Teaching AEs how to grow your existing client base with Mark Riggs

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 in to the conversation. I think you’re gonna find it really helpful. All right, let’s get to the show.

Welcome to the Agency Management Institute community, where you’ll learn how to grow and scale your business, attract and retain the best talent, make more money, and keep more of the money you make. The Build a Better Agency Podcast, presented by a White Label IQ is packed with insights on how small to midsize agencies are getting things done, bringing his 25 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 a Better Agency. Thanks for coming back. Always great to spend some time with you. Today we’re gonna talk about a really important topic. We’re gonna talk about how to think about growing the clients that you already have, which, you know, 20 23, 20 22 and 2023 have been really tough from a growing, from new client acquisition. So many agencies are really focusing more and more attention on growing their existing book of business, which, as you know, you’ve heard me say before, and you’re gonna hear me say, I’m sure at some point in time in the conversation in a minute, that you know, 60 to 70% of your net new revenue.

So of all the new money that you have in 23 that you didn’t have in 22, or that you’re gonna have in 24 that you didn’t have in 23, 60 to 70% of that money should come from your existing clients. And for most of you, that is aspirational. You’re not there yet. And so we’re gonna talk today about how, how to focus your team and your agency on growing your existing book of business. How do you, how do you get more from the clients that you already have? And you know, that is a topic where that we cover extensively in our AE bootcamps. The truth is, most of your AEs don’t understand that it’s their job to sell to their clients. You know, a lot of them balk at the idea of the word sales.

The good news is it’s not really selling. It’s really about understanding your client’s business well enough to be super helpful to bring to them ideas that will help them grow their business, which also grows our business. So we talk about that quite a bit in the A bootcamps. We give them some great tools to do that. So I wanna give you the dates of those. So the Advanced AE Bootcamp is gonna be September 14th and 15th. And the regular AE Boot AE Bootcamp is October 19th and 20th. So the October workshop is best for brand new employees, people who’ve been in the business, I’d say less than three or four years that it’s new to them. So a lot of junior AEs, project managers, account coordinators, folks like that.

And then the advanced is for folks who have been doing account service for a while. So think four or five years of experience, maybe they’re managing other AEs. We have lots of folks who come to the Advanced, a bootcamp that have 20 years of experience, but you want them to have a little bit of experience on their belt before they come to the advanced workshop. It is not a prerequisite that they attend the AE Bootcamp before they attend the Advanced AE Bootcamp. It’s really more about where they are in their career at which one makes more sense for them. So again, those dates. September 14th and 15th is the Advanced AE Bootcamp. And October 19th and 20th is the entry level AE Bootcamp. Both are held in Denver.

And we would love to have you, and if you wanna register your folks, you can head over to the A M I website Agency management institute.com, and under the How We Help tab. And you’ll see workshops, and you’ll see both workshops there. We won’t teach them again until the spring. So if you wanna get that in in 2023, the September and October dates are your only opportunity to do that. You get a discount for sending more than one person. And of course, if you’re an A Mami member, you get an additional discount as well. All right. Lemme tell you a little bit about our guests. So Mark Riggs has spent a lot of time on the agency side of our work. He was an AE. He grew books of business for the agencies that he worked for.

And then, as I’m sure he will tell you, he decided to branch out on his own and work with agencies and help them teach their people how to grow their books of business. So he took what, he spent a lifetime, a career learning, and now he’s teaching that stuff. Super smart guy really has a great track record with helping agencies grow their existing clients. And so my job is to pick his brain and get as much out of him as we can in the hour. So let’s not waste any time. Let’s just jump right in. Mark, welcome to the podcast.

Thanks, Drew. Thanks for having me. Appreciate it.

Hey, tell everybody a little bit about your background and how you came to help agencies grow their existing books of business.

Yeah, well, a couple of fortuitous bounces. You know, I, I didn’t start out in the agency business. I started out like a lot of people in, in public relations. I started out as a reporter, but with the intention of getting an education in the newsroom to get into public relations. Right? So I did that for a few years, went to grad school, ended up getting involved in the Olympic movement, which led me to meeting my first agency boss, who was on a bid committee that I was a part of for the Pan-American Games way back in the nineties. But I went to work at French West Vaughn, that’s a agency here in the, in the southeast. And Rick French and his team, David Gwen, gave me an opportunity.

And that was my first agency. And I was there for I think, seven years. And then left there, went to Mullen Low, worked in an I P G agency, got a tremendous education on brand integrated marketing. Sure. You know, with an ad agency, with a PR function. Right. Got introduced to brand planning and strategy and those things. And I was just kind of like, you know, just eating it up. Right. You know, I was just like a sponge. And then, but I’ve always been really passionate about sport. Then I had an incredible opportunity to move over to it at the time was Alan Taylor Communications. But by the time I got hired and I, and I moved for the job, it was Taylor and was there for about 10 years.

And, you know, Taylor was the original sports PR shop. You know, Alan Taylor was Muhammad Ali’s publicist. That’s how they got started. Right, right, right. So, was there for about 10 years, learned a lot about what I do now in terms of how to grow business. I think I was always kind of cut that way, and I’ll tell you a little bit about how I ended up having that viewpoint. But it was really, really important because we went narrow and deep and the, the business model, there was 15 clients, right. Go narrow and deep, find incremental opportunities. And it’s where I DeVol, you know, developed this philosophy of, of solve don’t sell. Right. If I’m, if I’m out in front of the clients and I’m taking care of their issues or helping them along the way, you know, the business really should kind of take care of itself.

Yeah. Right. It’s the same, same message that we teach at the bootcamps, the AE bootcamps is it’s your job to help your clients grow their business, which will inevitably grow your own. Right. Yeah.

No, no doubt. I mean, and that’s the beauty of what we do is a client’s challenges and problems are never completely solved. Right. There’s al there’s always more to solve, right? That’s right. Well,

So, or you solve one and that, that uncovers another. Right?

