Strategies for Winning More Business with Mercer Island Group

Danyel McLellan [00:00:01]:
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 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.

Drew McLellan [00:00:37]:
Hey everybody, Drew McLellan here from Agency Management Institute this week with, yep, you guessed it, another episode of Build a Better Agency. You know, one of the coolest things about the work that we get to do is the relationships that we get to form with other people who serve agencies, people whose work we have a deep respect for, that we can partner with, that we can bring into the AMI community and give all of you a chance to sort of enjoy their genius. And there’s really no one, uh, that I feel more strongly about, uh, than Robin and Steve Boehler and the Mercer Island Group folks. They are among our preferred partners, a very— we have a very small group of preferred partners that, that we really love and that we are constantly learning from and invite you to learn from as well. And so super excited that they are gonna be on the show today. They just wrote a new book and we’re gonna talk about some of the ways that you can peel back the content of that book and what you can learn from the book as you forge into new business in 2026 and beyond, because the game in some ways has changed dramatically in other ways, as you’re gonna hear. It’s still exactly the same. And so I want you to learn from them and their decades of experience.
But before we do that, I wanna thank our friends at White Label IQ for being the presenting sponsor of the podcast. So one thing you may not know about White Label is that they really get the reality of agency life and they know what it’s like to go after new business. They know that you don’t win every pitch, and that’s why when it comes to scoping and quoting, any work that you’re sort of baking out for a new business pitch or a proposal. They do that work for free. They don’t nickel and dime you. There’s no extra barriers. And because they work exclusively with agencies in doing design, dev, and paid media, they know exactly how critical those numbers are to walking into the client conversation prepared. So they just see it as part of their partnership with the agencies they work with, making sure that you have all the tools you need to win that piece of new business without adding cost or friction. And that’s the difference. Lots of folks say they’re a partner, but one of the things I love about the guys at White Label is that they really act like your partner. So if you wanna learn more about that, or you want them alongside you for your next pitch, head over to whitelabeliq.com/ami to learn more about how they partner with agencies just like yours.
Okay? So Back to Robin and Steve Boehler again, brand new book out and really a brilliant book, highly recommend it. But we’ve got them coming to us here on the podcast, the end of April. They’re teaching a workshop with us all about all of the written components of, uh, new business. So everything from your case studies to what your website should look like, cover letters, bios, RFI responses, proposals, budgets. They’re gonna show you good examples and bad examples, and we’re gonna dissect those in that workshop. So that workshop is April 23rd and 24th here in Denver. You can go to the Agency Management Institute website and register today. Mercer Island Group has taught several workshops with us, and this is one that gets rave reviews every single time they teach it. We’ve literally had people changing proposals during the workshop or at night when they’re coming back and forth from the workshop. And winning some of the biggest pieces of business that they’ve ever won thanks to the guidance of this workshop. So that’s happening in April. And then Robin and Steve will both be with us at the Build a Better Agency Summit in May. So if you’re a member and you come to Member Day, you know, you’re going to get to spend the afternoon with Robin and Steve learning from them. And if you’re not a member and you’re just attending the main conference, they’ll be with us the whole conference. They’re going to be running roundtables. And then Robin is going to be doing one of the keynotes. And so lots of exposure to the Boehlers, which I love because again, they’re brilliant and they’re so generous with what they know and they are on our side. They believe in agencies and they believe in the good guys winning. They want you to win the business that you have every right to win. And they hate it when you stub your toe and you knock yourself out of contention. And so that’s really what their book’s all about. And that’s what this conversation is going to be about. How do you get out of your own way? And do it a little bit better so that your clients or the prospects can see you for the absolute perfect agency that you are for them. Okay. So without further ado, let’s welcome them to the show. Steve, Robin, welcome back to the show.

Robin Boehler [00:05:27]:
Thanks for having us.

Stephen Boehler [00:05:29]:
Great to be here.

Drew McLellan [00:05:30]:
So it’s exciting. The new book, It’s Not About You, just came out. So tell me a little bit about what prompted you as busy as you are helping agencies and brands find the right agencies, what prompted you to write the book?

Stephen Boehler [00:05:44]:
In our work, we interact with clients and agencies every day, and it’s always incredibly sad when an agency that should win a pitch or should get the business doesn’t. And so we looked at each other over the years and thought, you know, this is just— it’s heartbreaking in a lot of ways because agencies work so hard to grow and so hard to get opportunities, if they then get close to the finish line and, and don’t get there because of themselves, it just feels bad. And so we thought, you know, we get to sit in the room before the meetings and after the meetings with the clients and we hear what the client’s thinking. And we just had so much stuff that we wanted to share with our agency friends because we have a huge amount of passion for helping agencies. You know, we’re a small service firm. We work with a lot of small agencies. We wanted them to be able to benefit a little, at least a little, from what we’ve seen over the years.

