The ROI of making your existing clients happier with Susan Baier

Speaker 1:

Running an agency can be a lonely proposition, but it doesn’t have to be. We can learn how to be better, faster if we learn together. Welcome to Agency Management Institute’s Build a Better Agency podcast presented by White Label IQ. Tune in every week for insights on how small to mid-size agencies are surviving and thriving in today’s market. With 25 plus years of experience as both an agency owner and agency consultant. Please welcome your host, Drew McLellan.

Drew McLellan:

Hey, everybody. Drew McLellan here from Agency Management Institute back with another episode of Build a Better Agency, and it’s a good one. As many of you know, for the last 10 years, AMI has partnered with Susan Baier at Audience Audit to do our Agency Edge Research Series. So every year we pick a different topic, pretty narrow in focus, and we go out in most cases, talking to people who hire agencies, so business owners, CMOs, directors of marketing, that sort of thing, and ask them some pretty pointed and specific questions around the topic. And that’s what we did this year. I’ll tell you more about this year, but in the past we’ve asked them what they want from an AE. We’ve asked them what makes them fire an agency. We’ve talked to them about what an agency can do to earn more trust, lots of different topics, but every year we get really specific about the topic based on what we see happening in the agency landscape. So I’ll tell you a little bit more about the 2023 study before we bring Susan on to talk about the results.

But before we do that, I just want to remind you, if you love last week’s episode with Carla Johnson, and I can’t imagine you didn’t because she’s brilliant. So Carla is the author of Rethink Innovation, and last week we talked about how we can all reinvigorate our ability to come up with the big idea on demand, be more innovative thinkers and how we can teach it to everyone on our staff. And Carla is teaching a live workshop on that topic, July 11th and 12th here in Denver. You can learn more about the workshop, you can register for it by going to the AMI website, agencymanagementinstitute.com. And under the how we help, you’re going to find navigation bar, you’re going to find the workshops button, and if you mouse over that, you’re going to see that particular workshop so you can register for it. It’s going to be awesome. We had folks raving about it last time we did it, about a year and a half ago, and so it was time to bring it back and we’re excited to host Carla here in Denver.

So when Susan and I were talking about in late 2022, we were talking about what we wanted to study in ’23. It was already very clear that ’23 was going to be a challenging year in terms of biz dev for agencies. The economy, other reasons, clients are slowing down, they are taking longer to hire an agency or to decide they need to hire an agency. And even after they hire an agency, they’re slower at doling out the work, which means we have to be able to grow more of our business with existing clients. And so that was the focus of the ’23 study. And so Susan and I, we were out in the field in January, so this data is very fresh. We just unveiled the research data and the findings at the Build a Better Agency Summit a couple weeks ago, probably by the time you listened to this about a month ago. So fresh out of the field, fresh data for you to use, and I think some really great insights. So let’s welcome Susan to the show and start digging into the data. Susan, welcome back to the podcast.

Susan Baier:

Thank you, Drew, always great to be here with you.

Drew McLellan:

So we’re here today to walk our folks through the 2023 Agency Edge Research piece that we just completed. Gosh, we just launched, we just unveiled the research data at the Build a Better Agency Summit in May, and we were just in the field, gosh, January, in February, so this is-

Susan Baier:

Yeah. Hot off the presses.

Drew McLellan:

… fresh data. So let me explain to everybody why we picked the topic that we did. So we had seen at the tail end of ’22, and we certainly are seeing it in ’23, that for most agencies this is really a challenging year to land new clients. That the economy or whatever’s going on, clients seem a little skittish about engaging in new relationships. They’re taking a much longer time to select an agency. And even after they select an agency, in many cases, they’re taking two or three months to actually start actually doing the work. And so what happens, the way Susan and I do this is every year we talk about sort of what’s going on in the agency landscape and what would be really helpful to understand or know more about.

And so in a conversation we had in 2022, tail end of 2022, we decided that we wanted to ask clients, businesses, business owners, CMOs, those sort of folks who are actively engaged in hiring and working with agencies, what, where and when they might give their current agency more money. So it was really about how do we get more wallet share out of our existing clients. If the new ones are going to take longer, how do we get more from the ones we already have?

Susan Baier:

And fascinating study, I mean, we have over 500 clients in the study. Statistical reliability is really, really strong on it. And I don’t know about you, Drew, this is one of my favorite surveys that we’ve ever done because the outcome is so powerful, I think, for agencies. There’s so much good news in it. It’s nice to be bringing good news instead of-

Drew McLellan:

And actionable news, like they told us what you should do to get more of their money.

