Sales is not a dirty word in the agency business, with Chuck Meyst.

Speaker 1:

If you’re going to take the risk of running an agency, shouldn’t you get the benefits too? Welcome to Build a Better Agency, where we show you how to build an agency that can scale and grow with better clients, invested employees and best of all, more money to the bottom line. Bringing his 25-plus years of expertise as both an agency, owner and agency consultant to you. Please welcome your host, Drew McClellan.

Drew McLellan:

Hey everybody. Welcome to another episode of Build a Better Agency. As you know, the reason I am putting together this podcast series is because I know all too well, the risks that we all take owning agencies, and I want to make sure we mitigate those risks and maximize the rewards that can come with agency ownership. One of the topics that when I’m hanging out with agency owners always comes up is the topic of new business and how to do it different, how to do it better, how to differentiate yourself. I know that today’s guest is going to strike a chord with all of you.

Chuck Meyst has been in sales his whole life, and he doesn’t think that sales is a dirty word or a bad word. He started with a morning paper route when he was a kid, went into engineering sale, magazine publisher work, voice recognition technology, and then found himself in the agency new business space. He’s worked in that space for quite a few years, and about 20 years ago, started the organization called agencyfinder.com. Basically, that is a matchmaking service for agencies. What Chuck’s going to talk to us about today is the things that we do right, the things that we do wrong, and how we can be better at agency new business. With that, Chuck, welcome to the show.

Chuck Meyst:

Thank you, Drew. I’m glad to be here.

Drew McLellan:

Tell us a little bit more about agencyfinder.com and sort of your role as a sales guy and your background.

Chuck Meyst:

Well, I was involved in agency new business process, starting back in 1990, working with Sanders Consulting. At that time, we were the be all end all to teach agencies new business process. I was there for four years. I left to start my own firm doing something similar but different in terms of principle, but came to the conclusion in doing any onsite engagements in teaching new, new business people, the proactive outreach process that basically, pardon me, but agencies don’t like doing new business. Now, what I mean there is that they don’t like to have to pick up a phone and reach out to somebody who is for the most part, a stranger.

I realized that my consulting business at that time and the staff we have had, we were never going to be able to address all the agencies or stay in touch with agencies that we taught. As a matter of fact, all of this came from, I was returning from Campbell Ewald, where I’d done an engagement to teach two new, new business people to replace two new business people that I taught two years prior. I thought, “I just can’t do this.” Flying home, I was reading a book on entrepreneurialship and the long story short was, I said, “We need to reverse this process. Agencies say, ‘You just get me somebody who can would get me an opportunity, and I can close it.’” Essentially, long story short, I came up with the reverse idea for new business development, which is AGENCYFINDER. I can keep talking, you got a question in there somewhere?

Drew McLellan:

Yeah. Just tell us a little bit about AGENCYFINDER and how it works.

Chuck Meyst:

Okay. Well, we launched AGENCYFINDER back 1997. We were the first finder service, and actually, in terms of format, we continue to be one of the few finder services in the agency community. Essentially, what we do is we’ve got a database, agencies are invited to build profiles. The profile gives them them about 500 data fields that they can check off to identify their experience, their services, and on and on and on. There’s also seven essays, they write typically 500 words. In the end, that profile is the largest data file on an agency in the industry. That’s what we’ve got to start with. Clients then are invited to come and register. When they come in, they’re asked to outline their search requirements and essentially, they are working on the other side of the Chinese Wall from that same data set. They check off what they want in an agency, what vertical market experience, what services, what market specialization.

They build their search outline, our search engine finds those that satisfy or appear to satisfy. We look at those, we look at those, we further edit that list. Eventually, the client gets to see those that satisfy the criteria. They tell us who they want us to invite. We invite them. At that point, essentially, we kind of walk away from the whole process. It’s meant for the agencies to respond to the invitation, either call and conduct an interview with the client. We call that a due diligence interview, or they’re meant to let us know that they have to decline for some reason, workload, budget or conflict. From that point forward, we kind of back away, but the whole process is to introduce and connect agencies that appear to be great candidates based on what the client has told us through their data entry, end of story.

Drew McLellan:

So you’re the eHarmony of agency new business, is what you’re saying, Chuck?

Chuck Meyst:

Drew that’s so well-spoken. The funny thing is in the early days, people used to say, “Well, tell me how this whole thing works.” I would say it’s sort of like a dating service. Before eHarmony came on the scene, you won’t believe how many people said to me when I use that analogy, “Oh, that’s disgusting. People would never do that. Blah, blah, blah.” Along came eHarmony, and I, from that point forward, I would just say, “Well, essentially, we’re the eHarmony of the advertising industry,” and they’d go, “Oh, I understand.”