Drew McLellan [00:06:42]:
Yeah, you guys have always had a heart for, for agencies. And I know that I don’t remember how I talked about you before Hamilton came out, but I always talk about the fact that you’re always in the room when it happens and where it happens. And so you have such a unique perspective. So if somebody, if an agency owner was only going to take one big idea out of the book and implement it fully, and I underline for the listeners, implement it fully, what is, what would that idea be and how would they look measurably different if they really did what you tell them to do?

Robin Boehler [00:07:18]:
So I’m gonna cheat on this one a little bit. I mean, the, it’s the title of the book is The One Idea to Take, which is to adjust your thinking around new business to be, it’s not about us, it’s about the client. And if we don’t understand what the client needs and wants and how the client chooses to, how the client chooses to buy agency services, which by the way will be my main stage talk at BABBA.

Drew McLellan [00:07:48]:
Yeah.

Robin Boehler [00:07:49]:
How the client has changed and they buy differently than they used to. If you’re not focused on how the client buys, then there’s no way anything else works. So all of it relates to that. So if you’re going to implement it fully, it means that your website has to be prospect-centric, not agency-centric. It means that every meeting that you’re in has to be about the client’s business, not about your agency capabilities. It means that any written documents you send have to be about the client’s business, not about your agency capabilities. At least solely about your agency capabilities. It means that when you do get the chance to pitch, and that can be a formal pitch or an informal pitch, it has to be about the client’s business, not about your agency. Every single step along the way has to be something that helps the client choose you, and it means moving all the unforced errors off the playing field. And that’s the— there’s a reason we chose that title, and because it does encapsulate everything for an agency. It, it’s a way, it’s about changing the way you think.

Drew McLellan [00:09:00]:
Well, I know that, you know, we’re getting ready in about a month and a half to teach a workshop together and, and what you guys are teaching, I facilitate, but all around this, this idea of all of the written elements and how we typically write them about ourselves as opposed to being client-centric. And so even in the workshops that we do together, I know this is a central theme for you. That you try and drive for agencies to understand that it really has to be— you really do have to flip the mirror around and make sure that everything is reflective of the prospect as opposed to reflective of the agency. So, and I’m sure there are agency owners saying, yeah, but they need to know all this stuff about us. Why wouldn’t it be about me? So how do you respond to that?

Stephen Boehler [00:09:48]:
You know, I think there’s a time and place for everything. Or to everything there is a season, right? And I think that agencies, if they get in the room, they got in the room somehow. And so usually the prospect has been to the website, they have a sense of what the agency is all about. And then if they can just prevent themselves from talking about themselves.

Drew McLellan [00:10:09]:
Yeah.

Stephen Boehler [00:10:11]:
And get the prospect to talk about themselves and their issues and have that be So that the tenor of the conversation, at some point the prospect will ask, start asking questions about the agency. Then it’s time to lean in a little more. But because now they’re interested, they, and they don’t do this, by the way, unless they think you have value to offer, unless they think, oh, these people, I can work with these people. I get what they’re about. They care about me and my business. They’re really understanding me. Once they are there, then the rest is really relatively simple because you can— these people can talk. Our agency friends could talk about their business all day long. We still want to keep it, you know, concise. The agencies really just need to sort of hold back on themselves and make sure they are engaging over the client’s business.

Drew McLellan [00:11:10]:
Yeah, I often talk to agency owners and say, Look, your job is to be interesting until they’re interested. And interesting means that you’re talking about them. I mean, the most fascinating person at any cocktail party is the one that asks you questions about you, not the one that starts talking about themselves. And I think that’s, I think that’s a mental shift for a lot of agency owners that are, that think that pitching and selling is about selling them as opposed to being of interest to the prospect. By being able to talk about their business.

Robin Boehler [00:11:43]:
Exactly right. Yeah.

Drew McLellan [00:11:46]:
So one of the, one of the elements of the book is that, you know, you talk about the importance of not looking like everybody else. So you, you reference, you know, that a lot of agencies sort of swim in the sea of sameness and you offer some very concrete ways for them to differentiate themselves. So what are the first 2 or 3 decisions that an agency owner has to make to become meaningfully different? And I’m underlining meaningfully different, right?

Robin Boehler [00:12:20]:
Yeah. So, um, the first decision they have to make is not— is the thing that doesn’t make them different, which is what kind of agency are you? So this is a run to sameness, right?

Drew McLellan [00:12:30]:
Interesting.

Robin Boehler [00:12:30]:
Right. So that, um, because clients think about agencies in categories.

Stephen Boehler [00:12:36]:
For sure.

