Speed is the fast pass to client happiness with Jay Baer

Hey, before we get to the show, I just wanna remind you that we have created a private Facebook group just for you, our podcast listeners. There are almost 1500 agencies, agency owners, inside that Facebook group every day talking about what’s going on inside their shop, asking for resources, gut checking decisions, talking about everything from pricing to hiring, to biz dev. All kinds of things are happening there. We’re starting conversations. You guys are starting conversations. What I love about it is the community’s coming together and sharing resources, encouraging each other, and just sort of having a safe place to talk about what it’s like to own an agency. So all you have to do is head over to Facebook, search for a Build, a Better, Agency Podcast Group, or Build, a Better, Agency Podcast.

And you’ll find the group. You have to answer three questions. If you don’t answer the questions, we can’t let you in. But they’re simple. It’s, do you own an agency or do you work at an agency? And if so, what’s the U R L? What are you trying to get out of the group? And will you behave, basically? So come join us. If you haven’t been there for a while, come on back. If you haven’t joined, join into the conversation. I think you’re gonna find it really helpful. All right, let’s get to the show.

It doesn’t matter what kind of agency you run, traditional digital media buying, web dev, p r r brand, whatever your focus, you still need to run a profitable business. The Build, a Better, Agency Podcast, presented by a White Label IQ, will expose you to the best practices that drive growth, client and employee retention and profitability, bringing his 25 plus years of experience as both an agency owner and agency consultant. Please welcome your host, Drew McLellan.

Hey everybody. Drew McLellan here with another episode of Build Better Agency. Excited to be back with you this week, and really excited to dig into the topic of the week with you and with our very special guest who I will tell you a little bit about in a few minutes. But before I do that, I just wanna remind you that although I know we are all sort of looking at late, if you’re listening to this real Time Labor Day is around the corner, we’re thinking about fall, believe it or not, spring is gonna be here before you know it. And so will the 2024 build a better agency summit. We are really excited about the lineup of keynote speakers that we have for you.

We are gonna talk about AI inside of agencies and best practices and cutting edge stuff there. We’re gonna talk about dealing with agency change, fatigue, and how to get yourself and your team rallied when everybody is so exhausted from all the changes we’ve gone through. We’re gonna talk about how to successfully build a program that sells more to your existing client, gets you a bigger share of wallet. We’re also gonna have a pricing strategy expert on the main stage, talking about how we can all get more money for the work that we do. We are gonna talk about how to get you on more stages. Where in the audience are your perfect prospects?

I’m just telling you, the content is gonna be off the charts. We’re in Denver this year. It is May 20th is Family or Member Day, and the actual full conference is May 21st and 22nd. The tickets are never gonna be cheaper than they are right now. So head over to agency management institute.com. The very first icon on the left or the in the navigation is b a b summit. Click on that and register yourself and your team. There are discounts. If you’re a member, there are discounts. If you are bringing more than one person, there are discounts if you are coming for the first time. So we’ve got you covered on the discount front.

But as you know, with every conference, the price goes higher and higher as we get closer and closer to the event. So if you want to really be charged up and take all of this great content into 2024 with you and beyond, grab your ticket now. Join us before we sell out, and we would love to have you there. All right, so my guest today is a repeat guest. He has also, he graced the keynote stage of the very first, the 2021 Build a Better Agency Summit. He was graceful enough to be a keynote speaker at an event that I had no idea if one person was gonna show up.

I had no idea we would sell it out. But he’s a good friend. He is a good colleague, a great professional peer, and one of the smartest people I know. So I cannot imagine any of you on the planet are not familiar with Jay Bear and his work. But as you know, Jay has, has written, I think, seven or eight books. He owned the very successful agency, convinced and Convert before he sold it. Now he’s doing more keynote speaking, writing more books, And. he has a brand new book out called The Time to Win. And, and it is all about how critical speed is to our consumers regardless.

B two b B two C doesn’t really matter. So Jay did, as always. He does big research, a big research project. He picks a topic, he does big research. Then he writes Keynote, a keynote presentation after he writes the executive summary, of course, and the report on the research. He takes the keynote on the road. He fine tunes that. And out of that comes an amazing book. So you’ve probably read Hug Your Haters and all the other books that Jay has written. His brand new book is just coming out. It is, it’s, it’s a great book. It’s also a very fast read. We’ll talk to him about why he, why it’s so short and so quick to consume.

But, but I think you’re gonna be fascinated by the results of the research and the findings and what it means for us as agencies for our own business, but also how we can take that data and become a great advisor to our clients. So grab a pencil and a piece of paper, ’cause you’re gonna wanna take notes and let’s get to it. Let’s talk to Jay Jay, welcome back to the podcast. It’s good to see you.

I am delighted to be back. Drew always a pleasure to spend a little time with you and the community.

So you have been crazy busy on the road writing a book. So give us a little bit of the lay of your recent land, and then I wanna talk about the book. ’cause it seems like you are on the go.

I sold, I sold my agency so I’d have more time to really focus on speaking and writing. And I have, I have done that. So coming outta the pandemic, my observation was that people care about time and how it’s spent more than ever. So I did a research project to validate that thesis, and it was validated. And so I published the research and then turned that into a new keynote presentation called The Time to Win. And then, as I typically do when I do research, I do the keynote and then I’ll do the keynote a few dozen times, get it perfected, and then turn it into a book, which is what I’m doing right now. So the book version also called The Time to Win, is, is launching right now. So I’ve done a lot of speaking this year, and it’s been fantastic. And then meanwhile, I found myself running a tequila education business at the same time.

