Skin in the Game
We’ve all heard the term “Skin In the Game” and it can conjure up different thoughts and feelings. For me, personally it makes me think of commitment. What is your level of commitment to your job, business, health, marriage etc…? If you’re an agency owner it’s safe to assume that you have the most skin in the game as it pertains to your own business. You started the business, probably invested your own money, pay salaries, keep the lights on, the list goes on. No one can argue that you have skin in the game. But what about your employees?
When Kelly asked me to join Agency Performance Partners I knew that the opportunity was there but I was hesitant as it was just Kelly and all of my professional experience has been at companies that were at least 60+ employees and my attitude towards all of them was that I would do the best job I could but I wouldn’t kill myself because they were already well established and even if I worked twice as hard what difference would it make to my bottom line? My commitment to these companies was there but it wasn’t as strong as it could have been.
When I decided to accept the role at Agency Performance Partners I knew that for it to be a game changing success I would need “Skin In the Game” I took it as my personal responsibility to grow this business. In order to do that I had to humble myself and know that I would be doing the heavy lifting. We don’t have the luxury of a cold calling team or a marketing team. I would need to do my own cold calling, I would have to market myself and I would have to remove the phrase “That’s not my job, responsibility etc..”
I hit the ground running here and I wanted to share with you a few things I’ve been doing. The first thing that Kelly accomplished for me was creating our sales war room. A separate office that has my monthly, yearly and life goals printed out and posted to the wall staring me in the face. My motivation for all to see. The purpose of this room is to strictly make cold calls. We look at the lists of people we’ve met at trade shows, people who opened our emails and lists we created on our own. I block off time every week to hit these lists and I’ll be honest it was daunting as I hadn’t made a cold call in well over 7 years but because of my commitment to see this work I did it. Another activity I took on was doing agency drop bys. Once a week I’ll load my car up with marketing materials, map out agencies in the area and I’ll drive to each agency to drop off said marketing materials and introduce myself.
Now if you had asked me to do this at my last two jobs I would’ve either said “Hell to the No!” or I would’ve done it half heartedly because my commitment to those places went as far as my job description. I didn’t have skin in the game. Which begs the questions, how many of your employees have skin in the game? How committed are they to growing the business? If you really think about it, you may be shocked to learn that your employees are only committed at best to what their job description entails. The great news is that Agency Performance Partners can help! Whether it’s updating job descriptions, creating sales objectives and employee incentives, or developing marketing strategies, let us help you with the heavy lifting. Check out beta.scxserv.com/agencyperformancepartners.com to learn how we can help you get your employees to put some skin in the game!
