Lead an effective growth review
Now that you have prepared your presentation and gotten a meeting on the books, it’s time to lead the discussion. Let’s dive into 5 best practices for leading an effective growth review call so you can feel confident going into this meeting.
Develop SMART goals
Within your conversation with the client, use your discussion time to build SMART goals. SMART is an acronym that stands for specific, measurable, attainable, relevant, and time-based, allowing you to best track the effectiveness of your efforts over time. These goals will function much like a hypothesis that you test, iterate, and re-test as you gather more data.
We recommend that you identify 3-5 goals with your client in this call. Then, in subsequent review conversations, you can discuss progress and results from these efforts. Let’s break down how to set up SMART goals using an example with ABC Agency.
Specific
Your goals should be specific, meaning that you get down to the most granular element of something you wish to track. Ask yourself: Have we gotten right to the point on what we are hoping to accomplish or is it still a bit ambiguous to myself or the customer?
Example:
ABC Agency and Beantown work together to put together a goal around implementing SMS. To start, they want to get specific.
Their goal: Create an SMS marketing strategy.
Measurable
Goals also need to be measurable, meaning you know what evidence to look for to evaluate success. Ask yourself: is this goal something I can actually track with our current analytics strategy? If not, it may not be the best goal to set at this time unless you are willing to invest in additional reporting capabilities.
Example:
To make this goal a bit more measurable, they sent a benchmark to hit.
Their updated goal: Create an SMS marketing strategy, with the goal of hitting at least 1000 new SMS subscribers.
Attainable
Each goal should be attainable; meaning, they can’t be too hard to accomplish. Consider your ability and bandwidth, asking yourself: Is this task possible, or too difficult to complete at this time? Be upfront and honest with the client, so you don’t set your team up for failure.
Example:
They then determine how attainable this is. Based on research, it seems their numbers were a bit ambitious, so they make sure to adjust accordingly.
Their updated goal: Create an SMS marketing strategy, with the goal of hitting at least 300 new SMS subscribers.
Relevant
Goals should likewise be relevant to your agency’s services, your client’s business, and their customers’ needs. If it’s irrelevant to any of the above, consider: Is this goal driving impact, or should we instead prioritize something more important? This is where a deep understanding of your client and their customer is key. Push back when needed to ensure that this goal will actually make a difference that you can track to your own agency down the line.
Example:
ABC Agency wants to ensure this goal is relevant to Beantown and their customers. They add context, aiming for the full omnichannel experience to be unified for subscribers.
Their updated goal: Create an SMS marketing strategy that aligns with their email content calendar, with the goal of hitting at least 300 new SMS subscribers.
Time-based
Identify a clear timeframe for your team to accomplish this goal. Setting goals that have a deadline will keep all stakeholders on track and allow you to clearly monitor performance over time. You can then set up ongoing reports that align with your set timeframe. In this case, ask yourself: What is a reasonable amount of time for my team to not only accomplish this goal, but also begin to see an impact from our strategic changes?
Example:
Finally, they need to center their goal around a specific time-frame: in this case in advance of their next quarterly review, which takes place every 3 months.
Their end goal: Create an SMS marketing strategy that aligns with their email content calendar, with the goal of hitting at least 300 new SMS subscribers in the first 3 months.
Identify key takeaways at the end of your call
After setting goals, keep the following best practice in mind as you wrap up your call.
Discuss what to start, stop, and continue.
Based on the SMART goals you align on determine what you need to:
- Start:
- What areas of opportunity can we implement immediately?
- What are net new initiatives to try out and monitor ahead of our next call?
- Stop:
- What strategies did not resonate with subscribers in the last few months that we should stop doing in the future?
- Which initiatives are no longer a priority based on business changes, recent trends, or new higher priority goals?
- Continue:
- What strategies are resonating with subscribers that we should continue?
- What content led to the highest revenue that we can replicate in other areas?
With this start, stop, and continue foundation in mind, you will now have a foundation for what to execute in the next quarter. This is thus the foundation for your next growth review call, honing in on how these changes have affected business growth.
Stay positive, but embrace constructive criticism.
As you go through your presentation, toot your own horn and keep things positive. Your spotlights should truly highlight wins and show off the amazing work that your agency has done.
That said, criticism is not always a bad thing. If your client has feedback for you, make sure to:
- Take notes:
So that you can keep track of what they’d ideally like to see in the future. - Follow up:
So that they know you take their feedback seriously and are listening to their concerns. - Take action:
To implement necessary changes and incorporate how those changes were done and their results within your next growth review call.
Keep it short.
Remember: you set a schedule for a reason. Make sure to stick to it. By timing each scheduled topic, you will be able to know when to move onto the next, ensuring that there is plenty of time for discussion towards the end of your presentation.
This discussion is crucial and should not be missed, as you will be able to gauge your client’s current sentiment, reaction to these findings, and goals for the next quarter.
If you consistently require more time for specific topics, take that as an action item on your team to fix; for instance:
- Adjust your meeting length in the future, say extending it by 15 minutes.
- Consider what did not resonate with your client and either cut it from future presentations, or share this content asynchronously via email or in a pre-recorded video that is sent out ahead ahead of time, with your initial agenda.