Agency Leadership Podcast: Recent Episodes
Chip Griffin and Gini Dietrich
The Agency Leadership Podcast provides insights for agency owners and executives. Co-hosts Chip Griffin and Gini Dietrich share practical advice and industry news relevant to PR and marketing agency leaders.
Most agency owners probably haven't thought much about shadow AI (the name for when employees use their personal ChatGPT, Claude, or Gemini accounts to do work). In fact, owners may be doing it as well. In this episode, Chip and Gini walk through what the risks are and how to respond without overreacting.
The instinct to crack down is understandable but wrong. Employees are going to use their own tools regardless, often because personal accounts are better trained or more accessible than whatever the company has set up. The goal should be education, not elimination. Most employees don't know that personal accounts default to feeding data into training sets, or that a single toggle can turn that off. That one fix alone is worth a conversation with your team.
Vibe coding and a plain-language AI policy get discussed, in addition to educating your team. Gini's team runs weekly micro-learning sessions to help people use AI as a thinking partner, not just a drafting tool. Both Chip and Gini advise that owners and employees who aren't using AI meaningfully within the next year or two are putting their careers and businesses at risk.
realize they're often the biggest obstacle to it. In this episode, Chip and Gini offer suggestions for how to stop being the bottleneck at your agency.
Chip tells of his own recent experience where he missed putting out a newsletter after an emergency root canal. Even with Jen repeatedly pinging him, the decision of whether to get something done rested with him. Most employees won't push back hard because they know who signs the paychecks. The exceptions are rare, and you can't build your accountability system around them.
Gini's structural fix has been making "less founder dependence" an explicit OKR, tracked at every leadership meeting. When the goal shows up red on a dashboard, the visibility creates its own pressure. Chip thinks it's less about any specific single system. AI has helped him stop some procrastination, but it's also added new projects he'd never have attempted before. His takeaway is that you need to figure out what works for your specific wiring, and not rely on someone else's approach.
For external accountability, peers, coaches, and organizations like YPO or Vistage can help, particularly for big-picture questions you wouldn't bring to your team. But formal advisory boards are another story. Both Chip and Gini are skeptical, since even paid corporate directors with legal obligations frequently fail at the oversight function. For owner-led agencies, the complexity almost never justifies the benefit.
You're using AI to handle more of the work that your team used to do. That's exactly why the human side of the business has become a competitive advantage.
In this episode, Chip and Gini make the case that as AI slop floods everyone's inbox and feeds, the bar for genuine human interaction has dropped so low that clearing it will make you stand out. Demonstrating real experience and expertise in conversation — not just in content — is where agencies will win.
That starts with having actual conversations. Chip argues that meetings have become more valuable, not less, because you can't fake a real-time interaction the way you can a written deliverable. And Gini adds that it extends to one-on-one meetings with your team, which can be used to get the specific decisions needed from you.
Written content is increasingly hard to trust, and Chip admits even he can't reliably tell his own writing from AI output. Video helps close that gap for now. So does the handwritten note, which Chip still sends to podcast guests when he can track down an address. He jokes that the illegibility is proof of authenticity.
In person beats everything. Chip pushes agency owners to budget for it deliberately, with clients, prospects, and remote team members alike. Gini mentions the Augusta Rule as one way to offset some of those costs, though both are quick to say talk to your accountant before you try to benefit from it.
Most agency owners think their clients have it easy. But the gap between how you believe your agency operates and how clients and prospects actually experience it is often wider than you'd expect, and it's usually the small, everyday frictions that do the most damage.
In this episode, Chip and Gini ask if you were on the receiving end of your own agency's processes, would you be happy? The answer, for a lot of agencies, is probably not. Their point isn't that agencies should cave to every demand, but if you market yourself as a partner, act like one.
The friction can start before someone even becomes a client. Contact forms loaded with qualifying questions scare people away. And back-and-forth emails to find a meeting time have no excuse in 2026. Use a scheduling tool, have a link ready, and make it especially easy for prospects. Once someone is ready to talk, the goal is to respond fast and remove every obstacle.
When it comes to the handoff from prospect to client, agencies should have a standard proposal template so they can turn paperwork around in 24 hours, not days. Make invoicing and payments as easy on the client as you would want it to be if you were in their shoes. And when it comes to project management tools, if the client already has one they're using, just use it. The tool matters less than having one.
Most owner-led agencies know they should be doing more than media relations. One barrier has always been capability: you can't execute paid media if nobody on your team knows paid media. AI is removing that barrier, and Chip and Gini dig into exactly how.
Gini built a PESO model operating system AI that prompts you instead of you prompting it. Many agencies are strong in one or two media types and need scaffolding to think through the rest. The tool can be used to help agencies execute unfamiliar disciplines step by step.
Chip frames this as an opportunity to do things that were theoretically possible two years ago but practically out of reach. A paid campaign to amplify a blog post no longer requires hiring a specialist. Beyond drafting, both hosts made a case for AI as a learning tool instead of merely a content machine. Gini tested this directly by vibe-coding a PESO model diagnostic, working through multiple versions with AI troubleshooting each step.
The practical upshot is that you can use AI to build separate knowledge-rich agents for each media type, loaded with client messaging and context, and treat them as thought partners for areas where your team lacks depth. It won't eliminate the need for people or strategic thinking, but capability is no longer a credible excuse for staying stuck at one letter of PESO.
Losing a client is never fun, even when you saw the writing on the wall. The only question is how you choose to handle it. In this episode, Chip and Gini cover the practical and emotional side of client departures, from the moment you get the news to the lessons you take away.
Gini points out that there are plenty of reasons a client could terminate the relationship, which may have nothing to do with your work. Strategy changes, budget cuts, and leadership turnover all end client relationships that were otherwise going fine.
Chip's advice is to not react immediately. Ask for a couple of days to review the agreement and put together a transition plan. That space lets you get the emotion out before you say something you'll regret.
Once you have your bearings, focus on making the exit clean. Read your actual contract, confirm the notice terms, and hand over everything the client needs: documents, passwords, contacts, work in progress. Chip is blunt about agencies that fight clients on the way out — it accomplishes nothing and just guarantees a bad final impression. Don't burn any bridges and you just might see those clients come back or send you referrals.
Finally, be honest with your team about what the loss means for the business. If there are financial implications, say so before people start drawing their own conclusions.
The SAGA Agency AI Survey results are in, and small agency owners are feeling great about AI. Maybe too great. In this episode, Chip and Gini dig into the numbers and find the gap between how owners think they're using AI and the reality of what's happening inside their businesses.
The headline figures look impressive: 89% of respondents report regular or widespread AI use, 74% use it daily, and 88% say they've seen productivity gains. But Chip isn't buying it. He questions whether the sample skews toward early adopters, or more likely, whether agency owners simply don't have a clear enough picture of what "good" AI use looks like elsewhere.
When 53% say they're ahead of their peers but only 13% say they're behind, the math doesn't work. As Gini puts it, they're probably grading themselves on usage habits, not operational depth.
Next, Chip and Gini look at what agencies are actually doing with AI. Most activity falls squarely into what Chip calls "generative AI 101" — drafting emails, writing social posts, generating blog content. The more interesting stuff is largely absent. AI-assisted design work barely registers.
Only 74% are even using AI to revise or edit content, a number both hosts find inexplicable given how easy and useful that is. Gini's own example of running an article through an AP style agent before sending it to a notoriously precise editor at PR Daily illustrates exactly the kind of practical, low-friction habit that should be universal by now.
Another data point they discuss is the disconnect between productivity gains and revenue. Agencies report getting faster, but their top-line numbers are flat or down. Gini's read is that AI efficiency is getting absorbed into existing scope rather than converted into new value.
Agencies are over-servicing clients at the same fees, filling freed time with more of the same work instead of building something new.
On the pricing side, almost no one reported clients pushing for discounts tied to AI use. Instead of a reduction in cost, the larger enterprise clients are asking about data governance, usage policies, and procurement compliance. Chip advises unless your agency has the infrastructure to manage those requirements consistently, that's a market best left to someone else.
Most agency owners know AI can write a first draft or clean up copy. Far fewer have figured out how to use it as the strategic sounding board they've always needed.
In this episode, Chip and Gini explore how to use AI tools as a thought partner, not just a content machine.
Gini's example is a client who asked her to map what a PESO model maturity ladder would look like for an organization. She described the situation and constraints to Chat GPT, and keep pushing the conversation forward. Six weeks of iterative back-and-forth surfaced ideas she wouldn't have reached on her own, including finding the gaps when the AI was willing to poke holes in her thinking.
Chip points out that for owner-led agencies, that 8pm Friday idea you don't want to dump on your team now has somewhere to go. The tool doesn't care what time it is, and it has no stake in whether your idea succeeds or embarrasses you. Both hosts advise to direct the AI to ask you questions rather than just answer them. It takes some coaching to get a tool that genuinely engages rather than validates everything you propose, but once you're there, you start getting real value.
One warning they have is that these tools are not always consistent. The same AI that helped you build a strategy three weeks ago might question it today with equally compelling reasoning. Stay in the driver's seat, and treat AI-generated recommendations as input, not conclusions.
Most agency owners think they're doing their team a favor when they quietly absorb the painful, tedious, or time-consuming work. They're likely not. In this episode, Chip Griffin and Gini Dietrich look at the sacrifices owners make on behalf of their teams and why those sacrifices often create more problems than they solve.
This isn't about the occasional tactical sacrifice, it's about the systemic ones: the conscious decisions to absorb entire categories of work because you've decided your team would find them too difficult, too unpleasant, or too much of a burden. Gini admits she's guilty of it herself, sharing that a new COO sat her down with a list of tasks she'd been handling and told her she shouldn't be doing any of them. The jobs weren't glamorous, but they weren't the owner's job either.
Chip extends this into two areas where owner sacrifice tends to do the most damage: new business development, where owners keep proposals and pitches entirely to themselves thinking they're protecting team time, and org chart design, where flat structures are usually not a deliberate choice but the result of owners absorbing management responsibilities no one else wanted. Both patterns block team growth and overload the owner at the same time.
Gini describes a practice she returns to every quarter, sorting her task list into three buckets — things only she can do, things she enjoys but probably doesn't need to do, and things she absolutely should not be doing. The third list gets delegated immediately. Chip puts it like this: for everything on your plate, ask yourself why you are the one doing it. If there isn't a good answer, stop doing it.
In this episode, Chip and Gini open with the analogy of Canadian doubles, the tennis format where two players face one. If your team outnumbers the prospect, you don't project strength, you project awkwardness. But the conversation goes well beyond headcount.
A little preparation goes a long way in making sure every seat on your side is justified. You'll want to match expertise to whoever the prospect brought, which requires actually knowing who's coming. Gini described a recent pitch where she reverse-engineered her attendee list based entirely on who was showing up from the prospect's side. That's not logistics, it's strategy. And whoever is in the room during the pitch needs to be the person doing the work after the contract is signed — not a handoff to a team with no context and no ownership.
Both Chip and Gini are emphatic that the meeting itself should not feel rehearsed like a school play. Agency owners who show up prepared to have a real conversation before pitching solutions will stand out. Harder for many owners is knowing when to keep quiet. Interjecting while a team member gives an imperfect answer undermines their confidence, signals to the prospect they can't be trusted, and makes them rely on you. The debrief after the meeting is where the coaching happens.
The entry-level talent pipeline is being entirely restructured. If agency owners don't figure out what role a young professional actually plays in an AI-assisted agency, they won't just struggle to hire today. They'll have no one to promote in five years.
In this episode, Chip and Gini dig into what's happening with entry-level hiring right now, and why the answer can't be to stop hiring junior staff altogether. The conversation covers why the old model of routine work is gone, what needs to replace it, and why agencies that don't solve this problem soon are setting themselves up for failure.
The episode opens with an observation from Gini: every presentation she gives to college classes lately surfaces the same anxiety from students. Nobody's hiring at the entry level because AI can handle the work those roles used to cover — news releases, media lists, social drafts, basic research. How can they find jobs today, and get the on-the-job training they need to move forward in their careers?
Chip frames the problem as a junction of circumstances: the rise of AI, economic uncertainty, and a higher education system that hasn't evolved with the workforce reality. Colleges discouraging AI use while their graduates are about to enter workplaces built around it is, as he puts it, the same mistake as banning calculators in math class. The students coming in aren't unprepared because they're less capable, they're underprepared because the institutions that trained them weren't keeping up with the times.
Chip and Gini agree that entry-level hires aren't obsolete, but the role must change. Instead of being the lowest rung of the ladder, new professionals need to come in already functioning like managers — just managing AI tools and processes instead of people. That requires more on-the-job training, better-documented processes and SOPs, and a genuine commitment to learning and development that most agencies still don't have. There's more than one upside, though. Better documentation and SOPs don't just help entry-level hires do their jobs — they make your agency more efficient, reduce owner dependency, and, for those who want to sell someday, significantly improve the value of the business.
Their closing argument is not to avoid entry-level hiring because the old version of the role is antiquated. Rethink what the role is, invest in the systems that support it, and get comfortable assigning junior people with responsibilities that would have felt premature five years ago. The alternative is a mid-level talent shortage that will be very hard to fix.
Most agency owners spend a lot of time thinking about growth, clients, and revenue. Far fewer think carefully about the words that define how they actually operate their businesses. In this episode, Chip and Gini dig into five of those words: leadership, management, accountability, responsibility, and authority. Leadership and management aren't the same thing. Leadership is about vision and getting people to follow you. Management is about making the work happen. Knowing which one you're stronger at is the first step toward building a team that covers your gaps. Accountability is the wrong place to start when a team member isn't delivering. You can't hold someone accountable for something you never clearly assigned, and you can't hold them accountable if you didn't give them the authority to get it done. Gini offers a useful comparison: when a client hires you for your expertise and then second-guesses every decision, it's demoralizing. That's exactly how your team feels when you delegate the work but not the authority to do it. The episode closes with a simple reminder. If you want more freedom as an owner, you have to be willing to actually let go. And if your team isn't capable of handling more responsibility, you should be asking yourself why you hired them.
Eight years and 300 episodes later, Chip and Gini take stock of what the Agency Leadership Podcast has actually been about and where their thinking has shifted since they sat down for lunch outside Wrigley Field and decided to start a show.
Chip shares an AI-generated analysis of the 10 most common themes across 300 episodes. Gini distills them into four she considers non-negotiable: communication fixes most problems, know your numbers, focus on particular wins, and the owner sets the temperature. Chip adds that communication doesn't just solve problems, it prevents them. Ironic, given that probably everyone listening is in the communications business.
On what's changed, Gini has moved from annual retainer-focused planning to quarterly reviews that constantly show results and surface what's working. She also notes that her advice for navigating a tough business environment now mirrors what worked during the pandemic: find the project work, start with an assessment, and build trust before building a retainer.
The biggest evolution for Chip is his position on AI. While he was skeptical a few years ago about the timeline, now he thinks agencies are under-emphasizing it. He and Gini disagree on AI's limits. Gini believes critical thinking, emotional intelligence, and crisis work still require human judgment. Chip is less certain those guardrails will hold. What they do agree on: AI is turning everyone into a manager, and that puts a premium on skills that were already in short supply.
The episode closes with a lightning round covering worst advice agencies still believe, best scary decisions, and prospect red flags including unreasonable expectations and unwillingness to discuss budget.
Most hiring processes obsess over the wrong things. Do they know our project management software? Are they proficient in this specific tool? Meanwhile, the one capability that actually determines whether someone will make your life easier or harder—their ability to solve problems independently—gets a cursory "are you a good problem solver?" question that everyone answers with "yes."
In this episode, Chip and Gini break down why problem-solving ability should be the primary hiring criterion, especially as AI makes technical skills easier to acquire and offload. The conversation explores why this matters more now than ever: as AI handles tactical execution, the ability to define problems clearly, break them into components, and figure out solutions becomes the differentiator between humans who add value and humans who get replaced.
Chip and Gini discuss how problem-solving cuts across every role, even ones you don't typically think of as problem-solving positions. Designers facing impossible deadlines, account people navigating last-minute client demands, anyone dealing with the reality that things rarely go according to plan. They all need to be able to figure out how to move forward rather than escalating every obstacle upward.
The episode tackles the mechanics of actually interviewing for this capability. You can't just ask "are you a good problem solver?"—you need scenario-based questions that reveal how candidates think through challenges. But not hypothetical scenarios you make up; real situations that have happened in your agency. Ask them to walk through how they've handled compressed timelines, missing information, conflicting priorities, or last-minute changes in past roles.
Gini shares how her daughter's school explicitly focuses on humanities and emotional intelligence rather than technical skills, anticipating that AI will reshape what jobs exist. She connects this to Anthropic's hiring practice of seeking people with humanities degrees who can absorb information, think critically, and demonstrate emotional intelligence rather than just technical proficiency.
The episode concludes with an important reminder: if you hire problem solvers but then micromanage how they solve problems, you've wasted the hire. You need to let them solve things their way, even if it's different from how you'd do it, or you'll end up with everything back on your plate anyway.
Most agency owners have read Built to Sell. But many have internalized the wrong lesson from it—fixating on that final chapter where the protagonist drives off into the sunset with a pile of cash, rather than the actual business-building advice throughout the book. The result is owners spending years building businesses optimized for a sale that may never happen, or that won't deliver the outcome they're imagining.