Susan Baier:

Yes. And for the first time, I think since we’ve been doing this, this is our 10th study actually, and for the first time we have a segment that we’re really saying, “Eh, don’t, there’s not a lot of value in spending your time on these folks.” So as always, in case you’re not familiar with our research, all of our studies include this attitudinal segmentation perspective, which is really looking at our respondents, not just based on how big their organizations are or anything like that, but how they feel about something. And in this case, the question that you pose, when do you do this? Why do you do this? What keeps you from doing this? And how would you like to be approached with these kinds of opportunities from your agencies? So this year we found three segments. Not terribly unusual. This year we have one that’s sizeably bigger than the other two. So let’s talk about the first one.

Drew McLellan:

Well, hang on just a sec. So just a reminder everybody, these segments, if I said to you, where do the men over 50 show up or where do the startup show up? Or where do the international companies show up or where whatever, the demographics as we know from these studies are irrelevant. These people are bound together by a series of beliefs and attitudes and the actions that come from those beliefs and attitudes, not a demographic. And so our whole goal with this is to help you recognize what is unrecognizable to your eye, but to start listening for clues in conversations or behaviors that would begin to help you understand which of your clients fall into these segments.

Susan Baier:

Right. And when we were talking with agencies at Baba after presenting this research, certainly in my conversations, agencies were saying, “Oh, we have all of those.” And I know exactly who they are.

Drew McLellan:

And now I know who to pay more attention to and how to approach them-

Susan Baier:

And what to do.

Drew McLellan:

… about how to get more wallet share. So yeah.

Susan Baier:

More wallet share. Yeah. Okay.

Drew McLellan:

So now three segments.

Susan Baier:

Okay, so relationship builders, that’s our first group. That’s 30% of these respondents. And this is an agency, a client type that we have seen before, Drew. These are the folks who way back, years ago, we started seeing as really those clients who want a strong long relationship with an agency, they want to be married to their agency. This year what we see from them is that they’re really looking to learn from their agencies to level up their own in-house teams. They believe that agencies are saving them money, are leveling up their marketing activities. They trust their guidance, they credit agencies for their success. And this group from an attitudinal standpoint says A, we have flexibility to adjust agency spending more than any of the other groups. We’re going to talk about some more data with respect to this. And we are very interested in anything that our agencies offer us.

Drew McLellan:

Because we trust them, because we learn from them, because they sit at the C-Suite table with us. And so we are open to suggestion and have flexibility in our budget to act on those suggestions.

Susan Baier:

Right. And everything we do with them, A, educates our team on how to improve, and B, ends up generating a return on investment for them. So really strong group, very powerful, again 30%. The biggest group that we have, 43% of our respondents are in this next segment, which we call staff prioritizers.

Drew McLellan:

Yeah, very different attitudes.

Susan Baier:

Very different attitudes. So these folks have a strong internal team and they have a lot of confidence in their team. These people actually say that their marketing team has more expertise than any agency that they’ve worked with. Now, that doesn’t mean they don’t want agencies, they do. They want agencies that are efficient, that can work very, very well with their team and actually be integrated into their business operations. So agencies are very important for these folks. However, they also say that real experts in their space on the agency side of the house are hard to find.

Drew McLellan:

And I think there’s an age old struggle I think between agencies and in-house teams. And a lot of times agencies in fairness are a little arrogant about their abilities as opposed to the in-house team. And this segment of agency buyers won’t really tolerate that attitude. They expect us to come in to value what their internal team can do and to partner with them in getting to the results they want to get to more efficiently, more effectively and faster. But they’re not hiring an agency to augment a weakness on their team.

Susan Baier:

Right. Which is what we see on the first group. They have a team, but they really love that sort of education that’s happening in their agency relationship. This group wants the education to move the other direction. But they also want agencies that will really understand their needs and goals deeply. They want agencies that will spend more time getting to know their team. Not just in a work relationship, but really understand these folks because their trust lies in their people. And they’re also challenged with a belief that anytime their agencies and their in-house team are coordinating, it complicates everything. And it’s probably us as agencies that are making that more difficult than it should be. But it’s certainly a lost opportunity with these folks knowing how important that close partnership is to them, that we’re not making it as streamlined to work with their teams as they would like it to be. And that’s the biggest group we’ve got.

Drew McLellan:

And I think another thing to note that’s important is, they don’t have a lot of patience for when it doesn’t go well.

Susan Baier:

Nope.

Drew McLellan:

So if the agency can’t sort of toe to toe with their team, isn’t a good play in the sandbox partner, they’re ready to switch agencies. So what you’re not going to do is convince them that their staff is wanting and you can step in and they can get rid of their whole in-house department. You’re going to be the one that gets shown the door.