Drew McLellan:

Yeah. Right, right. That’s awesome. I’m curious, how many matches, the eHarmony commercials always tell you how many marriages there are, so how many matches over the last decade do you think you guys have successfully done?

Chuck Meyst:

Well, successfully, that’s interesting expression. According to our counter on the website, we’ve got an in excess of 10,000 such introductions and presumed matches. We’ve got quite a few that have lasted a long time and we have some that have come back to do subsequent searches when a relationship, in one case that I’m thinking of, it didn’t last beyond say three years, but some were less than 10,000.

Drew McLellan:

Well, honestly, even a three-year relationship for most agencies is a pretty good client relationship, so it sounds like when you finally make the match, they work pretty well. I’m curious, how do you think clients are, when clients come to you in search of an agency, how clear are they about what they need and want and how often is that actually what they need and want?

Chuck Meyst:

Well, it’s an interesting question. We’ve had agencies say, “Well, what should we call ourself? I mean, what should we be an ad agency or an integrated or a digital, because those are options on our site.” I try to explain that, frankly, when clients come to us, they’re seldom looking for a specific type. I don’t see them come, “Oh, I need a digital agency.” Clients tend to say, “I need to improve my sales.” I’m often suspect if somebody is trying to be so specific as to say, “I expect to increase my sales with this kind of an agency, with these services, with this experience.” Because in fact, as I said, most of these CMOs, VP marketing, whoever it is that comes to us, they’re looking to increase their sales. As a matter of fact, I say to them, “What metrics are you going to use?” In other words, when you hire this agency, what will constitute something successful? Even there, they struggle to identify what that might be.

Drew McLellan:

Yeah. The agencies I work with too, find that with clients, but interesting. One of the things we talk a lot about in some of our workshops and our peer networks is that agencies spend too much time trying describe themselves as opposed to talking about how their clients are better after working with them. Exactly what you’re saying is, talk about results rather than worrying so much about the label you put on yourself.

Chuck Meyst:

Well, and case in point, we’re doing a search right now for a consulting firm that their process, this process is pretty complicated, but talking to the woman, who’s the VP of marketing, who in turn is telling me about the three conversations that she had with three of our identified and invited agencies. She talks about how distinctly different they are. One happens to be in Iowa. One’s in Florida, one’s in New York, the clients’ in New Jersey, but she’s okay with all locations. According to her, and even the agencies telling me, most of them all essentially ask her questions. They did not make sales presentations. One agency didn’t even ask what the budget was.

Drew McLellan:

Huh, that’s interesting. As agencies and clients come together and as you observe this dance, let’s look at each side of the equation. What are clients or prospects doing to come to that dance that they could do better? Then I’m going to obviously ask you what agencies should do better too. If you wanted to be a great client, looking for a great agency match, what should they be doing better than they do today?

Chuck Meyst:

Well, because we do all the work we do by telephone, which by the way, is important to mention because as a search consultant, which is what AGENCYFINDER really is, we’re a search consultant. We use the internet, we use the database, that’s our fly paper. That’s what we use to stick to a client, or in the case of agencies looking for us, stick to an agency. I wouldn’t say we don’t have the luxury, but the fact of the matter is we don’t get to sit with them and see if they’ve got a stack of paper or a checkoff sheet. I would say based on what our conversations become, I don’t hear from them that they’ve got a checkoff sheet, but we’ve given them a menu that develops a fairly precise checkoff sheet, which helps them articulate their requirements. I would say, well, I also would say incidentally, that the person who comes to us is supposed to be authorized to conduct an agency search and to take it to conclusion.

Unfortunately, many of these people believe that’s true, only to find out near the end that the chairman of the company steps in and takes over. That’s a very unfortunate situation, and it’s also the agencies, particularly, if it changes direction, the agencies are not at all happy, but I would say that the person who comes to us needs to make sure they’ve discussed what they’re going to do with their supervisor and their management, however, that happens to be, and that they’ve developed a checklist that they can use to conduct intelligent conversations.

Drew McLellan:

Okay, and I think we see that in most new business opportunities that oftentimes the decision-making committee, if you will, shifts around a little bit in the process. Let’s look at the other side of that. What could agencies do better in this process? How are they stubbing their own toe?