In this episode, Chip and Gini discuss Chip's "Build to Own" philosophy as a counterpoint to the built-to-sell mindset. The core principle: focus on creating a business that serves you today, not some hypothetical buyer tomorrow. This doesn't mean you can't or won't sell—it means you stop treating the sale as the primary objective and start treating ownership as the thing you're optimizing for right now.
Chip breaks down the TMRW framework for thinking about what you want from your business: Time (how much you spend and what flexibility you have), Meaning (what gives you satisfaction—clients, team, impact), Rewards (financial outcomes that fund your life today and tomorrow), and Work (the actual role you're crafting for yourself). Gini shares her decision to retire from speaking despite conventional wisdom saying agency owners should be out there raising their profile—because the anxiety wasn't worth the marginal business benefit.
The conversation tackles the uncomfortable reality that most agency owners counting on a sale to fund their retirement are likely building businesses that won't command the multiple they're hoping for. Meanwhile, owners who build businesses that throw off enough cash to fund retirement directly—while also being enjoyable to run—end up with something far more attractive to buyers when and if they do decide to sell.
Gini tells the story of a friend who prepared five years in advance for a sale: removing himself from day-to-day operations, hiring a president to build culture, ensuring the business wasn't founder-dependent. The result? An 18x multiple. But the episode's point isn't "here's how to get a great sale"—it's that you should make every decision through the lens of "would I still be happy with this if I never sold?"
S4 Capital has announced a revolutionary new pricing model that will transform how agencies charge for their services: instead of billable hours, they're moving to... subscriptions. Fixed monthly fees. Annual contracts that auto-renew. All costs absorbed into the price rather than passed through as variables.
You know, retainers. The pricing model most independent agencies have used for decades.
In this episode (somewhat abbreviated due to Gini's technical difficulties), Chip and Gini dissect the holding company's "brilliant innovation" with the appropriate level of sarcasm, then pivot to the actually interesting question buried in the announcement: how should agencies price around AI? The conversation moves from eye-rolling at repackaged retainer models to wrestling with legitimate uncertainty about how AI costs will evolve and what that means for agency pricing strategies.
Chip points out that we only know what AI costs today, and it's likely those costs will rise as platforms realize they're replacing expensive labor and can charge accordingly. This creates a pricing puzzle—do you transparently pass through AI costs, absorb them into your general cost of doing business, or find some middle ground? Gini shares how she's handling questions from college students about whether jobs will exist when they graduate, explaining that the work itself is shifting from doing to orchestrating, from creating to editing and refining AI outputs.
The discussion highlights the difference between cosmetic changes (calling retainers "subscriptions") and substantive challenges (figuring out sustainable pricing as AI capabilities and costs both increase). They land on the principle that AI costs should be factored into your total cost of doing business rather than line-itemized separately, giving you flexibility to adapt as the landscape shifts without locking yourself into specific cost structures that may not hold.
The subtext throughout is that holding companies remain out of touch with how most agencies actually operate, still discovering "innovations" that the rest of the industry implemented years ago.
The PESO Model has been guiding smart communications strategies for over a decade, but the tactical landscape underneath it keeps shifting. In the latest evolution, Gini and her team have completely revamped the PESO Model Certification to address how AI and large language models are fundamentally changing visibility in 2026.
In this episode, Chip interviews Gini about the newly updated certification and what's changed in how organizations should think about paid, earned, shared, and owned media. The conversation centers on "visibility engineering"—the intersection of owned and earned media where LLMs are scraping information and making decisions about who appears in AI-generated answers.
Gini explains why owned media remains the foundation (without content on your own properties, there's nothing to demonstrate to journalists, creators, or LLMs what you're about), but the recommended path has shifted from owned-then-earned-or-shared to a more deliberate owned-then-earned-then-shared-then-paid sequence. This evolution reflects how AI systems verify information by comparing what's on your website against what credible third parties say about you.
They also tackle the persistent "X is dead" headlines that plague the industry—whether it's websites, PR, or press releases. Chip and Gini push back hard on the notion that websites are becoming irrelevant, pointing out that your owned content hub becomes more valuable in an AI-driven world, not less. It's your source of truth, the fuel for custom AI assistants, and the foundation that persists even as social platforms come and go.
The conversation covers practical questions about implementing PESO in smaller agencies, whether you need to be full-service to deliver on all four pillars, and how the certification meets communicators at different experience levels—from college students to seasoned professionals.
If you've been treating PESO as just four columns of tactics rather than an operating system for communications, this episode clarifies what you're missing.
David C. Baker recently published a fascinating thought experiment about what he'd do if starting an agency from scratch today—and it's packed with provocative ideas worth serious consideration. His article offers a comprehensive blueprint covering everything from organizational structure to compensation philosophy, and much of it aligns with how Chip and Gini think about building sustainable agencies.
But the most interesting conversations happen when smart people disagree, which is why this episode focuses on the handful of points where Chip and Gini see things differently. Not because Baker's ideas are bad, but because they expose the tension between aspirational agency management and the messy realities of running a business with real budgets, real people, and real client demands.
In this episode, Chip and Gini tackle mandatory one-month sabbaticals for every employee, open-book finances published on your website, 360-degree reviews, and incentive compensation structures. They dig into why ideas that sound compelling in theory often create unintended consequences in practice—like how retention-based bonuses can fuel scope creep, or why forced sabbaticals don't actually solve the single-point-of-failure problem they're designed to address.
The conversation reveals thoughtful nuance on both sides. Gini shares her brutal experience with anonymous feedback that backfired when presented poorly. Chip explains why he sees most performance measurement systems as "performance theater" while still advocating for more financial transparency with teams. They discuss the logistical nightmares of scheduling multiple month-long absences and why backup systems for unexpected departures matter more than planned time off.
Throughout, they return to a central theme: what works brilliantly at one stage of growth can be completely wrong at another. The goal isn't to declare Baker's ideas right or wrong, but to test assumptions and recognize that even the most well-intentioned frameworks deserve scrutiny before implementation.
No more excuses. No more waiting to see how things play out. AI has moved past the experimental phase, and if you're still treating it like a nice-to-have rather than a fundamental shift in how your agency operates, you're already falling behind. In this episode, Chip comes out swinging with a wake-up call for the agency community: the ground is shifting faster than most are willing to admit, and the window for meaningful adaptation is closing. Gini backs him up with examples of how AI has progressed from an intern-level tool to something that can genuinely replace mid-level work—if agencies don't evolve what they're selling. They dig into the practical reality of training AI tools to work like team members, not just one-off prompt machines. Chip explains how he uses different platforms for different strengths—Claude for writing, Gemini for competitive intelligence, Perplexity for research, and ChatGPT as his strategic baseline. Gini shares how her 12-year-old daughter creates entire anime worlds through conversation with AI, demonstrating the power of treating these tools as collaborators rather than search engines. The conversation covers what clients actually want to pay for in 2026 (hint: it's not social posts and press releases), how to build AI agents trained on your specific expertise, and why the process of training AI forces valuable clarity about your business. They emphasize that this isn't about slapping the "AI-powered" label on your services—it's about fundamentally rethinking what value you deliver and how you deliver it. If you've been sitting on the sidelines waiting for the AI dust to settle, this episode is your warning: there is no settling. There's only evolution or extinction.
You built an agency you're proud of. So why does your website still feature that glowing tribute to someone you wouldn't recommend today, or explain services you stopped offering three years ago?
In this episode, Chip and Gini tackle the unsexy but critical task of auditing your agency's website content. They share practical approaches for identifying what needs updating, what deserves deletion, and how to prioritize your efforts when you're staring down hundreds (or thousands) of outdated pages.
The conversation covers everything from quick wins—like updating your homepage and key pages—to strategic decisions about high-traffic content that no longer serves your business. Gini shares her process for using tools like Screaming Frog to audit content systematically, while Chip emphasizes the importance of focusing on human users rather than chasing every algorithm change.
They also dive into the balance between refreshing old content and creating new material, with specific guidance on when each approach makes sense. The episode wraps with a reminder that consistency matters more than perfection—especially when AI is increasingly using your bio and content to determine whether to recommend you.
If your website is starting to feel like a liability rather than an asset, this episode offers a manageable roadmap to get it back on track without turning it into a year-long project.
In this episode, Chip and Gini discuss the importance of agency owners reflecting on the reasons they started their businesses and how those motivations can inform current strategies.
They share personal anecdotes about the challenges and growth experiences in their early days of agency ownership. They emphasize the value of going back to basics, understanding what initially led to success, and aligning business strategies with personal passions and strengths. The duo also highlights the importance of avoiding pitfalls such as micromanagement and burnout.
Finally, they encourage agency owners to use these insights to stay motivated, drive growth, and make informed strategic decisions in 2026.
In this episode, Chip and Gini discuss the importance of strategic planning for 2026. As they near the end of 2025, they emphasize the need for agencies to set themselves apart and adapt to the evolving landscape, particularly through the effective use of AI.
Despite ongoing economic challenges, they highlight the potential for AI to enhance both efficiency and strategic thinking. Chip and Gini also stress the importance of refining the ideal client profile and taking calculated risks. They share their personal experiences with using AI to assist in planning and decision-making processes, pointing out both the benefits and limitations of current AI technology.
In this episode, Chip and Gini discuss the complexities of hiring in growing agencies. They highlight the challenges of finding skilled, reliable employees who align with agency values.
Sharing personal experiences, Gini explains the pitfalls of hasty hiring and the benefits of thorough vetting and cultural fit. They stress the importance of a structured hiring process, including clear job roles, career paths, and appropriate compensation. They also underscore the value of meaningful interviews, proper candidate evaluations, and treating the hiring process as the start of a long-term relationship.
Lastly, Chip and Gini emphasize learning from past mistakes to improve hiring effectiveness and employee retention.
In this episode, Chip and Gini tackle the difficult subject of firing an underperforming and problematic employee. They discuss a real-life scenario where an employee with a bad attitude refuses to do their work, causing frustration among team members. They advise against prolonging the inevitable firing decision, suggesting that acting swiftly can alleviate overall team stress. Both hosts share insights on why Performance Improvement Plans (PIPs) are largely ineffective, stressing the need for proper documentation and the guidance of an HR advisor during termination processes. Additionally, they highlight the importance of showing proactive steps to the remaining team to mitigate the workload burden and maintain morale. The episode emphasizes the critical role of leadership in making tough decisions for the greater good of the team and the business.
In this episode, Chip and Gini discuss the growing concerns surrounding AI in the agency world. They highlight the irrational fears and cyclical nature of technological disruptions, drawing comparisons to social media and content marketing trends of the past.
The hosts argue against the notion that agencies should discount services due to AI efficiencies, emphasizing that AI should be seen as a tool to enhance productivity and strategic value rather than a cost-cutting measure. They stress that agencies should focus on delivering more value and maintaining regular client communication instead of simply protecting existing revenue.
The discussion also touches on the importance of transparency in AI use without oversharing minute details. Finally, they underscore the benefit of quarterly planning to align agency efforts with client business goals, thus fostering stronger client relationships and ensuring mutual success.
In this episode, inspired by a newsletter from David C. Baker, Chip and Gini discuss the authentic motivations and realities behind agency mission statements and values. They emphasize that many agencies publish values that are either not reflective of their true operations or are overly broad and similar to others. The hosts stress the importance of being honest about the core purpose of a business and aligning public statements with actual behavior. They argue that values should stem from the owner's true beliefs and actions rather than aspirational ideals. They also caution against spending too much time wordsmithing values for marketing purposes, as clients are more interested in results. The conversation touches on the impact of leadership behavior on agency culture and the pitfalls of misrepresenting agency values.
In this episode, Chip and Gini discuss a Reddit post about an agency leader going MIA and the repercussions for the team. They elaborate on the importance of communication, perception, and flexibility for agency owners.
The conversation includes personal anecdotes from both hosts, highlighting the need for frequent touchpoints, setting clear expectations, and maintaining a balance between taking personal time and being present for the team. They also stress the significance of transparency during challenging times and the benefits of empowering employees to reduce bottlenecks.
In this episode, Chip and Gini address a listener's question about the opportunities for growing an agency through outbound sales. They discuss the challenges of outbound sales, particularly in a small agency environment, and highlight the importance of building relationships and a strong brand. Both suggest that agency owners focus on networking and proactive relationship-building rather than traditional cold calling. They emphasize a multi-faceted approach to business development that includes content marketing, warm introductions, and maintaining an active online presence. Ultimately, they advocate for a shift in mindset from outbound sales to relationship cultivation to achieve sustainable agency growth.
In this episode, Chip and Gini discuss the impact of AI on small agencies, focusing on the high expectations and possible disappointments it poses. They reference a recent article from The Atlantic, which highlights a study showing that AI can sometimes decrease efficiency. They caution against overhauling business models based solely on AI's current capabilities, stressing that while AI can assist with tasks and improve efficiency, it cannot fully replace human judgment and creativity. The conversation extends to the challenges of integrating AI without sacrificing the development of new talent and ensuring that the evolving role of AI adds value rather than causing disruption.
In this episode, Chip and Gini discuss how to handle situations when the problems affecting an agency's client relationship stem from external contacts like procurement, IT, or the sales team. They emphasize treating client contacts as allies and not enemies, and provide strategies to navigate bureaucratic hurdles and internal politics. The discussion covers creative problem-solving techniques such as using MSAs, having biweekly calls with VPs of Sales, and understanding cultural differences. The importance of having a collaborative approach and pre-building relationships to effectively manage challenges is also highlighted.
In this episode, Chip and Gini discuss the common practice of providing free proposals and baseline ideas to clients. They argue that professional service providers should charge for these services as doing so adds value and ensures a thorough diagnosis before providing solutions. They share personal experiences and compare the situation to doctors who would never prescribe treatment without proper tests. They emphasize the importance of understanding a client's business through a paid discovery phase and making adjustments along the way to deliver effective results. Additionally, they discuss the risks of providing overly detailed plans in early stages, the benefits of quarterly assessments, and the importance of maintaining clear communication and trust with clients.
In this episode, Chip and Gini discuss how agency owners should handle employees with physical and mental health concerns.
They cover the increased openness around mental health and self-care, sharing personal experiences and business challenges. They highlight the importance of individualized management approaches, legal considerations, and quick professional advice.
The hosts also emphasize compassionate handling of employee health issues, the need for flexible scheduling, and the impact on small businesses. Gini shares insights on providing support for team members and owners, such as disability insurance, to cover long-term absences.
They conclude by underlining the importance of empathetic leadership and offering flexibility.
In this episode, Chip and Gini discuss how to manage situations where clients want to terminate contracts early. Gini emphasizes the importance of having a strong contract with clear termination clauses, which can serve as leverage in negotiations. They share experiences and strategies for recovering outstanding invoices, including offering concessions and being flexible with payment arrangements. The duo also cautions against aggressive tactics like public shaming for non-payment and stresses the importance of maintaining professionalism to avoid burning bridges. They conclude with practical advice on managing accounts receivable and resolving disputes amicably.
In this episode, Chip and Gini explore the impact of AI on client expectations. They discuss how AI is perceived to speed up work, leading clients to have unrealistic expectations regarding turnaround times and pricing. The duo emphasizes the need for agencies to set realistic boundaries and manage expectations from the outset. They share stories about AI's inconsistency, particularly in generating imagery and written content, and stress the importance of educating clients on the limitations and potential of AI. Ultimately, they advocate for leveraging AI's efficiencies while maintaining transparency and setting clear guidelines with clients to avoid morale and operational issues within your agency.
In this episode, Chip and Gini focus on the issue of employees over-servicing clients. They discuss the reasons behind over-servicing, including fear of client dissatisfaction and insufficient initial project scopes. The hosts emphasize the importance of educating employees on the long-term negative impacts, both on agency profitability and client relationships. They advocate for involving employees in strategic planning and scoping processes to ensure accurate budgeting and foster accountability. Chip and Gini also highlight the benefits of regular communication and collaboration with team members to prevent recurring problems and enhance overall agency efficiency.
In this episode, Chip and Gini discuss the importance of having a clear vision for where an agency is headed while also acknowledging the need for strong operational skills. They explore different types of agency owners, from visionaries to those who excel in operational management, and emphasize the necessity of balancing these roles within a team. The duo highlights the importance of complementing one's weaknesses by hiring the right people, whether it involves bringing in operational expertise or visionary ideas. They also share personal anecdotes and practical advice on maintaining this balance for the long-term success of an agency.
In this episode, Chip and Gini discuss the frequent occurrence of receiving offers to buy agencies and how to handle these communications. They share their own experiences of receiving such emails, including the prevalence of fraudulent or unserious offers. Gini describes her method of vetting these emails, such as examining URLs and LinkedIn profiles, and emphasizes the importance of legitimate connections within the industry. Chip provides further insights into the credibility of business brokers and the typical behaviors to watch out for. Both caution against making emotional decisions and underscore the necessity of due diligence, patient decision-making, and listening to one’s gut feelings. They conclude by highlighting the importance of proper advice and support for making sound decisions in the agency selling process.