So, so no grass is growing. It is certainly not the retirement plan. I

I, I love that you have been infamous and famous for decades because of your marketing prowess and you launched the tequila side hustle. Yeah. And, and now all of the, all of your professional work with marketing now pales in comparison to being the tequila guy. I tell

You what, one thing I’ve learned in my, in my life, and you know it better than anyone, is that most agency owners have some sort of interesting passion on the side, right? Yep. They’re, they grow roses, they’re cyclists, you know, whatever. They’re, they’re amateur magicians, whatever, everyone, because they’re interesting people. They’re interesting dynamic driven people by, by definition. And, and they always have something on the side. And, and I, I know so many agency owners who say, geez, she would be fun if I could make a buck, you know, on my rose growing or whatever. I’m here to tell you friends that it is possible. Yeah, I’m living proof because I started making videos about tequila, I don’t know, 15 months ago, 14 months ago. As we, as we have this conversation with no expectations whatsoever, just like, Hey, I don’t do a podcast anymore, so let me take that time and try and make a couple videos here or there and try and teach people some of what I’ve learned about tequila over the last 25 years.

And bingo, bango bongo, I find myself the number two tequila influencer in the world, non non-celebrity division, Drew. So it’s not like me and the Rock and, and me and George Clooney, but amongst mere mortals, it’s me and some realtor in LA. And, and it’s a real business. Like, like I had to call my accountant, one of my favorite conversations in my history of business, I had to call my accountant and say, Michelle, we need a whole new chart of accounts for all this tequila revenue. Which was an unbelievable victory

For me. Yeah. What a, what a great sentence to come outta your mouth, right? It was great for all this tequila revenue,

But it is crazy. As you mentioned, I get recognized in airports all the time now, always for tequila. Not the seven books, not the, all the other things I’ve done as a speaker or, or an expert for tequila constantly. So it’s, it’s actually kind of hilarious.

Yeah, that is. It’s crazy. But, but kind of lovely too.

No complaints. My wife said, imagine if you started the tequila business 20 years ago. I’m like, yeah, that’s

Right. We live in a mansion. Right? Exactly. Exactly.

A hacienda it would be,

That’s of course it would be. Yeah. Yeah. So as always, like you said, your, your pattern is research keynote book. Yeah. So you’ve done a lot of research over the years on different topics and that have resulted in, you know, books that everybody has read and learned from. So what about this research surprised you?

A lot of things surprised me. One of the most dramatic sort of, i in inward, you know, like I sort of gasped when I looked at the cross tabs, was the differences between generations in terms of their patients level. I’ve got multiple Gen Z people in my home, as do you and your family. And my expectation is that they want everything right now because they grew up in the, in the digital age, right? Everything was on a phone, one click cars, one click delivery, one click pizza, one click everything. In the research, however, we found out that the youngest consumers, gen Z, are actually the most patient generation.

Huh?

They’re, they’re willing to give business an extra amount of time in terms of getting back to them with a response or a quote or an invoice or a question answered. They are the most patient.

Yeah. That is surprising.

I I couldn’t believe it the least patient Boomers. Boomers. Now is that because boomers have less time left? I, I don’t know. We, we didn’t ask it specifically, but as, as a researcher, the math adds up. So I’m not, I’m not sure about that. But I find it interesting because I have been in many conference rooms in my career, and you probably have too Drew, where, where I’m working with a client that serves primarily an older customer demographic. And they will say something along these lines, well, our customers are primarily 60 plus, 65 plus. And, and so, you know, they’re retired, they don’t have anything else to do, so we don’t have to get back to them quickly. And it turns out the exact opposite is the case, which I found really fascinating.

I can remember when my mom retired her saying to me, I am busier than I ever have been before. I don’t know how I worked and got all these things done. ’cause I don’t have any, I don’t have no more room in my day. So I think, I think the misnomer of retired people sitting around doing nothing

Yes.

You know, is just, is a falsehood. I mean, I just, I just think most retired people, if they’re healthy, are pretty busy people. And I also wonder if it’s because people of that age have seen the shift in how quickly response could come. Right. So yes. They remember when it used to be by mail Yeah. Or by a phone call and complaint letter you would Right, right. Or the 800 number on the back of a, of a product. Right? Yep. So for them, they’ve seen the transition of access. That’s a really

Good point.

And speed to response. So I just wonder if they’re like, well, I remember how it used to be, and now it should be much faster. And, and maybe that’s,

That makes perfect sense. It really does. The other thing that I found really interesting in the research was, I mean, obviously I, I, I supposed that speed was more important than ever, which is why I did the research to begin with, right? But the direct correlation between responsiveness and revenue is pretty staggering. Two and three customers say that speed is as important as price two outta three. Wow. And 50%, half of all customers will hire whomever contacts them back first, regardless of price. So if you’re not habitually first to respond in your industry, you probably ought to fix that because you’re gonna get a bunch of customers just by being first.

And, and, you know, speed has been important in business, I think, for a long time. Yeah.

Maybe

Forever. But it’s been important. But my, my thesis now, and the research bears this out, is that now it’s the most important. It is arguably the single most important element of customer experience now. And most businesses have not fully elevated speed on their list of priorities, yet their customers already have. And that disconnect is the problem that I’m trying to solve.

So it’s interesting as you’re saying that I’m thinking about my own behavior and experience and you know, there are, there are certain partners or vendors that are your go-to, and you wouldn’t go to anybody else Yeah. Regardless of their return. But, but you’re right. If you are trying to get something done and you don’t have a go-to, I, I, I would say that we’re absolutely guilty of that. I mean, you know, with our travel schedule and everything that’s going on in our world, whoever gets back first and can book an appointment first, you, you do win.

It’s a psychology issue, Drew. It’s because now we’re in an environment where we interpret speed as caring.

