If you touch any part of the commercial side of a business, you are intimately familiar with the promise and pressure that is Q4. Whether you’ve been planning for this the whole year and are working a solid pipeline, or it’s snuck up on you and you’re clawing your way to the finish line, it takes a special mix of endurance and focused drive to make it to the end... successfully.  We asked some of the experts who’ve motivated (and sometimes carried!) teams over the finish line to share their tips for inspiring teams to their best performance.

The competition to find, and land, top-notch sales talent is as fierce as the push to meet Q4 numbers. Between the formalized open positions and the “always looking for good talent” opportunities, if you’re a successful sales professional, the world is your oyster. If you happen to be on the managerial side of the equation, life may not seem as rosy. With the cost of mis-hiring a sales rep costing you well into the six-figure range, it’s crucial you make an informed, but expedient, decision. 

At ESOMAR Congress in September we hosted a main stage panel discussion with industry leaders driving M&A activity in the marketing insights and technology vertical on “Key Drivers of Investment and M&A Activity in Market Research.”

Q4 is known for the frenetic pace that inevitably comes with the final push to meet (and exceed!) annual goals. Amidst the frenzy, we need to pull ourselves out of the weeds of the current plan to focus on creating next year’s plan. Short on time, many leaders short-change the planning process, committing a few cardinal sins that perpetuate the planning-to-scrambling cycle.

At ScaleHouse we spend a lot of time working with founders on exit strategies that are focused on selling to a strategic buyer or private equity firm. But what if you’re a CEO looking to exit while still desiring the company to run in perpetuity? Or you’re looking to give up control of the day-to-day so you can focus on contributing to the business in a different way?

It seems a new business book with tips and tricks for scaling growth is released on a weekly basis. Given the constant influx of business content, it can be difficult to know what is actual field-tested advice that works, and what is a potential distraction.

"I'm so busy!" As summer (for many of us) winds down and conference season and Q4 ramps up, this mantra will echo louder and louder.  We trade stories of miles flown, cities visited, sleepless nights counted, deals saved, speeches given. The tally of these items becomes a proxy score for our value as an employee, our stature as a professional. “She must have a very important job,” we think, “she is always so busy!”  We’ve come to equate busyness with professional status and we’ve come to equate professional status with self-identity. That combination equates to… burnout.

September marks the beginning of the Q3/4 trade show season. Even if you’ve already read our previous post on this subject, it deserves revisiting before you hit the road with a big event investment.

Running an agency, regardless of the type, requires grit, determination, some serious smarts and of course, persistence. Without these ingredients, you will do well to survive, let alone thrive. But what if your ambitions are loftier than simply survival or running a lifestyle business? What if you want to grow your agency and achieve some scale so that you can exit with a high valuation?  That's a challenge that a lot of agency owners tackle and with varying degrees of success.