In this episode, Chip and Gini discuss the challenges of dealing with team members who may not be enthusiastic about the clients or the work your agency is doing. They cover whether agency owners should be concerned if their employees dislike the job, the consequences of ignoring such issues, and the importance of alignment between client work and employee satisfaction. They also emphasize the need for transparency in the hiring process and preparing employees for potential pivots or shifts in the agency's focus. Gini shares her personal experience with pivoting towards the PESO model, and both hosts advise on involving team members early in the process to avoid misunderstandings and to gather valuable feedback. The episode underscores common themes such as the significance of communication, transparency, and knowing your financials in successful agency management.
In this episode, Chip and Gini discuss how agency owners should handle situations when an employee resigns. They explore the emotional reactions owners might have, the importance of maintaining professionalism, and the need to gather more information from the departing employee. They emphasize the value of a cooling-off period to devise a rational plan and the potential for restructuring the team. Chip and Gini also talk about seeking feedback from remaining team members to ensure a smooth transition and mitigate the risk of more employees leaving. They stress seeing an employee's resignation as an opportunity to learn and improve the business.
In this episode, Chip and Gini highlight the challenges and potential pitfalls of over-relying on AI for content creation in PR and marketing. They discuss instances of AI-generated content gone wrong, such as the fake book list published by the Chicago Sun-Times and poorly crafted AI-generated pitches. The hosts emphasize the importance of human oversight, individuality, and storytelling in maintaining quality and building relationships with the audience. They also delve into Google's EEAT guidelines and how PR professionals can leverage their expertise to stand out in search rankings. Finally, they discuss practical ways to efficiently use AI while ensuring the content remains authentic and relatable.
In this episode, Chip and Gini delve into the challenge of agencies being brought in late on client projects. They discuss the common scenario where clients give last-minute requests and share strategies for becoming part of the planning process earlier. Key recommendations include integrating into internal communications, attending more meetings, and maintaining a mindset of curiosity to stay updated. They also cover how to handle situations when timely inclusion isn't possible, such as negotiating new timelines or additional costs for urgent work. The conversation emphasizes the importance of proactive client communication to prevent unrealistic expectations and to potentially increase scope and revenue.
In this episode, Chip and Gini discuss whether or not employees can be encouraged to be "more strategic". They explore the definition of being strategic, frequently misunderstood expectations, and the challenges of fostering strategic thinking among team members. Gini shares her personal experiences and frustrations from her early career, emphasizing the importance of proper coaching and mentoring.
Chip and Gini conclude that agency owners should define their expectations clearly, consider the individual capabilities of their employees, and re-evaluate their own workload to potentially take on more strategic responsibilities themselves.
In this episode, Chip and Gini delve into the topic of scope creep in agencies. They discuss the bell curve of profitability and the importance of setting clear expectations from the first client conversation. They highlight strategies like dividing projects into 90-day scopes to regularly reassess goals and deliverables. The duo emphasizes the significance of internal communication, developing a culture of transparency, and ensuring team members understand project scope and costs. They also stress the need to build flexibility and cushion into initial pricing to manage minor scope changes and avoid financial strain. Finally, they agree on mastering financial understanding and regular one-on-one meetings for smoother agency operation.
In this episode, Chip and Gini discuss the psychology of pricing within agencies. They cover topics such as the importance of being confident in your pricing, avoiding negotiating against oneself, and the benefits of premium pricing.
Gini highlights her experiences with male and female negotiators, emphasizing how women often undervalue themselves. The duo debates the effectiveness of the 'three pricing options' strategy and its pitfalls. They also offer practical advice for owners to ensure their pricing sends the right message to clients and reflects the true value of their services.
In this episode, Chip and Gini discuss the prevalent issue of burnout among agency owners. They explore the different types of burnout, including cyclical and long-term burnout, and offer strategies to identify, cope with, and prevent it. Key recommendations include taking regular breaks, understanding personal energy drains and boosts, and adjusting work habits accordingly. They emphasize the importance of self-care, realistic time management, and the necessity to avoid making major decisions while burned out. Chip and Gini also share personal experiences and practical tips to help agency owners manage their workload more effectively.
In this episode, Chip and Gini discuss the latest quarterly SAGA owner survey, which provides a mixed bag of results for agencies.
They explore key findings, including the cautious optimism displayed by respondents, concerns about economic conditions, and the impact of government policies. Despite the varied performance of agencies, many are still managing to move forward.
The discussion also delves into the benefits of project work, the size of client bases, and the lack of mergers and acquisitions activity. Chip and Gini encourage agency owners to stay informed about macroeconomic trends but also to focus on positive strategies to navigate uncertainties.
In this episode, Chip and Gini discuss what agency owners can do to weather the current climate of economic uncertainty and potential recession. They suggest preparing for different economic scenarios by creating best, neutral, and worst case plans, cutting unnecessary expenses, and keeping lines of communication open with team members.
Chip and Gini also touch on the idea of diversifying income streams and being flexible with the type of work taken on, while cautioning against overreacting to market changes. They share personal experiences and practical steps to help agency owners lead through economic downturns.
In this episode, Chip and Gini explore strategies for agency owners contemplating an exit plan. They discuss the importance of planning and the different options available, depending on the agency's size and structure.
They talk about the limited choices for solopreneurs, as well as a wider variety of possibilities for larger agencies, including mergers, transferring ownership to employees, or simply stepping back from daily operations.
They emphasize the need for a solid timeline and a leadership team to ensure a smooth transition and successful exit. Additionally, they caution about potential pitfalls and unrealistic expectations, sharing insights from their own experiences and those of others in the industry.
In this episode, Chip and Gini discuss the ongoing challenge of managing remote workers in the PR and marketing agency world. Five years after most agencies leaned in to remote or hybrid work models, many owners and managers continue to struggle with finding the right approach to managing employees that they don't see in person every day. Chip and Gini address misconceptions about remote work, emphasize the importance of clear communication and trust, and highlight the need for detailed expectations and accountability. They advocate for flexibility and open dialogue between employers and employees. Using real-world examples and personal experiences, they present a balanced view of remote work's benefits and challenges.
In this episode, Chip and Gini discuss the practical uses and pitfalls of AI in agency lead generation and business development. They criticize the common misuse of AI for impersonal, high-volume outreach, which often results in off-putting and ineffective communication. Instead, they advocate for leveraging AI as a tool to enhance efficiency in tasks such as creating brand personas, drafting messages, and organizing proposals, while emphasizing the importance of maintaining a human touch in business development. The episode also highlights various AI tools and strategies to support agency growth without compromising personal relationships and quality.
In this episode, Chip and Gini discuss the transition from being a freelancer to an agency owner. They delve into the common fears and challenges associated with hiring employees and emphasize the importance of having structured processes and systems. The episode also explores topics such as the strategic direction of a business, handling pricing models, and the significance of building a team that you trust if your goal is to eventually sell the agency. Chip and Gini highlight the need to evolve business plans based on life phases and market demands, enabling freelancers to effectively scale their operations.
In this episode, Chip and Gini discuss the importance of mentorship for small agency employees. They explore various approaches including informal and formal mentorships, organic development of mentor-mentee relationships, and bringing in external consultants for mentorship. Gini shares her personal experiences, highlighting the challenges of forced mentorship and the benefits of organically developed relationships. The hosts emphasize the need for managers to support and mentor their employees, leveraging both internal and external resources, and the value of making time to mentor individuals outside one's own organization.
In this episode, Chip and Gini discuss the complaint from owners that AI is preventing junior employees from learning how to do their jobs the right way. They refute arguments that AI is detrimental to learning the fundamentals, comparing it to outdated technologies like fax machines and card catalogs. They advocate for embracing AI, citing its efficiency and evolving intelligence in completing tasks. They emphasize training teams to use AI effectively, focusing on editing and verifying AI-generated content rather than doing things 'the old way.' The episode concludes with practical advice for integrating AI into agency processes and improving productivity.
In this episode, Chip and Gini discuss the importance of satisfaction from the work you do for clients, both for agency owners and their teams. They explore how satisfaction can drive motivation, the significance of setting boundaries with clients, and the need for purpose in work. The conversation emphasizes the balance between achieving satisfaction and pursuing business growth, as well as the evolving nature of what satisfaction means over time.
In this episode, Chip and Gini address the topic of pivoting for small agencies in response to changing economic and political climates. They discuss the importance of evaluating whether to switch niches, cautioning against overreacting to trends. They highlight the risks of chasing 'gold rush' industries like cannabis and AI without true expertise. The conversation includes advice on gradual pivoting, focusing on adjacent industries, and the importance of long-term planning.
In this episode, Chip and Gini dive into the topic of agencies doing subcontracted work for other agencies. Both share their personal experiences of starting and growing their businesses through such work. They discuss the advantages, such as faster decision-making processes and the opportunity to work with big clients without direct procurement hassles. However, they also highlight significant risks like delayed payments, the potential for relationship conflicts, and the importance of clear contractual agreements. The hosts stress the need for transparency, proper onboarding processes, and clear communication channels to mitigate these challenges.
In this episode, Chip and Gini tackle the challenges of staffing, particularly in response to landing a large contract.
They discuss a Reddit user's question about managing a $2 million account and emphasize the importance of involving key team members throughout the business development process, rather than afterward.
The hosts advocate for a tiered approach to staffing, employing a mix of high, medium, and low experience levels, and leveraging contractors to manage workload peaks. They also highlight the risks of rapid, large-scale hiring and suggest regular networking and preemptive interviewing to maintain a robust pipeline of candidates.
In this episode, Chip and Gini discuss the findings from the SAGA quarterly survey of small agency owners. They cover insights on optimism in business outlook despite recent challenges, with a focus on talent-related issues such as compensation, retention, and recruiting. They delve into some surprising statistics, such as one in five agency owners not paying themselves regularly and over 30% having reduced headcount in the past year. The conversation highlights the importance of agency owners paying themselves a fair salary, balancing employee compensation, and maintaining efficient business practices without overworking staff. They also discuss the significance of flexible work arrangements and employee benefits in improving retention.
In this episode, Chip and Gini delve into the importance of empathy in agency management. They emphasize the need for agency owners to put themselves in the shoes of clients, prospects, and employees to improve communication and relationships. Key points discussed include handling difficult client conversations, managing scope creep, billing practices that avoid perceptions of nickel-and-diming, and providing constructive feedback to employees without micromanaging. They also advocate for regular, honest communications with clients and creative solutions to financial challenges faced by both agencies and their clients.
In this episode, Chip and Gini discuss the complexities of pricing strategies for agency engagements.
They explore whether agencies should charge more upfront for initial work, the importance of consistent revenue, and creative approaches to managing client expectations and financials.
The conversation emphasizes understanding client perceptions and the necessity of knowing one's financials to ensure profitability.
In this episode, Chip and Gini discuss PR professionals wanting a seat at the table when it comes to business decision-making. They explore the need for PR professionals to build relationships across departments, understand business dynamics, and communicate openly with other stakeholders. The conversation emphasizes the value of collaboration, learning from each other, and navigating interdepartmental challenges to drive business growth and improve client relationships.
In this episode, Chip and Gini discuss the common challenges agencies face in obtaining timely feedback and necessary information from clients.
They explore strategies for improving communication, managing client expectations, and the importance of having difficult conversations to maintain strong client relationships.
The conversation emphasizes the need for agencies to be proactive in addressing issues and becoming strategic counselors rather than mere order takers.
Key takeaways* Chip Griffin: “The clients never blame themselves or say, ‘we know this fell apart because of us’. They always point the finger of blame at the agency they’re paying.” * Gini Dietrich: “One of the questions you should ask your direct reports in every one-to-one meeting is what obstacles are you facing and how do we help you?” * Chip Griffin: “At some point, whoever is the senior person on the client side needs to understand what’s not happening on their side. Because it has an impact on the outcome.” * Gini Dietrich: “The good news is there’s a lot of project tracking software today that helps, because the client will get notifications and reminders that don’t have to come from you nagging them.
Related* Setting expectations for agency clients * Why (and how) clients should manage their PR/marketing agencies
View TranscriptThe following is a computer-generated transcript. Please listen to the audio to confirm accuracy.
Chip Griffin: Hello and welcome to another episode of the Agency Leadership Podcast. I’m Chip Griffin.
Gini Dietrich: And I’m Gini Dietrich.
Chip Griffin: Gini, I think we need to talk about the fact that I’m just not getting enough timely feedback from you and input on topics and research and all of that kind of thing.
Gini Dietrich: Okay. I like it. Let’s do that.
Do I get to give the feedback now?
Chip Griffin: I thought I was going to give you the feedback.
Gini Dietrich: Shoot. I thought you were not getting timely feedback from me.
Chip Griffin: I wasn’t, but I was going to give you feedback on your lack of feedback. I wasn’t actually. Yeah.
Gini Dietrich: Oh, that’s very meta, okay.
Chip Griffin: I, I’m afraid, I’m afraid what would happen if you actually started giving me feedback.
Gini Dietrich: You should be afraid.
Chip Griffin: Yeah, but no, we are going to talk about what happens when agencies are not getting what they need from their clients, whether that is feedback or research or access or approvals or edits or whatever, because this is a common challenge that agencies of all sizes have, but it, it has a particular impact on small agencies because you can’t be successful in most cases.
If you are not truly working in partnership with your clients and getting things from them to move the ball forward. And that might be trying to arrange to get an expert on an interview with a reporter or something like that. And so you need to get schedules and can coordinate it. Not every client is good with that.
Many clients are really bad about giving you timely feedback on drafts and things like that. So what are some strategies for dealing with it? And how do you avoid getting in a situation where you fail because you didn’t get what you need from the client? Because the clients never blame themselves. I, I’ve yet to see a circumstance where the client’s like, yeah, you know, we know this fell apart because of us.
They always point the finger of blame at the agency they’re paying.
Gini Dietrich: Yes. Yeah, yeah, yeah. You know, I mean, this has been a recurring theme throughout my career, of course. And this is, of course, why it’s a topic, because I think it’s a recurring theme for all of us. The good news is, is there’s a lot of software today that helps with that, because they will get notifications and things like that, that don’t have to come from you, but come from the software.
So there, there is that option. But even still, like we have one client we’re getting access and information from their subject matter experts continues to be one of our biggest challenges and we have tried everything. And then even when we get the information from the SMAE and we, we will like, I, I tested this just to see because my team gets so frustrated by it.
They will take the SMAE’s words verbatim and put them into content and the subject matter expert will be like, Nope, this isn’t right. And you’re like, Oh my gosh, it’s exactly what you said. So there, there are all sorts of challenges to this, but I think one of the biggest advantages we have today and going forward is, is access to software that will help us with some of it.
Chip Griffin: And, and so just elaborate on that a little bit. I assume you’re talking about project tracking software that shows what the blockers are and things like that.
Gini Dietrich: Yeah. I mean, project management software is one of the biggest things. It’s one of the first questions we ask a new client as we’re onboarding them is what project management system they use.
We have one client right now that doesn’t use anything. They just use spreadsheets. And we’re like, yes, that’s not going to work. So in some cases, we will implement or insert ourselves into their project management system, and in some cases, they will be implemented into ours, just depending on how it works.
And then, you know, they get the, they get the notifications, they get the emails, they get the reminders that say this is coming up due. And, and we, we use ClickUp, so we can say we send them a reminder when it’s three days due, send them a reminder the day before. And so it does, it does all of that for you, so that you don’t have to be the one for lack of a better term, nagging them.
Chip Griffin: Yeah, and I think, I think that is one of the keys is that you have to have some sort of a way of making clear to everybody who owes what when. And software obviously does make that so much easier today. But it may also be that in whatever regular reporting that you’re doing with clients, you need to make clear here are the things that we are still waiting on.
Because a lot of times, particularly if you’re dealing with multiple contacts within an organization, the project, the lead on the client side may not be aware of exactly what is not happening on their side. And they can light a fire if they know about it. But a lot of times we on the agency side are afraid to raise those things because, you know, we don’t want to rat out the juniors we’re working with or something like that.
We want to feel like we’re the tattletale. But at some point, whoever is the senior person on the client side needs to understand what’s not happening on their side. Because it has an impact on the outcome. And you don’t want to wait till the end to say, well, we never got these seven things. They need to know it when they can still do something about it.
And before there has been a failure.
Gini Dietrich: Yeah. And I think that’s part of, I think overall agencies can do a better job of onboarding client, new clients and going through that process with them. To say, listen, and, and maybe it’s not onboarding a brand new client. Maybe it’s starting a new project or starting a new campaign to say, okay, do we all agree that this is the end deliverable and the due date then, and then we’ll back it out from there.
And. If you, like clients, if you don’t meet these deadlines, then this is what will happen. And then as you’re going through the process to say, okay, this is due in two days. If you don’t get it to us, it’s going to push this, this, and this back. So It’s sort of like the whole, it’s the same kind of conversation that you have when you’re over, when you’re about to over service.
We’re happy to do that for you, but here’s how, here’s how it will affect the rest of the budget, the campaign, whatever it happens to be. It’s the same conversation. It’s continuing to have those open and transparent conversations. And it’s not, it’s not bad. It’s not critical. It’s just, hey, listen, this is due in two days.
And if we don’t get it, it’s going to going to affect this, this and this.
Chip Griffin: Yeah. And I think that’s, that’s a valuable piece of insight that you need to be able to show that there are consequences to, to the actions. And here is what that consequence is. And it’s very common, for example, when you are, doing web development, which is something I did with one of my agencies, years ago.