Susan Baier:

And they’re not saying we’re going to give you every little direction. They want partnership, they really do, but they value both sides, very comparably. So staff prioritizers, that’s 43% of our group. And then we’ve got this last segment, 26% saving seekers. So this is the segment where you and I looked at this and went, “Whoa, there’s not a lot of value here in terms of a right fit client.” So these folks say, and this is again data just from this year, very fresh, always looking for ways to spend less with their agencies. They feel they could handle their marketing in-house if necessary. They’re struggling to justify the cost of agencies in terms of the economic conditions they’re facing today. And the only thing they want to hear from their agencies is how are you going to save me money?

So in terms of our question, it doesn’t mean these are necessarily terrible clients to have for every single agency, but if you want to get more out of your clients, this is not a group you’re going to get any anymore out of. In fact, they’re just whittling away. They’re just going to carve out everything they can from you. So very difficult to justify really long-term nurturing or certainly prospecting among this type of client.

Drew McLellan:

So I think for the first time in 10 years, I think this is the first time where we have kind of said there is not a lot of redeeming value in this subset of people in terms of for the agency. So all of you probably have a couple clients like this. And what we’re saying is you have a finite amount of energy and time and brain power to invest in helping your clients grow their business and grow your business with them. And this is probably the folks that I would spend the least amount of time.

Susan Baier:

Yeah, diminishing returns from this folks, certainly. So here’s some other interesting stats across all of these segments. So as we have seen for the last, I don’t know how many years, more than one agency, 53% of these are working with more than one agency. Even the ones who really want that long lasting, very tight relationship with their agencies, they’ve still got more than one. So as usual, we’re saying you got to learn to play nice in the sandbox with the other agencies that they’re working with.

Drew McLellan:

Not just with the in-house staff, but also- [inaudible 00:14:52]

Susan Baier:

That’s right. To your point about demographics, there is no difference in the segment distribution here, whether they’re a B2B or B2C client, there’s no difference based on how long they have been in business. About two thirds of these have an in-house marketing team that they are working with. The staff prioritizers, that middle group have a larger team. So another signal that they’ve got more oomph on their in-house side. Now, those saving seekers, that third group, significantly more likely to have fewer than 10 employees and less than a million in revenue, so…

Drew McLellan:

That’s good news. They’re your smaller clients.

Susan Baier:

Yeah. I mean, a lot of them are, right? And that middle group, those staff prioritizers that was 43%, significantly more likely to have budgets over half a million dollars. And when you look at the data, what you see is that their piece of the pie, once you get over half a million dollars in budget is double what you see below that line. So if you’re targeting those kinds of budgets, 60% of the time you’re talking to someone who’s a staff prioritizer, just because the juice they’ve got behind it.

Drew McLellan:

Yeah. And in fact, we see much smaller segments of both the relationship folks and the savers once we get to half a million and above.

Susan Baier:

So once we get to half of that. Yeah. So understanding those prioritizers is really important if you want to be attracting that kind of budget. Now, one thing we didn’t know when we did this is whether the news would be good or bad with respect to getting more money out of these. But there is a lot of good news for agencies in this study. 43% of our respondents planning to use their agencies more over the next two years. Virtually none of them plan to use them less. So lots of opportunities, lots of different activities that they’re pursuing. And listen to the percentages, Drew, that are strongly agreeing with statements like these. I trust my agency recommendations, 72%. I want strong long agencies relationships, 81% strongly agreeing. 59% interested in new services from my agencies. Flexibility to adjust spending, 58% strongly agreeing. 44% strongly agreeing, I would spend more with an agency if they really understood our challenges and goals. And those are really good numbers.

Drew McLellan:

Yeah, those are great numbers.

Susan Baier:

But when you pull out the saving seekers, they’re even higher. For example, for our relationship builders, the number, the percentage that want strong relationships, say collaboration leads to better outcomes, are flexible and interested in new services is 70 to a hundred percent strongly agreeing with that. And the staff prioritizers aren’t far behind them. On the other hand, those saving seekers, that question about would we spend more if an agency understood our challenges and goals? Only 27% of that group strongly agreed with that. So again, to your point, there’s not much you’re going to be able to move these folks on, even if you are a terrific partner for them, they’re just, additional spending is not what they’re looking for. So there’s just a lot in here that does prioritize those relationship builders and staff prioritizers around this question in terms of spending more.