Yeah. So spent 10 years there, got some incredible brand experience, was a part of this transformation that’s now a Harvard business case study and, and lived it and saw this organizational shift and change, and just kind of soaked up as much as I possibly could and developed some really great, great relationships. And so after 10 years, you know, looking for new opportunities, I followed a former managing partner at Taylor over to m ww and worked at m ww for about 18 months. And somewhere along the way, you know, early 2018, you know, I had spent about 12 years basically, I live in Charlotte, North Carolina, but I had spent about 12 years on the road all the time.

Right, right. And was just kind of an absentee dad. And it kind of lost a passion for the, the business, quite honestly. But I always had this, this knack for growing business, and I, I, I will not lie and say I was the best when it came to new business. If you gave me an R F P, I could chew raw meat, but I, I wasn’t the guy who went out and, and beat the bushes. Right. So early 2018, I, I stepped away and wanted to spend more time at home and, and be a present father and that type of thing. And that summer I get a call from a, from a former colleague named Ann Mayer, who at this point was now the C F O of the Omnicom PR group. And she calls me up randomly and says, Hey, listen, you know, a lot of our agencies, great global agencies, but a lot of our young people don’t know how to grow business.

They’re just, they’re just really good at, you know, managing what they have, right? Yeah, yeah. Taking the order. Yeah. Could you come up and do kind of a lunch and learn type of thing? Right. And so I did. And so a few of their agency members were in the room, and fortuitous balance got introduced to Karen Van Bergen, who was president of Omnicom PR group at the time. And Brad McAfee, who’s now dear friend, but at the time was the global c e o of Portelli. And after I gave that little talk, he pulls me aside and was like, all right, how’d you really do that? Like, how’d you take small accounts and grow them into multimillion dollar accounts? And I said, oh, yeah, I just told you here’s, you know, here’s some of the philosophies. And he’s like, no, no, no. How’d you really do it?

And I said, man, listen, you know, my mom always said, you have two ears and one mouth. You should use ’em in proportion. You know, I think as professional communicators, we think people are paying for us to talk. Yeah. And for us to share ideas and constantly just, you know, and I said, you know, to me, if you’ll listen, you’ll hear opportunities. I said, but the trick is, can I quickly marry the tools I have in my toolbox with the opportunity and talk about it with a client in a natural way that feels like I’m solving a problem not selling them? Right. And so I got an opportunity with, with Porter, working with, with Brad and his team, and I started working with some very young executives.

So we, we worked for a quarter, uncovered quite a bit of organic revenue, working on eight accounts, signing me up for another quarter, and had similar success. And then I go to Brad and say, listen, you know what, it’s kind of just slapped me in the face that, you know, there’s such a power behind organic growth, you know, that, you know, it’s, it’s more profitable. It’s, it’s, you know, you’ve already done the hard part, you’ve already won the business. You know, all all those things. Right. There’s greater retention of your people and your, and your talent.

One of the metrics that we talk about a lot is that 60 per 60 to 70% of an agency’s net new income every year should come from existing clients. And very few agencies hit that mark. So, you’re right. A, it’s, it’s deeper, richer money. It’s easier to get, but for a lot of agencies, as you know, this is just a pain point where the AEs have not been trained to understand, well, first of all, a lot of times they’re overburdened, they don’t have the time to listen Yeah. And cultivate relationship with their pe with their clients. Number two, they’re so busy racing around just filling the order that they don’t, they don’t know how to invest their time in learning more about the client’s business.

And as a result, most agencies fall way short of that 60 to 70%.

Yeah. You know, and it’s, I read a stat a long time ago from Bain that, you know, acquiring a new client is, is anywhere from just like five to 25 times more expensive Right. Than growing an existing one. Right? Right. So that, that was the focus. And I, and I go to Brad and say, Hey, listen, this is not a competitive thing. I’m not, I’m not pitching you against Edelman or, you know, whoever. Right, right. I’m helping people grow what they already have. Would you help, would you mind if I pitched this service to other agencies? And he told me to go for it. Yeah. So that’s, that’s what I started doing. And pre pandemic we’re, we’re doing pretty well with it. I, it, it did dawn on me eventually that every agency owner or agency principal that I would speak to about the power of organic growth, it was Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.

We do organic growth. You know, we, we, we grow organically. Right. And I finally learned to say, well, of course you do because you do great work somewhere along the way, you do great work. Right. And great work gets more work. Right. But what about those moments? You know, nobody bats a thousand.

Right.

You know, batting three into

Whole family. And and most agencies will say they do great or organic growth, but they don’t track it. So they can’t actually quantify it. And, and again, because we see the financials of all the agencies we serve, I am telling you it, they are not hitting the 60 to 70% mark.

Yeah. And then not only do they not track it, but they’re not intentional about it. Right,

Right, right.

And oftentimes, you know, for us, it’s, it’s the way you start with a client.

Right.

You know, it’s, you, you, you win a new piece of business. And what, what we generally do in the agency world, we jump right in. Yeah. The, the emails start flying the, Hey, let’s get ’em a couple placements to validate their decision to having hired us. But what we don’t do is sit down and discuss how are we gonna work together?

Right.

You know, hey, client, what gets you raises and promotions.

Right? Yeah. That, that actually, I think that’s like such a secret weapon. We talk about that in, in a lot of our workshops. That, that you should understand what motivates your client personally. Like, this is how I’m gonna get promoted. This is how, like, like I tell the story, we had a, we had an agency who finally said to one of their clients, okay, how do you get a bonus, a raise, a promotion? And he said, actually, one of the ways I get a bonus every year is if I do not spend my entire marketing budget. And they were like, you’re kidding. ’cause they’ve been pushing to spend all the money. Right. And so they said, okay, well, how much do you have to leave on the table to get your bonus?

