Infusing innovative ideas into your agency operations with Stan Phelps

Speaker 1:

If you’re going to take the risk of running an agency, shouldn’t you get the benefits too? Welcome to Agency Management Institute’s Build a Better Agency podcast, presented by White Label IQ. Tune in every week for insights on how small to mid-size agencies are surviving and thriving in today’s market. We’ll show you how to make more money and keep more of what you make. We want to help you build an agency that is sustainable, scalable, and if you want down the road, sellable. With 25 plus years of experience as both an agency owner and agency consultant, please welcome your host, Drew McLellan.

Drew McLellan :

Hey, everybody. Drew McLellan here with Agency Management Institute, back again with another episode of Build a Better Agency. One of these days I’m going to come back with something completely different. I don’t know what it’s going to be, you’re going to think it’s an episode of Build a Better Agency. And I don’t know. I’m going to sing. No. I probably will not sing. But anyway, I’m going to surprise you one of these days, but not today. Today I have a great episode for you and I’m excited for you to re-meet our guest because he’s been on the show before, but not for quite a long time. I’ll tell you a little bit about him in a minute.

Just want to remind you that tickets are still available. I know we’ll sell out, so I keep telling you about this ’cause I want you to make sure you can go. So grab your ticket, A, before the price goes up again, and B, before we run out tickets. The Build a Better Agency Summit is May 16th and 17th in Chicago. And we have an amazing lineup of speakers. We have three different kinds of speakers at the summit. So we have keynote speakers. So they’re on the main stage and everybody’s in the room together. We have breakouts where you’re going to always have three choices. We’re going to do that three times throughout the conference. So three times you’re going to have to choose between three amazing speakers to hear the topics that are most important to you. This is why a lot of people bring more than one person to the conference, so they can kind of divide and conquer.

And then we’re going to have over 20 different round tables. And a round table is eight to 10 agency owners sitting around a table, a topic that they have chosen with a subject matter expert at that table. And the subject matter expert is going to lead you all in a conversation around that topic. So for example, last year I led a discussion at round table around how do you weave mission, vision and values into your agency so they’re actually a tool that you use to grow the business, to retain employees? And there’s all kinds of other benefits of doing that. So my job in that was to talk to everybody around the table about what they were already doing and everybody shared. And so, already people were stealing ideas from each other, which is the whole purpose of this. And then I threw in some ideas as well, and then we discussed those. So it was a really great, robust conversation where everyone around the table is both the student and the teacher, and I love that format. And the round tables will be everything from media buying and planning to succession, to leadership, to taxes, to finance, to growing young leaders, all kinds of topics. So we would love to have you join us and enjoy all of those different kinds of presentations.

And actually, probably the best presentation of all is not a presentation. It’s you sitting around with a bunch of other agency owners at lunch and at breakfast and on breaks, and connecting with them and finding out who they are and what they do. And you’re going to be amazed at all of the sharing that happens between the attendees there.

So you’re going to learn from the keynote speakers, the breakout speakers, the round table discussions. But where you’re probably going to learn the most and get the most is actually in your interactions with other agency owners and leaders. It really is remarkable. The community is amazing and we’d like you to be a part of it. So grab a ticket, go to the website, agencymanagementinstitute.com, go up to the upper left corner, hit Build a Better Agency Summit, and you’ll see register where you can buy a ticket. And make sure you also grab a hotel room because those are going to sell out as well.

Okay. So let me tell you a little bit about our guest today. So Stan Phelps and I have known each other, gosh, 10 or 15 years. When I first met Stan, he was working at an agency and he was deciding if he wanted to go out on his own. And what he wanted to do is, he wanted to start writing books about marketing topics, and he wanted to be a keynote speaker. So his very first book called Purple Goldfish, I’m going to give you the whole title, 10 Ways to Attract Raving Customers, came out shortly after he left the agency and decided to write this book and be a keynote speaker. He has written 10 books since that time. All of them Goldfish themed, and there’s a reason for that, which I’ll let him tell you. But he’s written about customer service. He’s written about great employees. He’s written about managing and leading a multi-generational office. He has written about how we use technology and marketing. He has written about customer excellence. He’s written about employee engagement. His books are fantastic. He’s a great storyteller. And I guarantee you, you’ll hear some great stories in our conversation.

But what we’re going to talk about today is his latest project and his latest focus, which is how to teach and foster innovation inside your organization, which I know is a hot topic for many of you. And so, we’re going to dig into that. Stan’s always about practical, good, tangible advice that you can put into play. So you’re going to enjoy this episode, you’re going to have some takeaways. And I promise you, you’re going to just enjoy hearing Stan tell his stories and teach us through stories. So with that, let’s just cut to the chase and welcome him to the show. Stan, welcome back to the podcast. It’s good to have you back.