Robin Boehler [00:12:36]:
Creative agency, media agency, PR agency, PR agency that only does my category, ag, let’s say, whatever, right? Think about it as an agency supermarket. There are aisles in that supermarket. The client knows what they want and they have to choose which aisle to go down. If you’ve called yourself something that no one’s ever heard of, they’ll never walk down your aisle because they don’t know what that aisle is. So the first decision an agency has to make is what kind of agency are we? Are we a media agency, full-service media, we do traditional and digital, or a digital media agency only, or whatever that might be. So that’s the first, and we call that the frame of reference. So that doesn’t differentiate you. In fact, that creates a commonality so you can be found and considered. That’s number one. But to answer the question you actually asked is what do they need to think about now to make themselves distinctive with in that aisle, think of it as you’re in the right aisle. Now, how does your box stand out on the shelf? Right. So this is perfect analogy. Now where the positioning work happens, which is what do you stand for? What’s your agency philosophy? What’s the thing that makes you special? That’s the— that this is the place to stand out. To be different is hard because there’s so many agencies. Honestly, there’s just Tens of thousands of agencies, literally tens of thousands of agencies.

Drew McLellan [00:14:05]:
Yeah.

Robin Boehler [00:14:05]:
So what we like to talk about is distinctiveness versus differentiation. The idea isn’t to be different from everybody else. It’s to be distinctive within your group. Mm-hmm. That box that I gotta stop and look at that box. So how do you talk about what you stand for? It’s the old Goodby Silverstein and Partners original positioning art serving capitalism, right? They do creative that drives business, but they said it in a very artful way. So that’s the first thing. And then the second, I think, since you asked for two, the first two things is it’s that it’s your philosophy, but also it’s being able to talk about your process, how you get to great ideas that lead to great solutions. And it’s not inventing the process. It’s figuring out how to talk about it. Usually starts with some kind of discovery and research, and then it comes, you know, some kind of an insight or strategic approach that’s, you know, a run to daylight for the client. Then there are solutions and there’s measurement and analytics, and it all starts over. So it’s not a matter of inventing it. It’s a matter of talking about it in a way that feels distinctive and gives your team confidence to be able to land on that every time a client says, so how do you work? And there you’ve got it.

Drew McLellan [00:15:20]:
Yeah, it sounds so simple. And yet we know— we both— we all know so many agencies that, that struggle with, with this, even though on paper it sounds simple. In reality, it is very difficult to do because, you know, I think it’s very difficult to sort of see yourself, to read the label on the bottle from inside the bottle accurately.

Robin Boehler [00:15:40]:
And I think agencies also, when they do it without any outside perspective— and it doesn’t mean you need to hire somebody, but somebody else needs to look at this before you go live, someone who’s not in your agency. Is that they’re talking, they get so enamored with this idea of positioning that they’re talking to themselves and there’s nothing in it for the client. Like, why do I care if you are purpose-driven? What does that do for me? Now, it might do something, but you’ve got to say it in a way that helps the client feel like there’s an outcome for me there. There’s what’s in it for me, the good old-fashioned what’s in it for me.

Drew McLellan [00:16:17]:
Yeah. Yeah. It’s challenging for sure. You know, one of the other things that you talk about in the book is, and this sort of aligns right with it, is, you know, every client is not— every client is a great client, but they’re not a great client for every agency. And so you talk a lot about making the case. You make a case for being more intentional about client fit and kind of the structure of the client relationship. Which I find interesting, you know, so with the advent of AI, one of the trends that we saw at AMI was, and we’re reporting on it now in our trends, uh, report, but, you know, a year ago agencies were like, AI is awesome. I can respond to every RFP on the planet.

Robin Boehler [00:16:58]:
Mm-hmm.

Drew McLellan [00:16:59]:
And what they found was their win rate went down to single digits because they were just spitting out pablum and then the client’s AI agent was grading their pablum and no humans ever touched any of it. And, and so, Interestingly, when I was reading the book, your message about being more intentional, going after fewer that are a better fit, is in alignment with, I think, the very painful lesson agencies learned last year, which is more is not better. So talk a little bit about how agencies should rethink their ideal client profile. Like, how do they know what that right fit is? And really, what are the— not just client fit, but also engagement model. How do they identify what a good fit for them is? What’s the thought process behind that?

Stephen Boehler [00:17:51]:
You know, I think it’s such a— it’s a great question, and undoubtedly the answer varies by agency. But I think in general, most agencies want to be a little bigger next year than they were last year and the year after that they want to grow a little more. And agencies, we believe agencies need to build in guardrails that force them to be selective because the alternative is frankly, we think that they’re going to miss their goals and they’re going to miss their goals because if they go after too much stuff, they’re going to use up too many man hours, too much of their agency investment. But they’re not going to win. And the reason is simple. In any competitive sense, in any competitive review-ish kind of situation, whatever the review is or whatever the opportunity is, the prospect has more than one option in most cases, right? And if you don’t go all in as an agency, someone else is. And that’s going to, that’s going to come out in the process that there’ll be more enthusiasm perceived from the other agency. They’ll do a better job on how they respond to every request. They’ll put a better team against it. What all of those things all add up to, somebody wins and somebody loses. And I think that— so the hard part about this is to make sure that you plan your year and you go after the things that are big enough to put a lot of effort into. That doesn’t mean you don’t take nice inbound stuff that’s smaller and run with it because you’re going to get some of that. But it’s that middle zone.

Drew McLellan [00:19:33]:
It’s going to come across the zone, right?