Chuck Meyst:

Well, I can answer the question as it relates to AGENCYFINDER, but let me broaden it out out a bit. Believe me, we’ve looked at thousands of agency websites and there are some that are outstanding. There are some that are incredibly poor. I notice a couple things at agency websites, which is good for AGENCYFINDER searches or a Google search, and that is incredibly so, when you go to the contact page on an agency website, what I abhor and what is probably the worst thing that they can do for a new business, they’ve got a text box fill in the form that basically says, tell me who you are, and if you’re lucky, I might get back to you. That’s what it implies. Now, on that same page, there is no indication of where that agency is. There’s no physical address. There’s no phone, there’s no email. There’s nothing. Now, no client who’s looking for an agency is comfortable dealing with an agency that hasn’t represented where they are. That’s step number one step, and that applies whether it’s an AGENCYFINDER search or a Google search.

Drew McLellan:

Sure. Right.

Chuck Meyst:

Second thing, I think, if you ask agencies and if you ask clients, I think you’d say that for any search of any magnitude where the client wants to have three final presenters that ultimately, however they got there, the three agencies are going to be quite a bit alike. The deciding factor, Drew, is what?

Drew McLellan:

Yeah. Do I like them?

Chuck Meyst:

Yeah. We call that chemistry, don’t we?

Drew McLellan:

Yep. Yep. Right.

Chuck Meyst:

If we all acknowledge that chemistry is probably the most powerful, single factor to selecting an agency, and on an agency website, they don’t mention their name, they don’t show their picture, there’s no indication other than a paragraph that says, “Our people have the combined experience of 412 years.” How ridiculous.

Drew McLellan:

Right.

Chuck Meyst:

What an agency needs, whatever the tab is, it’s a team tab or meet our people tab and then whether they’re caricatures or photographs. By the way, in both cases, particularly with photographs, there must be a name there with a title there. Nobody wants to … Clients don’t want to have to click on every damn picture of 35 to find the CEO.

Drew McLellan:

Right. Right.

Chuck Meyst:

The two big missing links that are killing agencies at new business, is the lack of an addressed location and the lack of any presentation of their people.

Drew McLellan:

Boy, I don’t disagree with you at all, but it’s such basic stuff. I mean, agencies who do this for a living, for other people, that they can’t get it right for themselves is in some ways sad and other ways sort of staggering.

Chuck Meyst:

Well, yeah. Before we present our candidates, using our process to a client, we actually look at each one of those agencies the same way the client is meant to do that. We do it before, because we have discovered that if we don’t do that, clients are going to say, “Chuck, why did you include that agency? I mean, we’re looking for a B2B shop and I landed on one and it says, “We are food, F-O-O-D.” We now go through and look just like they, and if we find that kind of disconnect, we take them away. If we find that they don’t have a team representation or a physical address, we take them off. I mean, I’m tired of fighting their battles.

Drew McLellan:

Yeah, no, it makes perfect sense. I’m not quite sure how to ask this question, but so let me stumble around a little bit. How or why, what gets in the way of agencies doing new business better? Why in the world, in your opinion, from your perspective, why in the world would agencies make these sort of what you and I would call rookie mistakes? Then what are the other mistakes they make through the process, beyond the website that get them disqualified, even when they’re actively pursuing an opportunity?

Chuck Meyst:

Well, Drew, I think my observation in my position, I’m basically a sales guy and have been all my life, but when I worked for Sanders Consulting, Stuart Sanders, who was very successful at agency, new business …

Drew McLellan:

Absolutely.

Chuck Meyst:

… Said to me, “Chuck, don’t use the word sales. They hate it.” One of the things I noticed as I traveled, I have never, in all my years in this agency interface, been at an agency where there’s a door panel or something that says sales department. They don’t like to use the word.

Drew McLellan:

Yeah. Right.

Chuck Meyst:

The word scares them. The same client, I mentioned a minute ago with the three agencies said, this is a client speaking now, she said, “Chuck, I just hired a young fellow, 22 years old to do sales for us,” but she said, “You know what, he’s a millennial. I can’t use the word sales. Do you know what his title is? Brand advocate.”

She said, “I’m teaching him sales,” because she’s a salesperson herself, “I’m teaching him sales.” I said, “Don’t you have to bite your tongue?” Oh, she said, “Yes, but it’s working fine. As a brand advocate, he’s more than comfortable to spread the gospel,” but she said, “One day, I’m looking forward to telling him, ‘Hey, you’re a salesman now.’” I think, come back to your question, you say, what are the different things? First of all, I recognized that over the years, that number one, they hate to admit and they hate to embrace the expression sales. Number two, they seem to think that sales is somehow a talent that is naturally learned by making a series of telephone calls or having conversations or face-to-face meeting, and you’re going to learn on the job. The answer is no boys and girls, it doesn’t work that way.