Stan Phelps:

Yeah. Good to be back, Drew.

Drew McLellan :

So we were talking, before I hit the record button, about the fact that pre-pandemic, you were traveling all over the world and mostly doing keynotes and some workshops, but really you were on the road, you were a true road warrior, and obviously COVID changed all of that. I know you’re back on the road now, but I know you’ve also shifted your focus away from the books more to this idea of innovation and how do teams innovate. And in the agency world, what we sell… You used to work at an agency, you know this. We used to sell stuff. We used to sell websites and PPC campaigns and all of that. But the problem is, all of that’s been so commoditized and somebody can go on Upwork or the web and find somebody who can do it less extensively, not as well perhaps, but still less extensively. So even more so, we have to show up with big ideas all the time. And so, this notion of innovation is really critical, I think, to agencies as we enter into the new year and we start thinking about how do we differentiate ourselves, how do we continue to add value to our existing clients, how do we demonstrate value to prospects? And so, I’m hearing this word innovation all the time. So let’s talk a little bit about, first of all, how do you define innovation?

Stan Phelps:

I define it as simply the ability to bring kind of new and fresh thinking and to be able to think outside of the norm of what the industry does. And to me, there’s only two ways to stand out, and this is through the research I’ve done around differentiation, you can either do more of what makes you unique or you can do less of what everyone else does as normal. So I believe, as we go forward, that the only way that you can get competitive advantage is about learning about your customers faster than your competition can, but that only gets you insight. Where real innovation occurs is when you’re able to take those insights and then to be creating action as a result of it. And so, I think innovation is the ability to develop that understanding and then to be able to run with it and create action and impact.

Drew McLellan :

I think that’s what our clients are asking us for, right? We want that outside perspective. The I’m inside the bottle, I can’t accurately read the label on the bottle anymore. I need outside perspective. I need somebody who has insights and ideas about my business, but can also translate them to some sort of action. So don’t disagree with you, but dang, that’s hard. So everyone’s nodding their head as they’re listening, they’re like, “Yes. That’s what we sell. That’s what we do.” But as you know, from your past experience from the clients you work with now, actually doing it is very different than understanding what it is and wanting to do it.

Stan Phelps:

Yeah. Here’s the thing, anyone who’s a leader right now, anyone who’s running an agency, who’s listening to this, it’s like there’s no one here that doesn’t want their team members to be innovative and to be creative in their approach. But I think the challenge is, we don’t teach them how to do it. We may know how to do it ourselves but we don’t give them the framework and the ability to think in process. We certainly don’t give them the space, often, to do it.

Drew McLellan :

[inaudible 00:09:32] the time, right?

Stan Phelps:

Right. And then lastly, if we’re not thinking about it, we’re not probably creating the right rewards that incentivize people to think outside of the norm, right?

Drew McLellan :

It’s interesting. Yeah. It’s probably easier just to do the tried and true. I can get through that faster, I can get through my email and my to-do list by just delivering what’s expected.

Stan Phelps:

Right. And a lot of times it’s because you’re listening to what the client is telling you they think they need, right?

Drew McLellan :

Right. Right.

Stan Phelps:

We know this. People don’t know what they like, they like what they know. But if you keep doing the same things that you’ve always done, you’re not opening up new avenues, you’re not expanding your thinking. So I think really great agencies challenge their clients to think differently and help them kind of expand their space in order to try new things.

Drew McLellan :

Yeah. Yeah. It’s interesting. I think you’re right. Every agency owner wants their team to be innovative. Most agency owners are sort of naturally… They get to that big idea, they have the ability to connect the dots and see something from a different perspective, but very few of them know how to teach. They can’t even articulate how they do it, let alone teach it, right? Like if I said to somebody, “You’re a big thinker, you have great ideas. How do those come to you? How do you take data about a client and come up with something innovative?” The person would recognize they’re capable of doing it, but I don’t know very many people who can articulate, as you said, the framework or the methodology that their brain just naturally knows how to do to get to that big idea, let alone teach it to somebody else.

Stan Phelps:

Right. Yeah. I think everyone brings different pieces to it, and some people it’s more intuitive. The clients that I’ve worked with, now literally hundreds through doing workshops, the process that I talk about, Drew, is what I call the IDEA framework. So that’s an acronym that I use, but it starts with inquire. So how do we understand our customers, right? How do we understand how they interact and how our clients’ customers interact? But very quickly, how do we take those key attributes and find either where there’s gaps, so where your client is not meeting the needs of the customer, or where there’s an opportunity? There’s a key moment, that if you hit that note just at the right time, and distinctively you can really make impact. So it starts with inquire. And then once you develop and see where the gap or the opportunity is, it quickly goes to design. It makes sense. You focus on your most damaging gaps for your clients or their most promising opportunities. And design is all about asking big questions of how you can solve for it, how you can be innovative.