Stephen Boehler [00:19:35]:
It’s the middle stuff. You got to get off the plate, the stuff you still have to compete for. But you know what? If you get it, it’s not that big a deal to the business. But honestly, it is to your ability to get other business and to keep investing. And so you need a set of screens, you know, and you’ve talked about this for years, Drew, that agencies need new business screens. The screens have to be specific to the agency. So there’s no hard and fast rule. But whether it’s scale of the account, how long the relationship looks like it might be, what the fit in terms of the type of work, the fit in terms of the client, as you know, that what their sort of demeanor is like, how they work with people, all that stuff’s valid. But at the end, at the end of the day, for growth purposes, we really think you have to shrink down the number of opportunities you’re going after so that you can just literally storm the beaches with the best possible approach. And we really believe that you’re going to win more that way.

Drew McLellan [00:20:38]:
Yeah, I think you’re right. I think the flurry of activity we saw in the last 18 months, you know, once everyone figured out that ChatGPT could write their their RFI response or whatever has come to roost with a lot of agencies. And I think, I think they have painfully learned the lesson that you just, that you just outlined, Steve, that we have to be super choosy. And, you know, it’s not about— it’s not about what I keep saying to agencies is this is not a volume game. You know, you win 2 pieces of business that are worth 10% of your AGI and you’re having an amazing year. You only need a couple wins a year. Of significant size to make, to have the growth goals, to your point, that, that you want to hit. And so it really isn’t about how many can we possibly get. It’s really about which ones are the right couple for us to go all in on.

Robin Boehler [00:21:32]:
Yeah.

Stephen Boehler [00:21:32]:
The flip side of that, if I could say one more thing, is that those, those, you don’t want to drain your staff too much so that they’re not taking care of the current clients.

Drew McLellan [00:21:42]:
For sure. Yeah.

Robin Boehler [00:21:44]:
Yeah.

Drew McLellan [00:21:45]:
Yep.

Robin Boehler [00:21:45]:
Yep.

Drew McLellan [00:21:47]:
Well, and you know, I, I often hear your voice, Robin, in my head when we’re talking about new business and, you know, you saying to many agencies when I’ve been around, look, this is about making sure that you create a long-term relationship with the right fit client that you can delight and that you can really have an ongoing meaningful relationship with. And that’s, that’s really the criteria, right?

Robin Boehler [00:22:15]:
And it’s interesting to me there, we’ve come across, and maybe it’s because there have been so few creative reviews until just recently, it’s really coming back now. I’d say the last 6 months things have picked up, especially in the creative space. I see agencies that go after a piece of business that I don’t know why are you doing that. So, uh, for instance, they require you to have experience in the following 3 categories. Well, we have it in 2 but not the third. Okay, you see that required word up there? Now you’re starting in a hole. It’s hard enough to win the business to begin with if it’s competitive, especially. Now you want to start with -10 points before you even open the door on this? I don’t— I think some of it is, you know, it’s just too juicy to pass up, or we really need a win, or whatever it might be. But I just think you’ve gotta play the odds game a little smarter.

Stephen Boehler [00:23:13]:
Yeah.

Drew McLellan [00:23:13]:
Well, to both of your point, new business when done well, ’cause the other thing that I hear both of your voices in my head all the time, and I’m quoting you constantly, which is if you’re gonna go after a piece of business, you gotta go all in, whether it’s spec or it’s, you know, more strategy or whatever it is. And so again, to your point, if you’re gonna go all in every time you go out hunting, you can, you only have so many resources that you can deploy to that without wearing everybody down. Steve, to your point, without paying for it with current clients, or Robin, to your point, without just spinning your wheels, but because you weren’t judicious enough, you’re not gonna win anyway. So you’re really just expending resource to expend resource.

Robin Boehler [00:24:00]:
And you know, in this new world of AI that we have, Strategy is more important than ever because really AI can’t do the feeling part. They can— AI can think very, very well, but AI can’t feel, at least not yet.

Drew McLellan [00:24:14]:
Right.

Robin Boehler [00:24:15]:
So the notion of an emotional insight or a judgmental conclusion evaluation around a piece of business that you can’t get from AI. And what clients are realizing is that they want strategic partners more than ever. We’ve always said that that’s what they’ve wanted. It continues to be that, but it’s magnified by the fact that they know that the repeatable tasks, which by the way are the highest margin work for any agency, should be handled by AI. So you can’t charge as much, or they’re taking it in-house.

Drew McLellan [00:24:53]:
Right.

Robin Boehler [00:24:54]:
So it’s the thinking, it’s the strategy, it’s the understanding the business is being that partner who can explain to our CFO why brand spend is important when he only cares about last-click attribution. That’s the agency I would like to hire. That’s what we’re hearing.