You know, we would have project timelines and when we didn’t get feedback on wireframes, we would say, okay, here’s the updated timeline that now shows where we’re at. So you can, you can literally see in real time the effect of your failure to get consensus on your side or whatever. And you can see these things happening and it then puts it on the client’s
plate to figure out, are we okay with that? Or are we going to do something to light that fire and start getting you things more quickly?
Gini Dietrich: Right. And I think we see a lot of this too, in, earnings releases. I mean, we do, or we do work with a lot of startups. So when they go to announce a new round of funding, they always want to make changes the morning that you’re announcing it and you’re like, you can’t make changes.
It’s already been uploaded to the wire. It’s about, you can’t, we’re done, right? Right. Or they don’t get you stuff the day before they want to announce. And so then it pushes it back because as it turns out, you can’t just go to business wire and upload something and have it released five minutes later.
So they have to understand that there are implications and consequences to your point when they don’t do it. And I think it’s, it’s less about wanting to be people pleasers and wanting to, to not tattle and more about, Hey, listen, we all have a job to do and we need you to do, to do your part for like, we’ll manage as much as we can, but you still have to do your part.
Chip Griffin: Yeah. And I, and I think it is, it is becoming more complicated. Some, some things are becoming easier because we’ve got software, as you mentioned. But I think it’s becoming more complicated because clients are looking to find ways to reduce the costs that they have with agencies. And so often they will come to the agency and say, well, what if we take on some of this work and you take on some of this work?
And so if you’re in a situation where the client, for example, says, okay, well, we’ll, we’ll take on doing the research part of it, we’ll send you the research, and then you’ll just write from that, for example. Versus, you know, maybe five years ago when budgets were a little bit richer, they would have just said, hey, you do the research, you do the writing, we’ll just approve it.
And so now they’re, they’re trying to, to find ways to, to do some burden sharing so that they don’t have to put as much money on the table to the agency. But that then makes it more difficult because now we’re into a realm of not really just getting feedback and approvals, which is easy, clear cut. But if you’re not giving me the research that I need, I can’t even start to write.
And so then that creates a, another layer of challenge. And, and I’ve seen agencies who say, well, to make this successful, we’re just going to start doing the research anyway. We know we’re not being paid for it, but we got to do it because we don’t want to get fired or get yelled at because we are not moving forward and hitting the deadlines that we have, even though it’s because we didn’t get these things.
And so it, it’s a very challenging situation for agencies to figure out how to navigate that because in general, I would tell agencies, don’t do work you’re not being paid to do.
Gini Dietrich: Don’t do that. Right.
Chip Griffin: At the same time, if you don’t do it. And if you start missing deadlines, it’s a, it’s a challenge sometimes to sell that.
And so some things like feedback and approvals, you can’t take on yourself, but when it’s work you can take on yourself, that really, I think is where the big challenge lies for agencies today.
Gini Dietrich: Well, and then it becomes an over service piece for you. So say, so then you can go back to the client and say, Hey, listen, we’re having trouble getting this accomplished.
We can do the work. Would you like us to adjust the plan? And push budget out so that we’re not going to do A, B, and C later in the year. Would you like to figure out a way to incorporate more budget so that we can get it done for you? Or can we light a fire and get this done? So give them, you know, some options because I think, I think in many cases, not all, but in many cases, the client will say, you know what, let’s just throw some money at it and you guys get it done for us.
We’re just, we’re just too busy. We’re going through a reorg, we’re, you know, whatever it happens to be, there’s stuff that happens internally all the time. That nobody can control. So in some cases, they may just throw money at it to have you do it, but don’t over service without having that conversation.
Chip Griffin: Right.
And I think that that you can’t be afraid to have these difficult conversations with clients. We’ve talked about this before in other areas as well. But you need to be having an open line of communication with your clients so that they understand what challenges exist on your side, on their side, somewhere in the environment, whatever, so that you can address problems earlier, as opposed to waiting until they really come to a head and now it becomes a crisis because the release needs to be out in three days, or the website needs to be launched for an event, or whatever.
You need to be, as soon as you start seeing problems, you need to communicate that. And you need to gradually escalate it as needed in order to get the resolution in terms of changed deadlines, increased budget, modified scope, whatever it is that, that needs to be done to fix it. But at some point you may also get to the realization that there’s no way that you can be successful within the bounds of what the client is paying, allowing, doing, etc.
And so in those cases you may need to have a very difficult conversation with them and say, if this doesn’t get fixed, we’re going to need to end this relationship and that’s not comfortable.
Gini Dietrich: Not comfortable at all.
Chip Griffin: But if you know that you’re not going to succeed there’s no reason to keep banging your head against the wall just because you think you might get a couple more months of cash out of it. Because it because you’re going to sour the relationship even more than it may already have been If you do that, so it’s much better to resolve that sooner rather than later.
Gini Dietrich: Yeah, I’m one of the things I always say to my friends and my coaching clients is listen, you’ve built an agency where trust is the currency. And you have reputation. And most of us grow our agencies because of referrals and, and word of mouth, right?
And our ability to do that is because of our reputation. So why would you avoid having the hard conversations, the critical conversations you need to have to protect your reputation at all costs? That’s what you’re doing. Yeah, it’s hard. Yeah, it’s uncomfortable, but protect your reputation at all costs, because that’s, what’s going to drive your business forward. Every single time.
So, you know, if you’re, if you have a hard time with it, there’s a great book called Critical Conversations. Read it, it will help you sort of think that through. And then it helps you change your mindset in terms of, this is less about, this being a challenging, challenging conversation and more about us finding a way to come together and figure this out.
And, and that may be that you cut ties, but I tell you what, every single time you lose a client or you fire a client, something bigger and better comes along. Every time.
Chip Griffin: Absolutely. And, and, you know, we, we focus mostly here on, on what the agency can do with the client, but there are things that you can do internally as well when you’re in this situation.
And I think as owners, the first thing is we need to make sure that we are aware of the problems that may exist. Fair. Yep. And so we need to communicate to our own team members that if they are running into these obstacles, if they are not getting what they need from the client, they need to make us aware of it so that we can help figure out how to knock down those roadblocks.
And it’s one of the reasons why I’m such a big believer in the weekly one on one. Because that is typically an opportunity where someone can raise, well, we’re just not getting what we need. They might not send a separate email to you or request a separate meeting with you to, to tell you that they’ve got a problem with the client.
But if you’re doing these weekly one on ones, it’s that venue because one of the questions should be, how can I help? What, what obstacles can I get rid of for you? And if one of them is this client isn’t giving me what I need, you can figure out how to address that. So there are internal things that you can be doing as well, in order to address some of that. And, and if you’re not getting timely feedback, or not getting timely research, think about, are there ways that I could get it more easily from the client? In other words, could I reduce their burden? So, for example, if you’re looking for research from a subject matter expert, could you just schedule a call and record it and transcribe it, versus asking them to send you materials?
It might be easier just to get 30 minutes on their calendar, have a conversation, and get either all or most of what you need in that, as opposed to waiting for them to write something up, go through their files, whatever. A lot of times it’s just trapped in their head, and if you can have a conversation, that’s good enough.
And so, think about how you can reduce the level of friction, and so that’s an internal conversation. You know, what, what do we really need? Are we asking for too much from the client? Are we asking for it too timely? In other words, if we know that the client takes a week to give feedback, don’t build a timeline that, that says that they give feedback in 72 hours. Because you know, it’s not going to happen.
It’s one of the reasons why I love paid discovery or initial projects with clients, because you figure out what their cadence is and how timely they are. And do they run around in circles, rethinking things over and over again. Build it into your plan, figure out how you can make it easier for them to do what they need to do.
And for you to succeed. As opposed to just saying, well, this is the way we do it. And we’re going to force square peg round hole.
Gini Dietrich: Right. Yeah. I love that. And I think it’s really important to be able to have those one on one conversations with your team to make sure that you are getting those answers.
And you’re right. One of the questions you should ask in every one to one is what obstacles are you facing and how do we help you? One of the things I’d say, and I think we’re all guilty of this is that we’re moving really fast. We… it’s really easy to jot off an email or to send a Slack message or a Teams message and put it into somebody else’s camp.
So, and I’m guilty of this as well. But it’s so much easier in some cases to just pick up the phone and say, Hey, do you have five minutes? Or to send an email and say, I know you’re incredibly busy. Can I get 30 minutes to get this off of your plate? And most of the time, people are going to be really agreeable to that.
Gini Dietrich: So I say to my team all the time, pick up the freaking phone. Do not send a Slack message. Do not send an email. Do not text. Pick up the phone and call the client because I promise you, you’re going to save yourself two weeks of frustration if you just do that.
Chip Griffin: Yeah, and anytime you’ve got a relationship with a client where you need to get a steady flow of feedback or information from them, it’s really important.
Have a regular schedule of meetings with them, just as you do a weekly one on one with your own teams. If you, I mean, and not every client needs a weekly call. So I’m not, I’m not advocating that you just, you know, calendar yourself to death here. But if you’ve got someone where you’re, you have a lot of back and forth, where you have a lot of these things, a lot of times reviewing some of those status things on a conference call or zoom call or whatever, it can be a more comfortable way of doing it as opposed to sending that email that says, here are the things we’re missing.
Cause email… it, it, it feels much more accusatory. It feels much more aggressive in many cases. Whereas if we’re just having a conversation, we can say, you know, these are the three things that we’re really waiting on right now. And, then you can have a dialogue back and forth with the client to figure out how are we going to break this down?
And so a lot of times you’ll make progress more quickly by having that call. It’s one of the reasons why I think all these folks who say, well, you know, we need to have fewer meetings. No, you just need to have good meetings. That may mean that some of them go away. But it, it really, meetings can be very effective if you’re using them the right way.
Gini Dietrich: Yes, and meetings don’t have to be an hour long. They don’t have to be 30 minutes long. They can be 10 minutes. And I think that’s the other trap.
Chip Griffin: Very few are. In fairness, very few meetings last 10 minutes.
Gini Dietrich: Sure. Sure. But you can do that. You can schedule a 15 minute meeting. So it doesn’t, I think we get in this trap of everything has to be an hour.
Everything has to be 30 minutes. And that’s not the case. Correct. At all.
Chip Griffin: Correct. But more importantly, you need to go into the meeting and understand what you’re trying to get out of it.
Gini Dietrich: That’s right.
Chip Griffin: Because too many of these meetings you just, you, you wander into and you just kind of like, you kind of wander around aimlessly and talk about.
You need to know what you need to come out of that meeting with and if you’ve got obstacles, if there are things that you need from the client, you need to make sure that you address them early in the conversation and you need to make sure that you keep talking about them until you have resolution on at least what the next step is, not necessarily how you completely solved it, but, but at least make some progress on it so that you come out of it and you don’t end the conversation and go back with your team and say, geez, I feel like we’re right where we started 30 minutes ago.
Gini Dietrich: Right, right, right. Yeah. I mean, I have, we have one client who their chief marketing officer and I very much both like to take walks during the middle of the day. And we usually, she and I usually take walks about the same time of the day and we call each other and we have a conversation. We don’t have a quote unquote scheduled meeting.
There isn’t a like, oh, we have to get this done. It’s just a chat that we have while we take a walk together and figure out like what’s missing, what needs to be done, what’s on the agenda. I know you met with the CEO today. What’s the, what came down from that? And it helps us help our teams. And it’s informal.
It’s not a formal thing. We don’t put it on the calendar. If we miss it, we do, like, it’s not a big deal. We probably do it two or three times a week though. So there are ways that you can get around this sort of, we have to have an hour meeting and it has to be every week and like… find informal ways to be able to get what you need.
Chip Griffin: I mean, the, the bottom line here is, you know, anytime that you’re not getting what you need from a client to be successful, you need to address it as soon as you know it’s a problem or think it might be a problem. You need to find a path to resolution. It’s not going to be the same in every single case.
You need to make sure that you’re having the internal dialogue so that you’re aware of these problems and you can start helping solve the problems on your end too and not just rely on the client. But ultimately you need to get these things resolved because sitting there and just complaining about them is never going to get you anywhere.
Waiting until there’s actual failure is not a good idea.
Overservicing is not a good idea. And so you need to be on top of these things because they’re only going to get worse. As client budgets continue to be tight and probably get tighter, it’s going to be something that you need to focus on because they may have fewer resources on their end to even fulfill some of the requests that you have.
And, and so you need to be in a position where you’re helping to solve these problems for them and helping them understand what you actually need in order to be successful. And what the consequences of, of not getting that are.
Gini Dietrich: That’s right. That’s right. And I think in part, and if you do these things, it puts you in a position of being a strategic counselor and not just an order taker.
Chip Griffin: Yes. So with that,
Gini Dietrich: Listen to us.
Chip Griffin: Listen to us. And, and, Gini, I appreciate all the feedback you’ve given on this topic.
Gini Dietrich: You’re welcome.
Chip Griffin: Today. With that, that will draw to an end this episode of the Agency Leadership Podcast. I’m Chip Griffin.
Gini Dietrich: I’m Gini Dietrich.
Chip Griffin: And it depends.
In this episode, Chip and Gini discuss the common challenges agencies face in obtaining timely feedback and necessary information from clients. They explore strategies for improving communication, managing client expectations, and the importance of having difficult conversations to maintain strong client relationships. The conversation emphasizes the need for agencies to be proactive in addressing issues and becoming strategic counselors rather than mere order takers.
It's business as usual in their 250th episode, as Chip and Gini continue to share their unvarnished opinions. At the risk of this being their last episode, they have once again chosen to tell you what you're doing wrong as an agency owner. The hosts share specific examples of agency owners breaking or ignoring rules that they don't like — or that clients may pressure them to bypass. They talk about compliance, ethical practices, and risk management for agency owners. They discuss the ramifications of behaviors such as unauthorized account sharing, misclassification of contractors, and copyright violations.
In this episode, Chip and Gini discuss strategic planning for growing an agency in 2025. They stress the importance of planning during Q4 and consistently gathering ideas throughout the year, whether digitally or using methods like post-it notes. They highlight the common mistake of agencies relying solely on referrals or word-of-mouth without proactive strategies. The hosts also emphasize the need for business owners to define their personal and business goals before crafting a detailed strategy to grow, warning against simply emulating others without considering personal business objectives. They touch on diversifying revenue streams and advise focusing on mastering one business development approach well before expanding to other approaches. The importance of involving team members and contractors in the planning process is highlighted to ensure a holistic and informed strategy.
In this episode, Chip and Gini discuss the critical aspects of onboarding new clients in the agency world. They emphasize the importance of setting clear expectations, proactive communication, and understanding client processes. The conversation includes tips for achieving quick wins without overburdening clients, integrating with client systems, and maintaining a sustainable pace. Both hosts highlight the significance of being adaptable and helpful, ensuring a successful long-term partnership with clients. They also share insights into balancing immediate results with strategic long-term goals.
In this episode, Chip and Gini discuss the importance of having clear alcohol policies in agencies. They explore the evolving norms of alcohol consumption in professional settings, the necessity of having written rules, and the implications for office events, client meetings, and expenses.
Drawing on their experiences and insights from expert Patrick Rogan of Ignition HR, the hosts emphasize the need for leadership to set examples and consider the legal and liability aspects of alcohol use. They suggest practical guidelines for limiting alcohol use to ensure professionalism and reduce risks.
Key takeaways* Chip Griffin: “My baseline is you should have rules about alcohol in place because it makes life easier for everybody. What those rules are… now that’s where it gets a little bit more complicated.” * Gini Dietrich: “In today’s day and age, everybody expects to have some sort of policy around it and it’s a really easy way to protect yourself and avoid taking the risk. Get something in writing and enforce it as needed.” * Chip Griffin: “Focus on leading by example here. The policies that you have need to be the same ones that you are adhering to because it makes it so much easier to enforce it.” * Gini Dietrich: “Most clients expect the agency to pick up the bill. So having a no alcohol expensed policy doesn’t work from that perspective.”
Resources* Agency policies on using and expensing alcoholic beverages
View TranscriptThe following is a computer-generated transcript. Please listen to the audio to confirm accuracy.
Chip Griffin: Hello, and welcome to another episode of the Agency Leadership Podcast. I’m Chip Griffin.
Gini Dietrich: And I’m Gini Dietrich.
Chip Griffin: Gini, I need a drink.
Gini Dietrich: Awesome. Let’s do it.
Chip Griffin: You know, I, I have thought about how sometimes we should do like, you know, an Agency Leadership Podcast happy hour show where we are actually just drinking and we can start to give even more unvarnished opinions than what we usually do, but, but given how blunt we tend to be, I do get some criticism occasionally from folks about how blunt I can be.
That may not be the best idea.
Gini Dietrich: I think it’s a great idea. We should do it. We should definitely do it.
Chip Griffin: But if we do it, we probably ought to have some policies around it. Probably. It’s important to have rules for your business around alcohol.
Gini Dietrich: Yes. You actually did a little bit of digging and research on this to see how many agency owners have a policy on alcohol use and what it might be.
So let’s talk about that because I think it’s interesting and it’s definitely something that we should all be thinking about if we don’t already have a policy in place.