And then the last two steps are more of like how do you take and qualify the ideas, both internally and externally? How do you create a minimally viable solution that you can test? And then, ultimately, if you can get those ideas past that next level, how do you advance them? How do you sell them in? How do you roll them out the proper way? And then, how do you measure them to make sure they’re achieving what you want?

Drew McLellan :

I would’ve said to most of the people listening, breakdown the steps of what you have to do when you’re thinking of big ideas for clients. They would come back with some ballparky thing like what you just said, but if I asked them to say, “How do you do it,” that’s, I think, where the rubber meets the road, and that’s where I think the gap is. So let’s take each one of those and let’s talk about the methodology that leads someone to successfully accomplishing each of those steps. So the inquire, that learning about the client or the customer, how do you recommend or teach that we do that for our clients?

Stan Phelps:

Well, I think it first starts with stepping into the shoes of the customer. And so, using the research that you have to start to create personas to really start to understand what makes that customer tick, what’s valuable to them, what they don’t value. That’s usually the first step that I do with clients. From there-

Drew McLellan :

Hang on, I want to stop you. I think that’s a really interesting question. What don’t they value? I don’t think we ask that question often enough, right?

Stan Phelps:

Right.

Drew McLellan :

We always ask, “What do you love about them,” blah, blah, blah. And maybe what are they not doing well, which is a different question, this is something I value, they just aren’t good at it, but the idea of what do they do that is just unimportant to you or not relevant to you? That’s a great question.

Stan Phelps:

Yeah. So I typically start with kind of understanding the customer. From there we even go deeper. It’s not my tool, but one of the tools I really like is one called attribute mapping.

Drew McLellan :

So tell us about that.

Stan Phelps:

So attribute mapping is really start to break down what the customers of your clients value as it relates to their need, right?

Drew McLellan :

Mm-hmm.

Stan Phelps:

And here’s the thing, you very quickly understand that if they can name six to seven or eight things, those things are not equal, right? There are some things, and what you’re looking for is really the top two. What are the top two drivers of what’s important to them as they think about the need that they have that leads them to the product or service, that solution? And then it’s understanding that, and this is a difficult one, we can’t plant our flag on every hill, right?

Drew McLellan :

Right.

Stan Phelps:

We have to make decisions of what we’re going to focus on. And what that step really requires is, let’s focus on the stuff that’s most important to the client and the customer that we serve, right?

Drew McLellan :

Yeah.

Stan Phelps:

And it’s only in those cases can we focus on those things, but part of this exercise is also looking at the things that aren’t important. And maybe in some of those areas we might even overemphasize them. And so, we have to get comfortable with maybe being unapologetically awful at the things that don’t matter.

Drew McLellan :

Well, that gets back to you’re doing less, right?

Stan Phelps:

Absolutely. It’s the only two ways to stand out. Do more of what makes you unique and what your customers value or less of what everyone else does is normal, but they do it because that’s what everyone else does.

Drew McLellan :

Right. Right.

Stan Phelps:

Right. Or we’ve always done it that way. And so, as part of that, what I typically do, because a lot of the work I do is around the customer and their experience or the employee and their experience, is we start to do some journey mapping. So how is the customer interacting with us? And by stepping into their shoes of that persona and understanding the things that are important through attribute mapping, when we do the journey map, we can start to see where they’re getting stuck. And we also can see where are the key moments within the experience.

Drew McLellan :

Yeah. Good or bad, right? The key moment that propels me to the next step or makes me go, “Nope. I’m done.”

Stan Phelps:

Right. Right. And journey mapping is just a tool, it’s not the end goal. You’re just using that as a tool to highlight kind of those… It’s almost like a heat map, right? Where are those areas that you really need to address? Because I think what happens is, most people start to play a game called Whack-a-Mole. They focus on just the gaps and they’re like potholes. By the time you fill one pothole… Being in the Midwest, what do you know happens?

Drew McLellan :

Yeah.

Stan Phelps:

Another one pops up. And then it’s this continuous game. You also have to think about key moments that you can elevate, right? Where can you really stand out? And if you do those key moments well, they become what some call peak experiences, and that’s what your clients and customers remember. They don’t remember the average or every step that they needed to take, they remember the key moments.

Drew McLellan :

I mean, again, that’s part of the job of being innovative, is identifying either a lack of key moments or opportunities where you can put a key moment where perhaps there’s either no moment or it’s an ordinary moment.