Ah,

It’s not necessarily true. Right? But that’s how we interpret it. We think, well, geez, if they’re, if they’re quick to get back to me or, or other way around, if they’re slow to get back to me, I, I take that to mean they care more or less about me, my business, my wellbeing, my life. And we all wanna work with people that we know, like, and trust. Right? And, and the know, like, and trust sort of set up is driven initially by how long does it take you to, to get, to get back? I mean, I got this house painted not too long ago, and I got three bids as you do. First painter got back to me in four hours and said, I can’t do the job today. I can’t even give you an estimate today, but here’s when I can come out and look at it. And based on what you told me in your voicemail, here’s kind of, sort of a rough range of what I think this is gonna cost.

Second painter got back to me in two days. Third painter got back to me in 11 days. Holy buckets. At which point the house was already painted, right? So it was slightly too low, right? So I hired the first one, which was the most expensive one, but I didn’t care because we interpret speed as caring. You wanna work with people who you assume really have it together. And here’s the, here’s the scary part though. Drew, and this is very true for agencies. A lot of agencies are not great about getting back to prospects quickly.

Oh my gosh.

And they do that at their peril in my estimation, because when you lose on speed, it is almost always invisible to the organization. So painter two and Painter three are in an agency situation. You lose the competitive bid. We always tell ourselves that it’s what price, right? We always say we lost on price. And how can they possibly, how can they do that marketing campaign that inexpensively, I don’t know what they’re doing over there. Well, it’s not price, right? It’s almost never a price. Right. The truth is they have their operational house in order in a way that you don’t, and they’re able to get back to people more quickly. So what do you do in the next bit?

Well, you drop your price. Yeah. And you lose again because you’re not any faster. You’re just cheaper. And the third bid, you’re like, wow, it’s getting competitive up in here on these RFPs. You drop your price again. Right. And you still don’t get it. ’cause you’re not any faster. You’re just cheaper. It’s only on the fourth competitive bid when you’ve given away all of your profits do you get hired. Right. Because in every competitive situation, in every customer, whether it’s an individual or a, a hiring committee or anything in between, there’s a tipping point. There’s a point that you say, man, I am probably going to regret this. I am probably setting myself up for a very bad business relationship because it took them so long to get back to me.

But they are so much less expensive than the other ones. I feel like I gotta roll the dice.

Yeah. I’ll tolerate it.

There’s no report that shows this to you. Yeah. There is no spreadsheet that you can run in your organization that says, here’s all the revenue we lost because we just didn’t respond to the emails fast enough. Right. It rots your business from the inside out. So you’re better off just being faster from the beginning and, and training your team to respond instantaneously. And then you don’t have to worry about it.

Well, and not only are you doing everything you just said, but you are running your business on a huge misconception, which is we have to keep getting cheaper and cheaper and cheaper to get the work. And so A, you’ve set yourself up to have a bad relationship that’s not profitable. And b, now that becomes part of the pattern you see in your head. So you repeat the pattern and now everybody is less profitable.

Absolutely. Yeah. It, it, it really is. It really is a good way to corkscrew your business into the ground, right? Yeah. Is is Now the other thing that’s really, I think, important for agencies in this regard, and I talk about this in the book, in in the presentation of the time to win, is this notion of Closing uncertainty gaps, Drew. So an uncertainty gap is the difference between what you know about what’s going on on the project and what the client knows.

Yeah.

And I realize now that I have sold my professional services firm that I was really, really bad at this because as you know, we specialized in, in large strategy projects for big enterprise corporations

Right. With big windows of time of work. Yeah. So

They’d give us a bunch of money. Yeah. We said, we’re gonna give you a great strategy, guys, give us a bunch of money. And they would, and then we’d go quote unquote make strategy, right? And it would take 75 days, 90 days, whatever. And the whole time internally, we had a super detailed project plan, okay, we’re gonna do this and this and this and this, this. We never missed a deadline in like 13 years ever. But the whole time we were doing that, our communication back to the enterprise client about those steps and the progress and what was going on was almost zero.

Yeah.

It was anecdotal at best. And I realize now, looking backwards that we really did that poorly. That there was a huge uncertainty gap there. That, that we knew exactly what was going on. Right. They didn’t know anything about what was going on, which creates a bunch of anxiety and stress because they’re thinking, Hey, are these guys actually doing this strategy? Do they take the money and go to Barbados? Like, how’s it going? Do they need anything from us? And, and that’s such a, a key thing that you can close down. Every agency has this problem and it bothers customers more now than it used to. And I’ll talk about that in a second. When you close uncertainty gaps and you have fewer information asymmetries, it, it raises customer confidence for sure.

Yeah.

Across the board. And most importantly, it dramatically increases their perception of your responsiveness.

Yeah.

You’re not any, actually, you’re not actually any faster. It’s not like we’d said, okay, you take 75 days to do a strategy, now it takes 45 days. No, it’s still 75 days. But because they know exactly what’s going on at all times, they perceive it as though we’re really, really on top of it. Yeah. And it’s a huge psychological shift that I think a lot of agencies can really benefit from. And trust me, everybody’s got those uncertainty gaps and we just don’t tolerate it anymore in society. Like we used to be fine with uncertainty gaps because we didn’t have any alternatives. I mean, look, you and I are are old enough to remember when you couldn’t press a button on your phone to get transportation, right? You would have to call a car, call a taxi using a payphone, and you just like, press 2, 2, 2, 2, 2.

And the guy be like, this is Lou. And you’d like, I need to go to the airport, he’ll be by to get you. And that was all the information you had. You don’t know what he’s coming, you don’t know what time, you don’t know what car you have no idea what it’s gonna cost you at all. And now Uber and Lyft, you’ve got the icon of the car, you can coach him, you got the guy’s blood test results, like there’s no uncertainty in transportation. And you think about that Domino’s Pizza tracker, they like send you a text message and they’re putting mushrooms on the pizza, right? So we’re, we’re in an era where technology is Closing all the uncertainty gaps, but in services largely, they still exist. And that’s a way that agencies can really make a change that will, that, that even if, even if their clients can’t articulate it, trust me, they will notice it.