Chip Griffin: Yeah. I mean, it is certainly something that, that I hadn’t given a whole lot of thought to in recent years, but, over the last few months, I’ve been asked by a few different agency owners about alcohol policies in terms of, use in office environments, as well as, expensing, particularly when travel or they’re at events, that kind of thing.
And so, you know, most of the time when I get questions, I have my immediate answer, I’m like, this is, this is what you should do. And it’s, it’s built up over the years. But alcohol is one of those things that there’s been a real evolution over the course of my career. When I first started working in Washington in the early 1990s, it was incredibly common to have martinis at lunch.
Gini Dietrich: Yep.
Chip Griffin: This was not the 1950s. It wasn’t multiple martinis, a martini, but it was very common.
Gini Dietrich: Yep.
Chip Griffin: And then by the mid 90s, it had transitioned from martinis to wine. And because it was wine, sometimes it was two glasses of wine. And then as we moved into the later 90s, it went down to one glass of wine. And then over time, it basically went to no alcohol at all at lunch.
Gini Dietrich: Yeah.
Chip Griffin: And, and in general, I would say that, You know, in the last 10 or 15 years when I was on business travel, if you had alcohol at a business lunch, it was the exception rather than the rule.
Gini Dietrich: Yep. Yep.
Chip Griffin: But happy hours have been and continue to be very popular. Lots of agencies have had them in the office.
I know I have. Mm hmm. Sometimes at restaurants or bars.
Gini Dietrich: Yep.
Chip Griffin: Certainly when traveling, it’s incredibly common if you’re out with clients or prospects to have alcohol. And to expense it. But those things have all shifted over time. And so it is, I think, worthwhile to look at. What should agencies be doing today?
Gini Dietrich: Yeah, I think you’re right.
I mean, we, you know, when we had an office, we always had wine, wine Fridays, wine 30 on Friday, 4 30 Fridays. And I provided the alcohol for my team. So everybody on Friday afternoon would have a little happy hour at the office and then go start their weekends. And like you, you know, we always, it wasn’t, wasn’t lunch every day, but Fridays, we definitely had drinks at lunch.
I could personally can’t do that anymore because I would fall asleep. I’d be sitting at my desk like, but I also think there’s something to be said for, you know, I think lots of people go to conferences, they go to sales meetings and they just put one, tie one on and there are lots of regrets the next day.
So I think there’s something to be said for limiting or putting a policy around limiting what your team can do, especially when clients are around. Because it’s not always appropriate to tie one on with the people that, that pay for your services.
Chip Griffin: Yeah. I mean, I, and I think that, you know, , so some of this comes down to some good common sense and thought about.
Particularly you as an owner are doing things. Part of it does come down to actually having written policies for your team in part, because your employees want to know what the rules are. Sure. Absolutely. And it’s helpful for them to know what they are so that they don’t have to, you know, keep coming to you.
You know, hey mom and dad, can I have a drink at this event or that event? You know, can I expense it? Or worse, they do expense it. They come to you after the fact and you say, no, I’m not paying for that.
Gini Dietrich: Right.
Chip Griffin: And that obviously is a very uncomfortable conversation, to have. So, you know, I, I think my, my baseline is you should have rules in place because it makes life easier for everybody. What those rules are…
now that’s where it gets a little bit more complicated. And I do think it’s important that you, as the owner live by these rules as well. Because it’s very, very difficult in any kind of policy where they see the owner doing something wildly different from what they do. And so if you want some exceptions, then you need to, to design your policy in such a way that the exceptions you want actually fit into an overall rules structure as opposed to, well, it’s whenever I feel like it, I can do it, because that, that doesn’t set a good example for your team.
Gini Dietrich: So, and I don’t know what the liability is either, like around having alcohol that you provide alcohol at work and then somebody gets in a car accident or something or gets a DUI, there’s probably some liability there too. So I think you have to be really thoughtful about how you approach this and what, what you allow and what you don’t allow, what you do.
Like it used to be that I could go get my hair cut and my hairdresser would provide a glass of wine. And because of the liability on that, they stopped doing that, which kind of sucks that you get punished for one person’s behavior. But, like they got sued because one person had too many drinks while they were getting their haircut and got a DUI.
So there, there is that piece of it that you have to be thoughtful about as well. So it’s not just thinking about it from the perspective of, you know, what kinds of things do I want to do? Do I want to be able to go out and order a bottle of wine with, the client and have an expense, or do we charge it back to them or whatever?
It’s more than that. It’s talking to your insurance company. It’s talking to your attorney. It’s ensuring that you’re protected as well, because there can be a lot that come back to get you without you even realizing it.
Chip Griffin: Yeah. And I, I think, you know, obviously we’re not lawyers or, you know, insurance agents or any of that kind of stuff, but you know, ultimately you do need to make some decisions about how much risk you’re willing to take because there’s, I mean, certainly there’s, you can’t get to a, a no risk situation in anything that you do in life or in business. But, you know, one of the things that I did with my own businesses was I tended to move away from hosting anything within the office that involved alcohol, because then it made it too easy if someone were to get into an accident. And people, even if the alcohol wasn’t the actual cause, the reality is in today’s society that people will sue just about anybody and they’ll look for the deepest pockets they can find, which is rarely the individual who did something and it’s usually someone upstream from that. And so I felt more comfortable paying for happy hours in restaurants or bars, because then at least a, a bunch of the burden shifts to them to make judgments on over serving and those kinds of things. It doesn’t mean that you’ve eliminated your exposure, but in my view, at least I felt I had shifted enough of it.
To quote unquote professionals, right? Because they have to have some level of training in order to do that. Whereas in the office, it’s just alcohol sitting on a conference table. Usually everybody kind of pour their own, and then it’s on you as the owner to say, no, no, you look like you’ve had too much, which you don’t really want to be in that position with employees, right?
Generally speaking anyway. So, you know, but, but you need to decide as an owner, what you’re comfortable with from a risk standpoint, it’s also good if you’re going to be hosting these things or paying for happy hours for your team to talk to your insurance agent and make sure that your current coverages allow for some level of protection for you in the event that something were to happen. Because you always want to think through what, what are the worst case scenarios that could realistically happen.
Gini Dietrich: Yeah.
Chip Griffin: And, and then decide, is that a risk you’re willing to take?
Gini Dietrich: Yeah. And I think, you know, there you, I think we’ve all experienced this where you go to a conference and you’ve paid for the ticket and everything and the meal plan and they give you two tickets for drinks at the opening night event. The reason they do that is so that they don’t killed on expensive drinks, but also for the liability piece of it.
So there are opportunities where you can say, Hey, let’s all go out and the first round’s on me. You can do stuff like that. And then whatever happens after that, and after you leave, the liability and the risk to you is a lot less because you paid for the first drink, that was it on the company dime, you left. Then they can go on their weekend, do their weekends and whatever happens to be, so you’re less liable from that perspective.
Chip Griffin: Right, and I do think that You know, you need to, as you say, you, you know, you, you kind of limit it and then you go away. Right. So that you’re not part of it. I, you know, I, and I do think, I mean, in the olden days, that was very common, right? You had, you hosted the holiday party and all the senior management left so that the, the quote unquote kids could have their fun.
I think even today, we need to be careful about that though. Because there are other things that can happen during those times. I mean, you know, I can’t tell you the number of stories I’ve heard about holiday parties. Oh, sure. Even in very recent years, in the last three or four years, where things have gone wildly wrong from an HR standpoint.
And so, you need to think about whether, whether that, that old fashioned notion of senior management leaves and lets everybody have fun still works in 2024. I, honestly, I’m not sure it does. And I, I think if I had a larger business, I’m not sure that I would. I think that I would stick around for the entirety of it and, and perhaps curtail it sooner.
And if people want to go do an after party somewhere else or whatever, that’s fine. But I, I would be reluctant to allow some of the shenanigans that I know went on in, in olden days as it were.
Gini Dietrich: Yeah. And I think the difference is like, I had that experience too, when I worked at the large agency that senior, like we would have a holiday party or our annual meeting and senior leadership would leave, but the bar was still open and the party was still going, the company was still paying for it, even though senior leadership had left. Like from my perspective, I would say first rounds on me buy the first round of drinks.
And then I like, that’s it. That’s all the company’s doing. You’re at a restaurant. You guys can go to a different bar. You can stay here. Like, but you you’re on your own after this. And I think that taking down the liability from that perspective helps.
Chip Griffin: And so, you know, one of the things as we think about all of these questions, , I went to my friend Patrick Rogan from IgnitionHR, who is my go to on HR things because I recognize where I’ve hit the limits of my real knowledge and where I’m just kind of making stuff up, which sometimes it’s okay to make stuff up, but in the areas like this, probably better to get a little bit of guidance.
And so I asked him for his perspective on it. And so in the article that I wrote on the SAGA website, and we’ll link that in the show notes. He actually provided a paragraph of suggested text for your employee handbook on alcohol use, but I think that the key thing in there is it says that in no event may an employee consume alcoholic beverages to the point of intoxication.
And so I think that, you know, you want, it’s, sometimes you want to be able to say, well, you know, you can have one drink or two drinks, but the problem is that those all impact that people differently differently. Sure. , you know, there’s a, there’s a local restaurant, here, in New Hampshire that serves what I call bathtub martinis, because I think they have, literally the equivalent of two to three martinis in the glasses, these giant glasses, which frankly I hate. I love a good martini. I do not like them in those glasses because if you drink it at a reasonable pace, it is warm by the time you’re done.
Gini Dietrich: Yeah.
Chip Griffin: So I’m very much, I like the old school, very small martini glasses. Then I can have two or three and still be fine.
Gini Dietrich: Right.
Chip Griffin: And it’s all cold and enjoyable throughout the whole time, because I’m not, I don’t generally, particularly at this point in my life, go out and just drink to get drunk.
Gini Dietrich: No. Right.
Chip Griffin: That is, that is not my idea of fun at my age. So, you know, so I think a standard like what Patrick suggests, which is that it’s, it’s you, you have to make the judgment as an employee that you are not intoxicated in a work environment, whether that work environment is in the office, because you’ve had a holiday party in the office, or whether it’s out to dinner with a client or whatever, if you’re on the job, then you need to be not intoxicated.
Gini Dietrich: I think that’s a good role. So what else did he say besides no time ever, can you be intoxicated?
Chip Griffin: So I, I, you know, his point was, was there. And then we also talked about the expense side of things, because this is, this actually is where a bunch of the questions that I’ve gotten have come up. Because it’s, part of it is the actual use of alcohol by the employees, but part of it is, I don’t really want to be paying for it.
Sure. Alcohol can be expensive.
Gini Dietrich: Yeah.
Chip Griffin: And so. You know, his, his view on that and his suggestion was that you should allow reasonable expensing of alcohol. So you should not have a, a zero alcohol policy. But this might be, you know, where you do say, you know, you, you have to limit yourself to one to two drinks that are at least that are expensed.
If you’re on a business travel, and that you would prohibit the, the expensing of like mini bar alcohol or things like that, you know? So it, if it’s, if it’s part of you going out particularly with clients or prospects or even team members, fine, have a drink or two it’s, it’s on the company. You know, you may also want to suggest that it has to be reasonable, you know, not like Louis the 13th or something like that, 250 a pour or whatever it costs these days.
And by the way, I’ve tasted Louis the 13th. It’s not worth it. So if you see it and want to do it.
Oh, it’s not?
No, it is not. There are, there are plenty of, of much better brandies at much lower prices.
Gini Dietrich: Interesting.
Chip Griffin: So, yeah. That you are paying for the crystal bottle in that particular case, because the bottle itself is worth more.
Gini Dietrich: Do You get to take the bottle home then?
Chip Griffin: I mean, if you bought the whole bottle, but if you buy a whole bottle at a restaurant, then you are not listening to this podcast.
You’re not listening to this show.
I pretty much guarantee that. That is big time money. But so, so I think the bottom line is that you do need to, you frankly need to allow your employees to be able to expense alcohol.
I think it’s, it’s a bad idea just to say no all the way, because then, you know, frankly, most of your employees these days probably aren’t doing a ton of travel and so you, you know, I do believe that it’s up to you to try to make it at least a little bit enjoyable for them and to feel like, yes, I’m away from home and it’s kind of a pain, but.
You know, there are little treats to it, and if that little treat is that you get to have a martini or two at dinner, so be it, right? That’s, you need to invest in that, in my view.
Gini Dietrich: And I think there’s, when you’re with clients, most clients expect the agency to pick up the bill. Whether or not it’s billed back to the, to the client is, it’s up to you and your policy, but most clients, when you’re out to dinner with them, they expect it and they expect to be able to drink as well.
So not having a no, no alcohol expensed policy doesn’t work from that perspective either. Because then all of a sudden you’re putting your employees in a position to be able to say, well, actually I can’t pay for this, which is super uncomfortable. And then they might end up doing it.
Chip Griffin: Yeah, that would be awful.
Oh, I mean, I have, I have seen bosses who have tried to have it so that their team can’t expense alcohol, but they can expense client’s or prospect’s alcohol, which is awful too,
Gini Dietrich: No! yeah.
Chip Griffin: Because, because part of the issue is, you know, if, if it’s an environment where it, you know, quote unquote, makes sense for people to be consuming alcohol, a lot of times the client won’t order anything if you don’t, right.
And so. You know, I mean, obviously if you don’t drink alcohol, that’s fine. You don’t, you don’t order alcohol if for whatever reason you don’t drink. However, if in, I mean, I think a general good rule of thumb when you’re out as a guest of somebody is that you don’t order more than what they’re ordering. Right. So, you know, you don’t order caviar unless they’ve ordered caviar.
You don’t order, you know, the nice bottle of wine unless they’ve ordered a nice bottle of wine. I mean, that’s sort of typical. eating out etiquette, at least the way I was always taught. And so a lot of that shows up in the business environment as well. So, you know, if you have a rule that your team can’t drink, then, then now you’re inhibiting that social situation that, that clients, as you point out, frankly expect. Whether they should or not is a whole other question, but, but it is absolutely something that most prospects and clients would expect the agency to be doing.
Gini Dietrich: So what other advice do you have in your article from your research?
Chip Griffin: So, I mean, I, I think the, the other bit was just, you know, really focusing on leading by example here. So the policies that you have need to be the same ones that, that you are adhering to because it makes it so much easier to enforce it.
Now that said, I think you can make some clear exceptions that, you know, that the senior management can approve exceptions to this rule, for example, right, for things like holiday parties, right, you know, we’re paid where perhaps you can expense a little bit more for that. I would never want to have an exception to the intoxication rule.
I think you need to be in a position where you’re prepared to have tough conversations with people. If they’re not living up to these standards. And this is, this is one of those areas where it could very easily become uncomfortable. So you may want to talk with an HR advisor or something like that before you have the conversation.
But if you observe team members who are going past the point of intoxication, whether it’s just with team members or even out with clients, that’s something that you need to address. Because you’re not going to be there for all of those situations. And so you need to make sure that it’s something that’s, that they understand the expectations that you have as a business. Because it becomes really, it’s a really slippery slope in my view and my experience from observing.
That, that if people start to think it’s okay to do this, they just keep going further and further. And, and we all know that alcohol impairs judgment, right? I mean, this is not, this is not a major revelation. And so it is an area where you need to really, I think, set a strong standard for what those limits are.
It shouldn’t be none in most cases, but you know, it does need to be clear and you do need to enforce it.
Gini Dietrich: Is it a fireable offense?
Chip Griffin: Well, I mean, I think, look, I think any time you violate policy is potentially a fireable offense. I think typically I would look at it in terms of is it a, you know, a first offense or something like that, in which case, unless it’s accompanied by something else, right?
You’re intoxicated and you also harass somebody or something like that, OK, well, now, now we’ve got a twofer and now you’re probably gone. If it’s quote, unquote, simple intoxication, then to me, I would, I would probably just address that and say, Hey, this, this can’t happen again, but I think it, it is all very much on the specific circumstances involved, but people need to understand that you’re serious about these things.
And this is not, you’re not just putting this in the handbook as a CYA kind of thing. And it is something where you are clearly communicating what your expectations are.
Gini Dietrich: So go to Chip’s blog and get the statement that Patrick wrote as a good place to start and really think about what this might look like for you and your team.
Both just for professionalism and, and also to, to make yourself less liable and risky.
Chip Griffin: Yeah. And look, and your rules may not be the exact same things, right? It’s more to your point. You need to think about it and you need to figure out what is right for your business. And, you know, we can offer what our experiences have been, what, you know, what our view on it is, and Patrick obviously shares his, but you, this is an area where you need to think carefully about it and, and not just allow it to sort of develop by osmosis with your team. Because I think a lot of agencies are, are handling it that way today. And I’ve just, I’ve seen too many problems crop up even before, you know, today’s more restrictive environment for businesses on things like this. And you really don’t want to be caught in a situation where because you didn’t think about it,
Gini Dietrich: right.
Chip Griffin: Problems got bigger than they should have.
Gini Dietrich: Yeah. And I think this is an area that it’s really easy to, to protect yourself.
So it’s, you know, I think in, in today’s day and age, everybody expects to have some sort of policy around it and it’s a really easy way to protect yourself and just don’t take the risk. Get something in writing and enforce it as needed.