That is a taught specialization, and yet they don’t want to be taught. Most agency owners themselves feel the same way about sales, so they’re reluctant to seek out sales solutions. I remember, Sanders Consulting is still around and doing, Stewart is retired now, but we had a program. Stewart introduced something called the spark and torch. The spark was meant to be the person who did the outreach and the torch was the more senior person and who accompanied the spark, and that’s an important word, accompanied the spark on first meetings with clients. Well, we taught that process at seminar locations around the country, but it was meant to invite the spark and the torch. The two were meant to come together, so that the spark could learn the daily grind and the torch could learn how to come in as the savior and close the deal. Well guess what? Half the time the tortures were too busy to come.

Just send the spark. I spent a lot of time after the sparks had been trained, they’d call him and say, “Chuck help me. My boss says, forget the mailing pieces. You just make phone calls. You don’t need a brochure.” They fight themselves. I don’t think that fight has changed. It seems to be the same. My point is, I hate to beat this dead horse, but they’ve got two embrace the fact that it’s a sales situation. They’ve got to be trained in the sales process and they need to apply sales-trained people to the new business process.

Drew McLellan:

Yeah. I find it fascinating. The agency owners that I hang out with all the time, the one thing they all want to talk about is new business, but they all want a magic bullet that doesn’t exist, which is I want … I want clients to just fall like manna from heaven and land at my feet, or I want to hire a salesperson, but I’m not going to give them process. I’m not going to give them resource. If they don’t make a big sale within six months, I’m going to call it a failure and fire them.

Chuck Meyst:

That’s right. Well, I meet lots, not so much anymore, I suppose but historically, I used to meet lots of agency owners that would tell me, “Oh, I’m hiring this guy and he’s going to do everything for us.” I would then find myself having to talk to this new guy, and I could tell in my first conversation, this guy was a loser or whether it was a woman, okay? They were arrogant. They didn’t know what they were talking about. They didn’t want to listen to anything that I was willing to share with them. I’ll mentor anybody, but when somebody is an off-putting smart aleck, I’m not too excited about that. In years past, I used to say nothing. Now if I detect that early on, I tell the agency president, whoever, “You’ve got somebody there you need to get rid of.”

I say that, it sounds rather outspoken, but over the years, for instance, if I identified somebody who was like that, and then a year out, I’d call and, “Ooh, Tom’s not there anymore,” so I talked to the president, “Hey Eddie, what happened to Tom?” “Oh, Chuck, he was terrible.” I said, “Well, I recognized that.” He says to me, “Chuck, you should have told me,” so number one, that kind of a mismatch is terrible. By the way, there’s a new business can consultant that I know that does what I might call outreach calling on behalf of, he’s a solo practitioner, not a couple of the firms that do this with multiple people, but he said the same thing, Drew, that his agency clients all expect overnight success. In many cases, they’re not willing to hang in to let it begin to mature.

Drew McLellan:

Yeah. I equate it to planting a seed and then standing over that seed and being mad that it hasn’t broken ground in the next day. You just dig it up and throw it away.

Chuck Meyst:

That’s right.

Drew McLellan:

Rather than let the roots take hold and do their job.

Chuck Meyst:

Well, and here’s another thing, by the way, you reminded me. Invariably, what I find is that when an agency is looking to hire a new business person, number one, the agency does not have a process that they’ve been using or that they’ve been taught or that they have the tools to put into practice. They don’t have any of that. Now they’re interviewing for new business. ,ow we got the new business applicant. Who’s sitting there and thinking to him herself, “Oh, this agency probably has a really neat new business program that I can use. God forbid, I don’t know what to do without such a thing,” so they both are talking to each other, thinking that the other guy has the process. Then they hire and find out, unfortunately, that neither one of them knows what to do.

Drew McLellan:

Right. Right. Then they both get frustrated with the process, and so it doesn’t work.

Chuck Meyst:

Yeah.

Drew McLellan:

Yeah, so let’s talk about the happier side of it. You talk to a lot of clients every day. What are agencies doing that make them the right choice? How are they engaging to differently? How are they coming across differently? How are they presenting themselves, or what are they doing in the actual presentation that clients come back to you and say, “We picked agency ABC, and they did this, which really knocked it out of the park.”