Drew McLellan [00:25:14]:
Yeah, makes perfect sense. So in the book, you spend a fair amount of time talking about the internal sort of functionality in the side of the agency, culture, behaviors. How the team works together. So I’m curious, what’s one belief or behavior that you see many agency leadership teams inside those leadership teams that you think absolutely has to change if agencies are gonna put all of the good guidance of your book in play? What do they have to do first? What’s foundational before they can take good advice from the book?

Stephen Boehler [00:25:52]:
Well, I think that overall one of the big mistakes we see that needs to change is that the senior executives at the agency have to prepare the rest of the agency to compete so that when they go into a meeting, they’re not talking. The senior executives, now they might open, they might close, but otherwise shut the shut the whatever up, right? And we literally, we were just in a significant review this past week, set of presentations. And one of the agency principals was one of the senior, like, sponsor-level person in the room, opened and closed, and that was it. But then when they got to the Q&A, she had to answer every stinking question.

Drew McLellan [00:26:45]:
So close to doing it well.

Stephen Boehler [00:26:47]:
So close to the finish line, right? In the same review, one of the other agencies, the most senior person in the room tagged on every comment one of his people made, every presenter presented, and then he would jump in and do the, whether it’s mansplaining or just big guy explaining part. And it just, it diminishes the team, and the clients almost always then question the capability of the people they will be working with. So if one big change is you’ve got to have the day-to-day folks ready to talk, ready to present, ready to show that they really deserve to be the client’s day-to-day person, the only way to do that is for them to have the spotlight.

Drew McLellan [00:27:35]:
So I’m curious because, again, you’re in the room, so you’ve walked through some presentations. The agency owner or leader has sort of stepped all over the presentation. What is the commentary on the client side or the prospect side when you go back in the room?

Robin Boehler [00:27:52]:
It varies from, well, if Drew got hit by a bus, I don’t know if they’d have anything there. That’s kind of the worst of it. To, I wonder why Drew thought he needed to explain again what each one of his staff people said. Does he not have confidence in his team? Should we not have confidence in the team? That’s the other side. So it’s nuanced. It depends, but they notice it. And, you know, worst case scenario really is when the day-to-day account person is there and just, you know, changes the slides. And there’s— does she have a brain in her head? How do we know if she understands the business? She’s clearly good at, you know, doing the Vanna White part, but we’re not so interested in that as our account exec. They talk about it. Sometimes I’ll bring it up to see if it, you know, I don’t want to give that feedback to an agency if the client didn’t care. They always care once I point it out. They just didn’t think they were allowed to talk about it. But I would say 9 times out of 10, they bring it up. They’ll say, wow, that was a lot by that guy. And it’s never, it’s never like a compliment. It’s always—

Drew McLellan [00:29:03]:
Right. That’s the, that’s the underscore theme, right? They’re never pleased by the performance. Yeah. We need to take a quick break, but when we come back, your book is chock-full of frameworks and tools, but as you know, agency owners are stretched thin, they’re overwhelmed. So when we come back, I want you to kind of dissect for us how you might suggest an agency sequence the work that you’re suggesting in the book, cuz really The book is, is like a workbook. It’s like a field guide that somebody can work through. So we’re gonna take a break and then when we come back, talk, well, let’s talk about how an agency owner should tackle this in a way that it’s not overwhelming. So we’ll be right back with Robin and Steve Boehler, and we will talk about how to use this really brilliantly written book. All right, we’ll be right back. I wanna take a quick moment to reassure you that when we bring sponsors on the show, These are people that we know and trust, and that is absolutely true of our friends at JobRack. When agencies ask us about long-term remote hiring, we often introduce them to Noel at JobRack. We’ve spent time with him. We see how he approaches hiring decisions. We’re confident sending AMI agencies his way. That’s why we’re thrilled to have them on board as a paid sponsor of this podcast. If international hiring is something you’re thinking about this year, They’ve put together a really thoughtful hiring playbook with lots of tips and tricks at jobrack.com/ami. Again, one more time, jobrack.com/ami. You’re definitely going to want to take advantage of some of the great advice that’s in that playbook. So go grab it now while you can, and let’s get back to the show. Hey everybody, just want to remind you before we get back to the show that we have a very engaged Facebook group. It’s a private group. Just for podcast listeners and agency owners that are in the AMI community. And to find it, if you’re not a member, head over to facebook.com/groups/babapodcast. So again, facebook.com/groups/babapodcast. All you have to do is answer a few questions to make sure that you are an actual agency owner or leader, and we will let you right in. And you can join over 1,700 other agency owners and leaders And I’m telling you, there’s probably 10 or 15 conversations that are started every day that are gonna be of value to you. So come join us. All right. We are back with the Boehlers and we are talking about their new book. It’s Not About You: Winning New Business in a Crowded Agency World. And right before the break I said, and of course all of you need to go and buy the book, but what you’re gonna find is it’s really written in a way that is for you to work through. It’s not a book to read that’s just about philosophy. It’s— you can work through and make changes in your agency to win more new business and to win more right new business. So before the break, what I asked was, how should you, the listener, the reader, tackle this book in a way that’s not overwhelming, but you can put it to good use? So Robert and Steve, how would you recommend the listeners do that?