Chip Griffin: Absolutely. So with that, now that we’ve tackled that tough topic, I’m going to go have a drink. Because it’s, it’s only lunchtime.
It’s only noon.
It’s only, well, it’s almost one here, but still, it’s not five o’clock. And if it’s not five o’clock, I guess it’s five o’clock somewhere though. As the song says, but anyway, on that note, before we go off the rails, while I’m completely slow, so sober,
Gini Dietrich: sober, are you though?
Chip Griffin: Who knows?
Gini Dietrich: Who knows
Chip Griffin: That will draw to an end this episode of the Agency Leadership Podcast.
I’m Chip Griffin.
Gini Dietrich: I’m Gini Dietrich.
Chip Griffin: And it depends.
In this episode, Chip and Gini discuss the importance of having clear alcohol policies in agencies. They explore the evolving norms of alcohol consumption in professional settings, the necessity of having written rules, and the implications for office events, client meetings, and expenses.
Drawing on their experiences and insights from expert Patrick Rogan of Ignition HR, the hosts emphasize the need for leadership to set examples and consider the legal and liability aspects of alcohol use. They suggest practical guidelines for limiting alcohol use to ensure professionalism and reduce risks.
In this episode, Chip and Gini explore the challenges of ageism within the PR and marketing industries, with a focus on agencies. They discuss the stereotypes associated with older professionals, particularly concerning their perceived familiarity with platforms like TikTok.
They emphasize the value of experience and the misconceptions around the cost of hiring experienced talent.
They advocate for creative solutions like flexible hiring and service delivery models including fractional roles to incorporate senior expertise while balancing the cost to clients and agencies alike.
Additionally, the conversation addresses the importance of continual professional development for current team members and offers advice to experienced job seekers on navigating ageism in their job search.
The co-hosts also offer insights for older, more experienced job-seekers on maintaining a positive presence in the job market and using one's network effectively.
In this episode, Chip and Gini discuss results from the SAGA Q3 Agency Owner Survey. Despite a difficult year, the survey reveals widespread optimism among small agency owners regarding future revenue and profit growth. However, there is a noted contradiction, as not as many respondents plan to increase headcount. The discussion highlights agency owners' dissatisfaction with their business development efforts, scoring an average of 4.8 out of 10 in satisfaction. Effective tactics like podcast hosting and video content are underutilized, while traditional methods such as attending events and word-of-mouth continue to play significant roles. The episode encourages owners to adopt more modern business development strategies and to be mindful of adequately resourcing their growing needs. The full survey results are available for download on the SAGA website.
In this episode, Chip and Gini dismantle the myth that agency management can rely on a one-size-fits-all approach. They emphasize the importance of understanding the diversity and unique needs of different types of agencies, such as PR, ad, and digital agencies. Chip and Gini discuss their experiences in various agency environments and highlight the influence of agency size and specialization on management strategies. They caution against blindly following advice from other agency owners or consultants without considering the specific context and needs of one’s own agency. They also stress the importance of tailoring roles and titles to actual needs rather than fixed hierarchies, revealing the potential pitfalls of title inflation and focusing too narrowly on prescribed roles like account or project managers.
In this episode, Chip and Gini discuss the importance of effective reporting for agencies. Many agency leaders view reports as a necessary evil, but when done right they can actually become an important contributor to profits. Chip and Gini recommend auditing existing reports to eliminate unnecessary ones and creating meaningful reports that directly influence business decisions. They also highlight the potential of leveraging AI to analyze and generate reports, ultimately transforming reporting from a mundane task into a profit center.
In this episode, Chip and Gini discuss the pros and cons of using LinkedIn for agency growth and professional engagement. They touch upon the challenges of spam and overautomation, and emphasize the importance of personalized, thoughtful interactions.
They also share strategies for repurposing content, such as tailoring blog posts to different audiences when posting on LinkedIn. They address the increased use of LinkedIn direct messages for networking and provide insights on effective commenting. Additionally, they briefly discuss the appropriateness of political posts on LinkedIn and recommend focusing on values rather than partisan views.
In this episode, Chip and Gini discuss the pivotal role of trust within agency teams. They explore common scenarios where agency owners struggle with trusting their employees, often due to micromanagement tendencies, ill-defined roles, or unrealistic expectations.
They emphasize the importance of clear communication, proper onboarding, and creating an environment where employees feel trusted and empowered. They also address the importance of identifying whether the lack of trust stems from the owner's behavior or if the employee is possibly not the right fit for the role. Practical steps such as implementing standard operating procedures and incremental training are suggested to foster a trust-based work environment.
Agencies sometimes find themselves mired in micromanagement, worried about the wrong things, or presenting ill-considered solutions to clients.
Much of this can be avoided by asking "So What?" more often.
In this episode, Chip and Gini discuss the importance of that one question and how it can lead to more effective decision-making for agency owners. They highlight the need to challenge assumptions, manage time wisely, and empower team members to think critically.
Through practical examples, they explain how this simple question can uncover inefficiencies and drive better outcomes in client interactions and internal processes. The discussion also covers the benefits of asking team members for their input to foster growth and confidence.
In this episode, Chip and Gini discuss the importance of email marketing for agencies. They emphasize that email newsletters should be a top priority for agencies to nurture leads, share content, and maintain direct communication with clients. The conversation highlights the risks of relying solely on social media platforms, which can change or disappear. They also advise agency owners to publish thought leadership content to differentiate themselves and align with their values, despite potential fear of alienating prospects. Lastly, they stress the importance of owning one's content and not just focusing on the size of the email list, but rather the quality of engagement and relevance to the audience.
If you’re a regular listener, you know that Chip and Gini have strong feelings about staying away from RFPs when possible. But sometimes they can’t be avoided.
In this episode, Chip and Gini discuss offer practical tips for handling RFPs efficiently, like templatizing repeat information, asking insightful questions, and focusing on building relationships. They also touch on strategies for incumbent agencies facing potential renewal through RFPs, emphasizing the importance of not burning bridges and maintaining a full pipeline of business opportunities.
Overall, they highlight the necessity of minimizing effort while maximizing the chances of success in the RFP process.
Key takeaways* Chip Griffin: “A lot of RFPs are just giant wish lists. Don’t fall into the trap of thinking you’re only going to win this if you respond in original detail to every single question. Because you’re not. That’s not how they’re making their decision. You need to provide enough information to keep moving through the process, but your only goal is to get to the next conversation. You don’t win it on the RFP alone.” * Gini Dietrich: “If they want to see the way you think, you don’t have to create new material. You don’t have to invest a bunch of time in design and copy. You can definitely use stuff that already exists.” * Chip Griffin: “Ask some questions and get clarifications. Don’t make assumptions, particularly if your assumption is going to require a lot of work.” * Gini Dietrich: “Templatize some of the work. Every RFP usually asks for the same thing about the agency, about your team. Sometimes they ask for financials. The things that are standard in almost every RFP, you can templatize that. You don’t have to recreate it every time.”
Related* Conversations are key to successful RFP responses * Should Chip stop blindly hating RFPs for agencies? * ALP 7: The pros and cons of RFP’s for agencies * Common mistakes agencies make when pursuing new business
View TranscriptThe following is a computer-generated transcript. Please listen to the audio to confirm accuracy.
Chip Griffin: Hello and welcome to another episode of the Agency Leadership Podcast. I’m Chip Griffin.
Gini Dietrich: And I’m Gini Dietrich.
Chip Griffin: What’s that?
Gini Dietrich: How did I say my name?
Chip Griffin: I don’t know.
Gini Dietrich: gibberish
Chip Griffin: and usually it’s me screwing up the opening here. I think we’re going to keep this in though, just so people understand that Gini is not perfect.
I am not the only one who flubs things. Gini does too. I didn’t even hear it cause I wasn’t even listening cause I was, I was trying to think of my witty opening. And so now I can blame you for not having a particularly good one. I was just going to say I was going to request your proposal for how we should move forward with the show going forward.
That wasn’t a great one though, but, but that’s because you threw me off.
Gini Dietrich: Sorry.
Chip Griffin: And interrupted my thought process, so.
Gini Dietrich: Okay, I’m good.
Chip Griffin: In any case, she is Gini Dietrich, I’m Chip Griffin, this is the Agency Leadership Podcast, and if you’re surprised by anything that’s happened in these first 30 seconds, you haven’t been listening to this show for very long.
Welcome.
Gini Dietrich: Welcome.
Chip Griffin: So today we are going to talk about RFPs, and we’re going to take it a little bit of a different angle. on it, because normally when we talk about RFPs, we’re sitting here pounding our fists on the table, desk, wherever we’re at saying, stay away, don’t do them, avoid RFPs at all costs, but we always include, because we always say it depends at the end of every show, we include an asterisk, which is sometimes they’re unavoidable. And the primary times that RFPs are unavoidable for agencies are, one.
If you’ve got an existing client that wants to renew with you, but is putting the process out to an RFP, if you want the business to stay with you, you’re going to have to participate. You don’t just get to say, nope, sorry, peace out. Chip and Gini told me not to do this. So I’m just, I’m either going to let you go or you’re going to have to keep me without making me go through the RFP process
Gini Dietrich: Without the RFP.
Chip Griffin: Because most clients don’t care what Chip and Gini have to say, so.
Gini Dietrich: No, they don’t.
Chip Griffin: You’re out of luck.
Gini Dietrich: Unfortunately.
Chip Griffin: And the second is there are some industries where it’s just so standard to do RFPs that trying to convince, you know, travel and tourism, for example, most travel and tourism boards do RFPs.
And so, if you are an agency that specializes in that, you probably don’t have any choice because like many government or quasi governmental organizations, they love the RFP process. And it’s, it’s very difficult to avoid. So if that’s your specialty, you got to play. So if you meet one of these exceptions and you are absolutely compelled to participate in a RFP process, how can you make the best of it, Gini?
First off, I’m really,
or at least avoid the worst.
Gini Dietrich: Yeah. I love it when, somebody will say, so I was listening to the Agency Leadership Podcast and you and Chip said we shouldn’t participate in RFPs, but I do a lot of government work and I’m not sure how to get out of it. And I’m always like, it depends.
That’s our asterisk. I would love it if we didn’t have to do RFPs because I think that as an industry they’re, they’re not useful at all. But, yes, there are going to be some, and I have some clients who, that’s all they do is government work. So, they have to do RFPs. But to your point, there are some things that you can do to make it easier.
And, and one of those things is to for lack of a better term, templatize some of the work. So every single RFP usually asks for the same thing about the agency, about your team. Sometimes they ask for financials, you know, the things that are standard in almost every RFP, you can templatize that. You don’t have to recreate it every time.
And I think I see. There’s, I see a lot of people, a lot of agency owners try to recreate all of those things every single time, which adds to the time that they are investing in the RFP. You don’t need to do that. You can absolutely standardize, standardize your response. To all of the standard questions.
Chip Griffin: Absolutely. I mean, there is so much repetitive junk in RFPs that you should be able to reuse a significant portion. And I think, in general, when you are compelled to respond to an RFP, you should make it as, as little burden on you and your team as possible. You should not be creating a lot of original content for the RFP, even when it looks like maybe that’s what they want.
Sometimes you just need to say, look, I’m drawing the line. I’m not, because some of these RFPs, they’re insane with the things that they ask for. And the reality is that a lot of it isn’t even going to be used in the decision making process. It’s just, you know, some person is sitting down and they’ve either copied and pasted from something else that they found, or they’ve surveyed their internal team and said, what, what are all the things we would like?
And so you basically, you know, when I was a kid, you’d take the Sears catalog and you’d go through it, build your Christmas list with all of the things that you wanted. It was this like monstrously long thing with all sorts of crazy, stupid things that, Even if I ever got them, I wouldn’t use them more than once because they were just novelties.
Gini Dietrich: Sure.
Chip Griffin: That’s what a lot of RFPs are. They are just giant wish lists. And so you shouldn’t fall into the trap of saying, well, I’m only going to win this if I respond in original detail to every single question. Because you’re not. That’s not how they’re making their decision. You need to provide enough information to keep moving through the process, but really responding to that RFP, your only goal is to get to the next conversation.
You don’t win it on the RFP alone.
Gini Dietrich: Yeah, because you’re going to have to do the dog and pony show and all that kind of stuff. And that’s typically where you want it because that’s the, the chemistry check. you know, I think the other place that agencies tend to fall into a trap is where they’ll say, they’ll give you an example and say, create new copy, new creative, new, whatever, like we want to see your thinking.
And I think we, we tend to fall in the trap of, Oh my gosh, we have to create a whole campaign for this. And you don’t. Like you can definitely speak to your past experience. You could showcase examples from past experience that relates to what they’re saying, but you don’t necessarily have to create new for that either.
You don’t have to create new creative. You don’t have to invest a bunch of time in design and copy and all those kinds of things. You can definitely use stuff that already exists. And say, when we did this for client X, this is how we handled it. And this is what it looked like. So that they can see the work, but that you’re not necessarily giving them a bunch of ideas for free.
Chip Griffin: Right. I mean, that’s, that’s a great suggestion, you know, where you’re saying, you know, my, my thought would be, it would be something like this. Right. So you kind of illustrate it. You can say a few things in your commentary to tie it back to what their particular challenge is. But the reality is most of these RFPs don’t give a lot of useful information for you to work from anyway.
So you’re really just flying blind in any case. And so, you know, spending a lot of time and money on this doesn’t make a lot of sense at that stage. And, and frankly, I’ve seen a lot of even small agencies spend in the tens of thousands of dollars in labor and materials and research and all that in order to respond to a single RFP.
And that’s bonkers. You need to find a way to do it much more efficiently if you are someone who is going to have to respond. The other thing I would say is you need to start by asking questions. And so you need to get some basic questions answered before you decide if you’re even going to participate, and this goes for even if it’s an account that you already have, even if it’s an account that you already have, you have to ask questions like, how many people are you sending this RFP request to?
Right. I mean, you know, have you, you’ve sent this out to hundreds of agencies and are just waiting to see who responds? Have you sent it to five people because you pre screened them? Makes a big difference. If you’re one of five that have been pre screened, it may be worth putting in a little bit of extra effort.
You have to ask, is the incumbent part of this process or is there an incumbent? Because if there is an incumbent and you’re not it, you need to ask yourself really that deep question. Do I really need to respond to this? Do I really have enough chance? Or if I do, maybe I, you know, I don’t fully half ass it, but I kind of, you know, I kind of, you know, phone it in a little bit.
And I just kind of, you know, give the very basic, very copy and paste, send something in and see, do I get lucky and move to the next phase of the process? Because if there is an incumbent and you’re not it, your odds are very low. Unless they tell you, You know, the incumbent is someone we’re definitely moving on from.
Oh, even then I wouldn’t fully trust them when they say things like that. Cause sometimes they’re just trying to lure you in because a lot of times procurement just tells them they need to get a certain number of responses before they can move ahead. And so they will tell agencies pretty much anything just to get the document in hand.
If you’re going to be one of those people, don’t put a lot of effort into it at least. Save yourself some time.
Gini Dietrich: And I think, I mean, to your point, which is excellent, that if there’s an incumbent agency, usually the reason they’re doing it is because there’s a time period that they have. Like, we’ve been with the agency for two years, for instance, or we had a five year contract and now we have to put it out to bid again, and we have to get three to five RFP responses. So usually the incumbent agency is always going to get the business, especially because the marketing and communications teams don’t want to upset the apple cart and everything’s working and relationships and all those kinds of things. And procurement is the one that has to go out and do this.
So there’s that. To your point, if they, if there’s an incumbent and they say the incumbent is being fired or the incumbent is no longer working with us or something like that, then I think you have a better chance. But yeah, usually, usually when there’s an incumbent also participating, it’s because Procurement is required to go out after a certain number of years to get bids again, just to keep things fresh and make sure pricing is correct and all those kinds of things.
Chip Griffin: Right, and we’re not saying that the incumbent always wins, but they certainly have an edge because they have the relationships, they know the client, when they’re responding to the RFP, they get to respond with a whole lot more knowledge than every other participant.
And so, you know, knowing if they’re involved is vitally important.
I think the other thing from a question standpoint is most RFPs have some sort of a question process where you either submit questions in writing or they do a zoom call where, you know, prospective vendors can come in and ask questions then. Take advantage of whatever opportunity you’re given to ask questions before you put in a lot of work. Because this can help you to refine your answers. It can help you, you can ask things like, you know, what are you looking to change from what you’ve done before? Or what do you think has worked and what hasn’t? A lot of times they won’t give you a lot of detailed information, but it doesn’t hurt to ask.
Right? At least try to pull something out of them. And if you’re going through and you look at the RFP and you’re like, there are some of these things that would require monstrous amounts of work, ask if that’s really what they intend. Because a lot of times they’re not even thinking about it. And if you say, well, this, you know, putting together this plan would be a 12 hour process and they’ll say, Oh, we’re not expecting that.
We’re just looking for off the top. Now, sometimes they may again be fudging. But at least ask some of those questions and get clarifications. Don’t make assumptions, particularly if your assumption is going to require a lot of work.