And so whatever the number was, you told them. So they then built the budget intentionally to leave that amount of money so that he would always get his bonus, which made him the champion for that agency, right. All along the way. So he kept getting bigger budgets, he just, they just always knew to leave whatever, $10,000 or whatever it was in a slush fund at the end, so that he got his bonus.

Which is interesting because, you know, that’s counterintuitive what most right. Clients say, Hey, listen, I gotta spend it to the penny. That’s right. Or I won’t get, or I won’t get Right. And you’d have never known if you hadn’t asked that question.

That’s exact, that’s exactly right.

Right. But, you know, we also ask things like, Hey, how do you handle conflict? Because if you want me to be a consultant, if you want me to be a counselor, we’re gonna have reasonable conflict. And I don’t mean head banging conflict, but we’re gonna have differences, opinions. And that’s the beauty of an agency, right. You’re constantly smoothing, smoothing that, that, that stone trying to make a beautiful gym. Right. Right. So that’s along the way. I, I did realize though, that I was giving people a vitamin, not a pain bill. And so I, I sat in on this professional development thing. I was listening to this gentleman who had, had built his own consultancy and sold it. So it was all about how do you grow scale and exit? And he said, one of the top five competitors to a professional service firm is in action.

Right.

Not doing anything, standing pat not innovating. Right. Taking your clients for granted, et cetera, all this stuff. And I said, man, if I could calculate people’s in action, right? So I came up with this very simple formula that’s on our website now. People can play with it if they want, but we asked four simple questions. And what we can do is we can tell any agency how many pieces of net new business over that horizon. So we know all, a lot of these small mid-size agency owners, whether it’s two years or 10 years, they, they do want to exit at some point, get paid for their life’s work. Right. But we can tell you how many net new pieces of business you have to win to get there. Right. And it is an impossibility just about every time.

And so it really illustrates the point of that we’ve gotta teach our people how to expand revenue. And, and our joke is, you know, we’re a society of liberal arts majors. Nobody knows how to rub two nickels together until you’re pressed into duty. And if you’re really good at churning butter, eventually they put you in charge of all the butter churners. So that ad VP level, all of a sudden, you know, you’re given all these business acumen things you’re responsible for, right? Hey, now you need you to be in charge of, of margins and f t e and a g i and direct and indirect costs, and people’s heads explode. Right. So you see people either going up or going out. So our philosophy is let’s teach people the business of the agency. Right.

Because I didn’t get, I didn’t really find my groove until it dawned on me as a young AE that we were in business.

Yeah. Right, right,

Right. And I had a, I had a bumpy pass to, to that discussion, which we won’t go into here, but what it did lead me to is, you know, I was a young AE. I was just doing what I was told. I was pitching, I was writing, I was being creative, all the things. And at that agency, you know, I was offered a position on a different account team, and I had, and I, Drew I kept getting moved around, and I thought it was like, why, why do they keep moving me around? I don’t, I don’t understand. Right. And so I was offered a position, I thought it was like a new job offering on the biggest account, the agency. And I thought about, I said, can I think about it? I’m like, yeah, sure. So I went home, thought about it, came back to the next day.

I’m like, no, thanks, I’ll just stay where I am. And they was like, ah, no, it wasn’t, you know, then it was colored. It wasn’t really a, I wasn’t giving you the option. Right. I,

We, we, we positioned it in a nice way, but you’re moving. Yeah,

You’re moving. Right. And, you know, it kind of got played back to me like, Hey, you know, are you, are you a team player? I was like, well, I don’t, I don’t understand. Why do I keep getting moved around? Right. And it was explained to me, well, hey, we thought you were high potential, so we wanted to expose you to all the pieces of business. I’m like, why don’t you just tell me that? Right.

We’re

Supposed to be professional communicators. Right. So I go home that night, very upset, and I called my dad and I said, you know, tell him what’s going on. He said, you know what? I want you to go back tomorrow and ask him how they make money, because I had no idea. Yeah. Right. So I go back in the next day, I ask Rick French, how do we make money? And to his credit, he spent a couple hours with me on a whiteboard. It showed me everything from F t E and Billability and, you know, utilization, et cetera. He showed me how the business, and all of a sudden this light bulb went off in my head. I’m like, oh my God, we’re actually here to make money.

Yeah. Yeah. I’m, I’m always surprised we talk about this all the time. I’m always surprised at how few agencies talk about agency math with their employees. Unbelievable. I mean, our bonus program, everything we teach is all about your employees have to understand how every day your employees either make you money or cost you money. No ifs, ands, or buts about it. And if they don’t know any better, you can’t get frustrated with them when they cost you money. Right. You have to teach them how agencies make money. So let’s, I I want to dig into, so, so now let’s fast forward. Now you, what you do is you help agencies teach their account people how to grow their book of business.

Exactly. Right. In,

In the simplest term. That’s, that’s what you do. So you started to say, it starts with how you kick off the thing. So let’s talk about how do we begin with intentionality at the start of a relationship with a client to, to set ourselves up, to be able to help them grow their business as we continue to work together. What does that look like?

Yeah. So that, that is, is you having a, a principled and established approach to onboarding. And every agency thinks they have one, but, but they generally don’t. Right. And we’re not, we wanna be in collaboration. We wanna be in partnership. Right. We wanna be in business together. Right. But what, but what we end up doing is, you know, have this idea, it’s somewhere along the way, someone smart said this to me, I don’t remember who it was, but, you know, unexpressed expectations or plan resentments

Right?