Chuck Meyst:

Well, you might say, surprisingly, we don’t hear as much about those out of the park hits that we would like to hear. If we become persistent in asking, we get the impression that they’re annoyed that we’re asking. They want to move on now, but the characteristics that certainly bring favor are good listeners. Well, agencies that ask questions that are pertinent questions. Well, I’d say another thing, by the way, in the initial telephone interview that we arranged the due diligence interview, that’s where both parties are meant and given freedom to ask an answer of each other, there’s nothing off limits. It’s the agency’s opportunity to ask about budget, ask about client expectations.

The clients are impressed when the agency has done research on their company on, again, I come back to the one that’s current. One of the agencies is so PR firm, did an incredible amount of research. The principal at this consulting firm, the client, as the PR agency described him, he said, “Chuck, this guy is like a Donald Trump in his industry.” He said, “This guy has in credible cred.” He said, “Frankly, I can’t imagine what remains to be done for this agency. Why they’re look …” For this client, “Why they’re looking for an agency. It seems they’re getting everything,” but when he talked to the client, because he had done such research, she was really impressed by how much he knew. By the way, all three of these agencies in this initial interview, according to the client, did not sell themselves at all. They asked questions. To that point, she liked all three of them and is planning to invite all three to come forward to compete for the business.

Drew McLellan:

Yeah. It’s counterintuitive in some ways not to sell when you’re selling, but at this point it really is very, again, back to our eHarmony analogy, it very much is like a date. We find people fascinating when they talk about us all the time, right? When they want to know more about us, I mean, that’s just human nature. The agencies that come in, especially when they’re doing live presentations and burn up 30 minutes of their 60 minutes talking about themselves, really get themselves in hot water, I think.

Chuck Meyst:

Well, by the way, that reminds me, we seldom are present at final presentations, but we did a search for DuPont Corian countertop materials number of years ago. The budget was I think, 20 million, and there were three fine lists. One was Kirshenbaum Bond. One was an agency out of Baltimore, now out of business, and the third was Donor. At that time, the gent that was the new business head at Donor, he’s now deceased, and I’m struggling to remember his name, but the setup for the presentation, this was in [inaudible 00:30:21] they’re up north somewhere. The room was set up with a series of eight-foot conference tables. They were set out in such a way that was a big horseshoe arrangement, and the DuPont people not only were DuPont people there, but they had their distributors there.

Around the outside of all these tables were chairs and people sitting and then up forward in the center was the presentation table. Now, it was interesting because the first firm, again, whose name escapes me, I mean, they gave me goosebumps when they were presenting their stuff. I can’t even remember exactly what it was, but God, it just emotionally, it just really wrinkled my back. I thought, how can anybody beat this? Well, then Kirshenbaum presented, and there was a lot of chemistry and jocularity and I thought that was neat. The woman, John Bond was still there, but there was a woman who I think has come and been president she’s British and her accent was appealing, but the last round was Donor. Again, I wish I could remember his name, but Ellen Colter was the CEO, and the second guy was a salesman. What he did, Drew, in this presentation, he walked around the inside of those tables, that horseshoe I talk about. It was almost, it was incredible. Talk about chemistry. I mean, he walked that circle and I don’t think he shook anybody’s hand, but emotionally and verbally, it was almost that much of a contact and he just swept that circle. It was incredible in terms of the chemistry of it. They won the business, by the way, much because of that. I mean, they were the winner. It was beautiful.

Drew McLellan:

Yeah. When I listened to that story, I think about what he did was he sort of moved inside the circle and connected with them at a different level and figuratively, or literally, that’s what agencies need to do is they need to get out of their own way and kind of move inside that client’s circle and make that connection.

Chuck Meyst:

Right.

Drew McLellan:

Yeah, so when you talk to clients and they’re talking about their agency relationships, and they’re talking about their own search, when they articulate what they’re looking for, do they understand its chemistry, or is that sort of the unspoken?

Chuck Meyst:

Well, I volunteer it. I don’t hear them saying it that often. Again, back to the question, what are clients looking for? Are they looking for an experiential agency? Are they looking for a digital … No, they’re looking for a marketing partner to help them improve their business. What I think is important is … Well, back to the agency now, is an agency that doesn’t come to the table with a specific service in mind, such as digital marketing. As a matter of fact, this day, I ask a lot of people, what does digital marketing mean? It means nothing anymore. I mean, everything we produce is done in a digital platform. It’s now become vague as to what it means if you’re a digital agency. Does that mean you don’t do print, that you don’t do outdoor? You tell me, Drew, what does it mean to you?

