Many successful business leaders will tell you that a major factor in their success was to have a business mentor (boss etc) who has spent time with them over many years and passed on ‘pearls of wisdom’ that stop them making the same mistakes they did.

When it comes to establishing and running a PR agency most leaders of PR agencies are masters at the business of helping clients communicate but have had to learn the craft of agency management on the job and often make mistakes that could be easily avoided. Many agencies make the same old mistakes and don’t necessarily learn from each other.

This is where the PRCA’s Agency Management Workshop on November 15th in London comes into play.

Alastair Gornall will run this Agency Management Workshop and to pass on his experience and insights into agency management and what he has learnt over 25+ years of building not one but two award winning agencies (Scope and Consolidated Communications – PR Week Agency of the year 2001) but also being one of the few PR agency leaders to leave the PR industry, after selling his agency, to become CEO of a major global  business, Reed Exhibitions Ltd – where they retained 30+ PR agencies working on major trade exhibitions like The World Travel Market, London Book Fair etc.

Alastair plans to run this workshop in a format where the delegates determine the agenda and issues they want debated and he will then aim to help find solutions.

‘Running an agency at the best of times is never easy but in these times it is much more difficult and you have to be much more focussed about what your business is outstanding at and how that matches the ever changing needs to your clients’, said Alastair Gornall.

‘In this workshop, we can discuss anything but I feel the areas of great importance in these times include PR agency value propositions and positioning; market focus; developing market and media insights; getting paid to think; stopping your business getting ‘commoditised’; new business systems; financial systems (especially those that manage work in progress/cash flow); staff retention and motivation; building your agency profile; building profits/margins; planning an exit and so on.

To attend this Agency Management Workshop , take a look at the PRCA training website or contact Alice Chadwick-Jones on 020 7233 6026