As agency owners we have to juggle how much time we spend on the actual public relations work and running the business. While I get great fulfillment from owning my own agency, I still love doing PR. At every CAPRSA event I have attended one of my key takeaways is work on the business, not in the business. I don’t know about you, but this is often hard for me to do as I enjoy strategizing with clients and my team, pitching media and getting that great story placed. So, I struggle with how to balance both.
But, when I am working on the business, I know that my top priority is to manage better profitability. And, I learned that from Darryl Salerno, founder and president of Second Quadrant Solutions, who is presenting “Managing for Profit” at the CAPRSA conference in a few days. This session is designed to help agencies manage to better profitability while having their staffs work less than they are today.
He will discuss how to focus on the elements that are most critical in creating and maintaining a profitable organization. And, he will review the critical ratios we all need to attain to improve and maintain higher profits and provides concrete methods to achieve these results. Darryl will help us understand the impact of over-servicing, billing rates, raise and billable targets on an agency’s performance.
Even though I am the daughter of a CPA and have a good business sense, I didn’t really get how to manage to profitability until I attended one of Darryl’s presentations. His entertaining and encouraging style makes you want to go home and start analyzing the data we already have and if we don’t, start compiling.
A regular attendee and presenter at Counselor’s, Darryl had more than 25 years in agency management before he founded Second Quadrant Solutions to help professional service organizations improve their performance, profitability, productivity, effectiveness and overall long-term financial health. He was chairman and chief executive officer of Magnet Communications (now Havas PR) and Creamer Dickson Basford (CDB). In these roles, he was responsible for driving business development, acquisitions, strategic alliances, joint ventures and the day-to-day operations for the North American public relations holdings of Havas Advertising, then the 5th largest communications company in the world. He also held board positions at Burson-Marsteller, Edelman and Ruder-Finn.
