if it comes with a robust business case and a convincing ROI for the activity it’s difficult for anyone to say no. So why not try to sell ROI or success based fees.

Get Feedback

Tracking the achieved targets for any activity is key, as is the feedback on a project or job. You should keep a record where you compare delivery against the brief, and success against defined targets. Also how the client perceived the project, as well as feedback from the creative team on the brief, and the account team on their deliverables. All this information should be stored in a central place.  In Traffic we have a ranking system where we rank a job out of 100 based on the delivery of a number criteria against each success criteria. We rank it from the team and then from the client – and then track against the two.  If there are any shortfalls you know about it early, it’s often that creative teams think everything has gone well.

The importance of project management

This therefore brings us neatly into the area of project management – this is the other major factor that helps in retaining clients. Ensuring they have regular and accurate communication, that timelines are given, updated, and delivery is ranked and recorded.

Current project management systems fall into two categories – very complex and time intensive scheduling or programmes that are not specific to the creative process. A key requirement is to break a project into jobs, and within those jobs different stages, and those stages can be further classified into tasks, which are specific to a person.  Also important in management of projects is scheduling events, the things that need to happen, and are not about time based tasks but are factors that need to be completed before you can move to the next stage.  Any project management process needs to work to a framework and scheduling of events and staff activity needs to be easy and simple to record. And to report back as to what everyone in the team is working on.  You need easy Gantt charting – and any changes in the schedules relayed to the client with new information.

Finally tracking all the correspondence related to a client, a job or a project is vital.  It’s important that this is recorded for everyone to see, including emails, and phone correspondence and a history of everything that’s happened on a job.

Thought for the Month

“Good design can’t fix broken business models .”  Jeffrey Veen

Have a great month!

Cheers,

Tracey

In the current economic climate of bank struggles and consumer nervousness it’s essential that you keep your eye on the most important driver of creative success — your sales pipeline.

We often see creative companies who are brilliant at driving business for their customers but less than savvy at doing it for themselves.  Creative companies tell us the best way for them to get new business is by word of mouth – and yes word of mouth is great – a true accolade that you are really good at what you do – however it relies on your clients knowing other great potential clients to recommend you too.

It’s essential not to leave new business wins and growth of your customer base to chance – you need to do for yourselves what you profess you do for your customers – great creative that drives you business – and from that it needs to be followed up, managed and supported.

So how do we know a successful creative agency?

At Sohnar we can often quickly and easily identify a successful creative business or one that we know is going to grow and succeed.  9 times out of 10 its one that has a defined sales process and someone responsible for new business.  It helps if it’s not just the owner of the business – as this normally means that it’s a part time job and it most definitely is a full time job.

It’s very important to have a sales process in place, that you have mechanisms like brochures, case studies and a portfolio of great work. For starters case studies are key – and clients that will act as references – ask them and then keep them abreast of anyone who may get in contact.

You need to embrace cold calling – we know that no one (except the mad) jump up and down with excitement at doing it BUT having someone who does this and builds a data set of companies that you can target – named contacts – with a record of them and their buying habits.  Knowing who to call to get on the roster – when pitches are coming up and recording this with times to call back, and budgets.  We all know we need to do it but it’s all too easy to not to.  You need a CRM system – something that manages all this data for the company.  Great sales and new business people leave – unfortunately – so it’s essential that if they do – you hold all the key relationship information and all the follow-up times.  It’s what you’ve paid them for.

As a general rule we’ve seen that only 3 out of 10 creative companies have a common place for data or a database with this type of information.
Every person responsible for new business also needs a defined sales target, this can be weekly, monthly, quarterly or yearly.  From our experience a monthly target is best; as it doesn’t leave you to the last few months of the year to focus on it.  But no matter the time scales any target needs to be measured, recorded and tracked. Expected sales against actual is key.  As is being realistic it needs to be something that is achievable and it needs to be rewarded if the target is hit.  And even better rewarded if it’s overachieved.
It’s also our belief that there is no better reward than a financial one – we encourage commissions.  Transparency to see who is bringing in business and who’s not is also important.

