Paddy Moogan, founder of digital marketing agency Aira, talks about his journey with Waypoint Partners
Aira’s situation before Waypoint
Prior to engaging with Waypoint Partners, Aira had grown organically with very little formal advice or mentorship. We relied on our own network of industry friends from other agencies for help on the day-to-day challenges of running and growing a successful agency. This worked well, but we were also aware that “we didn’t know what we didn’t know” and that having someone external to Aira with experience of the challenges that we were facing could benefit us a lot.
Waypoint’s experience working with similar agencies was clear and they demonstrated knowledge of the challenges we were facing, along with others that we might face in the future. We initially engaged with them for sales enablement training which was delivered to our senior team. This developed into further training for our client services team looking at how we could deliver more value for our clients.
Since then, Waypoint’s support has grown into a general advisory role, and they’ve had a transformative impact on all areas of the business; from sales and marketing, to client delivery, finance and operations.
Where we are now
After 18 months working with the Waypoint team, their influence on Aira remains very positive. They work with us at a board level but are also happy to invest time with other senior team members who oversee areas such as client delivery, client services and sales. In particular, they’ve trained us on producing high-value sales proposals, offering strategic advice and role-playing situations with our team to prepare them for pitches.
Each month, we hold productive board meetings with Waypoint who aren’t afraid to challenge the leadership team and push on areas where we can improve. This external influence is hugely valuable to us and has shaped a lot of our thinking on how to grow the agency. We now go into board meetings with mental models that equip us to make better strategic decisions and have productive debates as a team.
The delivered outcomes
Aira now has far more robust and scalable sales processes than ever before, with improved lead qualification that is delivering better conversion rates. Waypoint have also helped our client services team to better understand where we can add more value to client accounts and the kinds of questions we should be asking during the course of a project. At a board level, our meetings are far more productive and engaging with a structure that allows for consistent preparation whilst remaining focused on the pressing issues.