Now, if you don’t talk about, Hey, this is how we do business, what you’re ultimately gonna end up doing is inheriting the negative equity from the previous agency. That’s

Right. Because

Clients just know that you’re an agency and you must be like everybody else and et cetera. And we, we’ve worked with so many agencies over the last five years that yeah, they might offer some similar products and services, but they are unique in the way they do business. So for us, it’s never, don’t introduce the way you do business with a document, with the M s a, with the scope. Right. Let’s talk about here’s how we make money, here’s how we work as an agency. And going back to your point a minute ago, what, what are your personal ambitions to that end? Right? Right. I know, I know the brand has, you know, a mission. We wanna accomplish these things, et cetera. But what, but what are your ambitions? And I want talk about that with them.

Right. And I always like to start off with three questions. Are you, do you want me to be a counselor or do you want me to be an order taker? I, I’m fine with either. I just want clarity on which one it is. Right. Right. Nine times outta 10 you hear, oh, of course I want you to be a counselor. Right. But the smart ones say, I want you to be both. Sure. Right. Okay. Well, great. Do you know how you want the story to end? Let’s talk about that. Let’s not talk about objectives necessarily and that type of thing in the beginning, but do you know how you want the story to end? Yes. I, I do know I want the story to end. Okay, great. Are you gonna hold me accountable, me and my agency accountable to that outcome? Well, of course I am. I’m paying you. Okay, great.

Right. Well then let me tell you how this goes. Right? So it, we, we, we try to do it in a very affable way, but, but yeah. We work with these agencies over time to change muscle memory because with the way we’ve been trained and brought up is to bend over backwards, give it away, and we end up over-servicing, which eats into a g i, which eats into anything that you multiple, you may want to get later on. Right. So what we’re teaching is you have to write defensible scopes of work, very definitive fo scopes of work. And you’re te you have to teach your people how to defend them. And going back to your point about understanding the business, what happens to a dollar when it walks through the door?

How far am I willing to go? Right. Or when or when do I walk into the CFO’s office or whoever handles finance at a small agency and says, Hey, how far can I go in this negotiation? Right. How, how far can I go with the pricing? So we’re, we’re wanting to teach people who are really good at the art of advertising or public relations or sponsorship or whatever it is to be in business, to, to make, to make money. And so we collaborate with them over time. We have a process we call dig, which stands for discovery, immersion Growth. Right. But we work that process to change that muscle memory, and we’re holding them accountable. So over time, it’s not just a nice to have, we’re actually holding them accountable.

And we, we call it the rule of three Drew. So in the first three months in working with an agency, you should have found at least 3% revenue growth, have introduced three new products and services to the client, or have met three new people on the client side who could change your business. Right. More, more relationships, more conversations, more opportunity. Yep. And lots of times, we’ll say to these small mid-size agencies, 3%, they’re like, that’s not a lot. I’m like, yeah, you’re right. It is, it’s not a lot. Right. You can find 3%, and if you can find three, you can find seven, you can find seven, you can find 10. Now I’m changing the muscle memory, I’m changing the approach. We’re actually here to generate revenue. And it’s, it’s being, I know we’re in account service, I know we’re in account management, and we want to be affable, and we wanna be easy to work with, but it’s important for your people to understand the business dynamics and the repercussions of what we do or don’t do, how that’s gonna affect our p and l.

Right. Right.

Because we pay taxes just like the clients pay taxes. Right.

Well, and I think it also, you know, I, I think it’s the part of the work that isn’t necessarily trained unless somebody gets some outside help. So, you know, at our a e bootcamps, one of the things we talk about is, here’s a, here’s an uncomfortable reality that you probably don’t know. Your agency owner carries a list in their head every day of, if I get a phone call from a client and they leave, here’s in order who I have to let go. ’cause the only thing they have to write the ship is to have fewer people. That’s our biggest expense. So your job as an AE is to be at the bottom of the list. And that to be at the bottom of the list means that you are retaining your clients and you’re growing your clients.

That’s your job. Yeah. Ultimately, that is your job. And, and, you know, we talk about the scope documents. So one of the things you talked about is sort of in that kickoff meeting, tell me those things. Part of the problem in an agency is that kickoff meeting is held by somebody different than the day-to-day AE as a general rule. Right. Bingo. So, so either I might be in the room, but I, I’m maybe taking notes or I haven’t said a word because my boss is in the room. My boss is having that conversation, and then I am obligated to now fulfill the promises of that organization of what we’ve said to that client. And scope is a, scope is a great example. I tell agency owners all the time, the reason why you have so much scope creep is ’cause your documents are horrible and your employees cannot defend them.

And so when push comes to shove and the client says, well, I want the fifth revision, and your document doesn’t say how many revisions they get, guess what your a is gonna say? Okay. Because they don’t have a leg to stand on. And so it, it really does start with, as you say, how we kick things off and the way we document our promises and the way we hold clients accountable and ourselves accountable to measurable metrics.

You know what else that does is it sets you up to also go back once a quarter Right. Or once every half a year and say, how am I doing against what you and I agreed to the way we were gonna work together? Yeah. Where am I winning? Where am I losing? What would you like to see more of? And what would you like to see less of? And let ’em talk. Right. We, my, my experience has been, you know, everything’s good news for the client. My status is great. Results are everything’s good until it’s not good. Right.

Right.

Right. Give your client a constructive environment in which to complain, where am I winning? Where am I losing? And when they say, Hey, I wish you did more of this, I wish you’d stopped doing that, you know, oh, we can do that. Right. I don’t, I don’t know what means,

Or at least, or at least tell me more about that. Tell me, yeah. Tell me why you want more of that, or tell me what we’re, you say you want me to stop doing that? Okay. Well, here’s what I’m trying to accomplish with that. Let’s figure out a different way for me to accomplish that for you.

Yeah, yeah. I mean, and, and it can be the smallest of things. I I worked on a, a very large insurance brand when I was at Taylor. And what was interesting is along the way, I, I had come from this ad agency where we were on all the time. On all the time, right? Yeah. And so I brought that mentality to this client, and about a year in the, the main client who’s now a dear friend of mine, she calls me up and it was like a blessing. And it was also a, a very interesting phone call. But she said, listen, you have to stop emailing and calling my people after five o’clock.