Stan Phelps:

Right. Right. To really stand out. And here’s the thing, research will tell you that creating those opportunities and key moments in some cases will return up to a nine to one return on investment [inaudible 00:19:40]-

Drew McLellan :

Wow.

Stan Phelps:

… simply just fixing the gaps.

Drew McLellan :

Yeah. Interesting.

Stan Phelps:

Yeah.

Drew McLellan :

Okay. So I do all of my due diligence. I learn about the client, I learn about their end game with their customers, we find the gaps, we do some journey mapping. We identify where there are and aren’t peak moments, where we could create them. So now I have this insight, this knowledge. And first of all, this is one of the first places where agencies don’t build in enough time. We don’t do a deep dive on this. We have a three-hour discovery session with a client. We think we know everything, which is already, from the very get-go is biased because we got it out of the client’s mouth and we think that we’re done. So number one, this requires some time. So when you think about sort of mapping out a project or a scope of work for a client, in your experience, how much time does it take to really do a great job? Because I’m assuming, correct me if I’m wrong, but I’m assuming if you get this wrong or you get this light, then the rest of the process kind of pales in comparison.

Stan Phelps:

Right. You begin to start prescribing before you really have gotten the right kind of diagnosis, right?

Drew McLellan :

Right.

Stan Phelps:

So I don’t know if there’s a magic number of hours or time. And what I like about at least the 12 steps and the four main areas that we’ve created, it forces you not to skip steps, Drew. So to build out that persona, to really think about attributes to draw upon the research that you might already have from the customers that you’re serving, but I do agree with you that sometimes that can get overlooked because at the end of the day, if we’re being honest, we like the design phase.

Drew McLellan :

Right. Well, in fact, sometimes we just jump right to it, right?

Stan Phelps:

Right.

Drew McLellan :

We have all these ideas, right?

Stan Phelps:

Right. And so, I think it’s so important. A lot of work goes into, if you’re doing it correctly, is uncovering those insights and then figuring out, in that design phase, we can’t do everything. What are the most critical elements that we need to address? And we call those either the most damaging gaps or the most promising opportunities.

Drew McLellan :

Okay. So how do we connect the dots from I have invested enough time, I have taken a deep dive into the truth about the customer journey, what matters and doesn’t matter to the customer, what the competitor’s doing, all of those things? So I’ve done my due diligence, but now I have to take that and I have to put it into play in the design phase. So especially because we do this every day, and honestly, a lot of us go into the first phase already thinking we know the answer, right?

Stan Phelps:

Right. Yeah. I think going in with more of a beginner’s mind, not having prejudgments or not trying to get confirmation, avoiding confirmation bias is absolutely key. But again, the thought is that when you’re coming out of that inquire stage, you’ve identified a number of key aspects that you want to address, those gaps and those opportunities, but then you really have to start to cull because you can’t do everything, right? We know that just as a general rule in business that the 20% of X drives 80% of Y. And so, what we’ve got to do is, cull down and start to understand what are the biggest gaps that we need to address, the ones that are creating the most friction that is not allowing the customer to get what they want, or where is the biggest opportunity that we can seize in order to really create a moment of magic as opposed to just focusing on the misery?

Drew McLellan :

Right. Or the tactics.

Stan Phelps:

Or the tactics. Yeah. Yeah.

Drew McLellan :

Right. Yeah. Yeah.

Stan Phelps:

So that first step is really focus in the D of design. Then to me, it’s really about, once we’ve identified the things that we want to go deeper on, it’s about asking big questions.

Drew McLellan :

How do you teach that?

Stan Phelps:

Well, I mean, in the workbooks that I have and the books that I’ve written, we even have a list of questions that we start to think about. And it’s like going through these to eliminate constraints, but it’s from both sides. So it’s, “Hey. If we had a million dollars to attack this, how would we do it?” But then you do the flip side and you go, “What if you only had $10 to do it or a $100 to do it-”

Drew McLellan :

Or no dollars, right?

Stan Phelps:

“… how would you might attack it?” If we had a year to work on this, what could we do? Well, what would we do, if we had, in 30 minutes from now, we had to present something that addresses this? So it’s trying to open and eliminate some constraints, but also bring some more in to get a variety of ideas. Asking questions. I love this question. If it was magic, how would it happen?

Drew McLellan :

Right.

Stan Phelps:

Right? Again, if we had a million dollars or $10 million, how would we solve for X? And to me, that’s when it kind of broadens the thinking. And agencies are great at this in terms of brainstorming. They know all the right rules. It’s about eliminating constraints so you get a whole host of ideas that address that gap or that opportunity. And then ultimately, you have to start kind of pairing it down to what is the best idea? And once you start to have those ideas based on the insights that you’ve created, the next two steps of the evaluate and advance in the IDEA process are more of qualifying the idea. That’s the whole objective of the evaluate, of the E.