It’s also vital to remember that sales is not an island – it needs to be run with the input of everyone in the business - if you can give your account mangers an up-sell target all the better.  If someone finds business out of hours and they are a designer – reward them.  Tell the business about this great person.

Recording of all new business needs to be split between current clients and completely new business so you can track it – and forecast for it.  The most common reason for a creative business going bust is unfortunately the loss of a big client.  Of the creative businesses that Sohnar sees, over 40% rely on one client for over 50% of their billing.  That’s a huge risk to the business, your staff, and the future of your creative company.

There are lots of other important factors within the sales process that we’ve only briefly touched on, up-selling current clients, the use of CRM, and tracking targets and what these would be in a typical creative business.

It’s easy to automatically go into “saving mode” when the economy is bad. However, it is important to remember that now is the time to invest in tools that can make immediate bottom line savings or increase revenues. You need to stay on your toes and move fast to ensure your business remains profitable.

Technology is an invaluable tool in keeping your customers happy and will give you the competitive edge you need. Business management software should be regarded as an investment in growth rather than just a cost. It will improve your level of service, increase transparency and help you keep a close eye on deadlines.

A system helps you keep track of projects so time and cost don’t get out of hand, plus it helps you communicate a lot better with your customers, something they will definitely appreciate.

Some benefits that will help you keep your clients (and bottom line) happy:

• All client/project data in one place
• Consistency
• Control of workflow
• Increased efficiency
• Time & expense management
• Transparency
• No more missed deadlines
• Increased profitability (!!!)

In creative agencies, time is literally money. With the time you can save with a good system it will have paid for itself in a month.

The goal of any creative business after producing great creative for their clients is to increase efficiency and profitability of their own business.  Whether within an advertising agency, design or marketing company, sustainability of that business is absolutely key.   So how do you ensure that you eliminate false starts, inappropriate job initiation, incomplete information sharing, over- and under-cost estimation, and the need for deadline extensions?   Firstly we need to address the issue. Without a Traffic or creative management system to carefully control and document processes even the most successful agency might find itself in a state of chaos. You have to meet deadlines, stay within budgets and you need to know who’s doing what and when they’re doing it.   The core competency of creative agencies therefore is not simply the production of great creative work. It’s the efficient management of that production. And, most importantly, you have to have the tools to help you to deliver it.   There are many project management options available on the market today. But a Traffic System should empower you to break work down into measurable increments and manageable tasks, making information accessible to everyone within your agency whether working in- or outside of the office. A central system such as this fosters a way of doing business that is much more organised than a paper system. It also makes everyone involved in the process more accountable.  And getting reports or information out is much easier since it’s not trapped in the minds of the very people who are too busy to give it to you.   As the key driver of a workflow system, the Traffic Manager or Studio Manager ensures the consistent delivery of accurate work on time and within budget parameters. This is accomplished through not only the initiation of project work electronically via a document such as a project estimate, project brief, and schedule but through the constant policing of deadlines and financials using such tools as to do lists, work requests, and time sheets.   The Traffic Manager also ensures that work is accurate through the provision of detailed job requirement information to the appropriate parties via progress reports and work requests.  Careful daily monitoring of all jobs through a creative business from inception to their completion is the ultimate responsibility of the Traffic/Production Manager.   A central traffic system, overseen by an employee whose sole responsibility is its ongoing maintenance, can save your agency valuable time. By making client information that was once segregated available to all employees from the convenience of their computers, it makes it possible to increase billable time through increased productivity.   Time and expense management, access to all client communication, and the instant retrieval of job-specific information, are among the many key features of a good creative management system.   Every employee within an agency plays an integral role in its workflow processes. Through the combination of an efficient traffic/ creative system, team commitment and management dedication, your creative agency can experience unparalleled efficiency and profitability.   Now that’s why a Creative management system or Traffic management system is so important.