Stephen Boehler [00:32:19]:
Yeah, I think at 20,000 feet, we would— part of the book is really about how does an agency best get itself ready to match the customer journey of the prospect. And we think there’s 3 really critical steps and we’ve simplified it to the notion of be ready, be memorable, and be findable. And this first step, that first step, that readiness step Robin talked about, one of the core components earlier, which is the agency has to have a distinctive positioning. So, and you need that frame of reference, the commonality piece, but you also need the part that makes you stand out within on that shelf in that agency supermarket aisle when they’re looking so that your box stands out. Then the second piece is you really have to have a prospect-friendly website. And we talk a lot about prospect-friendly websites, but the point of the website just like the point of the book is it’s not about you really. It’s about the client or prospect being able to rapidly find everything they need to be able to find to figure out if you’re the right agency for them. And often, very often, the person that’s going to your website has a list of agencies that they’re gonna check out that they’ve developed from some, some way, and they have a list of things they’re looking for. And if they don’t find the things on that list really fast, they simply X you out and move on, move down their list. And, and so this is number one, is are you the right kind of agency? Robin talked about this. Is your frame of reference prominent above the fold on your website? Are you interesting? The distinctiveness piece of your positioning. And then there’s, you have to be able to find, they have to be able to find your capabilities, your clients. And a range of other things that we talk about in the book. And if that’s job number one, because for the most part prospects are going to be looking at you before you know they are looking at you.

Robin Boehler [00:34:22]:
Yeah.

Drew McLellan [00:34:23]:
Awesome. Robin, anything to add?

Robin Boehler [00:34:25]:
The only thing I would add to that— I agree with Steve 100%. Obviously we wrote the book together, but they— there is an exception for how can you use the book in a specific way. And that could be if you are in a situation where you are You’ve been invited to pitch or you’ve gotten in the door to pitch a piece of business. If you need to write an RFI, go to that chapter. If you need to do a presentation, go to that chapter. You don’t have to— the book is intended to be, to have each section stand alone enough that if you’re in a situation and you need to figure out how do I, how do I write case studies, man, I don’t need my case studies, they’re terrible. There’s a section in the book and you don’t have to read the other chapters before or after it to be able to make that useful. So I think overall, I agree with Steve’s approach 100%. In specific situations, the book is set up for you to be able to get what you need in, you know, in a short-term problem solution situation.

Drew McLellan [00:35:24]:
Yeah, you’re right. It’s very modular. And you could either start from the beginning and work your way through it. But to your point, it’s also very modular. And so if you have a specific pain point, you’re trying to solve this week, then just go to chapter X and deal with it there and then go back and do the long-term fixes that Steve, you were talking about. So one is sort of a short-term immediate fix and the other one is a longer-term set yourself up for success overall thing.

Robin Boehler [00:35:51]:
Exactly.

Drew McLellan [00:35:52]:
And you two have worked with agencies and, and clients, cuz I know you work on both sides of the fence for a long time and Mercer Island Group has been around for many years helping agencies and clients find the right match. I’m curious, was there anything as you were writing the book and you were doing your own research and looking at the case studies, was there anything that surprised you or that maybe challenged an assumption that you had?

Stephen Boehler [00:36:20]:
I think one thing that surprised me is that many of the challenges that agencies have today are the same challenges that they had 36 years ago when we started the company.

Drew McLellan [00:36:30]:
Right, right.

Stephen Boehler [00:36:32]:
I don’t know any other way to say it. And honestly, and a lot of the stuff that’s in the book, we’ve been talking about for 15 years, probably when, you know, and it just, it takes time. I think the agencies that do better are the ones that aren’t as precious about the way they’ve done things in the past and are more open to hearing that. There may be, you know, slightly better ways of doing things.

Drew McLellan [00:36:59]:
Yeah. You know, it’s interesting. The good news about that is that once you actually wrap your head around it and you make the changes, they’re pretty longstanding permanent advantages that you, you and your agency are going to have over the competition. Because to your point, you know, if this is the same stuff agencies have been struggling with for 40 years, What it means is that a lot of people still aren’t getting it right. And the agencies that do get it right— and I’m sure you see it all the time in the competitive pitches that you’re a part of— the agencies that do get it right have a disproportionate win rate because they look— to your— to the word you used earlier— distinctly different from the agencies who are still sort of splashing around in the water a little bit.