So first, looking internally, do we have the bandwidth to potentially do this? How much will it cost? Will the benefits outweigh the cost? And assuming you can kind of jump through those hoops, it’s like, “All right. Then it goes to external validation. We don’t want to do this in a vacuum. We want to actually go and bring it to customers and get them to validate what we think,” right?

Drew McLellan :

Yeah.

Stan Phelps:

And assuming we can get that validation from our customers, then how do we create a version of this that we can try out and we can pilot? We try to either let it go to die very quickly or figure out ways that we can improve it and iterate on it, but ultimately, if it gets through that pilot phase, we’re ready to potentially start to advance this and really roll it out.

Drew McLellan :

So I want to ask you about the evaluate stage a little bit in terms of is that done in a vacuum, the agency does it themselves, do they bring their clients in, when do they bring them in? I want to take a quick break and then we’ll come back and we’ll dig into that phase a little bit.

Hey. Sorry to interrupt, but I wanted to make sure that you are thinking about how to connect with your clients by figuring out what they love and maybe a few things that they’re not so crazy about with your agency. So at AMI, one of the things we offer are client satisfaction surveys. We do both quantitative and qualitative. So an online survey, but also interviews with some of your key clients. And we come back to you with trends, recommendations, what they love, what they don’t love, lots of insights around how you can create an even tighter relationship with your clients. So if you have interest in that, you can go under how we help tab on the AMI website. And very bottom choice on the how we help tab is the client satisfaction surveys. You can read more about it. But whether you have us do it or you do it yourself or you hire somebody else, it is really critical that you be talking to your clients about what they love and what they wish was different or better. So do not miss the opportunity to tighten your relationship with your client, whether we help you or not. All right? All right. Let’s get back to the show.

All right. We are back with Stan Phelps and we’re talking about innovation and how we bake it into our process at the agency and how we can teach it to our team rather than you, the agency owner or leader, being the only one that can come up with big ideas. So right before the break we started to talk a little bit about the evaluate stage. That idea of now we have this big laundry list of ideas, we’ve done the inquire stage, we’ve really done a deep dive into discovery. We have some really interesting ideas around what the customer is and isn’t experiencing, what they care about, what they don’t care about, what the competitors are doing, all of those things. We’ve then taken all of those and we’ve said, “All right. So if we’re going to solve for some of these problems, how might we do that? How might we close some of these gaps? How might we take some sort of non-memorable moments and make them super memorable, turn them into peak moments?” But at a certain point in time, we have this basket of ideas and now we have to figure out which ones we’re actually going to even broach a conversation with the client about or try and attach a budget to, or fill in the blank.

So from your perspective, at what point, because a lot of this has been done sort of without the client’s involvement or the client’s sort of dipped in and out, at what point do you bring the client into these conversations to evaluate these ideas? And do we typically bring them in too early, too late or the right time?

Stan Phelps:

Yeah. So great question. I mean, depends on how much they have a seat at the table through this entire process, but this is certainly… When you get to the evaluate phase, it is definitely where you’re going to need their input. So internal evaluation, it’s really trying to evaluate what would it cost if we could do this, do we have the capability to do it?

Drew McLellan :

Yeah. And cost probably isn’t just money, right? It might be time, it might be resources, it might be other opportunities you can’t take advantage of.

Stan Phelps:

Right.

Drew McLellan :

Yeah.

Stan Phelps:

How many cycles is this going to take? How much bandwidth do we have? But then ultimately, you bundle those costs and then you also look at, “Well, what would we expect if we could do this? What would be the benefit? And how can we quantify that? Would it lead, potentially, to greater retention and loyalty? Is it going to spur word of mouth? What could we get as a benefit if we did this?” And ultimately, just in that internal, assuming we can do it, assuming that the benefits outweigh the costs, you’ve then jumped through the hurdle of internal. And that idea is now ready for, it’s got past the internal assessment, it’s now ready for external validation. And that’s something where you’d work hand-in-hand with your client. What do we need to know from our ultimate customers? And then two, here are we going to have to go to get that information? And once you figure out what you need to know and where do you need to go get it, it’s just a matter of going out and putting the idea in front of that advisory board, or putting together a focus group, or doing some qualitative surveys to get the feedback that you need to hopefully validate that what you believe is also what the customer feels. Now you’ve gotten through two of the three hoops.

The last one is when you’re going to create that pilot. You’re going to try to find a way that you can do it on a very small scale to further validate the potential of that idea. And that can be done a number of different ways, but the idea is to try to fail fast.