Richard Mott, Chairman and founder of 20/20 hosted a session titled “Surfing the waves of change – How to survive an economy low”. In today’s economical climate,  I thought this would be a great topic.

So I’m now handing you over to Richard Mott:

Enjoy the article

Tracey Shirtcliff

Surfing the winds of change -
How to survive an economy low

Before I talk about business, I want to introduce an analogy.

When I was 17, I was a surfer. Whenever I could, I would go with a band of like-minded adventurers travelling from bay to bay looking for the best waves.

A wave can be the source of immense excitement, providing a chance for the most fantastic experience of your life, but a wave can also be the most powerful and dangerous force of nature that can throw you off your board, hold you under the water, and turn you over and over while your lungs are bursting.

Surfing and business

Surfing gives me an understanding of waves and how to survive them that I have since applied to business. Out at sea, you are constantly watching the waves. You learn that they come in sets of three and you get to recognise which are the best waves to catch and which ones to leave alone.

You need balance and you need to keep your wits about you. It is the same when you sit on a company board – you look out for the waves, learn how to ride them and how to survive them.

The ups and downs of client relationships are waves to be ridden with skill and balance. The ups and downs of the economic climate are waves to be survived.

For 20/20 it all started 20 years ago in 1988 …

Firstly we need to address the issue. Without traffic / creative management – the ability to carefully control and document workflow processes – even the most creatively successful agency might find itself in a state of chaos. You have to meet deadlines. You have to stay within budgets. You have to know who’s doing what and when they’re doing it.

The core competency of creative agencies therefore is not simply the production of creative work. It’s the efficient management of that production. And, most importantly, you have to have the tools to help you do so.

There are many project management options available on the market today. But a Traffic System empowers you to break work down into measurable increments and manageable tasks, making information accessible to everyone within your agency whether working in- or outside of the office. A central system such as this fosters a way of doing business that is much more organised than a paper system. It also makes everyone involved in the process more accountable. And getting reports or information out is much easier since it’s not trapped in the minds of the very people who are too busy to give it to you.

As the key driver of a workflow system, the Traffic Manager or Studio Manager ensures the consistent delivery of accurate work on time and within budget parameters. This is accomplished through not only the initiation of project work electronically via a document such as a project estimate, project brief, and schedule but through the constant policing of deadlines and financials using such tools as to do lists, work requests, and time sheets.

The Traffic Manager also ensures that work is accurate through the provision of detailed job requirement information to the appropriate parties via progress reports and work requests. Careful daily monitoring of all jobs through a creative buisness from inception to their completion is the ultimate responsibility of the Traffic Manager / Production Manager.

A central traffic system, overseen by an employee whose sole responsibility is its ongoing maintenance, can save your agency valuable time. By making client information that was once segregated available to all employees from the convenience of their computers, it makes it possible to increase billable time through increased productivity.

Time and expense management, access to all client communication, and the instant retrieval of job-specific information, are among the many key features of a good creative management system.

Every employee within an agency plays an integral role in its workflow processes. Through the combination of an efficient traffic/ creative system, team commitment and management dedication, your creative agency can experience unparalleled efficiency and profitability.

Now that’s why a Creative management system or Traffic management system is so key – makes sense when you see it like that doesn’t it?

If you’re a web designer charging a reasonable rate for your services, you’ve likely been really discouraged when you’ve looked at job boards in the past—lots of jobs that pay very little and want the moon. Or, worse, the jobs that want a designer to merely clone a pre-existing site.