Yeah.

I was, I was dumbfounded. I was like, what? After she’s like, when they leave here, I want ’em to be mom and dad or live their life or whatever. It’s, and so I was, you know, I was ticking her off. I was upsetting people unnecessarily because I would email them or eight o’clock, Hey, I got an idea, you wanna hop on the phone and talk? Right. Right. Those types of things. Right. And because that’s the way I had come up. Right, right. Just always on. And if she hadn’t told me that, we probably wouldn’t have had a 10 year relationship.

Right.

We probably wouldn’t have grown that account into multimillion dollar account. Yeah. Right. But it, it was just, it’s not always just about the business, it’s also about the way we work. Right.

No doubt. For

Sure. Yeah. So, so that onboarding’s not just about, like, to your point, it’s not just about the brand, it’s not just about the agency, but Drew, how are you and I gonna work together?

Right.

Right. Like, wait, what are your likes and dislikes? Let’s, let’s go put it, put ’em on the table. And by the way, if you ask me for something incremental, it’s gonna be additional. Right. I, I’ve gotta make the work feel tangible.

Yeah.

Because I feel like most of the time, you know, it’s strategy ideation. These things are intangible, they’re pixie dust. Right. And so it’s really easy for the client to say, Hey, just work that in there. Just, just this time, you know? Right. Just this one time. Right. And then it becomes standard operating procedure. And so, you know, we’ve come up with this list of what we call the dirty words of scopes. And so when, one of the things we do with an agency when we first start working with them is, all right, what are you supposed to be doing? What are you supposed to be getting paid for? And so we review scopes of work. Yeah. And we see all these websites.

I wanna I wanna ask you about the dirty words.

Okay.

Let’s, this is a perfect time to take a break and then Okay. I know everybody will come back. Alright guys, so we’ll be right back in a minute. We’ll talk and talk about the dirty words that we have in our scope documents after this brief break. Hey, sorry to interrupt, but I wanted to make sure that you are thinking about how to connect with your clients by figuring out what they love and maybe a few things that they’re not so crazy about with your agency. So at a m i, one of the things we offer are client satisfaction surveys. We do both quantitative and qualitative. So an online survey, but also interviews with some of your key clients. And then we come back to you with trends, recommendations, what they love, what they don’t love.

Lots of insights around how you can create an even tighter relationship with your clients. So if you have interest in that, you can go under the How We Help tab on the AAMI website. And very bottom choice on the how we help tab is the client satisfaction surveys. You can read more about it, but whether you have us do it or you do it yourself or you hire somebody else, it is really critical that you be talking to your clients about what they love and what they wish was different or better. So do not miss the opportunity to tighten your relationship with your client whether we help you or not. All right. All right. Let’s get back to the show. Alright, we’re back. And we were just about to dig into the dirty words that we stick in our scope documents that cost us money and time.

Alright, mark, give it to us.

Yeah. So, you know, it’s a long list, but the ones that I see that are most egregious are ongoing. Ongoing. We’ll, we’ll do ongoing media relations, well ongoings all the time, forever and ever. Amen. Right? So if you, if you do a great job, you crush it on that first program or that first initiative for the client, and they come back and say, Hey, I got a second initiative, or I’ve got a, I want to give you more. Well, now your scope will work or your, it says ongoing, so where’s the line? Right. Or with content to your point, Hey, we’ll do th definitive is I’ll do three pieces of content per work. You get two rounds of edits on each, right? Yeah. I wanna draw, I wanna draw a line as needed.

See that all the time as needed. Well, where does that stop? Who, who defines what’s, what’s needed? Right. What are some of the others ongoing as needed? Oh, included. But, you know, was it included? But as, as part of, or not necessarily included, but we, we always say these things are included, or we’ll do things like estimates. I, I see people all the time who send over scope what they consider to be a scoping document and it says estimate or proposal. Right. They’re, they’re not, they don’t have a specific chain as to how they’re doing these documents.

Right. And so the, and so when you use these words, you’re just leaving an open gate for clients to just come and pour in, pour in on, because you haven’t drawn a line, you haven’t said, we will strategically pitch 15 outlets per month. Right. Or whatever the, the metric may be. Right. Numbers are our friends. So if I can be definitive with those things, I always know where the line has been crossed. Because at some point, you know, we get asked a lot, well, how do I have that conversation with a client? I say, well, so to me, and, and I know I’m making sound, this sound easier than it really is, but hey, client, your requests are starting to outpace the resource. Right? When we, when we started working together, we agreed on four f t e to do this amount of work.

Now you’re giving us so much work, it’s five and a half, right? I, I’m, if I did that for my every client, I’m gonna be outta business. Hey. Right. It’s like you’re running your household budget. If you’ve got more going out than you’ve got coming in, you’re gonna be living under a bridge. Right. So, but trying to get those words eliminated from scopes. So they’re very, very defensible and they’re very clear as this is what you’re scoping needs to do now. Right. Right. And one of the easy things that we developed Drew for, for those clients who don’t like to talk about money, but the, the client comes to them to, to them with an ex extra assignment or a thing, is we call it the assignment confirmation brief.

Right. And it looks very much like a just a brief, Hey, what’s the assignment? What’s our goals? Who’s our target? All those types of things. But it also asks, what’s the incremental budget for this incremental assignment right now, the first couple of times your client went, what do you, what do you mean incremental? Well, you’re asking me to do more. And so I often use the analogy of a glass with water, right? That that glass is your staffing model and the scope is the water that you pour in it. If you just keep letting ’em pour more and more in, it’s gonna overflow, it’s gonna make a big mess. Right? So we’ve gotta make sure that we’re constantly aligned on our staffing and, and the work that we’re, that we can do. And so that’s those defensible scopes.