Drew McLellan :

Right. Of course. Yeah. So much of this phase, at least the tail end of it, requires a client who is ready for all of this. Oftentimes when I talk to agency folks about why they aren’t more innovative or why they don’t bring more big ideas to clients, what they’ll say is, “You know what? We used to do that all the time and client always said no. So we wasted all this time coming up with ideas and pitching ideas and all of that, and we could just never get our client to be open-minded enough to explore something big or different or new.” And there’s a whole host of reasons to take big ideas to clients that have nothing to do with selling them ideas, which we’ll talk about another time, but how do you prep a client, do you think? So we’re talking about the agency being innovative, but it’s a partnership, right?

Stan Phelps:

Right.

Drew McLellan :

The client has to be willing to be innovative too, or at least innovative or open-minded enough to consider some innovative ideas. So when you are the agency that’s been hired to do all of this thinking and come up with some new ideas, and at what stage, how do you begin to prep your client so that they are ready to consider something that is not ordinary and tried and true?

Stan Phelps:

Right. Yeah. It’s probably a mix of A, finding the right clients, right?

Drew McLellan :

Sure.

Stan Phelps:

Because if all they want is the widget, you’re setting yourselves up to be a commodity. We know this. The special sauce that you’re ultimately able to bring to the table is that kind of critical thinking and those insights that lead to action. So I think part of it is finding the right client, part of it is hopefully bringing them along as part of the process and including them in the process. It’s not an or scenario. I’d like to think that you might reserve 20% of what you do for a client to be new and innovative stuff that might fail, but it’s not just the 100% of taking the order and fulfilling what you’ve always done in the past. So maybe it’s just carving a little bit out and developing that trust in the process, but I don’t know if there’s a magic wand that you can… Other than having the right clients who value it, I don’t know if there’s a magic wand you could use.

Drew McLellan :

It’s interesting. We do research every year and we talk to people who hire agencies. And a few years ago, this whole research project was why do agencies get fired? And one of the biggest reasons why agencies got fired is because we stopped bringing them big ideas. We did it in the beginning when we were wooing them, when we were pitching them, we rolled up our sleeves and we did all the things we had to do to create that chemistry and that trust, but over time, I think the relationship starts to wear, especially if a client is not innovative. And so, agencies start bringing fewer ideas.

But I also think that with what you’re talking about, this IDEA methodology, there is a place for a client involvement at every stage of this methodology. And one of the things I always hear clients say, and I suspect you did too back in your agency days, is clients love being around agencies when they’re thinking big and thinking bold, and they don’t get to do that in their corporate jobs. That gets shut down in a hurry. And so, if we can make it interesting and fun for our client to participate and it feels exploratory and kind of an adventure, and we don’t really know where we’re going to end up, put on the backpack and let’s go for a hike kind of a thing, I do think if you do that early enough in the process, you condition the client to be ready to think about more interesting and groundbreaking ideas.

Stan Phelps:

Right. Right. I’ve heard really good CMOs talk about this idea of always carving a little something out of the budget to be able to try something new.

Drew McLellan :

Right.

Stan Phelps:

Right? Yeah. I think the co-creation, finding the right match as a client, it’s carving that out.

Drew McLellan :

Right. And when you think about it, even in the very early engagement with a client, when you’re just talking about initial budgets and things like that, that’s when we should start saying, “Look, one of our recommendations is, marketing is changing so fast, communication with clients is changing so fast, customer experience and all of those things, constant change.” And so, you can’t only do what you know will work because by the time you implement it, something new will have come along. And so, we do have to carve out part of the budget to experiment. If we’re going to stay ahead of where the puck is going, we really do have to, on occasion, experiment knowing that we’re not going to get it right every time, but we’re going to get it right often enough that we’ll stay out ahead.

Stan Phelps:

Right. Right. By the way, I have to share this. So I think that’s such a famous saying, don’t skate where the puck is, skate where it’s going. So Wayne Gretzky’s dad is famous for that quote, but part of the reason why is that when Wayne was five or six years old, he would watch Hockey Night in America and he literally would sit there, Drew, with just a pen and a blank sheet of paper, and wherever the puck went, he would draw it on the sheet of paper. And what was amazing, by him looking at that sheet of paper, is where he realized… He was one of the first players to actually play from behind the net.

Drew McLellan :

Huh. Really?

Stan Phelps:

And to skate into areas that no one had ever really explored because he saw-

Drew McLellan :

Because the puck was going there.

Stan Phelps:

Yeah. But here’s the thing, you don’t get that if you’re not, again, taking out that sheet of paper and doing the work to be able to get the insight.

Drew McLellan :

Right. Right. Yeah. That’s a great story. That’s fascinating. I didn’t know the origin of that story, but it does tee up exactly what we’re talking about, which is you got to do the homework.