Drew McLellan:

Well, I think agencies are struggling with that. I think it used to be five, 10 years ago, a lot of agencies put that in their name or somewhere to prove that they had the chops to do work online. I was just with a bunch of agency owners yesterday and we had the same kind conversation about what does digital mean? It can mean anything from social, to search, to programmatic buying, to websites and web dev, to apps to … I mean, the list goes on and on, and there are very few agencies in today’s day that if they don’t have some capability in that are still around, you can’t survive today without having digital chops either internally or a great partner.

Chuck Meyst:

Well, and not to not to diminish it, but it’s just another service.

Drew McLellan:

Well, or another medium, right?

Chuck Meyst:

Well, yeah.

Drew McLellan:

Yeah, absolutely. Yep. Okay, so let’s talk about, you see all these profiles of agencies and we’ve talked about some of the things that they do wrong. We’ve talked about actually putting your location on your website, which is crazy and your people and all that. What do you observe that the good agencies are doing well in terms of attracting the right kind of clientele to their business?

Chuck Meyst:

Well, again, our relationship with these agencies is almost exclusively with and through AGENCYFINDER.

Drew McLellan:

Whether it’s on AGENCYFINDER or elsewhere, is it how they present themselves? Is it how they talk about themselves? Is it that they have compelling case studies? What is it that … You’ve got this huge database, right Chuck? When you’re calling through to find the final X number that you’re going to invite to this initial discovery call with a client, what is it about what they say in the database or about themselves or their work that puts them in the yes column rather than the no column, beyond they have the capacity to do the work?

Chuck Meyst:

Well, that’s an interesting question because we have something called a power index, and this is a whole topic, by the way, that’s quite interesting. Power index, as we say, is a measure of new business readiness. It’s an algorithm. It’s a real time number calculation that reflects the completeness of their profile, 85% is attributed to that. In other words, have they filled in all the blanks? It’s not a question of what they’ve said in the blank. It’s just a question, did they fill in the blank? Making the argument that if an agency comes to us to use our service of their own volition and then fails to finish filling in the blanks, that doesn’t say the are pretty sharp at new business.

Drew McLellan:

Orr very committed to the process, right?

Chuck Meyst:

Right.

Drew McLellan:

Yeah.

Chuck Meyst:

The power index, 85% of the score is a function of their completeness. There’s another 15% that is experiential, such things as have they paid their bill to us on time? Number two, do they, our phone calls? Number three, do they accept our business model? In the beginning we give them full credit for that. If they’ve filled in all their check boxes and we don’t have any experience, their score is 100, but as we get to know them, and if they maintain a good relationship with us, their score is still 100. If they start failing to return phone calls, or if they argue with us about our business model for some reason, they start losing points and they can drop down.

Number one, the power index is important, and what I’m saying, Drew, this is a whole different topic, but within the different industries, the advertising industry is one of the few that does not have any kind of regulatory. I hate the word, but when you think about it, a doctor has to have a license, so does a chiropractor. Even the women that put on acrylic nails have to pass a test in most states and then be licensed to do it. Now without belaboring the point, what does an agency have to do or have to represent itself as an agency that will devote a fiduciary responsibility to the client’s money?

Drew McLellan:

Right. You’re absolutely right. They have to hang up a shingle,

Chuck Meyst:

Right, and to that point, I mean, I’m not trying to damn the industry, but I’m just saying that poor clients, how are they to know when they’re meeting three or four or five? I mean, they may be nice people. They may have good chemistry. They may present good materials, but how does that client know that this agency knows what they’re doing and has the education to do it? That’s why we, end of story for a moment, that’s why we developed a power index. We say to a client, if their score is 100, you can be fairly comfortable at least as far as new business that they score well. If they got a 64, which some do, that means this agency hasn’t done their essays, they shouldn’t even get to the surface.

Drew McLellan:

Right, so what you’re saying is oftentimes agencies are their own enemy that they … I often describe it as they get a little shiny object syndrome problem going. They would come to a service like yours, or start to engage with a prospect and then something draws their attention, and then they’re not as attentive to the detail as they need to be.

