Mirren

Cristina Sarnelli

Associate Director, Agency Growth Strategy

Cristina is Associate Director, Agency Growth Strategy at Mirren, a firm that specializes in organic growth and new business training for agencies in digital, PR, advertising, media, experiential, and more. Each year, more than 700 agencies participate in Mirren’s annual conference, training programs, and webinars (www.mirren.com). Their team has trained CEOs and their senior management teams in every region around the world. Cristina brings senior experience in B2B account management and strategy with a special focus in qualitative methodology. In addition to her agency background, she spent time consulting independently and in partnership with a management consulting firm on business growth strategies for brands in categories including luxury accommodations, SaaS, and industrial manufacturing. Her background in client leadership and qualitative analysis provides tremendous insight to her training. At Mirren, she empowers agency teams by training on the importance of buyer journeys, true qualitative insight, irrefutable logic trails and their impact on agency growth. “I encourage agency teams to embrace the lost art of qualitative to uncover real target audience insights – some of the most valuable IP an agency can provide its clients. Ultimately, the goal is to understand and drive target behavior to make an impact to the client’s bottom line.” Cristina spent the majority of her career running accounts agency-side in the B2B and B2B2C space for companies like Cox Automotive, Olam, FujiFilm Electronics, and Smithfield Foodservice. In her previous consulting role, she led research and delivered strategies to optimize business operations, R&D, and acquisition strategy for brands including Daxko, Private Suite (P/S), and Trane Technologies. Originally from the Chicagoland area, Cristina moved to Seattle in 2022.

This Speaker's Sessions

The New Skills Generating Organic Growth

For All Access Virtual Registrations:
2 Part Series: May 23, June 13

May 16, 2024 | 1:00 pm

Session 1: May 23, 1-2:30 pm ET

Getting More Work from Difficult Clients

Speaker: A Better View Consulting: John Gleason, CEO

$\"\"$ As a former P&G client and procurement executive, John has engaged hundreds of agencies. Leveraging this critical client-side insight, he’ll shed new light on how clients are now assessing, selecting, and negotiating with their agencies.In particular, he will dive into how to work with clients that can be a little more difficult:

Why some clients are less accessible, don’t understand your value, and can be challenging negotiators
What it now takes to establish a strong partnership-based relationship
The objectives of senior clients and procurement
How clients are now negotiating fee reductions
How to make two critical investments that will increase your value with senior clients and procurement – resulting in more work for the agency

Ultimately, this session will address how to more effectively engage senior decision-makers and gatekeepers, get more work, negotiate better terms, and develop stronger partnerships.

Session 2: June 13, 1-2 pm ET

Stop Getting Pigeonholed: Selling Current Clients on New Capabilities

Speaker: Cristina Sarnelli, Associate Director of Agency Growth Strategy

$\"\"$ It’s not uncommon that agencies get pigeonholed with their clients. Whatever type of work you provide at the outset of the relationship, can unfortunately, set a precedent for the future. Clients can be resistant to using more of your agency’s capabilities.The good news is that there’s a fix for this. In this session, we’ll take a look at a few steps you can take to persuade clients to use more of your capabilities – potentially even stealing business from other roster agencies. Ultimately, the goal is to capture a greater share of each client’s spend.