And yet, if you’re looking for work, a job board can be a great place to find it. You just have to know these five tips.
1) Don’t Expect To Land Any One Gig

No matter how perfect you know you are for the position, don’t be discouraged if you don’t even get an email back. Rather, take the attitude that your right clients will find you—with a little help by
seeing you in their email inbox.
2) Apply For Many, Many Openings

Take a few hours, and find at least 30 positions you’d be great for. Apply to all of them. Applying for jobs advertised on job boards is a crap shoot, and the more awesome emails you send, the better your odds of getting at landing at least one client.
3) Apply For Each One Individually

Read the job requirements, make sure you apply the way they ask (if they ask you not to send a resume, don’t send a resume). Write a personal email for each opening, and even if you do some copying and pasting, make sure to write at least one original sentence explaining why you want this particular job. It’ll go a long way to catching the eye of whomever is slogging through the applications to know you’ve treated them like an individual.
4) Take A Long-Term View

As you read the job requirements, don’t just think about how you could help immediately, think about what the client needs going forward. For instance, a client who wants a WordPress blog designed might also need future training, or advice on attracting more search engine traffic. Something that can really help to drive this point home is to use a testimonial from a client who you started with Project A and then also helped them with Project B. If you have a client who can say, “We hired Jo to design a company blog, and then found ourselves without many visitors. So, we called Jo again and were able to attract 50% more search engine traffic in a month just by making the recommended tweaks” that can go a long way towards making your point.
5) Make Sure You Get The Pieces In Order First

You’re going to need a portfolio, whether it’s on your own site or a portfolio site. You’re going to need contact information beyond an email address. An awesome resume won’t hurt, nor will some killer client testimonials. A lengthy client list (especially if you’ve worked with big players in the prospect’s industry) is also useful. If you don’t have these pieces yet, don’t despair, but do start putting them together as you go—they all go a long way towards
demonstrating your credibility.
Final Thoughts

If you’re good, you can expect to land 1 out of every 10 jobs you apply for even if yours is the highest price they receive. Sure, those are somewhat long odds, but when you’re
looking at projects around $5k, it’s well worth the two hours it’ll take you to knock out thirty emails and land three gigs. So, be personable, be professional, and apply for a lot of jobs. Will you lose out on some jobs because your prices are too high? Of course! But, you’ll lose out on all the jobs if you don’t apply at all.
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First off, you should start with an overall to-do list? Afterall, it’s impossible to remember all your tasks, and amazing post ideas. Try to keep a pen and paper handy, or some kind of note taking app of your choice. I love using Evernote, it’s a cool web app that allows me to jot down all my tasks and ideas, and it’s as simple as pie.
Prioritizing Tasks

To Do List

Now that you have all your tasks in one place, it’s time to prioritize them. Many of the note taking apps allow you to do this. Some folks just use a color coded spreadsheet. With different colors representing different levels of importance. The main thing is to get a system in place that helps you organize which tasks to do when.

Be careful not to keep pushing the same tasks to the bottom, or else they will never get done. It’s wise to schedule some specific time for these bottom feeder tasks.
Setting a Schedule

Speaking of a schedule, now that you have a to-do list all prioritized you can began to compile a daily schedule. I know from personal experience that It’s nearly impossible to stick to every detail, but it’s quite helpful to outline your day. I’ve found that even a flexible schedule is much better than a fly by the seat of your pants approach. A simple list of work times and tasks is usually sufficient.

Be sure to set aside times for social media, email and rss feeds. These things are important, but you should do so in moderation. Many designers/bloggers (including myself) have a tendency to be obsessive compulsion about checking these areas.

During your scheduled work time, turn off the email client, twitter and anything else that proves too distracting. You’ll find you’re so much more productive when you spend an hour focused, rather than a bunch of 10 minute bursts.
Reaching Out to the Design Community

After much thought about what I should be doing to improve my time management skills, I decided to pose a series of quick questions to some of my favorite bloggers in the design community. Their answers were honest and helpful. Here’s what they had to say…
Chris Coyier — CSS Tricks
Do you set a schedule? If so, what does your daily routine look like?

I work from home, but I probably have more of a schedule than many home-workers have. I basically work 8-5 at “the day job” right now. I spend time before and after that working on my other projects, so I put in a lot of hours at the ol’ desk. The routine is basically a hodgepodge of Communication (Email & IM), Designing (Photoshop), and Coding (Coda).