Chuck Meyst:

I don’t want to overwhelm things with what’s wrong. What’s right, customer service, they’re responsive. In other words, when the client reaches out and says, “I have an issue,” they’re responsive. They’re also proactive in many cases. Now, there’s some clients that frankly don’t want this, and there are clients, I describe the extreme. There is the Kinko agency, the Kinkos, that’s the agency that essentially much because the client doesn’t want it differently, the client is so infused with great ideas that they almost overwhelm the agency. The agency doesn’t need to do much thinking at night, they know the client will do it.

The client will get in touch with them next day and say, “Look, I need this, and then the agency does it, and does it well. That’s not a bad relationship. That’s a good relationship, the way that one is couched, but there are many clients that don’t have a clue what to do. They wouldn’t know a headline if they bumped into it. They need an agency that’s proactive, that thinks about that client at night, that comes to that client the next day with some thoughts, and that’s the other extreme of a client agency relationship. Nothing better about that one. It’s just, that’s what that client requires. I would just say attentiveness, no matter how the client wants it. It’s the difficult to say be attentive because different clients want to be attended to in different ways.

Drew McLellan:

Well, I think in that you hit on one of the key components, which is agencies need to be very in tune with how their clients want to be connected with and contacted and about what kinds of things. I need to know that my client responds better to text messages, or I need to know my client Mondays are a day that I shouldn’t bother him or her, or I know that my client wants me to bring him ideas, big ideas, crazy ideas, and then we’ll talk through them together, or my client really, “Look, here’s the program we’ve agreed upon the program. Just do it.”

Chuck Meyst:

Yeah, and that reminds me. Again, I learned, don’t let Stuart Sanders hear this, but I learned so much from working for Stuart.

Drew McLellan:

Yep. Brilliant man.

Chuck Meyst:

The things that he knew about the intuitive and the chemistry and the peace parts of agency new business relationships, and then it reminds me that, for instance, he taught something … Well, I can’t remember what we called it, but he taught a chemistry process and it was a derivative of the Myers-Briggs four quadrant idea, but the essence of it is birds of a feather flock together in business.

If you are a type A agency, in other words, if you’re led by somebody who’s a type A, who runs a tight ship, if you look at your client list, you’ll probably see that your best clients are also type A, and if you’re looking for new clients, however you do that, whether you come to us or whether you do it proactively or whatever, you should be see seeking more type As, because a lot of the connectivity tissue is already there in place.

Drew McLellan:

Right. Oftentimes, we talk about every prospect is not a good prospect, and sometimes the best thing an agency can do is walk away if they don’t think the fit is good.

Chuck Meyst:

Well, absolutely. Again, since it’s top of mind, this search we’re doing right now, the client wrote in their, we call it RFD, a request for dialogue, not an RFP. We abhor those things, but the RFD, this woman wrote that, “We’ve had very unfortunate experiences with some public relations firms in the past. We are now rather jaded, so we will have to be convinced.” Well, that was a true expression of both her feelings and their opinion. Interestingly enough, and I, maybe I should have known better, to take it out because a number of agencies said, what do you think some of the agencies, Drew, might have said or assumed because of that statement about this client?

Drew McLellan:

Yeah. They assumed they were going to be difficult to work with.

Chuck Meyst:

Right. This is a problem client.

Drew McLellan:

Right.

Chuck Meyst:

Rather than accept the fact that the PR firm failed, which in fact it turns out was the case, I mean, it was a solo practitioner PR publicist who promised everything. I’ll get you front page New York Times, got nothing. It was all the fault really of the publicist, but many read that to mean difficult client. As a result, by the way, they exercised the decision to say, no thanks.

Drew McLellan:

Yeah. Yeah. Well actually, although in this case, it might have been misplaced, I’m happy to hear that they actually said no, because for a long time over the last decade as the economy was shaky agency, anybody with a pulse and a dollar was a good client. I’m glad to hear that agencies are being more discriminatory in deciding who they want to work with. Even if in that case, it was a bad choice. I’d rather see them make some bad choices than never make a good choice.

Chuck Meyst:

Well, and again, in our process, when an agency’s talking to a client in the question is what’s your budget, and by the way, I pre-addressed this with registered clients, because I say to them, what’s your budget? Now, there’s a place in our forum for them to indicate a budget range that we give them pull downs. Less than a 100, one to 250, 250 to five, we got 25 million, et cetera. If somebody, for instance, chooses one to 250, I’ll say, “Well, let’s talk more about your budget,” and if they start playing cagey with me, I say, “Look, you can’t do that. If you do that to an agency, they’re going to run for the hills.” They don’t need a client who’s not willing to discuss the reality of what the budget is, could be, whatever.