Robin Boehler [00:37:48]:
Yeah. And clients need to figure out how to select agencies. Most new business searches for agencies are done by clients, not by search consultants like us. And we do all shapes and sizes ranging from very tiny, $250,000 a year retainer, all the way to tens of millions of dollars in retainers. But most reviews of all shapes and sizes are run by the clients themselves. And when we ask a client, are there any agencies you’d like us to make sure to include in the pitch? I would say 9.5 times out of 10, they say, oh, I really should— can I get back to you? Now they’re about to spend $5 million in a creative retainer and they can’t name any agencies they really want us to consider. And it’s, it’s because clients are thinking about their business. They’re not thinking about the agency world. So we talk to ourselves all the time in the agency world and AdAge and all of the places where we celebrate agencies. Clients don’t read any of that, right? They don’t know who got awards unless they go look as a way to try to select agencies. So they now are going to have to go or put somebody on their team on a search for, go find me an agency that can do X. And Google is their friend. AI is their friend now too. Um, and I’ll tell you, we recently did a review for a client that was looking for search, paid and non-paid, organic, and also UX, how that could then lead to the website and connecting their website with all of the search activity. And it’s a very small space. That’s a niche spot, right? We found a bunch of really good agencies that they could consider. And then after we gave them our list of recommended agencies, they came back and said, well, we went to ChatGPT. I don’t know why they’re paying us. We went to ChatGPT. We found these 3 other agencies that you guys didn’t mention. 2 of them we had never heard of, which tells you something because we live and breathe this stuff all day long. One of them we had, we just didn’t think that they really were sophisticated enough for this particular. So what ended up happening was we reached out to all 3 because we’ll do it. 2 never responded to us after many attempts to try to get their attention. And the 3rd one, what they, they did bring in and wrote, actually wrote a decent RFI, which was nice. But that’s how they’re finding agencies. And so they’re not gonna find you unless you’ve got content out there. When they get to your website, they see stuff that’s interesting enough to continue to put you on the list. All of that, it’s an ecosystem that is difficult to navigate and you have gotta do work that’s gonna pay off in the long term and not expect short-term results. It won’t be overnight. Yeah.

Drew McLellan [00:40:36]:
Yeah. But again, to your point, this, this is, I mean, different tool, but the same reality from the client’s perspective and our sort of maybe misunderstanding of how much they’re paying attention to what we’re doing all day every day, which is not so much.

Robin Boehler [00:40:52]:
Yeah.

Drew McLellan [00:40:53]:
For sure. Yeah.

Stephen Boehler [00:40:54]:
You know, Drew, one of the things we talked about, you and I were talking about before we got on the podcast today was that I had mentioned just how busy the space is right now that there’s a ton of clients looking for new agencies, looking for new service providers. But we on a daily basis are hearing from agencies, many agencies, that their pipeline is dry right now. And so this is— there’s a sort of strange thing going on out there. And I really believe that there’s never been a more important time for independent agencies to be ready to be doing all the things we’re talking about in the book Because if they’re not, if you have— if they haven’t been doing all that readiness stuff, if they aren’t memorable, if they aren’t easily findable, they’re probably the ones that have a dry pipeline right now, right? Because they haven’t put— because as Robin said, clients aren’t going around thinking about agencies. They have— agencies have to do something special to stand out.

Robin Boehler [00:41:57]:
I’d like to put an exclamation point on that, Steve, because just, just in consideration of AI, because if a client goes to AI to try to find agencies, AI is scraping the internet, right? They’re looking for examples of, yes, they have experience in center store CPG. I need to know that they can do, or they, they have experience in fresh consumer packaged goods, or they have experience in high-speed internet. So someone, someone on the client side will go on to one of these search engines and they’ll say, give me 6 agencies that have experience in the high-speed internet space. Well, if you have it, but it’s not on your website, and you never did any kind of a content on high-speed internet marketing, you never mentioned high-speed internet on the internet in any way, shape, or form, you will never get on that list. So the content piece and making sure your website has past and current clients and team experience, if you don’t have that, the search engines will devastate you.

Drew McLellan [00:42:59]:
Well, Robin, to your point, to your analogy earlier, if you don’t have that, you’re not, you don’t show up in the grocery store aisle at all. You’re invisible.

Robin Boehler [00:43:08]:
Yes.

Stephen Boehler [00:43:09]:
Right.

Drew McLellan [00:43:09]:
On the aisle. You may, you may be on the shelf, but you are invisible to those, to that search opportunity, which means you’re invisible to the prospect.

Stephen Boehler [00:43:18]:
Yeah. Yeah. You’re bottom shelf, bad package.

Drew McLellan [00:43:22]:
Right.

Robin Boehler [00:43:23]:
Right.

Drew McLellan [00:43:25]:
I have so many more questions, but I know that we need to wrap this up. So my last question for you, uh, before we say goodbye, and just a reminder to everybody, uh, the Bollers will be with us in Denver in about a month teaching a lot of this stuff in a workshop that gets rave reviews, uh, and we’ll put a link to that in the show notes. And, uh, they will be with us at the Build a Better Agency Summit as they always are. Uh, they’ll be with us both on Member Day, and Robin is doing one of the keynotes. So If you have enjoyed this interview, like I know that you have, and if you’ve enjoyed the Boehlers in the past because they’re frequent guests of ours, you have two opportunities to spend quality time with them in person in Denver in April and May. But here’s my question. So we’ve got a discouraged, tired agency owner who’s feeling stretched and strapped, and they are literally or figuratively, maybe they’re walking upstairs or they’re literally driving from an office back home after a long day, what would you say to them? What encouragement would you give them about the changes that they could make thanks to the book and how they can thrive in the next 3 to 5 years when everything feels so uncertain?