Drew McLellan:

Yeah, lots of good news. So one of the other things we talked to them about was sort of, okay, you love your agency, you say you want to spend more. What does that look like? How flexible is your budget? Can you spend more in the middle of the year? Do you have to wait till there’s a budget review? And some things like that. And that data was really fascinating too.

Susan Baier:

Really, really fascinating. And of course for an individual agency, if all of your work is government work, this is going to look a little different for you.

Drew McLellan:

Sure, right.

Susan Baier:

But 62% of our clients said they do set a fixed dollar amount for their agency budgets. But 60% of them say they are regularly evaluating the results they’re getting and opportunities that come to them and adjusting the budget throughout the year. 60% of them. And another 20% say absolutely we will increase the budget as needed based on opportunities that come our way. So I was surprised at the amount of flexibility these folks have. 59-

Drew McLellan:

I think this is one of the dirty little secrets clients keep from their agency. I think they try and convince us that budgets are much more fixed than they are, that they don’t have a lot of fluidity in the middle of the year. And what this data really shows is that when we present a compelling case, a compelling reason, and we’re going to show you some of the things they find most compelling in a little bit. They do have more money and the ability to spend it when they want to spend it.

Susan Baier:

Right? 59% have increased agency budgets mid-year. And for the relationship builders, that first group, it’s 71%. So there are budget allocations to be made and things moved around during mid-year. So we asked them why they have increased agency budgets recently.

Drew McLellan:

Yeah. What prompted that?

Susan Baier:

So 36% said it was, we wanted to throw more money at something that was working, right? We’ve tried this, it’s working well, we’re going to invest more in it.

Drew McLellan:

So this is critical. We talk about this a lot, the need to be able to prove to clients to connect those dots of what we’re doing and how it’s working. And so defining success metrics on the front end, clearly communicating those success metrics, really, really important.

Susan Baier:

Yeah. We have a new product or service cited by 33%, and this is one of those places where I think as agencies, if we can get a seat at the strategic table with them when they’re doing planning and help them develop new opportunities to serve their audiences, there’s marketing that’s going to go with that. And there’s an increased budget that can come along. 31%, there was an opportunity we just couldn’t pass up. And what our research shows as we’re going to talk about is, that opportunity can come from us as agencies. There’s a recommendation there. 22% said the reason they upped a budget in the last couple of years is that the agency proposed something new, new initiative. Like 22% of the people who made this thing, that was it for them. Like, “You told us we needed to do something more and we did.” So lots of power there.

And we see similar things across the segments. The relationship builders are more likely to do this pretty much for any reason because they trust their agencies. 31% of them say it’s because their agency proposed new initiatives. Staff prioritizers, so yes. Funding is successful activity. We have a new product or service. 24% of our staff prioritizers said they increased budgets to pursue an idea that they got from a conference or an event. So they’re out there looking for opportunities. We’re going to talk about maybe how we could be part of that process in the next time. So I think there’s lots of information in here, and obviously we’re kind of hitting the top of the iceberg here in the podcast, but there’s a ton of data in the study itself that listeners can dig into and look at that really gives us a lot of information about what they’re going to do, what’s going to make them move off the dime with respect to- [inaudible 00:22:39]

Drew McLellan:

That’s a good point. I mean, obviously in 45 minutes we can only cover the highlights. So a couple things. Number one, we’ll have the executive summary, which will be lots more data, lots more drill down, but if you really want to dig into the data with us on June 30th at 1:00 PM Eastern, we are going to do a webinar where we’re going to walk you through every question we asked and the responses.

And so in the show notes, we will include a Zoom link where you can come join us live. We’ll sit through the webinar, we will walk you through the visualization of all the data, all of the questions, and answer any questions you have about what we think the data means or where the direction we think the data is pointing. So again, that’s June 30th, 1:00 PM Eastern. If you can’t make it, if that’s not a good time zone for you or you already have a commitment, of course we will record the webinar and make that available to all of you. But just know that there’s a lot more depth to this than we’re going to get to in today’s podcast.

Susan Baier:

For sure. So more good news around sort of their agency relationships. So how long have you worked with your best agency? For a lot of them, it’s quite a while. And then we see a big chunk of them, 35% overall, say they’re going to continue working with their best agency for at least five more years. And that number’s 50% among the relationship builders. So there’s some really good long-term relationship activity going on here with these clients and their agencies. And there’s a lot of them who say that they are actually getting a better ROI working with an agency than they would just working with their in-house team. And remember, most of these have an in-house team. So ROI is something that these clients overwhelmingly think their agencies are giving to them.

