How can you build, manage, and lead a team to take your agency to the next level? It’s much more than just filling seats with talent. Learn ways you can help your team share in the agency’s goals and inspire them to achieve great work.

In this post, we’ll cover:

• 2 secrets to creating a better team.
• How often you should meet with your team.
• Ways to inspire your team.

Today’s guest is Marcus Murphy, Director of Monetization at DigitalMarketer. He manages all client-facing teams, including: Sales, Service, Success, Account Management, Business Development, and Partners. So, he’s gotten really good at creating and inspiring large teams. Marcus shares with us his best tips for building and managing an amazing team to take your agency to the next level.

2 Secrets to Creating a Better Team

#1  Share the Mission

Communicating the mission statement can be a super way of motivating your team. It helps them understand the big picture and keep everyone on the same page. When your team realizes the common goal and buys into why they’re doing what they’re doing it encourages a better team environment.

Communicating the mission is just as important as measuring it. Be sure your company mission is measurable so your team can celebrate accomplishments together. For example, DigitalMarketer’s mission is to double the size of 10,000 businesses by the year 2020. The progress on this goal is totally measurable and the team can feel pride as they work closer toward the common goal.

#2  Hire on Core Values

You don’t want to hire a bunch of mini-you’s. In fact, you should to hire people smarter than you to fill in your weaknesses and things you hate doing. However, you should hire full of people with similar beliefs. When your team shares the same moral and ethical code, they’re able to work more cohesively, which inspires better work output.

One of DigitalMarketer’s core values is “to pursue growth and learning every day.” That means every person goes through every training. They provide paid lunch and learns, buy books for their team whenever requested, and generally support any type of further education.

How Often Should You Meet with Your Team?

Marcus holds a standing Monday morning meeting with his teams. He avoids the rah-rah, pep rally stuff and uses that time to focus on the week ahead and look back on the month. In order to set the right tone, he starts the meeting by going around the room and asking a few people what they’re thankful. He says this begins the meeting on a positive note and eliminates a sense of entitlement. As Tony Robbins says, “Trade expectations for appreciation.”

Ways to Inspire Your Team

A lot of businesses have a bonus system tied to performance, but consider an award system that encourages hard work or is tied to your core values.

Marcus says as his teams grew it he felt it was important to start an award system. He has been inspired by the movie The Quest for a Go-Getter, which is about a man who must go through hoops to deliver a blue vase. The point of the story is how the man overcomes challenges and goes above and beyond to achieve success while maintaining his integrity. So, Marcus’s teams have The Blue Vase Award – teammates nominate others by emailing their story on why someone deserves the award. He’s noticed that by having his teams nominate their coworkers, there’s been a shift in appreciation for the hard work of others. The monthly winner receives $100 cash and ownership of the blue vase for a month 🙂

Other team motivators include: plank competitions, 5-minute trivia breaks, and employee scoreboard displays around the office. Marcus has discovered these types of healthy competitions have been good for unifying the team and increasing productivity overall.

Need Guidance and Support to Grow Your Agency Faster?

Most agency owners struggle to scale. We’ve developed an amazing mastermind to guide you through the journey of implementing the right systems so you can scale your agency — instead of feeling overwhelmed by it.

We do this by bringing together successful agency leaders to share strategies, offer advice, and reveal what’s working (and what’s not working) in their agency. The truth is, whatever you want to accomplish in life, nothing will help you go further, faster than getting the right adviser in the context of motivated peers. If you want to GROW fast and smart, Digital Agency Elite mastermind will help.

How to Further Improve Your Digital Agency

If you found this article helpful and are ready to take your agency even further or improve as a business owner, I can help you.

Do you have more questions? Whether you are an experienced agency owner or have just started a new agency, I have covered topics including how to stop losing clients to how Instagram can benefit your marketing strategy for your agency.

If you have other topics you want advice on, check out all my tips, tricks, and everything you need to know in my blogs. I have covered a wide variety of topics as well as answered your questions in more from my Ask Swenk series.

Are videos more your thing?  You can check out my Ask Swenk series and more of my videos on my YouTube channel for advice from myself and other agency experts.