Well, you know, it’s interesting, we talk about this in the AE bootcamps. We teach, we, we remind the account people that on the other end of the equation is a client who’s being asked by their boss all the time, Hey, where, where are we at with the fill in the blank? And the, there’s no worst day for them to be able to say to their boss, I don’t know. I don’t know. And so status reports that keep, get that, give the client information not only to calm their own uncertainty, but even more important to calm the organization’s uncertainty that they, that they made a good buying decision. ’cause by the way, if the boss thinks that the agency sucks, yeah, the agency’s gonna get fired, but so is our client contact.

So we talk a lot about that. So you’re exactly right. I, I think, I think we, we know how busy we are and we know how complicated our work has gotten, and we know how much time it takes. But we do not have in, in some, in some agencies, we do not have a really great way of communicating with a client the micro steps of the work we’re doing so that the client always feels there’s progress. We’re getting closer to the goal line. And more important, I think in our world, they almost always have somebody they have to report to to calm them down.

I think a lot of times in agencies, we, we, we fool ourselves into this thought process that the client doesn’t need to see that level of granularity. Right. They don’t want that to see that level of granularity. There’s too much detail for them. Or if we show them that much detail, they can nitpick it, et cetera. The reality is it’s pretty rare that a customer will say, please stop informing me so well,

Right. Right.

You don’t hear that much. You know, you just, there’s a reason for that. Right. So

Slow down the information. Right? Yeah.

They can disregard it if they choose to, but I think you should probably offer it. And it was a real eye-opener for me doing this work to be like, oh yeah, we, we could have done that a lot better. And I’m glad you mentioned what you said about, about revalidating the purchase decision. Because one of the other interesting findings in this research is that 85% of customers say that responsiveness is a critical factor in brand loyalty. Hmm. Because if we agree with the principle that we interpret speed as caring, we want our vendor partners to care about us, not just in the initial onset of the relationship, but at every point of the relationship, whether that relationship is two months, two years, or two decades.

Right. And so when it’s time to renew, when it’s time to, to, to do the new R F P or decide, hey, should we use them for another project or get another agency? How responsive, or at least the perception of your responsiveness at all times is gonna be a big part of that. It’s not just, Hey, should we answer the phone first for net new business? Yes, of course you should, but it’s more than that. It’s, it’s being on top of it all the time. Because eventually they’re gonna say, do they care about us enough?

Right.

So that we feel like they’re really on top of it.

Well, I think we see this too in agencies that are more responsive in the prospecting stage, right? When, when I’m courting you, I’m super responsive and I am thinking about you all the time and I’m sending you articles and ideas, and once you’re a client, all of that sort of dissipates. And now all of a sudden you’re like, okay, wait, when you were wooing me, you are all about being responsive. And I, you know, I could text you and get an answer in 10 minutes and blah, blah, blah. But now that I’m giving you money, now that you’ve won me now, now all of a sudden I’m not as important to you. So you’re right. That the translation of that action, accurate or not Yep. Is I think always been a part of our business.

But to your point, as responsiveness gets even more important, timeliness gets more important. It, it elevates that feeling of you don’t love me anymore.

Absolutely. And there’s a way to, to make a bunch of new money with this idea of responsiveness as well. In the book, we talk about this as offering a fast pass.

Yeah.

You’ve heard of that. Disney’s done it for a while now. They call it Lightning Lane, I think. Yeah. In the research we discovered that 25% of customers, so one in four will pay as much as 50% more to not wait one in four will pay up to 50% more. Yeah. To not wait. So not all of your clients are gonna want this, but those who do want it, want it desperately. And it’s so many professional services firms are beholden to the master calendar. It’s like, okay, we gotta do this project first and then this one and then this one and, and shuffling that order is, is chaos. Right? And it, and it shouldn’t be because if somebody comes in and says, Hey, I messed up.

I really need this marketing campaign sooner rather than later. I should have called you guys a long time ago, but I didn’t, my bad. Can you help me? Instead of saying, no, I’m sorry, we’ve got too many projects in front of you. You should say, yes, we can. It’s gonna cost you an extra 30%. Would you like to take advantage of that? And you will be shocked how often they will say, sure. Right. And then all you’ve gotta do is message to the folks that you’re bumping down the sequence. And so I was doing a presentation and somebody said, well, how are you gonna message that if you’re gonna take somebody who was the next customer and you’re gonna, and you’re gonna, you know, move them down in line, how do you do that? I said, well, here’s how you do it. You charge the one that you’re putting on the top of the stack, 30% more. And then you call the one who’s now from first to second, you say, Hey, I’ve got great news for you.

It’s gonna take us a couple weeks longer to do your project, but we’re gonna give you a 10% rebate.

Right.

Your net 20% to the good.

Right. And everybody’s feeling like they got special service.

Everybody feels like they’re a winner, everybody’s a winner. Yeah. It’s just free money to do this. You’re not, it’s not costing you any more money. All you’re doing is reshuffling your customer sequencing. And every professional services company can do that. And I, I think you should plan to do it right. Set up your, your actual projects as an accordion so that if somebody comes in and they wanna do the fast pass, you can just jump ’em in there.

Right? Yeah. It’s really interesting. I mean, Disney’s a great example of that. They Yeah. They are selling multiple layers of faster, faster, faster. No line, no line, no line. You know, to, to the point of $10,000 a day to have a private guide Yeah. Walk you through the park. Yeah.

I was at Caesar’s doing a speech just a few weeks ago, and I, I went to check in and they usually say, okay, check in times at four, come back at four and we’ll give you keys until then, lose as much money as possible in the casino. Right, right. And I got there and it was like two 30. They said, okay, check in times at four, come back at four, or if you’d like to give us $30 now more, we’ll give you keys. Would you like to do that? And I said, well, I’ll lose more than 30. Sure. Here’s yes, that’s right. Here’s my $30. Right. And, and it’s amazing, right? Not everybody’s gonna want it, but those who want it are gonna want it desperately.