Gini Dietrich: Yeah, and I think, you know, we’ve talked about this in the past as well, but in any new business meeting, when you go in with a prospect and you ask really thoughtful questions, and you’re curious about their responses, and the response creates a deeper set of questions, you’re having a conversation where you’re curious and you’re asking a lot of questions. The prospect leaves that meeting always thinking, wow, that agency is really smart or wow, I really like the way that they think. And all you do is ask questions. And the same thing goes in the RFP process. If you’re asking really insightful questions and you’re digging deep, you want them to leave with that feeling of, Oh, I really hope these guys respond to RFP because I like the way that they think. I like, I think they’re really smart.
You give them that, that opportunity to start to think that way before you even submit the RFP and it’s like I said earlier, it’s about the chemistry. It’s about building the relationship and that’s one way to do it really quickly off the bat to at least get you to the next level.
Chip Griffin: Absolutely. And the chemistry is so important.
So, you know, if you don’t have any relationship at all going in, With anybody with the account, I mean, that to me, that’s a red flag and suggest that that’s probably not, if you’ve never had a conversation with them at all, ever, your odds are going to be pretty low, but let’s assume that that’s the case.
You know, you can try. Not all, not all RFP processes prevent actual conversations with someone at the client. A lot of them do. A lot of them will say, you know, only, only questions submitted in writing will be. You know, but it doesn’t hurt if it doesn’t prohibit it, it doesn’t hurt to try to have some kind of a conversation with somebody on the client side who might be able to give you some more color, some more information, and also to build that chemistry. Even if you do have a prohibition in place and you can’t do that, guess what those folks are on places like LinkedIn, you can start building relationships by commenting on their posts, liking their stuff, reposting it. You don’t have to do it in an obvious, you know, Hey, looking forward to seeing, you know, how we do in the RFP process, but just, you know, kind of doing things that gets you on their radar screen in other ways can be productive. Particularly because a lot of the folks at the client who are part of the process may not even know who the RFP has been sent to. So they won’t even see it as you trying to curry favor.
They just see it as your name is out there. And oh, by the way, now when they see the RFPs and they’re reviewing it in their little committee meeting, they’re like, Oh, I just talked to Chip on LinkedIn the other day. I just saw him do this or that. Right. So find ways to manufacture that chemistry within the bounds of whatever the restrictions might be.
Gini Dietrich: And I think that goes across the board in general. Like that’s some advice I always give to college graduates is find the places that you want to work and start commenting on their content. It works for media relations too. Journalists and influencers. So that’s such good advice. Let’s switch gears though and let’s talk about if you’re the incumbent and you fear that the RFP has gone out because you’re about to be fired.
How do you handle that?
Chip Griffin: Well, I think you need to take an honest look at the relationship and ask yourself, is it over? Right? I mean, are there, because there are certainly times where, as the agency, You know you’re done, right? You know that they’ve basically made the decision that they’re moving on.
They’ve got a new CMO. They’ve got, you know, business has gone bad. I mean, some, there’s some relationship issue, who knows, whatever it is. There are times where you just see the handwriting on the wall. So you have to ask yourself, is it even worth participating? Should I even go down this path? Because if you know it’s gone, why are you wasting the time on it?
Why not spend that time pursuing other business that is more likely to land? I will say most of the time, it’s not that clear. And most of the time, the client is playing their cards close enough and giving you just enough hope that even if they’ve kind of made up the mind to let you go, they’re not going to fully rule it out. Because honestly, they may not be able to find that, you know, greener pasture out there.
They may not find someone who is promising them the sun, the moon, and the stars for a lot less money that they think they can find. So in general, it’s worth continuing to pursue it. But at the same time, I mean, I would look at the RFP if I’m the incumbent more as my general planning process for that client.
And so just as in that general planning process, I’m not going to create all sorts of brand new spec ideas and that kind of stuff. I’m going to lay out, here’s the roadmap. I would take the same approach to the RFP. But keep in mind, you’ve got a huge advantage because you know what’s worked, you know what hasn’t, you know what the client’s tastes are.
It ought to be a heck of a lot easier for you to respond to that RFP than anyone else. So don’t make it more difficult than it is.
Gini Dietrich: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And I would say, I mean, to your point, you know, my husband went through a, an RFP process with an agency that they use, late last year. And it was actually fascinating from my standpoint to watch the incumbent agency and how they behaved.
And he was honest with them. He said, listen, I can’t afford to keep paying you at this level. I’m willing to take the scope back a little bit and, and roll it back. But this is, this is what we’re looking for, for 2024 and he outlined it really specifically. I mean, from my perspective, I was like every, every agency wants a client like this because he outlined it specifically what they were looking for and what the budget was that they had to spend.
And the incumbent agency was like, never going to find it. Not going to do it. And we, we’re, we’re, we can’t do it. Like the, the amount of combativeness and defensiveness that the agency showed, he was willing to continue working with them if they could scale back the budget and the scope. But instead they went on the defensive and they were really rude and combative.
And he was like, I don’t want to work with you guys anymore. You just ruined it. Right. So you have to think about that too. Like, I always say that when somebody leaves your organization, they’re remembered by how they left. By how they behave when they left, not all of the great work that they did while they were with you.
And the same thing with the agency. Don’t burn bridges. If you feel like the relationship is over, or you can’t meet their demands, or whatever it happens to be, Don’t burn the bridge. Please do not burn the bridge because that’s going to come back and bite you tenfold.
Chip Griffin: Yeah, I mean, it’s a relationship that you’ve had.
There’s no reason to set it on fire 99. 9 percent of the time. And even that 0. 1%, I probably still wouldn’t do it because who knows what’s going to happen in the future. They may fully deserve it or whatever. But, you know, so you need to, you need to be having these conversations if you’re the incumbent, so you know where you stand.
You should not, even if they say to you, by the way, on the flip side, we’re definitely keeping you, procurement’s just making us do this. Don’t accept that either. Right? I mean, understand that anytime you’re going through an RFP process, even if you’re the incumbent, even if the client says, you know, we’re happy with you, you are at risk.
It’s sort of like if you’re engaged and your fiance says, well, I’m going to go out, you know, cruising the bars tonight. Just for fun, just, just to kind of see what’s out there, you know, but don’t worry. Don’t worry. I’m coming home. I’m coming home at the end of the night to you. Don’t worry. It’s fine, right?
I mean, that’s a risk. It’s just, I mean, because that’s what it is, right? They’re saying, and they may believe it, that the relationship with the agency is great. But now they’re going out and talking to all these other agencies, many of whom are going to over deliver and provide all sorts of promises and great ideas and cool looking graphics and, you know, and they’re going to sit there and say, Oh, I could have that.
Do I want that? Maybe I want that.
Gini Dietrich: Maybe I want that. Oh, you know. The agency we’re with right now, they, they don’t do that. It kind of drives me crazy. Yeah, you’re definitely at risk.
Chip Griffin: So, I mean, you’ve got to be honest with yourself. And so you, if you are the incumbent, you’re going through RFP, don’t get too high, don’t get too low because you don’t know what’s going to happen.
Gini Dietrich: Yeah, totally.
Chip Griffin: And by the way, you should always be looking for other business anyway.
Gini Dietrich: Yes, you should. Your pipeline should be full no matter what. It doesn’t matter how long the contract is, how many years you have it. How many years you think you’re going to have it after that, you should have your pipeline full all the time.
Chip Griffin: So bottom line is avoid RFPs if you can, but we understand that there are times when you can’t. Hopefully we’ve given you some decent tips on how to make that process as
Gini Dietrich: Definitely will never forget that example.
Chip Griffin: There you go. I mean, it’s, you gotta, you gotta find ways to relate to people. And that’s what I do.
I’m, I’m a, I’m a people person, Gini. That’s what people think of me as, for sure. But, but try to minimize the amount of work, maximize your odds of success, pick the right ones, invest your time wisely, and then if you have to participate in those RFPs, you’ll hopefully win more often than you lose and, or at least, you know, it’ll all come out positively once you add up all the numbers and all that kind of stuff. So
Gini Dietrich: yeah,
Chip Griffin: be smart.
Gini Dietrich: I still think generally RFPs are bad, but you’re right. There are some industries where it can’t be helped.
Chip Griffin: If you gave me no information at all, and you just said, I’ve been asked to do an RFP, I would say, don’t do it. Kind of like if you asked me how, you know, is your pricing good?
I’ll say, no, you need to increase it. With no other information those are going to be my answers. Obviously information can change things because as we always say, It depends. So that’s how we’ll draw this episode of the Agency Leadership Podcast to a close. I’m Chip Griffin.
Gini Dietrich: I’m Gini Dietrich.
Chip Griffin: And it really does depend.
If you're a regular listener, you know that Chip and Gini have strong feelings about staying away from RFPs when possible. But sometimes they can't be avoided. In this episode, Chip and Gini discuss offer practical tips for handling RFPs efficiently, like templatizing repeat information, asking insightful questions, and focusing on building relationships. They also touch on strategies for incumbent agencies facing potential renewal through RFPs, emphasizing the importance of not burning bridges and maintaining a full pipeline of business opportunities. Overall, they highlight the necessity of minimizing effort while maximizing the chances of success in the RFP process.
In this episode, Chip and Gini discuss whether PR agencies should report to the head of communications or the head of marketing. They reference a LinkedIn post by Parry Headrick, which suggests that PR agencies should ideally report to the communications lead. Chip and Gini explore various considerations such as the size and structure of the client's organization, the types of projects being handled, and the importance of having someone who understands PR work. They also emphasize the need for agencies to adapt and possibly integrate the PESO model to better serve modern client needs.
For years, agency advisors like Chip and Gini have implored agencies to be strategic and avoid being simple order takers. Owners were told that this shift was key to increasing profitability and client retention.
But has it gone too far? In this episode, Chip and Gini examine whether agencies have hit ‘peak strategy’ as suggested recently by Blair Enns.
They ask whether some agencies are overemphasizing strategy at the expense of implementation. They note that clients say they want their agencies to think strategically, but they also balk at explicit costs for strategic planning.
They maintain that agencies should incorporate strategy into their overall services without explicitly charging for it, and emphasize the need for balance between strategic planning and practical execution.
Chip and Gini also discuss proper pricing strategies, ensuring clients receive value without feeling nickel-and-dimed. The conversation highlights the necessity of delivering workable strategies tailored to client needs and the importance of understanding costs and pricing based on agency specifics.
Key takeaways* Chip Griffin: “You need to be strategic. You need to be viewed that way, but you don’t need to rub it in the client’s face and make them pay for it explicitly in a line item on the invoice.” * Gini Dietrich: “When we say you need to look at your pricing, you need to increase your prices, it’s because you have to fold in your account management and your results reporting and your data analysis and your strategy.” * Chip Griffin: “A restaurant doesn’t offer someone wine and then itemize the glass because you’re not going to let them sit there and drink it straight out of the bottle. That’s how strategy should be. It’s the glass.” * Gini Dietrich: “There’s a common occurrence that’s happening that I see happening more and more where people are asking one another what they’re charging for things. And I think that’s the completely wrong approach. When you’re thinking about pricing, you have to figure out what it costs you and price it that way.”
Resources* Have We Hit Peak Strategy?
View TranscriptThe following is a computer-generated transcript. Please listen to the audio to confirm accuracy.
Chip Griffin: Hello, and welcome to another episode of the Agency Leadership Podcast. I’m Chip Griffin.
Gini Dietrich: And I’m Gini Dietrich.
Chip Griffin: Gini, you know, strategy. Does strategy even matter? We don’t really care about strategy, do we? We just kind of amble forward. And that’s what we should do with our clients, right?
Gini Dietrich: We do care about strategy.
I think it’s in how we position it, that is different.
Chip Griffin: Oh, Really, the topic is, have we hit peak strategy? That’s something that Blair Enns of Win Without Pitching was writing about recently, and he was talking about how agencies have been encouraged to head towards strategy, to build for strategy, to demonstrate strategy to their clients, and he’s questioning now whether agencies have perhaps overcorrected in this direction, and we’ll include a link in the show notes so you can read it because it’s a much more detailed assessment than what I just condensed it down to in 15 seconds.
But let’s talk about agencies, strategy, and clients.
Gini Dietrich: Yeah, I mean, I think there’s a couple of things going on. For sure, you know, people like us, and we’ve done this too, and other agency owner advisors have talked about the importance of raising your prices and finding things, packages, for lack of a better term, or projects that you can do that are easy for a prospect to sign on to become a client.
And I, I think that those things still stand. I think that, overall, and generally, most agencies don’t charge correctly. They’re not priced correctly. And overall, just like I think we talked about last week or the week before, there are too many agencies that are going in for a full year retainer versus in times that are tough, like this year, doing project based kind of work. So I do think there’s something to be said for those things. But to your point, I think that we have over expanded and a really good example of this is that we have always, gosh, probably for the last seven or eight years, we’ve always started a new client with a strategic planning session.
And in the last couple of years, and it’s been great because it’s a project. It helps. We charge a certain price for it. It, it gets us into an organization fast. We learn about the business fast. We get access to all of the tools that we need on their end really quickly. We get the executive’s attention really quickly and we get some, we show them some demonstrable results and something tangible within 30 days.
So it’s great from that perspective, but in the last year and a half, I would say every single prospect has said something along the lines of, we don’t really need that or let’s just get started. Or, you know, our last agency did a big strategic planning session. Can you use what they created? And it’s been one of those things.
So we’ve had to sort of take a step back and go, okay, wait. Let’s not talk about a strategic planning session to launch the relationship. Let’s, let’s try something else. And I think it goes to what Blair Enns is writing about or talking about right now.
Chip Griffin: Yeah. For, I mean, for many years, agency advisors have told agency owners that if you want to be able to charge more, you have to be strategic.
You have to be viewed as a strategic advisor and not merely an implementer who just delivers individual tactical executions. You need to be at that level. And so I’ve seen this shift in a lot of the agencies that I’ve talked with where they really want to lean into that. And so they do things like try to explicitly charge for strategy. Or at the extreme, I talked to some agency owners who are like, I don’t even want to do implementation. I just want to get paid for strategy. Now let’s start with the extreme end there. Almost no client today wants to pay just for strategy. They’re out there. They’re very, very few and far between. Most clients. may even understand that you need to be strategic, but they don’t want to feel like they’re paying for it.
So to me, the first lesson I take from what Blair was talking about and something that I’ve encouraged my own clients for a number of years is don’t ever explicitly charge for strategy. Don’t have a line item that says strategy in whatever you’re doing. You need to be strategic. You need to be viewed that way, but you don’t need to rub it in the client’s face and make them pay for it explicitly.
Gini Dietrich: That’s right. And I, I mean, there are other things on that you and I discussed before we hit record that are on the, that can be on the invoice or in the scope of work as well, which are project strategy for one. Project management or account management, administrative work, like all of the things that we have to do to be – results reporting – we have to do to be able to do our jobs.
But clients don’t want to pay for it. So those are the things that you say when we say you need to look at your pricing, you need to increase your prices. It’s because you have to fold those things into it. You have to fold in your account management and your results reporting and your data analysis and your strategy.
You have to fold it all into the pricing and then do the work so that you’re able to do those things and get paid for it. But it’s not something that a client or a prospect can go, Eh, you know, we don’t really need account management. We can do without results reporting, and we definitely don’t need strategy.
You do need those things, but they’re not, you have to do it in a way that they can’t just remove it from the scope of work.
Chip Griffin: Right. Whenever you’re talking about something that you’re line iteming with a client, something that’s going on the invoice here, in the proposal, you never, ever, ever should list anything that can’t be removed or added.
You only want to include those things where it’s truly a menu option. You don’t, you know, if you’re a restaurant, you don’t offer someone wine and then itemize the glass because they can’t have the wine without the, you’re not gonna let them sit there and just drink it straight out of the bottle.
Gini Dietrich: I mean, you could give them a straw.
Chip Griffin: You could, but you’re not going, if you have a nice restaurant, you’re not going to allow that. So you should not have an explicit charge for the glass. Even though there is a cost, there’s absolutely a cost to have it, to purchasing that glassware, maintaining that glassware, cleaning that glassware, delivering it to the table. There’s breakage, there’s all sorts of costs that go into it, but you don’t actually charge the restaurant customer for the glass. You charge them for the wine and they get the glass along with it. That’s how strategy should be. It’s the glass.
Gini Dietrich: I love that analogy. And there you go.
There’s the end of the episode because that’s perfect. So there you go.
Chip Griffin: Well, I mean, but I do think you need to be thinking in general about all of these kinds of things that you’re putting in there. And it reminds me, I think I’ve shared this story previously on this show. Certainly I’ve shared it a lot of other places, but when I first started hiring agencies myself back in the mid 90s when I was in house, I had agencies that would nickel and dime me for faxes and copies and things like that.
There are very few things more irritating than getting an invoice for a dollar per page for faxes. And you young folks don’t even know what faxes are. But anyway, look it up. I’m sure you can, you can hear the screeching noise if you go on YouTube and put fax machine noise in there or something like that.
You’ll know what all of us have heard for many years. Anyway, you need to be thinking about how is this being received by my client? None of it means these are things you shouldn’t do. For example, you need to do things to maintain the client relationship. Should you expressly charge them for the time that it takes for you to go and pitch a renewal?
No! No client’s going to want to pay for that. But, your overall pricing needs to account for the fact that you’re going to spend the time to put together the proposal for the renewal, that you’re going to go visit them. It needs to factor in the travel costs. Again, don’t charge the client to go visit them.