It’s the one thing I think most agencies take for granted, Hey, let’s just get something signed and get so we can start billing, right? Let’s just get something on paper. Or Hey, do you have a template from that other client that was very similar that we can just copy and use that and Right. And, and it’s if,

If they get, if they get something signed at all.

Right. Yeah. So that’s a good point. But you know, when I, when we first started down this path, I was working with an agency and the, and the president, c e o calls me up and says, Hey, listen, I got, he heard me speaking somewhere, and he said, I got three VPs. And they’re horrible at organic growth. They, they wouldn’t know an opportunity if it smacked them. I was like, all right, okay, great. Well let’s start with the scopes. Let’s, let’s read the scopes. And they were beautifully written documents, pros. I mean, the guy was a poet, but they weren’t business documents. Right? Right. So I said, listen here, you, they may not be grow good at growing business, but you’re handcuffing them the way you’re writing these scopes. They’re completely handcuffed. And so what, what expectations are realistic of you to have them to grow business when there is open-ended as, I mean, you could drive a Mack truck thing, right?

Yep. So let’s, let’s talk about the intentionality. So I think, I think you’re right. Every agency owner would say, we absolutely grow our book of business. We grow our clients. We, we keep clients forever, we grow them, but it’s sort of by accident, by accident. So by talk a little bit about the in intentional, the intentionality around what AEs need to be thinking about and doing to grow their book of business. And one of the things that we talk about all the time is AEs need to understand the, the a g i of their book of business and know that their job, it’s not about a bonus, it’s not about a promotion. Your job is to grow that book of business at least 10% a year

At least.

Right? But most, most AEs don’t know what their book of business is worth. They don’t know agency math, and they certainly don’t know they’re being measured without talking about it, about if they grow their book of business. So how do you help AEs understand and build intentionality into the management of their clients?

So one of the, the one of the tools we deploy, we call the product deployment map, right? So let’s take agency A and we’ll say, Hey, listen, let’s your products and services out that you as an agency that you have. What’s really, what’s really interesting is lots of times we’ll get those from leadership or from the head of client services and we’ll get dig into those with the, the account people. And they’re like, I’ve never even heard of that service.

Yeah.

Don’t, they don’t even know the tools that are in their toolbox. I’m like, what, what’s the expectation of them upselling or cross-selling these things? They don’t even know what they are. Right? Yeah. Yeah. So, but we start, we start with that list, and the first part of the exercise is I’ll say, okay, I want you to go down and highlight everything you do for that client, right? Just, just highlight it all the products and services you, you deploy. And so they do that. And then I said, the first question is, are you getting paid for all those things? Right? Because we over service with services,

Right?

Right. We end up giving too much time because we over service with services. And so if they’re over servicing where they’re giving a service away, we’re like, all right, well, let’s kind a put in that we’ll come back and talk about how we go and have that conversation with the client, right? The, the overservicing illustration. Right? But the products and services that you’ve highlighted, what problems are we solving for them? How is that specific product and service highlighting for them, right? I mean, solving for them. And so we ask them to be very specific and, you know, go a little bit deeper than the obvious of what the problem is we’re trying to solve. Is there, is it related to their business issues? Is does types of things, right?

So if you highlight all the things that you’re solving, if you’re immersed in the business, you should also be able to articulate all the problems you’re not solving. Right. And if I can articulate, it doesn’t matter if it’s 10 problems or one problem. Can I draw a line from that list of products and services to that challenge, by the way, even if another agency’s doing it for ’em, right? Right. Do you think you should be solving that problem for them? And how Right. How would I do that? Right? So if I can draw a line between my products and services and the challenges, I’m not solving what’s the cost of those services. Now I’ve got a goal, now I’m intentional about, Hey, I believe I could find a hundred thousand dollars of incremental revenue by solving a real problem.

Yeah. ’cause what we see so often is, you know, you’re walking through the client’s office or you pick up a phone and you call ’em, say, Hey, I got a big idea. I got a great idea. Right? And you and I both know all the clients here are big budget. Yep. Right. As opposed to if I’m very intentional about identifying a problem they have and I know how to solve it, going to them and saying, Hey, I have, I’ve noticed something, I have an idea thought. And here is the business benefit of solving that. Right. I wanna be able to articulate to them, the business benefit here would be the, the impact on your p and l. This would be sales or distribution or whatever it may brand, whatever the things we’re scoring. Right? Right. And so, if I can be very intentional about that, now I’m having a conversa who, who doesn’t wanna have a conversation about solving a problem, right.

Or helping them sell more of what they sell. Right. You know, a C M O of a fledgling brand will listen to that. What’s the, what’s the average tenure of A C M O these days, like two and a half years? Like, tell them, tell them something they haven’t heard before, solve a specific problem. And if I can be very intentional about that, you know, that we can work with them and figure out, all right, how do I set up that conversation? Do I have it at the end of a status meeting? Do I set up a call? Right. But I just, I wanna bounce the idea off of them. And if I can get them, if I can invite them in the idea, Hey, I got this idea, I wanna bounce it off of you and I’m gonna get your immediate reaction. Right. They’re either gonna bite or they’re not. Right.

But if they give their, they give their immediate reaction, say, oh, great, great. Let me stop you. Let me go back to the shop, let flesh this out a little bit more with my team. And then I come back with an idea statement, right. And how, how’s this feel? What would you do different client? What would you add? What would you subtract? Right. Really kind of put the onus on them if they’re gonna be involved in the conversation, and I can have 2, 3, 4 of these conversation about developing an idea that’s gonna solve a business problem, problem. I’ve had three or four conversations and I have never brought up money.

Right.