Drew McLellan:

So a point we need to make is we did not define what best agency meant. We allowed them to define that for themselves. So if you’re wondering who’s their best agency, hopefully it’s you, but we didn’t put parameters around what that meant.

Susan Baier:

We just let them pick that. Although we do have some insights in the survey about what makes a best agency, which is really interesting. Overwhelmingly, these folks trust their agency’s strategic recommendations and the relationship builders more, but sizable percentages, in fact, majorities are saying that they trust their agency strategic recommendations. Does your agency care about us reaching our goals? So this is kind of an interesting question.

Drew McLellan:

But this was good news. I mean, I think a lot of you sometimes feel like your clients fight you tooth and nail, they ask you to prove everything. And again, as you might imagine, the relationship builders had the highest percentage of… Their answer was absolutely, 78%. The staff prioritizers at 44% and then to some degree the staff prioritizers is 46. So you add those up together and you’re almost at 90%. So the good news is they do know. And by the way, you add up the relationship folks, and it’s 90 some percent. They do know that we care about their goals. They just want us to be able to help them prove it probably internally as much as they need to with all the pressure that they’re under.

Susan Baier:

So when we talk about this, what makes your best agency, and there’s a lot of qualities that they want, creativity, flexibility, communication skills up at the top, characteristics. I mean, whenever we put a hundred percent satisfaction guarantee, it gets a lot of votes on this list. But also specialized marketing expertise and a full range of marketing services. So sort of this specialization thought leader kind of thing happening where you do have a niche, but they want you to be able to do a lot of things for them when you understand that particular niche.

Drew McLellan:

Which gets to, so for those of you that listened to the solocast a couple weeks ago, one of the things we talked about is clients are growing weary of working with so many agencies. They’re not going to go down to one, but they want to reduce the number of agencies that they have. And what they’re looking for from us is that whoever is sort of their lead agency, that their best agency, that those folks bring with them a cadre of partners in any area that they can’t fulfill in-house.

And so for those of you that are inside peer groups or inside the AMI community, this is a huge opportunity for you to align with other agencies that you know you can trust because they’re part of the AMI fold who do the things that you don’t do, because they do want you to have a wide depth and breadth. So they want you to be a specialist, no doubt about it. They want you to have a niche, they want you to understand their industry. We’ve been hearing that for years, but now what we’re hearing is sort of agency juggling fatigue. And what they want you to do is they want you to juggle the other agency.

Susan Baier:

Yeah. Exactly.

Drew McLellan:

Bring them in so that they don’t have to.

Susan Baier:

Yep. Yep. So let’s skip to one of the aspects of this research that I found so powerful. So with respect to buying additional services in the last year-

Drew McLellan:

Let’s actually take a break first.

Susan Baier:

Okay.

Drew McLellan:

Let’s create a pregnant pause, if you will.

Susan Baier:

A pregnant pause. Here we go.

Drew McLellan:

Yes. All right. So we’re going to take a quick break and then we’re going to come back and we’re going to tell you what these folks are looking for in an agency. In other words, how did they say these are the agencies that are the best for us, that provide the greatest value, that I’m most likely to give more money to? So sit tight for a second. We’ll be right back and we’ll talk through some of those.

Hey, just want to take a quick minute and tell you about a resource that we have on the website that I don’t talk about as often as I should. So it’s an exercise called My Future Self. And the reason why you would do this exercise is if you are in planning mode, and this is really for you as either an agency owner or an agency leader, but you really want to think about what your future looks like, not the agency’s future, your future.

I find so many agency owners struggle with how they are spending their days and is it fulfilling and is this what they want to do in five years that we created an exercise, and I will tell you a very brief story, but I first did a version of this exercise probably 15 years ago, and it basically walks you through some thinking and you have to do some journaling around what your future self looks like. And you have to sort of give yourself into it. You have to really suspend the reality and talk about what it is today. But I’m telling you, when I did it, how it was different from my current moment in my life was pretty dramatic. And I was working with a coach at the time and I said, “This is great, and this is the life I want, but it doesn’t look like my life now.”

And we talked about just being open to the possibility of transitioning in some of those directions. And I will tell you, for the last 10 years, I have been living that life, the life that I created in this exercise. So it can be very powerful and very eye-opening. And I’m not a woo woo kind of guy, but once I understood what I wanted as opportunities presented themselves, I just took advantage of them in different ways than I would’ve had I not done this exercise. So head over to the AMI website and go to agencymanagementinstitute.com/myfutureself. And you can read more about it. There’s an intro, a video intro where I tell you all about it and then some questions. It’s $197. If you don’t like it or you don’t end up doing it, happy to give you your money back, but I’m telling you can be really transformative if you give yourself into the exercise and really do it with an open heart. So just wanted to tell you it was there. Hopefully it will be helpful for some of you. Okay, let’s get back to the show.