So as always, as I, as I have these kind of conversations, I, I have this dual thought process in my head. Number one is, how can we as agencies take what you’ve learned and apply it to our own business, but also how can we take what you’ve learned and apply it and help our clients apply it to their business? How do we, how do we help them think about this from a strategic point of view? Because, you know, I I think as, you know, the agencies that just make stuff are being commoditized left and right. That’s Sure. The agencies that are thinking about their client’s business differently and coming in with ideas that are much bigger than just marketing, that are really operational, pricing, packaging, whatever it is, those are the agencies that can charge a premium that are thought of as a thinking partner rather than a vendor.

So as you think about this, what are some ways that I, I know in the book there are the, the sort of the steps. So would you, would you recommend that an agency take the steps that you’ve outlined based on the research and create like a, a process or a discovery or a something out of that? Absolutely.

Yeah. So, so number one, I’ve made it super easy because the book is only this big, right?

The book, I was gonna say very, very small and short, right? Itself,

The book itself is 70 pages and it’s three by five. Yeah. So you can read this book in under an hour if you’re a slow reader. And, and I’m not compensating for anything, it’s just that I thought it would be tremendously out of sync to ask you to spend five or six hours reading a business book about speed. Yeah. About speed. I just didn’t make any sense. Right. I’m like, I feel like I have to live my own principle here and make this book really fast to read. So the book is very inexpensive. You can get it on Amazon, or you can get it direct from me at Jay bearer book.com, Jay bear book.com, and ana and three pack. So one for you, one for a colleague, one to give to a business that disappoints you because they’re too slow. Yeah.

You could just leave

’em everywhere. Yeah.

So in, in, you know, in the old days, you know, given, given your clients all the books gets kind of expensive given your clients, this book is very inexpensive, and that’s by design. But there is a six piece framework in here, six piece time to win framework. And what I would do if I was still in the agency business, as I would sit down with my clients, maybe even have a workshop with multiple clients at once, and say, let’s go through these six pieces and figure out which of these we can implement in your businesses first and in what order. Because this research and the book and the presentation is very carefully built to apply almost universally. There. There’s, there’s almost no industries that, that this advice doesn’t make sense for.

It’s just in what sequence do you deploy it?

Yeah. I, and do you think the sequencing is dependent on the industry, or do you think it’s unique to everybody and you’ve just gotta figure it out?

That’s a good question. Well, there are some precursors. So the first thing that, that we recommend in the book that everybody should do regardless of industry and, and agencies should, should start this tomorrow, is to perform what I call a Got. it Audit Got it Audit Got it Audit is how long does it take your clients to get what they need? How long does it take them to get an email back in a net new business scenario? How long does it take them to get an invoice? How long does it take them to pay their bill? How long does it take them to get a question about hours or to get ad creative changed or whatever, right? Right. How long does it take? And, and that seems like a super obvious question, but Drew, as you well know, when you ask agency leaders that question, what you hear back is, well, usually it takes two days, but sometimes it can take three.

If it’s over a weekend, it could be four. If Susan’s on vacation, it could be five. And I’m like, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. This is not math. Now this is now a collection of stories,

Right?

This is anecdotes as measurements that ain’t gonna do it. Right? So if you’re gonna use speed as a competitive business advantage, and you absolutely can, and sure, that’s why I wrote the book. I think you’ve got a two year window right now, a two year window to outperform competitors based on responsiveness until they figure it out. You got two years, but you gotta start now if you’re gonna do that, and I think you should, because the data show that you will make more money. Definitely. You have to know how long this stuff takes for real, right? Like, how long does it take on average? What’s the median, what’s the mean to get invoices sent out or whatever, right? All the way through the customer journey. So that’s the first step, not only for agencies, but for their clients, is to figure out the math.

Because if you’re gonna say, all right, what, what is our right now? Which is the principle we use in the book about the ideal amount of time, not too fast, not too slow. The right now, if you’re gonna figure out the right now, you have to know what your starting point is. So that’s the first step for everybody is the Got. it Audit.

And you have to be able, to me, it has to be measurable. Yeah.

Can’t just,

It can’t be anecdotal. Yeah. Yeah.

It’s gotta be a, it’s gotta be a spreadsheet, right? Yeah. And that’s gonna take a little work. Like, I get it. That’s gonna, that’s different than how most people do it now, but it’s absolutely worth the effort. And this idea of the right now is, is key, right? That, that there is a goldilock zone, there’s a sweet spot for responsiveness for everything. Literally for everything. Because you can be too fast.

Okay. I wanna ask about, you can be too fast. Let’s take a quick break and let’s come back, come back and talk about what too fast looks like and then talk about the, the next steps. All right. We’ll be right back everybody. Hey there. Just a quick interruption. I wanna make sure that you are aware that you are cordially invited, not just invited, but cordially invited to join our Facebook group, our private Facebook group. All you have to do is go to Facebook and search for Build a Better agency. And you’ll find the Facebook group. You have to answer three quick questions. You have to put in the agency, u r l, you have to talk about what you wanna learn from the group, and you have to promise to behave yourself. And that’s it. And then we’ll let you in and you can jump into the conversation with over a thousand other agency owners and leaders.

And there’s a robust conversation happening every day. People are sharing resources and best practices and discussing everything from work, from home policies, to maternity and paternity policies, to biz dev strategies. So come join us and jump into the conversation. Right. Speaking of conversations, let’s head back. Alright, we are back with Jay Baron. We are talking about speed and responsiveness and his new book, which again is a, it’s a great read. It’s a fast read, the time to win. So make sure you grab it. But before the break we were talking about there is too fast. So everything we’ve talked about up to now would suggest that the faster you can go the better.