Drew McLellan:

Right, yeah.

Chuck Meyst:

We try do the agencies a favor by addressing that rather aggressive.

Drew McLellan:

Yeah. As you know, that’s an age old problem for agencies, our clients who hold the budget close to the vest. I’m sure the agencies are thrilled that you’re doing that. As I knew it would be, this has been a fascinating conversation. Unfortunately, we need to sort of wrap it up. One of my rules for podcast, Chuck, is that I want, if somebody will invest their time and listen to you and I talking, by the end of the podcast, I want them to be able to have a couple actionable items that they can go do right now based on the topic. Given that our topic is new business, we’ve talked about a couple of them, put your location on your website and put your people on your website and make sure you tie names and titles to those pictures, whatever they are. Give me another couple things that agency owners can do right now to improve how they present themselves in any part of the new business process?

Chuck Meyst:

Well, you stole my two, but-

Drew McLellan:

I know you have two more, Chuck.

Chuck Meyst:

Well, witness a problem that we have on an ongoing basis. As we reach out to agencies, sending them an invitation, which is the very thing they come to us for, and it’s a new opportunity, we find it extremely difficult to get the invitation in their hands. We send emails, the emails get caught up in a spam folder. We send faxes and I’ve been told many times it’s an obsolete technology, but if you go to the website of some of the largest agencies in states on their homepage, you will find their fax number. What I find is that some of the tiny agencies, for whatever reason, they’re the ones that tell me that faxes are obsolete. There are E-faxes. There’s a multitude of things. All I’m saying is that we then send faxes and the faxes are often thrown away by some well-intending non-new business person at agency. We telephone to follow up.

Did you get the invitation? We get voice messaging. We get poor voice messaging systems. We get, “I’m sorry, but this mailbox is full.” How can you be a new business person and have a voice message box that’s full? What I’m saying is, and I don’t know how to solve the problem, but agencies need to be more reachable. Oh, well here’s one more thing by the way, I’ve suggested this over the years. Often you call an agency, “Hi, thanks for calling Schwartz Advertising. If you know the extension of the party, trying to reach …” Put that in, on and on. If you’d like to reach the production department, how about starting at this one? “Thanks for calling Schwartz Advertising. If you’d like to consider working with us, press one,” and then put all the other crap behind it.

Now, I’ve had some agencies do that and it’s remarkable. I mean, they’re better at the words than I volunteered, but the point is the first choice is new business, push one. Push one. That would be my big contribution. In other words, whether it’s AGENCYFINDER or Google or however they referrals, however, they find you, my God, let them get you. Oh, and here’s another thing, but I saw this happening. I called one that has the option, press one. I press one and I get voicemail. “If you’d like to talk to somebody on the new business team, please leave your name and phone number and we’ll get back to you.” That should be answered all the time by a person.

Drew McLellan:

Yeah. It could roll to somebody’s desk.

Chuck Meyst:

Anybody’s, that’s right.

Drew McLellan:

Yeah. Yeah.

Chuck Meyst:

That’s my humdinger.

Drew McLellan:

Isn’t it crazy? I mean, agencies hustle and work so hard to get new clients and these are the silly little things they do that get in the way of them being successful. It’s crazy. All right, Chuck, this has been great. Thank you so much. If the listeners want to track you down, if they want to learn more about AGENCYFINDER, if they want to reach out and talk to you in some way, what are the best ways for them to contact you?

Chuck Meyst:

They can just leave voicemail. No, first of all, AGENCYFINDER is www.AGENCYFINDER.com. My email is Chuck@AGENCYFINDER. Our main switchboard phone number is (804) 346-1812. What else? Well, those are the best options and I’m quite responsive. We are quite responsive to anybody that comes here because everybody that comes here is a new business prospect in some way, shape or form.

Drew McLellan:

Yeah, and you know what? That is the perfect way to end this conversation. Everybody in as a new business prospect in one way, shape or form. For the love of Pete, be accessible. Thank you, sir. I enjoyed our conversation very much. I appreciate your time. Thank you.

Chuck Meyst:

Thank you, Drew.

Speaker 1:

That’s all for this episode of Build a Better Agency. Be sure to visit agencymanagementinstitute.com to learn more about our workshops and other ways we serve small to mid-sized agencies. While you’re there, sign up for our e-newsletter, grab our free e-book and check out the blog. Growing a bigger, better agency that makes more money, attracts bigger clients, and doesn’t consume your life is possible here on Build a Better Agency.