All right, we are back with Susan Baier and we’re talking about the 2023 Agency Edge Research Series where all we did was talk about, hey, what would make you give your agency more money? So let’s talk about some of the things that these clients value about their agencies.

Susan Baier:

Yeah, so the question was around what’s going to positively impact your opinion of an agency? I mean, 79%, they deliver ahead of schedule. No big surprise there. But listen to these, Drew, an owner meeting to understand potential improvements that the agency could make. A document from the agency that outlines what to expect from us. An agency that is sharing their goals with us for projects. Weekly check-ins. Asking for in-person meetings. Asking for formal feedback. 55% said scheduling a value alignment conversation with them would be something that would really affect their perspective of us positively. And I think a lot of these things we sort of write off and they’re easy to skip, but they really matter to clients.

Drew McLellan:

And so it’s probably that you do all of these things, but you may not put the spotlight on them in the way that benefits you.

Susan Baier:

Yeah. For sure. They want a lot of in-depth reporting. And we sort of talked about this a little bit because we know a lot of us are doing this maybe on a monthly basis, but I think that there are folks who want to see something more often from us. So maybe we break up those big monthly reports that we’re doing and dribble them out on a weekly basis, focusing on one section or something like that.

Drew McLellan:

Or I think the reality is a lot of what we do, nothing moves in a week. And so you’ve got to identify some early indicators or some proof points that you can report. So don’t think of reporting as a, here’s the final result or here’s the result in a month or a quarter, but here’s movement. Here are clues that this is working. Here are things that we could change right now or experiments we could do after what we saw last week in this or that. So think of it as more bite-sized iterative insight as opposed to reporting in the way you are thinking about reporting.

Susan Baier:

Yep. I think that the other aha moment for me in this is, we asked folks when they want to be pitched new opportunities from their existing agencies. And this was crazy. Like, during regular check-in, 47%. During a strategy conversation, 45. In a proposal, 44. So that’s maybe not too surprising. But during annual marketing planning, during project work, when asking for feedback, during onboarding. Like all others, what they-

Drew McLellan:

At social events.

Susan Baier:

They really want to be approached with opportunities from their agencies. And I don’t know that we’re doing that really well. And that big group, the staff prioritizers, the ones with the bigger budgets and the bigger teams are significantly more likely, like two or three times as likely, to say they want to be approached because there’s an opportunity identified by some research that they’ve done from an audience standpoint, or they saw one of their competitors having good luck with something or they learned something from a thought leader or at a conference that impacted their thinking. So, so many opportunities. And when we ask folks how likely they are to buy a new service from a best agency, lots of them say very likely, very, very likely.

Drew McLellan:

I think one of the often missed opportunities for us as agencies is that we don’t attend events and conferences with our clients and we are not learning together or hearing the speakers or walking the floor or whatever it may be. But we heard earlier in the data how often those events or conferences or trade shows trigger new ideas for our clients. And if we’re there when the idea is triggered or we discover it together, I think the opportunity to sort of ideate right in that moment around how could we use that or how could we apply that to the business is really a huge lost opportunity. And so for many of you, I know that’s a time and a dollar investment, but it could be time really well spent. And also time where you are developing more of a relationship with the client, which is the next segment of the data that we have, is what kind of a relationship do they want to have with agency leaders?

Susan Baier:

Totally. And if that’s our niche, we should be at those places anyway. We should be learning ourselves. So I think a double whammy in terms of things that matter. So there’s a lot of stuff in the data around what they expect from their agency relationships. And so much of it that threads through this research is about really connecting with them, really understanding them. I mean, you talk a lot, Drew, about sort of owners building relationships with their clients and the people in this survey absolutely want that kind of relationship and they don’t want it to be superficial. And so we’ve seen it before with respect to hiring, do you feel a connection with an owner?

But this study is all about existing relationships and there’s a lot of clients in this study that just want more from the agencies that they’re already working with. And our reward for doing that with them is that they’ve got money to spend and flexibility to spend it and they want to hear what we think. But it is to your point, it’s based on trust. And I think there’s a lot of good opportunity here. But I also think that there’s places where maybe we’ve taken our eye off the ball a little bit as agencies and are not being the trusted resource that we could be for them.