Never brought up money. Right. But if they’re bought into the idea at the end, it’s, would you be interested in me in putting some numbers against this? Let’s see if this is doable. Yeah, sure. Why not? Right, right. You know, and so, but the, the key for us is I’ve gotta go into any opportunity with the intention of I am solving a problem, there is a barrier to growth and I need to figure out how to either remove it or get around it.

But I have to be, look, I have to understand their business well enough to spot it, to be able to articulate it. And again, I have to have the time to invest in that kind of conversation and in that kind of homework. And, you know, I think for a lot of AEs, a they don’t even know that’s their job. They are overburdened as it is. They don’t have the time and they don’t, they’re not incented to do it. Right. They, they don’t understand that it’s actually their job and it’s how they’re being evaluated. So, you know, it’s sort of like you were talking about, you kept getting moved around, moved around, but no one sat you down and said, okay, hey, here’s what’s going on. Here’s what, here’s why we’re doing this. Here’s what your job actually is and here’s how you’re being measured.

And I think we do our employees a huge disservice by not helping them understand what their job really is, how we are measuring their success without them understanding that that’s the measurement and that we’re holding them accountable without giving them the tools to actually do the job.

Or, or even like you said, telling them that is an expectation.

Right. Right.

Right. Again, it goes back to those unexpressed expectations. Yeah. Right. But you know, the other thing that, that I think, I, I read somewhere not too long ago that, and this could be completely wrong, but this is what I read, that like 1% of M b a grads go into marketing communications 1%, right? Yeah. Right.

If

I look at, if I look at the top benefits of having an M B A in my business, one of it’s economics, just understanding the economy, what’s going on around us, et cetera. Because we feel like we get so shut out of different categories because we don’t have experience in that category, et cetera. But if your people understood the business and the economy and the culture of what’s going on around us, I should be able to have an educated conversation. Right? Right. So to your point about not only being immersed in my client’s business, how do they might make money, how do they spend money? How does procurement work? Right? But if I understand the economics of their category and their competitive set,

Right

Now, I can have conversations around here’s would be the business benefit of doing something like this. Who would not listen to that? Right. Again, batting 300 will get you in the hall of fame of fame. They’re not gonna buy it every time.

Right.

At least you get the equity of having tried to solve a problem. So the next time they have a problem, you know what, maybe, maybe Mark’s got an idea. Right? Right. He, he, he keeps coming to me with these ideas. And so, you know

Right. It positions us as their thinking partner solving, understanding their business and trying to solve their problems. And what I always say is, it’s okay if they don’t buy it. ’cause we get the credit for bringing them the idea, or we get the credit for asking the right question. And sometimes they’re gonna solve the problem internally fine. Sometimes annoyingly they’re gonna hire one of their other agencies to solve the problem. Honestly. Fine. Because you are the one that brought them the idea, you’re the one that spotlighted the problem, the opportunity, whatever it is. And honestly, I think it’s good that we don’t bat a thousand because then what the client feels like is we’re bringing them ideas without always having our hand in their pocket that we are, we actually, we actually are genuinely invested in their success, whether we make money on it or not.

That’s, that is the, that is the golden standard, I think for good long-term client relationships. You’re right. Three, 400% of the time or 300, 400 batting, we’re gonna get the money. Right. But even even the ones that we don’t, we get the credit.

Yeah. One of, one of our, one of our principles of organic growth is on the ecosystem.

Right?

Right. So if you’re working with a client that has multiple agencies Right. Maybe has a, let’s just call it a PR firm and an ad agency. Right. And you’re the PR

Firm, and every, every client these days has multiple agencies. Right. Our research shows that. Yep.

Right. So on the ecosystem, so instead of being, you know, in this competitive s us versus them, our piece of the pie versus their piece of the pie work, work together.

Right.

Right. Be, be the catalyst for bringing those agents together and problem solving together. Because I might have an observation or an idea how to solve the problem, and it may not be my agency that can solve it.

Right. Right.

It might be the ad agency, but guess what? If the ad agency gets work outta that, there’s probably gonna be some residual work for me somewhere along the way. Yeah. Great. Right? And if I continue to work like that, if I’ve established the right relationships with the other agencies, there’s gonna be reciprocity,

No doubt. Right?

So it doesn’t always have to be here’s a problem to solve and I’m the one to solve it. Here’s a problem that needs to be solved, let’s talk about what the best option for that is. And that leads to longevity, that leads to partnership, that leads to trust, that leads to integration, which allows you to be reasonably assertive.

Right. Right.

’cause you’ve gotta be assertive. You can’t just sit back and let things come to you. You’ll, you’ll be waiting forever. Right.

Or or you’re just getting crumps. Yeah. Right. Yeah. Yes, yes. You’re growing the client, but in tiny little bits.

Yeah. And so when people think about organic growth, they’re thinking hundreds of thousands, millions of dollars. And by the way, so am I

Right.

But let’s, let’s make molehill outta mountains. Let’s just start small. Let’s have a small 3% goal.

Right.

Right. And that might just be being really responsible with your pre-bill and at the end of the year, having a little pre-bill leftover and say, Hey, I know you don’t want this back. Right. Because you’ve gotta manage to the penny. I got a couple ideas of how to activate against this and get some results. Right. Just any small thing like that. Yeah. There’s just creative ways. And so, but it’s always gotta be the intention. The client needs to understand that you are there to help solve problems and help them sell more of what they’re trying to sell. Whether it’s B two, b, B two C doesn’t matter. Right? Yep. But I, the, when I was at Taylor, we had a client, I did not work on it at the time, but after I left Taylor, I gotta be friends with, with a guy named Chris Montera, who used to be chief communications officer at MasterCard.

And so we’re having a conversation one day and he asked me, he said, do you remember when you were in school that if you were gonna work on the client side, they taught you, they, they teach you how to manage the agency. And I was like, I don’t remember that class. He goes, yeah, ’cause they don’t teach it.

Right.