But when is fast Too fast.

Yeah. It’s largely true that you should try to be faster than you probably are always right? That that’s, you know, generally speaking the case. But the, the advice is not to be as fast as possible all the time because speed at all costs actually costs. Mm. And and what I mean by that is you can be so fast that people begin to distrust the quality or veracity of what it is that you are providing. Ah, okay. The, the anecdote that I tell on stage is that I live in Indiana and just like you Drew in the Midwest, as you know, Mexican food is not really our, our our best cuisine. So, but I went to a Mexican food restaurant here anyway, being from Arizona, I feel like I still have to support the, the cause.

And I got chicken enchiladas and they brought me chicken enchiladas in 90 seconds, seconds, seconds. It was astonishing. It was too fast. I distrusted the enchiladas. I’m like, do they have an enchilada machine back there? Like, how is this conceivable?

Or, or do they know? Everybody orders those? So they hadn’t stacked. They have psychic stacked up, right?

Yeah. They have a psychic at the front desk. I was very confused, I was impressed. But then very quickly I was like, wait a second. Right? How, and, and, and the same thing happens in business. Many people I’m sure either have on their websites or, or have worked with clients to implement some kind of a chat bot. Well, drift is one of the primary SaaS companies that, that supply chatbots, et cetera, to, to websites. Drift intentionally, programs a three second delay in chat bot responses. Because if you are as a consumer, you’re typing in your question in the chat bot, you hit submit, it’s all ai, right? Right. It could respond to you literally in a nanosecond faster than the blink of an eye.

It could respond, but when it responds that quickly, people are like, wait a second, this is a robot. I don’t trust this answer. Right? But if you hit submit and it goes 1001, 1002, 1003, and then the answer like, oh great, thanks for the help. All it is is, is the psychology of being too fast. Yeah.

Fascinating.

So what you want in your business at every, at every customer interaction point is the right now, which is not too fast and not too slow. And, and it’ll take a while to kind of figure out what that is for, for each client or for your own, your own organization. But, but once you kind of zone in on that, you’re in, you’re in great shape.

Alright. So we had talked about sort of really doing an assessment, like how, what is your response time in all of the various ways, shapes and forms, whether it’s initial contact, email, delivery of a certain thing after we’ve assessed that, what, what, from an agency perspective, when we think about how we can help ourselves and our clients. So, you know, let’s assume that our clients are also in the service industry just to keep things clean. What’s next?

I think the second thing I would work on is this notion of, of, and it’s, it’s not a hard thing to, to, to fix, but it’s just a little bit of a cultural imperative is to what we call replying without answers. Replying without answers. So in the agency business, a a lot of people are dependent upon one another for information. So client has a question, you don’t know the answer, you gotta go check with production or you gotta check with media, you gotta check with accounting, you gotta check with somebody else. And, and the whole time that you’re out there procuring that information, the client is thinking, well, did did she get that information? Did she get the question, is she blowing me off? Is she on vacation? Right? Like, when am I gonna get it? And it, and it raises their anxiety.

So the better way to handle this is if somebody asks you a question, and this works not just in business, but with your spouse, with your kids, with your mailman. I’ve been doing this now for about two and a half years. It’s been a huge impact on my life. Somebody asks you a question, you don’t know the answer, you say, good question Drew so good In fact, I gotta go find out the answer. I’m gonna go do that and then I’ll let you know. Hmm. Typically we just don’t say anything until we get the information. Right. Right. And it’s just a vacuum. So this means you gotta respond to everybody twice. But the first time is just, I got it

Right.

And then you get it and then you come back to them. That little process of saying, I got it, takes it off of their mental to-do list and puts it on your mental to-do list. And that psychological change is really, really important. And again, dramatically increases their perception of your responsiveness. You’re not actually any faster, but it feels like you’re way faster because you’re like, I got it, I’m on it. Right. So in my business, we respond to all emails, you know, unless I’m like literally on a plane within five minutes, right? I mean like, at all times. And like, we got it. He’s on, he’s on the phone, but we’ll get back to you like it because we’d never want people to think that we, that we didn’t get it. That we’re not on top of it, that we’re not around. And so some of this is just, it’s just cultural in your agency to train and to train your clients to just, to just do it this way and it makes a big difference.

That’s the, the one I would probably start with first because it’s the e it doesn’t require anything other than just sort of a process and cultural imperative.

And in your organization, do you have someone manually doing that? Or have you Yes. Implemented technology manually. So it’s especially not because, so it’s not, not an autoresponder.

No, we don’t, we don’t get enough Now that’s just me. We don’t have enough input to, to use it as an autoresponder. Right. You certainly can do that. And I would, and I would recommend that for, for folks who have more touchpoint, I would, I would probably opt to use one of the AI powered ones now. So it’s not the exact same language every time. You know, just Right, right. Make it a little, make it a little better. So yeah, that’s, that’s the first one I would, I would go with. ’cause it doesn’t require anything really new. It’s just how you handle your business.

Yeah. Well it’s interesting that you say that. ’cause I’m sure I, I’m just thinking about human nature, right? You get an email, you don’t know the answer today, you would forward that email to whoever has the answer and say, Hey, what should I say to this person? Right? But you’re right that the quick, hey, got it. Gotta gotta find the answer, get right back to you.

Yep.

Short and simple, right? Yeah.

The perception difference is really significant. Yeah. Yeah. It really, it really works.

Okay. So we are responsive on the get go. And, and what does that look like in mediums other than email? Is that just an email best practice? Or is that a

Same quick, quick phone call, voice note text? You know, and typically, and I’ve written about this in previous books, I’m not a big fan of channel shifting, right? Right. If somebody, if somebody picks a contact mechanism, they did that on purpose.