Drew McLellan:

Well, any of you who have heard the podcast or downloaded the ebook where we outline the ideal agency owner’s day know that client love is a part of that. And what we mean by client love is not client work. It is not doing the day-to-day work. It is carving time out of your day and out of your week and out of your month to connect with your clients in a thinking partner, let’s just talk about business sort of way. It’s not around a specific project, it’s not in the middle of a team meeting. It is time you are investing in them to create more relationship. And in the peer groups, we ask every agency owner to break down their day compared to the ideal day. And I’ll tell you, the one place that almost every agency owner is lacking is in client love, that we do not spend enough time cultivating and nurturing those relationships and building up that trust so that we can take new ideas to the clients and they’re going to be open to them because they know we’re doing it out of their best interest.

Susan Baier:

And I think one of the things this research demonstrates is, there’s also opportunities to build relationships between your team and theirs. So yes, owner level conversations. But so much of this, I think, decision making in a lot of these organizations is including people that are actually part of the tactical process and what kind of a relationship do they feel. If they’re feeling dismissed by the agency or something like that, that’s probably not helping with this question of should we give them any more money? And so many of them just want us to connect with their team and understand their team and work smoothly with their team and be the organization that’s really making things go better for everyone instead of the organization that’s sort of mucking up the gears and making things more difficult.

Drew McLellan:

Well, and I think there are some key takeaways from this. Number one, and probably the most heartening of all the key takeaways is that your clients have money and they are willing to spend it when presented with ideas that have merit. And I can hear a lot of you saying, “God, we can’t even get our clients to come to a status meeting. How in the world do we present these ideas to them?” Yes, that is the challenge. But I think all of you are creative enough and thoughtful enough to figure out ways to serve up the appetizer, to dangle the carrot enough to get your client to listen to you for 20 or 30 minutes.

Or maybe it’s a part of a regular quarterly meeting that you have where you’re always bringing them a big idea or two. Or maybe it’s part of a Friday wrap up where you’re showing them what their competitors are doing and what they could do that would combat that. However it makes sense in your relationship. The point is, despite how they behave, they do want new ideas from you. They do want to know that things are going well. So if they put more gasoline on that fire, it’s going to go even better. They do want to trust you and to count on you to bring them opportunities that allow them to tap into their budget. That’s the big headline for this.

Susan Baier:

And the folks who have actually done this, the increased agency budgets, moved things around mid-year to free up some more money. We see statistically that what has driven that decision more than anything else is the agency asking, the agency approaching, saying, “Hey, we saw some really great results from this. We think you need to put more money against it.” Or, “Hey, we heard about this thing at the conference, and I think that’s a huge opportunity for you.” And I think a lot of us have just become afraid to ask, convinced that because things are scary economically or whatever, our clients aren’t doing this. And we know from data this year already that they are absolutely willing to do it. They’re basically waiting to do it, and we’re not doing a very good job of building trust with them so that they listen to us or approaching them across the many, many ways that they say, “Yeah, pitch me something new.” Lots of opportunities for that.

Drew McLellan:

And I think another way to approach this, again, given people’s reaction to the economy or whatever the slowdown is, there’s a million reasons why, but proposing experiments, recognizing that marketing is pretty iterative these days. All of your clients are interested in AI and machine learning. There are things that you can propose that, “Hey, let’s try this for 90 days. Let’s see what happens.” So think smaller budget amounts, little experiments, more iterative, more collaborative. Again, especially with the staff prioritizers, getting together with them and saying, “Hey, let’s come up with some experiments that we can do based on the results of this thing we’re already doing. I wonder what would happen if we did this or that or we stopped doing that or we turned the orange thing blue or whatever.” And just trying to be more open to smaller projects with a undefined open-ended outcome that is going to teach you how to do something better and bigger.

And I think approaching clients that way, maybe be less scary for them, the budgets might be a little smaller. You’re acknowledging, “Hey, this is an experiment. We’re going to see what we learn here.” And probably one of three things is going to happen, and then we’re going to know what to do next after the next 90 days. And again, being open to learning, whether it’s at a conference, whether it is… I think that for the two segments, we’ve sort of ignored the savings people and agree that they sort of suck. But the other two, whether you are their guide, the relationship builders, or you are their partner, the staff prioritizers, doing things with their team, leading brainstorming, leading ideation sessions, leading exploration, you taking the lead in some of those things, that will make everybody better. Also, I think would be really warmly received.

Susan Baier:

And with the staff prioritizers in particular, getting together with their teams and getting some ideas coming from their side and being able to say, “We heard this from you, which was really, really smart. Here’s our response to that and here’s how we think we could bring that to light effectively.” In to your point, like an experiment or in a small project or something like that. And really showing them that you’re hearing them and listening to their expertise and then coming back with what you can add to make that a worthwhile initiative to do so.