He said, we’re on the job training too. Right. Right. People are coming up through brand management, those types of Right. He said, so some things we don’t know. He said, but it always frustrated me, well how, how aggressive and creative you guys are in trying to win my business. And then you, you entrench into this fear and trepidation. Right. Once I, and I was like, hell, when nobody wants to rock the boat and upset you. Yeah. He’s like, man, he said, keep bringing it.

Yeah. Keep bringing this In fact. Our research shows that one of the main reasons why an agency gets fired is ’cause the client feels like they were pursued and wooed during the prospects phase. And now I’m just taking for granted they don’t bring me new ideas anymore. They don’t talk to me anymore. And so, I mean, this is a great way to sort of wrap up this conversation is we actually frustrate our clients when we don’t bring them new ideas. And when we don’t act like we care about growing their business. Yeah. We acted like it, it was on fire for us when we’re trying to win their business. But our AEs aren’t trained to keep that passion and that fire going. And we worry that it comes off as looking aggressive or greedy.

But to your point, when you do it properly and well, it looks like you actually care about their business. ’cause you do and you care. And as a result, it benefits your business as well.

Yeah. We call it implications, identification. Yeah. Everything you do, good, bad, indifferent, great. There’s always implications, right? Right. And so we just did this thing client, what are the implications of what we just did? Now we’re the past, but it could take us. Yeah, right. It clients want, I mean, statistically clients want to be led. Show them the implications of what we just did, even if it was a, a bad program. Hey, these are the implications we’ve created. Yeah.

Here’s what we learned,

Here’s what we learned. Here’s the path we can follow. And you know, that’s the idea is that I want to work with you for a long time. There’s gonna be key learnings. Again, we’re not gonna bat a thousand, but if I’m, if I’m proactive right, and I identifying those implications and the power of those things, you’re gonna have a long lasting client relationship and it will grow. Right. Because you, you’ve got that problem solving mentality.

Absolutely. Hey Mark, if folks want to learn more about your business, chat with you more about this stuff, what’s the best way for them to track you down? Yeah.

Well they can find us on our website. It’s pemberton worldwide.com. We’re also on LinkedIn. Pemberton has a a page that we have quite a few followers on, on LinkedIn. They can reach out to me on LinkedIn. It’s Jay Mark Riggs on LinkedIn or via email, which is j jm Riggs at pemberton worldwide.com.

Beautiful. Hey, thank you so much for being on the show and sharing your expertise. I am sure that we’re gonna talk again soon, but this was a really great first conversation around the power of focusing on our organic growth. And, you know, if people are listening to this in real time, it’s, you know, summer of 23 and boy, it’s been a bumpy, bumpy season for you guys trying to grow your bi, your agency, getting new clients, new business has been slow. So now more than ever, you should be focusing on how to grow your existing book of business. How to retain those clients. You know, not only are you growing their, their business with you, but if you’re helping them grow their business, I assure you, you’re, you’re increasing your retention rate, you’re increasing your client satisfaction.

So everything that Mark talked to you about today is stuff that you should be sharing with your account service team. You should be figuring out how to help them understand their job, how to give them the tools to do their job, and how you can grow your net new income year over year. 60 to 70% with existing clients. Yeah.

All right. We, last thing I’ll leave you with is we always talk about operational awareness. If I’m aware of how the business operate, operational awareness leads to observational excellence, right? Yeah. And observational excellence is gonna lead to growth. Yeah. Drew, I appreciate you having me, man.

Hey, thanks for being on the show. This has been great.

Thank you.

Alright guys, so Mark gave you a lot of very tangible things that you can put into play. This would be a great conversation to have at your next account service team meeting, making sure that they understand that their job is to grow their book of business. And even if they understand what that means, book of business, if you haven’t taught them agency math, what a g I is, and cost of goods and all of those sort of things, that’s on you. That is your job to teach them how agencies make money and how you make money. ’cause again, as I said earlier, every one of your employees is either making you money or costing you money every single day. And if they don’t understand the implications of their actions or choices or inactions, you can’t blame ’em for the results.

So that’s on you. Agency owner, you’ve gotta help them understand agency math. And, you know, if, if that is something that’s not in your bailiwick, if that, if you grew up in the business like many of you did, and as you’ve heard me say a million times, you’re one of those accidental agency owners, accidental business owners, and you don’t understand agency math, then you need to come hang out with us for a couple days at one of our workshops. We have Money Matters coming up in October. We have running your agency for growth and profit coming up in the spring. We will teach you agency math and we’ll give you a deck that you can take back and teach your team. It’s absolutely a game changer. And I know most of you got into the business ’cause you didn’t wanna do math. Well, I hate to tell you, but as Mark said, numbers are our friend, data is our friend.

We have to figure out how to leverage all of that and the financial metrics that make us successful. So I can go on and on about this, but my point is, this was an episode filled with actionable items. Do not passively listen and not put it into play. All right. All right. Before I let you go, huge shout out and thank you to our friends at White. Label IQ, as you know, they are the presenting sponsor of the podcast have been for several years. They are born from an agency. They help agencies make money by partnering with them on white Label, PPC dev and design. And they are spectacular folks. They do great work, super complicated builds of websites and apps and all kinds of things.

So go check them out at White Label IQ dot com slash aami. Alright, last but not least, you know, I am super grateful that you keep coming back and listening. I, I love hanging out with you every week. I know we’re on a golf course or we’re in a subway, or I’m on the commute with you or on the treadmill or I, I walk a lot of your dogs with you. So whatever, whatever we’re doing together, I’m enjoying it. I hope you are too, and I’ll be back next week. All right, see you then. Thanks for listening.

That’s a wrap for this week’s episode of Build a Better Agency. Visit agency management institute.com to check out our workshops, coaching and consulting packages, and all the other ways we serve agencies just like yours. Thanks for listening.