Climbing the value ladder

As an agency grows, it's healthy to develop an offering higher up the value ladder — or move the entire agency up.

This is particularly true in unsettled economic and political times, when clients are seeking trusted advisers.

Moving up the value ladder is about being known for your thinking more than your doing, and nurturing consultative relationships more than pitching.

Objectives

In this session the board will consider where on the value ladder the agency currently operates.

It will support the CEO in deciding whether to extend upwards, and how that might be achieved.

Pre-reading

Agencies operate on four different levels of value for their clients: Clarity, Creativity, Capability and Capacity.

The value to the client increases with each step up the ladder, and therefore the rates they are willing to pay increase too.

But the client expects different thinking and behaviour from you. At the lower levels they want you to deliver what they tell you, but at the higher levels, they want your agency to take charge and lead them.

Many agencies struggle to gain the confidence to take that step up to leading.