It was so nice after some really hard years with respect to telling agencies what clients were thinking, where they were struggling, it’s so nice to see a study full of so much opportunity with things that I think agencies are built typically to want to do relationships with their clients and strategic conversations and sort of rolling up their sleeves and working with them on things. And the opportunity just appears to be massive here. We just have to know as agencies how to set things up so that they will trust us and how to come to them with ideas throughout the year in all different types of circumstances that allow them to say, “Yeah, it’s worth giving you some more money to work on this.”

Drew McLellan:

And remember, this is not just a 2023 thing. 60 to 70% of your net new revenue should always come from existing clients. You’re just feeling the pressure of it this year because the new business, the new clients are slower to make decisions and execute. But focusing on this in 2023 out of necessity because new business is slower, is a great training tool for you and your AEs and everybody else in your shop to be doing something you should be doing anyway. Taking good care of your clients, growing their business, which grows your business with them. And so I think this is fundamental agency 101 that we have walked away from. It’s so much easier to chase after the new thing. It’s sexy, it’s fun. And I think our team doesn’t really know how to think about it growing our existing client’s business. This is the year we have to do it, but the good news is exercising this muscle and creating some muscle memory around it is good for us long-term as well.

Susan Baier:

For sure. And we have a pretty good map of what we need to do. I mean, I know at the summit we have a lot of folks who are like, “I need to get this to my team. I need to get this to my AEs.” So if you’re out there listening and you’re an owner and you know we’ve got this webinar coming up, invite some of your AEs, they’re the ones who were the rubbers hitting the road on this thing. And I think there’s a lot in there that’s going to create excitement and interest on the part of your team who’s dealing with these clients day in and day out.

Drew McLellan:

But it is not the AEs job by themselves. Honestly, most of your AEs don’t know how to do this. They’re going to need some coaching. And what you also heard in the data is agency leadership, not just ownership, but agency leadership plays a huge role in cultivating the trust and the relationship to grow that book of business. So your AEs need some help and you guys are the ones to be able to help them. So again, just a reminder, that webinar is June 30th, 1:00 PM Eastern. In the show notes, there will be a Zoom link. If you get the newsletter, there will be a Zoom link. If you’re a part of the Build a Better Agency podcast Facebook group, there will be a Zoom link. So there is no excuse for you not to have, what? Yes, the Zoom link for the June 30th webinar. If you can’t find it in any of those places, you can email me or Susan. And you know what we will give you? The Zoom link.

Susan Baier:

The zoom link.

Drew McLellan:

Right. So please mark on your calendar, June 30th, 1:00 PM Eastern, and come explore this data with us a little further. Susan, as always, this was a fun study. You’re right, this was… Sometimes when you and I are going over the raw results, I’m always like, “Oh God, what do we have to tell them this year?” But this one felt good.

Susan Baier:

Yeah, it did feel good. And I know that our agency is incorporating a lot of this, and I hope that all of you listeners are thinking about doing the same thing because it’s really a roadmap to success in a lot of ways with your existing clients.

Drew McLellan:

Yeah. So thank you for coming on the show again. Thanks for being our research partner for the last 10 years. And here’s to 10 more.

Susan Baier:

Here’s to 10 more. Clink. Cheers.

Drew McLellan:

Right.

Susan Baier:

Thanks, Drew.

Drew McLellan:

All right, guys. This wraps up another episode of Build a Better Agency. So again, action item, June 30th, 1:00 PM. Find the Zoom link in any of the places I told you and join us. Invite your entire team, fill the conference room, invite anybody you want, just whoever you think needs to hear this data. And we will answer questions live, so it’s not just us walking you through the data, but we’ll field questions throughout the webinar. And I know I have to catch a plane later that afternoon, but we’ll stick around for as long as we can to answer any questions that you might have. In the meantime, a huge shout out and thank you to our friends at White Label IQ. They are the presenting sponsor and have been for several years of this podcast. They make it possible for us to bring you research and guests like Susan and other folks every week. So big thank you to them.

As you know, they partner with agencies. They are a great example of what we were talking about. Clients want you to bring partners to the table for the things you can’t do. And White Label is a great agency partner for White Label dev, design, and PPC work. They are born out of an agency. They understand how to work with agencies, they are part of the AMI community, good, honest, trustworthy folks. So check them out at whitelabeliq.com/ami. And as always, I will be back next week with another guest. Super grateful for you to be here with us, and I will talk to you soon. Thanks for listening.

Speaker 1:

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