Robin Boehler [00:44:39]:
I think what I would say is there’s work out there. There’s plenty of work out there. And the question now isn’t, why am I not getting my fair share? The question has to be, how do I get more than my fair share? It’s really easy to feel— I mean, I do this all the time. I will turn to Steve and I’ll say, what’s our pipeline look like? And I’ll say, well, where’s it going to come from after that pipeline? What if you even won all of these things? How is anything else going to come in? But of course it does because we do all the diligence to make sure that we get found and all of the advice that we’re giving, we try to employ ourselves. I think it’s— there has to be an attitudinal shift on the part of each agency owner now to figure out what do they think is the biggest barrier for them to getting new work, new business, and figure out what that barrier is. Is it that no one knows who we are? Is it that people keep telling us they’re confused about what we do? Is it that we actually need to grow some capabilities that we don’t have, that we actually need to look at our own internal structure? Have we kept up with the times, in other words, and brought in capabilities? Do we need to train our staff in how to talk to a client, a prospect? What’s the thing or the things that are in the way? And then take them off one at a time. To set yourself up to be able to achieve something in the next 3 to 6 months that will help to move the needle, that will X out one of those. This is a problem for us. You don’t have to do it all at once. It’s not going to result in a quick change in your situation, but this absolutely is achievable. You just have to make a decision that you’re going to be truthful with yourself about what’s not working. And then go after the solutions to those things.

Drew McLellan [00:46:39]:
Steve, something to add?

Stephen Boehler [00:46:41]:
Yeah, I, I would, I, I, everything Robin said is so spot on. And I think I, even though we wrote the book, separate that for a second. I truly believe that what’s in the book is bulletproof advice for that agency person who’s worried about the next few years. If they do the stuff that’s in the book, they’re gonna succeed better than if they don’t. And they’re gonna do that not because we wrote it, but because we lived this through the eyes of clients and prospects. In the past few years, we’ve done literally hundreds of agency reviews. We’ve seen how clients pick agencies. We’ve heard from them about how they select the list on their own. We’ve worked with procurement teams. This is all the stuff that’s in this book is all based on firsthand in-the-room experience with clients and prospects. And so give it a shot, you know, it’s— just give it a shot. It’s like a Kevlar vest to protect your future.

Drew McLellan [00:47:45]:
Yeah, I love that. It is a brilliant book. We’ve worked together for many, many years, and I have sat in the room and listened to you teach and talk and share and coach. And the book is a beautiful culmination of a lot of that. And You’re right, it, it is, it is a field guide for how to prepare yourself for continued good health and growth in the agency space, regardless of what comes around the corner, whether it’s AI or whatever’s next around the corner that, you know, this is fundamental stuff that to your point earlier, Steve, has pretty much been the same for 40 years and, and yet we still don’t get it as right as we could. And that’s a competitive advantage that every agency should wrap their arms around. So thank you both very much for being on the show again. Always love spending time with you and I’m always super grateful for the heart that you have for agencies and the good counsel that you give to our folks. So thanks for, thanks for being with us.

Robin Boehler [00:48:45]:
Thank you for having us.

Stephen Boehler [00:48:47]:
Always a pleasure. Thank you.

Drew McLellan [00:48:49]:
All right guys. So here’s homework by the book. And then go through the book and just self-assess, self-assess where you are the weakest. And to Robin’s point, just put together a game plan, an action plan of how you’re gonna tackle some of these things. And you know what, if you’re an attraction agency or you do Agency Advantage with us, or you are just, you, all you do are the ROCKS part of it, just make it quarterly goals and just Understand that a year from now, you could look vastly different if you start deploying this information right now. So this is not a read it and set it aside book. This is a workbook. This is a field guide. This is a step-by-step sort of tutorial of how you can level up your new business opportunity and your acumen so that your agency not only wins more business, but wins more right business. Profitable business. And honestly, I barely scratched the surface of the book. There’s a— I have 2 pages of questions that I didn’t get to. So grab the book and start putting it to work. All right. That’s your homework. So before I let you go, 2 quick things. Again, a thank you to our friends at White Label IQ, the presenting sponsor, uh, of the podcast, whitelabeliq.com/ami for a special deal they have for you. And, uh, just want to remind you that I am super grateful that you keep coming back. That you say the nice things you do when you leave us a review. I don’t get to do this if you don’t listen. So I’m coming back next week with another great guest to help you think a little differently about your agency. And I am super, super grateful that you come back every week too. So have a great week and I will talk to you soon.

Danyel McLellan [00:50:34]:
That’s a wrap for this week’s episode of Build a Better Agency. Visit agencymanagementinstitute.com to Check out our workshops, coaching and consulting packages, and all the other ways we serve agencies just like yours. Thanks for listening.