Stan Phelps:

Right. Right.

Drew McLellan :

Yeah. Yeah. Okay. So the last stage, the advance stage. So let’s assume that we have gone through the evaluation stage, we’ve evaluated things, we have done some piloting, and now it’s time to sort of take this idea to market, if you will. We’ve got the client involved at some stage throughout this process, so they’re nodding their head maybe reluctantly maybe, or we have to sell it into another part of the organization that wasn’t a part of all of this experience, but walk us through that last part of your methodology.

Stan Phelps:

Yeah. Well, you nailed it. Assuming the pilot has went well, we’ve made corrections, we know we’ve validated the idea, the first part of the advance phase is the sell-in process. So you’ve got to go and get the budget, you’ve got to go and get the resources and make the case for the idea to get the investment and the buy-in. And so, it’s not just you selling it into your client, it’s your client being able to sell it up the ladder to get sponsorship and the funds to do it. So that’s a big part of it. So how do you design that in a way where you’ve taken them through the thinking, you’ve taken the feedback that you’ve gotten from that evaluate stage, and you now know it’s ready for prime time? And assuming you can get through that first gate, the second part of the advance phase is the rollout phase. And this is where a lot of great ideas go to die.

Drew McLellan :

Right. That’s right.

Stan Phelps:

Because we get so excited about the idea, but we realize, “God, we’ve got to figure out the process, we’ve got to train the people, we’ve got to figure out a plan to actually roll it out effectively.” And a lot of that can get stuck along the way. But assuming we’re doing that correctly, the third thing, and sometimes this gets forgotten, is the last part of advance is to really think about how are we going to measure this, right? How are we knowing that this is achieving the benefit that we sought when we gave it the go ahead? And so-

Drew McLellan :

Well, the benefit we probably used to sell it up the ladder, right?

Stan Phelps:

Exactly.

Drew McLellan :

Yeah.

Stan Phelps:

And to me, that measurement phase, if you think about this IDEA thing, I like to think about it as coming back full circle because we’re measuring it, we’re getting feedback from our customers, and that leads us right back to where? The inquire phase.

Drew McLellan :

Right. Right.

Stan Phelps:

One of the things to me, Drew, that really has resonated with me, there’s a piece of research that was done by Bain years ago, and I’m talking like 2005, and they asked senior executives, they’re like, “How many of you are creating just a superior experience for your customers?” And four out of five raised their hand and they’re like, “Yeah. Check the box. Were already doing it.” And Bain was clever. Who did Bain ask next?

Drew McLellan :

Right. Yeah. The customers.

Stan Phelps:

They asked the customers. And I used to live in London, so I love this saying, mind the gap. 28% of customers thought that they were getting a superior experience. So where Bain went was, what was happening with the 72% who thought they were but their customers didn’t buy it? And it came down to three reasons, and I think it’s so telling. For 8% of that 72% gap, it was simply a failure to design. So they weren’t doing anything above and beyond to create a superior experience. For 25% of that 72%, it was a failure to execute. So remember we talked about the rollout phase. It got caught up, we didn’t have the people, the process, the resources, but here was the most telling. The third reason was by far the biggest. For 39% of those companies, it was the failure to develop the capability to continuously renew the experience.

Drew McLellan :

Ah, interesting.

Stan Phelps:

Because what we might have done two, three, four, five years ago, that might have, at the time, considered superior, but we know how the market moves, we know the expectations of our customers. So to me, that’s a telling. And it really speaks to the need, I think, to build the capability to continuously go back. It’s almost like this circle as opposed to you do it once and it’s done.

Drew McLellan :

Right. Right. And to your point, innovation is never done. And the minute we go out to market, we should be gathering data to continue to that continual improvement part of it, which I think oftentimes clients and agencies kind of feels like, “Oh. We’re done with that. Okay. Next thing on the list.” So in today’s world with customers having such a loud and powerful voice, can’t really afford to be ordinary anymore.

Stan Phelps:

No. I mean, there’s only two ways that you can compete. One, you can compete on the price that you charge, which is a mistake, right? It’s a race to the bottom. Or you can compete based upon the experience that you provide, right? And people will pay a premium to get a better experience. And so, at the end of the day, I think you want to be in that 70% that are competing based upon the experience that you provide.

Drew McLellan :

Absolutely. I think agencies want to do that, and I think most of our clients want to do that.

Stan Phelps:

Right.

Drew McLellan :

This has been a great conversation. So to kind of wrap this all up in a bow, if you were an agency owner or leader, how would you begin to infuse this process into the agency operations?