Right? It’s their, it their chosen channel. They don’t,

They don’t have a roulette wheel of contact mechanism that they’re spinning. Oh. Looks like it’s gotta be messenger. Right. They pick it because that’s where they’re most comfortable. And I, and I usually don’t like channel shifting, but this is one case where I think it’s okay where you just say all, maybe they, maybe they sent you a phone call, but you don’t wanna spend the time to leave ’em a voicemail. It just says, I got it. So you just hit him a quick email or text. Got your voicemail, I’m on it. We’ll get back to you.

Yeah. Okay. Are there aspects of our business where the speed is more noticed or critical, do you think? Is it, is it on the initial getting to know you getting the bid? Is it on the delivery of work? Is it on? Is is there chapters of our relationship with clients that where it see, it feels to you based on the research, that it’s even more critical?

We studied that in the, in the research. It’s not agency specific, but what we did was we looked at all the different kind of key nodes in the customer journey and then talked to, and I should say this is university level research. This isn’t Jay did a SurveyMonkey, this is right. Tens of thousands of dollars, you know Right. Pegged to the US census. Like this is, this is the real deal. And what we, what we looked at was throughout the totality of the journey, where is speed most important to customers? Yeah. The answer is always, but Right, right. Of course. But, but beyond that, we find a couple things. One, speed is more important when somebody has a problem, right.

Because they, they have an active burr under their saddle, they wanna remove that pain and they wanna remove that pain as quickly as possible. So any kind of problem or question that is really job one for responsiveness. But the second part, and, and I think this will be really germane for agencies, is any time something has to be scheduled

Hmm.

Because it requires synchronicity between both parties. Yeah. So anytime we’ve gotta either set up a meeting, set up a zoom, when are we gonna deliver the thing, when’s the R F P due? Like anything that has an actual deadline that we both have to agree to all the stuff in that realm, speed and responsiveness and kind of getting that handled expeditiously is disproportionately important to other nodes in their customer journey because it, it’s a, it’s a loose threat. Right. And people don’t like having loose threads on their calendar, especially busy, you know, clients And so,

Well I gonna say ’cause it hangs them up too, right? Right. They can’t schedule other things. They

Can’t, they can’t reschedule. Yeah. And it just creates a lot of, a lot of drama and angst. Yeah. So, so that’s an area where we really should lean in a little more than perhaps you are, is like find a way to, to tie up those kind of appointment threads as quickly as possible.

Where do we get speed wrong? Where we, you, we talked a little bit about, you know, the too fast. So when you, when you look at business today, other than that, we’re not fast enough. Yeah. Where else do you think we misstep?

I, I’ll tell you this happens all the time. I probably hear this once a week from, from folks doing this presentation out on the road where people say, well yeah, we could go faster, but we intentionally go slower because we don’t want potential clients to think we’ve got so much capacity that, that, you know, we’ll just take anybody. Right? So we could’ve, we could’ve responded to their email request today, but we intentionally wait three days to make it seem like we’re so busy and hard to get. And I hear that constantly and I was like, wow, what an interesting psychology that is. Yeah. Lemme try and fool my client from the beginning Right. To make them think we’re busier than we are. Yeah. So that you can do what charge, charge them more.

Like I don’t understand, like I don’t understand the whole end game of that, of that thought process. But it happens a lot. And I know it happens in agencies like,

Oh yeah, I’m sure that’s true.

I have been there. Right. We’re like, Hey, don’t call ’em back too fast. You know, or, or don’t, you know, don’t, don’t turn. The client has a request to change the ad creative. Don’t do it too fast. ’cause they’ll expect it that fast next time. How many times have you heard that? Right. If you turn it so fast, if you turn it so fast, clients will expect it that fast next time, guess what? Yes.

Yes they do. They’re

Gonna expect it that fast next time period. Right. Whether you do it or not. Look, I’ve been doing this for 30 years. I’ve never in my entire entire career heard a client say, you know, I’ve been thinking and next time it’d be better if you guys did that more slowly.

Yeah. Right. I’d like to wait a little bit. Right.

Speed expectations continue to escalate in a way that other expectations simply do not. Right. It’s the nature of technology in the world we live in. So whether you train your client to expect ad creative to be switched out faster or they’re trained by whoever they replace you with, that’s gonna be their expectation. Right. And so I think one of the big challenges with this whole idea of speed is that you’re never done, you’re never fast enough because clients are gonna continue to expect it to be faster and faster. And I know that sounds disheartening, but here’s why. It’s an opportunity. Drew, most business owners, especially small and medium sized business owners, have just kind of found themselves in a point of stasis with regard to this entire conversation.

They’re like, we’re pretty fast, we’re as fast as we can be. We can’t be any faster than this ’cause we don’t have the technology, we don’t have the people, we got too much turnover. We got other things to focus on. Everybody’s at that point. Yeah. So if you are the one who says, you know, based on this research, if we actually are disproportionately faster, we are literally going to gain more customers and keep more customers. I’m not saying it’s easy. I’m not, I know. Like I’ve run a lot of businesses. I’m not saying anything that I’ve told you is easy. I am saying that it’s worth it. Right. And the reason it’s worth it is because it’s hard. The reason it’s worth is because your competitors won’t do it.

If your competitors would do it, we wouldn’t be having this conversation. That’s, and I certainly wouldn’t have written a book about it. Right. The reason it works is because it’s hard. And I’m telling you in two years you’re not gonna have a choice. So if you can do it now, you’re gonna have two years of gravy while your competitors are like, ah, we don’t wanna work on speed. That’s too hard. Do it now.