Do you use any sort of app to help you keep track of your to-do list?

I’m a Mac guy and I use Things for my to-do lists. It’s pretty nice, but I don’t “live by it” like some folks do. It’s more of my reference guide and for longer term “don’t forget this” stuff. My actual to-do list, unfortunately, is my email inbox.

What are your biggest challenges for sticking to a schedule?

Because of the expectations of my day job, I don’t find it particularly challenging. If I wandered off, or sat around watching TV all day, I wouldn’t have a job for very long.

What advice would you give for someone trying to improve his/her time management skills?

Obviously distractions is the biggest time killer. If you are putting in hours and hours at the computer only to stand up and find you didn’t accomplish anything, you have a problem. It might be time to turn off IM, quit your Twitter app, and focus on the project at hand. I do that a lot. If I start dragging I start quitting applications to prevent distractions. Apparently my brain is that easily fooled.

Chad Mueller — Inspiredology
Do you set a schedule? If so, what does your daily routine look like?

I am a freelance designer as well, so Inspiredology is another project for me, I try to keep the to-do lists separate. I try to set a schedule for posting, as well as I try to have 5+ posts sitting in Wordpress ready to go if I need it. I am not a daily blogger, so I don’t have a routine, I tend to just write blog posts as they come to me.

Do you use any sort of app to help you keep track of your to-do list?

The only real app that I have been sticking to that takes care of my to-do list tasks is Gmail. I have tried Doomi, Things, Remember the Milk, but I found that since I spend so much time in my web browser, and email, it is just easier. I use a really good system for archiving emails, adding them as tasks, and such. I have also used Ta-Dah Lists — I really loved this, and I do still use it, it super simple, easy to use and looks great.

What are your biggest challenges for sticking to a schedule?

I have a full time design job 9-5 then I come home and work on my freelance stuff, and in between there I have to manage and write for Inspiredology. So it’s very tough keeping a good schedule, and finding the right time to do blog tasks, or working on projects that help pay for bills. Time management is a great skill to master, and its a very challenging thing to do. So all in all, I would say prioritizing between projects, as well as being effiecient.

What advice would you give for someone trying to improve his/her time management skills?

You definetly need some sort of to-do list, whether it’s pen and paper or a great to do app or program. Organize yourself with a good system, whether it’s rating tasks with stars, colours, tabs and etc… You will find that if you are organized, you don’t need to manage yourself as much, you can concentrate on managing your blog and projects.

Sam Dunn — Build Internet
Do you set a schedule? If so, what does your daily routine look like?

My idea schedule goes something like this:

* Check and respond to Email
* Hit up Twitter/blogs for latest in community
* Work on blog post or client projects
* Check Stats sparingly
* End day with a smile

In reality it goes something like this

* Check and respond to email
* Get hung up on twitter/articles
* Explore new Photoshop/jQuery/CSS trick
* Check stats more than I should
* Work on blog post/client work amongst all of this

Do you use any sort of app to help you keep track of your to-do list?

I have sampled both Hit List and Things for the Mac, but somehow always deteriate back to Stickies (the default note taking app for OSX). I have a rather large one on my desktop at all times with a hefty to do list. I don’t really need a calendar/to-do list application to manage that for me, I like how quickly I can deal with my Stickie note, it’s rapid fire.

What are your biggest challenges for sticking to a schedule?

Sometimes I’ll be trolling through articles or CSS galleries and stumble upon something that inspires me to write a tutorial or learn a new jQuery technique. When I get excited about something like that I get terribly sidetracked, luckily I have deadlines to rope me back in before the point of no return. I used to get hung up checking stats and responding to email all the time, but I’ve recently pumped the brakes in that regard and limit those addictions. As a result I have bundles more time now.

What advice would you give for someone trying to improve his/her time management skills?

I just read the book Four Hour Work Week by Tim Feriss and sweet goodness did that open my eyes. It’s a New York Times bestseller for a reason, definitely worth a read for those that need a new perspective on time management.

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