Stan Phelps:

Again, I think you really pointed on something. It’s probably something that the owner intuitively knows how to do, but it’s hard for them to teach or to quantify. It’s again, investing in the capabilities of your team, it’s giving them the space to work on it, and it’s ingraining it as part of the process. And that’s always a little more difficult than to put it in practice.

Drew McLellan :

I think the time thing is such a bugaboo for agencies. I mean, we’re so conscious of billable time and all of that, and especially if this is a new business prospect, really challenging to do that when you know that you may or may not get compensated. And even if you are doing it for a paying client, pricing it properly so that you have enough time to really do the deep dive, not easy to do. But if agencies really truly want to be innovative, that doesn’t happen, as you said, with the wave of… It’s not magic, right?

Stan Phelps:

Right.

Drew McLellan :

We don’t have the answer to that question. It does require that you bake it into your system and your process and your timelines, and your budgets.

Stan Phelps:

Right.

Drew McLellan :

Good stuff. This is such a critical topic for us right now. I think agencies are really wrestling with how to stay really relevant and how to really provide value for their clients. And so, I think there’s a lot of takeaways to this. So I know we have to get going, but how can people reach you? How can people learn more about you? How can people learn about the program that you have around this IDEA, and innovation and teaching it?

Stan Phelps:

Yeah. So thanks. So best way to check me out is my website, stanphelps.com. And I appreciate you mentioning it. The big program for me going forward is this thing called Goldfish Tank, and it’s a day long program where I take groups through this IDEA process. And what I love about it and why all of my books, as you know, Drew, have goldfish in them, but what I really like about this is that at the end of the program, your teams actually have to pitch ideas.

Drew McLellan :

Interesting.

Stan Phelps:

It’s an applied learning innovation and team building experience. So that’s something I’m really excited about, this concept of Goldfish Tank.

Drew McLellan :

Yeah. Love it. Yeah. As I said in the introduction, Stan has written a series of books that are fantastic, but all of them take a little twist on the goldfish. There’s multiple colors involved, as I sort of outlined for the beginning, but the idea of the tank, everyone coming together and thinking together like a think tank, I love that. So thank you, my friend. It was good to catch up. We haven’t talked to each other for a while. It was good to catch up. It is always great to have you share your wisdom with our audience. So I’m grateful for your time, and we’ll have to do it again soon.

Stan Phelps:

Absolutely. Thanks for having me, Drew.

Drew McLellan :

You bet. All right, guys. So again, as you know, my goal with every episode is to give you tangible, practical things that you can go put into practice. And we literally outlined a whole methodology. Now, we did not outline it in the way that Stan would in a full day workshop, obviously, but you got a pretty good taste of it. Some of it, I know, is going to be familiar to you. You just don’t bake in the time, the budget. Other ideas, I’m hoping were sort of eye-opening for you in terms of maybe when you infuse clients or how you drive a little deeper into some of those.

So take this back, talk to your leadership team, figure out where you can practice. Maybe you practice on yourself, maybe you practice on an existing client, but this is a muscle you have to keep working and using, otherwise it atrophies. And when it atrophies, you end up being one of the agencies that competes on price. And I don’t think any of us want to be in that role, especially with the cost of employees today. We can’t really afford to do that. So put this into play, use it, learn it, teach it, coach it. And I think every time you do it, it gets a little better and a little better. You’re not going to be brilliant at this the first time, you may be, but your team isn’t going to be. So be patient, give them some grace, but continue to bring it back into the agency operations so that you too can be one of the agencies that stands out for being a big idea agency. All right?

Quick shout out and thanks to our friends at White Label IQ. As you know, they’re the presenting sponsor of the podcast. Head over to whitelabeliq.com/ami to learn more about how they leverage their ability to do white label PPC design and dev for agencies. Because of their methodology and the way they work, they have some of the smartest, best developers on the planet, and they’re able to give that to you at a great wholesale rate. They understand. It was actually formed by an agency, an AMI agency. They understand that you have to make money on this. And so they’ve priced it in a way that it can be a very profitable thing for you to outsource some of that work. So go check them out. Good, good people. Tell them I said hello.

Also, just want to say thanks for listening. I love that you come back every week. I love that we get to have these conversations. And I’ll be back next week with another guest like Stan who’s going to help you think a little differently about your business. All right? In the meantime, you know you can track me down anywhere on social. You can track me down by email and certainly in the Facebook group for the podcast. We are there every day answering questions. So pop in and say hello. All right? See you next week.

That’s all for this episode of AMI’s Build a Better Agency podcast. Be sure to visit agencymanagementinstitute.com to learn more about our workshops, online courses, and other ways we serve small to mid-sized agencies. Don’t forget to subscribe today so you don’t miss an episode.