Yeah. Well, you know, I, I’m thinking about sort of the, the thread of some of your past books to this book and, you know, whether it was Hug Your Haters or anything else. In a lot of ways, when I think about the work that you’ve, the body of your work, it’s really about how do we get smarter and better to create better relationships with the people that we want to serve. Right. And and so you, you have studied a lot of different ways around that. And this just feels like, okay, this, this is a trend that has been coming for a while, but probably for a lot of reasons, technology covid. Yeah. What, whatever. Yes.

This is now a cultural trend that to your point, we can’t really ignore. I mean we, we, we or we can ignore it at our own peril.

Yeah. Who’s gonna disagree with this?

Right. Right.

No speed’s. Not we speed’s not more important than it used to be. No one’s gonna say that. Right. Right. It’s just what you do about it is, is the question. And you’re right, Drew, like I’m not a futurist, I don’t have a crystal ball. I’m not the kind of person who’s gonna say, here’s gonna happen in 10 years. I have no idea. But I can tell you what’s happening now. Right. And that’s really my whole career is to do the research, combine it with working with 700 brands or whatever I’ve worked with and started five companies on my own. What I can tell you is what customers want now. Yeah. And then how to use that as a competitive advantage and like a two year window until competition, you know, catches up. So, you know, I taught, I wrote a book about social media when that was your competitive edge. I wrote about a book about content marketing when that was your competitive edge. I wrote a book about customer service when that was your competitive edge.

I wrote a book about word of mouth when that was your competitive edge and probably still is. Right. And now it’s a book about speed. ’cause that’s the competitive edge. So my goal is to find the edge, teach you the edge, give you a two, your head start and then you gotta pick a different horse and I’ll figure out what the horse is for you, but ride this horse now.

Right. Yeah. It’s interesting when you think about it, everything you just listed, right. Social media, content, whatever. Now those are givens. When you wrote about ’em, you’re right. They were the edge. That’s, but now’s we’re like, well of course you have to be on social media and of course you have to create content and of course you have to blah, blah blah. So I, I guess, but at the time

People were like, what whatcha talking about? I gotta write a blog.

What I, I have to be on Facebook every day. Right? Yeah. Right. So, so this is sort of the warning and, and maybe this is the way we wrap up this conversation. You have proven with every book and every piece of research that we have about a two to three year window to get better at something before it becomes the norm. Yep. And given that this topic is speed, we probably don’t have two or three years. Right. It’s gonna come faster.

Mean, AI ai is gonna really change it. Like, you know, it already is. Already is.

Right. Yeah.

That’s why.

So this is our window.

Yeah. I would not wait till next year. Right. I wouldn’t work on this in the fourth quarter.

Yeah. This is fascinating. As, as always, this, if folks wanna learn more about where I, now I know you’re on a huge speaking tour and you are traveling all over the country. If folks wanna learn where they can actually hear you talk about this live or get in touch with you. Yeah. Or of course wanna chat with you about tequila. ’cause I think that’s what nine tenths of the people listening will, will tap you

For. Well, let’s, let’s do another episode just about tequila. I’m happy to come back.

I like that we have to do a tasting episode, though.

Can do. No problem. We’ll do it on, we’ll

Do it live, do it on time. Imagine, imagine, imagine 45 minutes into that.

We can do it. I’m happy to do it. All right. So a few places, j bearer.com, b a e r j bear.com is the main site. The book is available [email protected]. You also find it on Amazon. And then the dedicated research portal for this whole thesis, the time to win the full research report, infographics, PowerPoint, presentations, videos, if you go to the time to win.com, it’s, it’s all right there.

Awesome. This has Ben. Fascinating as always. I always enjoy our conversations. I am grateful for you to, I know you’re super busy, In fact, I know you’re heading off to a speaking gig later today. So thank you for carving out the time to do this and spend the time with us.

My pleasure. Anytime I’m, I’m ready for the tequila tasting.

All right. I, I will reach back to you around that. See you later. All right, guys, this rep’s up another episode. Tons of actionable items. Get the book. It’s really, it is Jay’s, right? It’s a very fast read, but it’s fascinating and it’s sort of horrifying at the same time because you’re gonna start to realize all the places where you could be better. But I think what we just talked about, which is all, most of you are a fan of Jay’s work. He followed his work. We’ve talked about his books before. He is been on the show. You’ve seen him at the summit. You know, he is not wrong. He’s, he hasn’t been wrong yet. So this is not the bet I would take against him to assume that speed doesn’t matter. We all know it from our own personal lives.

So we better figure out how to, how to weave it into our business. And, you know, I know a lot of you are feeling like this has been a year when you’ve been climbing uphill and things have been hard. And so you’re like, oh my god, more change. And now we have to get even faster. Are you kidding me? The answer is, yeah, we have to get even faster. So grab the book, talk about it with your leadership team, talk about with your clients. This is also another opportunity for you to be smart on behalf of your clients and help them be better. So take advantage of that as well. Well, all right. Alright, before we leave, I wanna thank our friends at White. Label IQ. As you know, they’re the presenting sponsor of the podcast. Super grateful for them. As always, head over to White Label IQ dot com slash aami to learn about their white Label, PPC dev and design services.

So a lot of you reach out to me and say, look, we have clients with smaller PPC budgets, cannot find an agency partner who can help us without us losing our shirt. White Label IQ has got you covered. So if you’ve got clients that only have a thousand bucks or a couple thousand dollars a month to spend, go talk to them because odds are, they are the solution you have been looking for. All right. I’ll be back next week with another guest to challenge you to get you thinking differently about the business. In the meantime, you know how to reach me. I’m Drew at agency management institute.com. And now I feel like I have to answer you even faster if you email me. So I’m gonna be, I’m gonna be on that. So, alright, thanks for listening guys. We’ll see you next week.

Come back next week for another episode, designed to help you build a stronger, more stable and sustainable agency. Check out our workshops, coaching and consulting packages, and other professional development [email protected].