To pitch the renewal. Nobody wants to pay for that, but you do need to price it into the work that you’re doing. And so understanding that these are two different things is important. And I think the other thing is just when it comes to strategy itself, be careful that you don’t overvalue it, right?
Strategy is important. Absolutely. You’ve got to have it. But if you sit down and you say, okay, well, Chip and Gini say, well, we shouldn’t itemize strategy, but I’m going to include it in there. I’m going to put a big number in there because it’s really important. And we’ve got really great ideas. I’m sure you do.
I’m sure you have the best ideas and the best team and all of that, but you’ve got to be reasonable in what you’re charging. As my old business partner used to say, pigs get fat, hogs get slaughtered. So make sure that you are being greedy, but not too greedy.
Gini Dietrich: Yeah, I mean, I think that’s exactly right. And another thing is, you know, I, there’s a, there’s a common occurrence that’s happening that I see happening more and more and more in groups that I belong to.
Facebook, LinkedIn, Slack, wherever it happens to be. where people are asking one another what they’re charging for things. And I think that’s the completely wrong approach. Now, certainly Is it nice to be able to say, Oh, well, so and so charges 30 grand and so and so charges 25 and so and so charges 20 for this package. Okay, that’s fair. But when you’re thinking about pricing, you have to figure out what it costs you and price it that way. So, you know, I’m in Chicago, so it’s gonna cost me more to get work done than it’s gonna cost someone that you’re working with, Chip, in New Hampshire, right? Because the cost of living is a lot higher here and people get paid more and like all the things, right?
So I think that’s the wrong thing to think about. So if you think about and, and I know that we beat this horse to death all the time. But if you think about here’s everything we have to do. And here’s all the software that we need to use. And here’s everything that it takes. Account management, strategy, all those pieces.
How much time we’re going to spend in weekly meetings and in you know, creating agendas or whatever it happens to be. All of the stuff has to be incorporated into the pricing. And then you can price based on what’s – and add in your profitability too, be based on what makes sense for your agency, not what makes sense for my agency or what makes sense for another business.
Chip Griffin: Yeah, I’d go even further. I mean, it’s, you shouldn’t be worrying about what other agencies are charging. You shouldn’t worry all that much about what they’re scoping either, and whether they’re expressly talking about strategy or not, right? You need to figure out what you need to do in order to deliver the results that your prospects and clients are looking for.
I will almost certainly guarantee you that’s not strategy only. Right. No matter whether you find another agency owner who says that that’s what they’re doing or not. If they say that, I would seriously question it because I do think it is so few clients today who will pay for strategy only. But even if you hear, even if you believe that, you still need to sit down and say, well, how much strategy do I really need to do here?
What is it really going to take? And if by strategy it means you spend two hours putting together a few ideas on a piece of paper, is it valuable? Yes. Should you charge through the nose for it? Absolutely not. Because it’s two hours. And I know we, you know, we get excited about value pricing and all that kind of stuff.
And I think everybody here knows that I think value pricing is silly for 99 percent of agencies because almost 100 percent of agencies don’t even understand what it is, let alone having it as a viable thing that they can use. But you need to figure out what you need to do to get the job done, and then you need to figure out what does it actually cost you to your point.
It is very different in different places. It would be like landlords getting together in a group and saying, How much do you rent your apartments for? Well, how big is the apartment? Where is the apartment located? And it’s not even just that it’s in Chicago. Where in Chicago is it? It’s going to be different prices in different parts of town.
It’s going to be different price based on the age of the building, the square footage of the apartment. There’s so many things that go into it. And so if as an agency, you’re trying to just compare and say, you know, what is everybody else doing and try to follow after them? You’re not thinking about the most important thing, which is what is your client need? What do they value? Yep. Those are the things you should do. And those are the things you should charge for.
Gini Dietrich: Yeah, absolutely. And I think the other thing that the other mistake I think I see agency owners make in this kind of scenario is they, they price it by saying, Oh, well, to your point, it takes me two hours to write down ideas.
It probably takes me two hours for meetings and maybe four hours to do some research on an audit. So I’m eight hours all in. And so I’m going to charge it based on my hourly rate for eight hours. And I’m like, no, First of all, you shouldn’t be the one delivering this, ever, and doing the work. So how much time is it going to take your team?
And then they go, oh, well, maybe 10 hours. I’m like, no! It takes your team at least triple the time it takes you. At least. So you have to take those things into account as well. Because you, you have to think about, okay, Yes, if you were doing that, it would take you less time because you have more experience and expertise and all those kinds of things, but you shouldn’t be the one that’s delivering this.
So even if you’re the one who’s delivering it in the beginning, you still have to price it based on who’s going to deliver it six months from now, a year from now, because that’s gonna be really hard to go from your eight hours at $150 an hour to 24 hours at $125 an hour. It’s gonna be, that’s a huge divide.
So you have to think about those things too. And I think we, I see a lot of agency owners make that mistake.
Chip Griffin: Absolutely. And, and I think as we’re thinking about strategy and, you know, bashing on how agencies work with strategy. I’m going to continue it. I think the other thing when it comes to strategy is that that we need to be putting together strategies that are actually workable for our clients. Because I’ve seen a lot of strategies put together that look great on paper.
That maybe it’s the absolute right idea, but it needs to be a strategy that can be sold internally with the client that they will actually buy into. It needs to be a strategy that they can actually implement both from a resource perspective as well as a cost perspective and a time perspective and an organizational tolerance perspective.
I mean, if I go into a, a client and say the solution, you know, you would knock it out of the park with video, but they don’t have anybody they want to put on camera. They don’t have any desire to do that. They’re nervous about YouTube. That’s probably not a good strategy for them. So the strategy needs to be something that they can actually implement and ideally that you can implement for them because ultimately what people are really paying for is that the outputs and the results and we can sit here all day long and say that’s wrong.
They shouldn’t, they shouldn’t pay us for a press release or a website or a video or a social media post. But guess what? That’s what they’re paying for. In their minds, that’s what they’re paying for And you can sit there and you can have a religious conversation with them about how that’s not really what it is and we really need to be thinking about results and all this which is all great And you need to think about it.
You need to report on it. But if if you get so wound up in that, you will go out of business. Because that’s not what clients want.
Gini Dietrich: They hire agencies because they need extra arms and legs. They need somebody’s help to do the work and not to think. I mean, yes, to think and to do the work. So, you know, I mean, there are plenty of us and I’m the same.
Like if you came to me and said, Hey Gini, I’d love to hire your agency to do social media. And, but I want you to be the one who does it. I’m like, no freaking way. No, thank you. And even if it’s not strategic from their perspective, even if it costs them a ton of money because I’m the one doing it, I’m still not going to do it.
So you also have to be able to say, not the right fit for us. But it has to be based on what they expect the relationship to bring, not because you think they’re not strategic.
Chip Griffin: So, I mean, I think the bottom line is, do you need to be strategic? Yes. Do you need to be smart about how you’re being strategic with your clients?
Yes. Do you need to charge explicitly for strategy? Absolutely not. Hell no. Please don’t do that. Can you be a strategy only agency? Probably not. Do you need to tie strategy to actual tactics and results? Yep. Absolutely. I mean, and I think because we’ve talked so long, not, not just the two of us, but the agency advisor community generally about the importance of strategy, we have pushed too many agencies into over correcting on this.
And we need to pull them back in and help them to understand that it’s about balance. Ignoring strategy completely and just being an order taker, that’s bad too. We’re not, we’re not telling you to now over correct back and don’t have the pendulum swing back the other way so hard that you just, you know, go in there and you say, I’ll just do whatever you tell me to do as long as you’ll pay for it.
We don’t want that either. You’ve got to have balance.
Gini Dietrich: Yeah. And I think that, you know, just incorporating it into the work that you do and into your pricing is the right way to do it.
Chip Griffin: Absolutely. And it works. It’ll help your clients. It helps your team, frankly, if they understand why they’re doing things and they’re being part of that, that process.
So, so wrap it in. Just make strategic thinking part of what you do. Don’t make it something that you put up on a pedestal and try to charge a billion bucks for.
Gini Dietrich: And remember that you’re serving a very nice bottle of wine, and along with that they get a glass and some service.
Chip Griffin: That’s right. And if anybody out there can find a restaurant that actually charges you for the glass, I look forward to seeing your comment
on whatever platform you’re listening or watching us on. With that, that will draw to an end this episode of the Agency Leadership Podcast. I’m going to go get, no, I’m not going to eat a glass of wine. It’s only one o’clock in the afternoon right now. So, so with that, I’m Chip Griffin.
Gini Dietrich: I’m Gini Dietrich.
Chip Griffin: And it depends.
For years, agency advisors like Chip and Gini have implored agencies to be strategic and avoid being simple order takers. Owners were told that this shift was key to increasing profitability and client retention.
But has it gone too far? In this episode, Chip and Gini examine whether agencies have hit 'peak strategy' as suggested recently by Blair Enns.
They ask whether some agencies are overemphasizing strategy at the expense of implementation. They note that clients say they want their agencies to think strategically, but they also balk at explicit costs for strategic planning.
They maintain that agencies should incorporate strategy into their overall services without explicitly charging for it, and emphasize the need for balance between strategic planning and practical execution.
Chip and Gini also discuss proper pricing strategies, ensuring clients receive value without feeling nickel-and-dimed. The conversation highlights the necessity of delivering workable strategies tailored to client needs and the importance of understanding costs and pricing based on agency specifics.
In this episode, Chip and Gini discuss the widespread apprehension about AI in the agency world, urging listeners to embrace the technology rather than fear it.
They emphasize that AI will not replace jobs but will change the nature of work, making tasks more efficient and allowing for more strategic focus. The conversation also explores how agency owners can leverage AI to create new service models and improve client offerings.
Key takeaways* Gini Dietrich: “I don’t think AI is going to replace us. I do think it’s going to change the way that we do our jobs. It’s going to make us more effective.” * Chip Griffin: “One of the things that I hear is, it’s going to cut down our rates. Well, like for like, it ought to. If you’re not doing something new and different and additional, you absolutely should charge less for the things that AI is helping you do faster, because that’s what happens with all technology.” * Gini Dietrich: “Technology is coming at us really fast, and the way that we adapt to it is what’s going to set us apart.” * Chip Griffin: “Instead of freaking out about artificial intelligence, you need to use the other kind of AI – actual intelligence – to come up with a plan to move forward.”
Resources* How AI is Shaping the Future of Communications (Spin Sucks podcast) * What a pink “While You Were Out” message pad looks like
Related* Is AI writing an agency’s friend or foe? * Should AI upend your agency business model today? * What does ChatGPT and generative AI mean for PR agencies? * Introduction to generative AI for agencies
View TranscriptThe following is a computer-generated transcript. Please listen to the audio to confirm accuracy.
Chip Griffin: Hello and welcome to another episode of the Agency Leadership Podcast. I’m Chip Griffin.
Gini Dietrich: And I’m Gini Dietrich.
Chip Griffin: And Gini. I don’t have a witty opening. I just have a message for people. Stop being afraid of AI.
Gini Dietrich: Amen. Yes, totally agree. 100%. Yes.
Chip Griffin: The amount of hand wringing that I see, not just in the agency world, but elsewhere around AI.
Gini Dietrich: In general. Yeah.
Chip Griffin: You know, it’s going to take our jobs. It’s going to mean that we can’t charge clients as much. We’re going to lose business because of it. The we’re going to get scammed and conned because of it. It’s, I mean, just all of these things, it just take a deep breath folks. Take a deep breath. You don’t need to go out and disclose everything.
You don’t need to go out there and, you know, put it into your contracts that you use AI. Have you used a grammar checker? Yeah. Okay. Do you put that in your contracts too? Do you use interns? Do you put that in your contract too? I mean, come on folks. Let’s take a deep breath.
Gini Dietrich: I totally agree with you. And I think that I don’t, I agree that it’s not going to replace us.
I do think it’s going to change the way that we do our jobs. It’s going to make us more effective. does that mean that we can charge clients less? No, because we’re going to be doing more strategic, thoughtful work than like the tactical administrative stuff. And the way I like to think about it and the way I present it to our clients is.
What are some of the things you, you have to do that you don’t enjoy doing? It could be anything from media list development to data research, to metrics reporting, to results reporting, to drafting presentations, like there’s all sorts of, what I would call administrative tasks that we have to do daily, weekly, monthly, quarterly, because they’re critical to our jobs, but not necessarily things we enjoy doing.
That’s what AI can help you do. So rather than say, well, I have to sit down and I have to pull all the reports from analytics and then I have to look at the metrics and figure out what changed. Like AI can do all of that for you. You don’t have to worry about doing that kind of stuff. And then you can focus on the things that you really enjoy doing.
If it’s strategic work, if it’s writing, if it’s, you know, Google ads, if it’s PPC, whatever it happens to be that you enjoy doing, you can focus on that.
Chip Griffin: Absolutely. And I mean, there’s so many benefits that potentially can be had from it. Now, I mean, you know, one of the big things that I hear is, well, you know, it’s going to cut down our rates.
Well, like for like it ought to. Right. Like, if you’re not doing something new and different and additional, you absolutely should charge less for the things that AI is helping you do faster, because that’s what happens with all technology. Correct. And back when I started in the agency world, we charged people for photocopies and faxes and the time that it took to do those things.
Gini Dietrich: Right. Yes.
Chip Griffin: You charge people for that today? No, and you shouldn’t because you’re not using copies and faxes and things are faster. When I started out in the agency world, I spent every, every morning going through newspapers with an exacto knife and cutting out stories and taping them onto a piece of paper and photocopying them and then sending those as faxes.
All of that was billable time for the client project. Whether you billed by the hour or factored into your project cost, it was all there. You don’t do that anymore. You get your Google alert or your alert from some other system and you just have it and you forward it along a lot faster. You should absolutely charge less for that work than you did 30 years ago when it was all manual.
Gini Dietrich: Right. Yeah. And so exactly that. When you think about, okay, if it’s, if we’re going to spend less time doing all the things that we’ve talked about and more time doing the things that we’re really good at or enjoy doing, then yeah, you’re going to charge less for those administrative tasks, which to your point, you should, And more for the things that the outputs that actually result in moving an organization’s business forward. And clients are gonna be happier with that.
I mean, I’ve used this example, the example of the client of ours that does the hour long webinar every week and how it used to take us two weeks to create all the assets for one webinar. And now it takes us like 45 minutes. We have, the budget hasn’t changed, but we’ve shifted the work that we’re doing and we can do more strategic work that quite honestly, we’ve had on the backburner for a couple of years because we haven’t had the time or the budget or the scope to get to it. And he’s completely happy because he’s getting things a lot faster, he’s communicating to his audience more quickly, and we’re getting to do more work. So it hasn’t reduced our fee, but it has reduced the way or changed the way that we do the work.
Chip Griffin: Right. Because you’ve continued to evolve. And I think any agency that is not continuing to evolve, whether it’s AI or anything else, you can’t do business the same way that you did it 5, 10, 20 years ago. You have to change. Your audiences are in different places, the technology is different that you use to get your work done, the workforce is different, all of these things contribute to the need to evolve and adapt and come up with new things that you can be doing that are more effective than the things that you did those 5 or 10 years ago when it was a lot more difficult to do certain tasks.
Gini Dietrich: Absolutely. Yeah. I mean, I, I mean, to your point at the very beginning, stop being afraid of it. Stop wringing your hands. You know, I think every, there was a conversation about it in the Spin Sucks community. And I think some people are really worried about things like, what if we get scammed or what if somebody uses our voice or what if somebody uses our likeness?
Well, Guess what? There are bad actors no matter what and people are going to use all of this to scam people just because that’s what they do. It’s not any different than them scamming people with phone calls or with mail or anything else. It’s just a different way of doing it.
Chip Griffin: Yeah, I mean, it, you know, does AI come up with some more interesting ways of doing scams?
Sure, absolutely. But people have been being scammed for centuries. People even today are still being scammed by simple things like phone and mail and email.
Gini Dietrich: Yeah, yeah.
Chip Griffin: You don’t need the fancy AI stuff to get there. If you’re susceptible to being scammed, does the AI make it a little bit easier? Perhaps, but it also is something that’s out there no matter what.
And for folks who are worried about that, you need to address the whole culture of scamming, not the technology around individual pieces, because otherwise you’d just be playing whack a mole. And what are we going to try to do, just get rid of everything? You can’t get rid of all technology.
Gini Dietrich: Right, right.
Yeah. And I think, you know, I think there’s a pretty big opportunity in here for agency owners that we’re not necessarily thinking about. And I did a recent Spin Sucks podcast episode on this. but I think there’s an opportunity for us to think about AI in a new way, and especially for agency owners, how we might create things that we can build a subscription model on, for instance.
So say that you’re doing sentiment analysis and media monitoring and, crisis preparedness and results reporting. AI can do all of that for you now. And you create it in a way that it’s, that it’s applicable to your specific clients. So you have an AI that does, does it for all four of those things, for instance, for one client. And you offer that to the client as a subscription model because it’s created and it’s, it’s sort of a passive income thing where they get a report as often as they want daily, weekly, monthly, however they want it and they get exactly what they want. And then you, you have the oversight of saying, okay, we saw this in your report.
And this is what it means, or this is what you should be thinking about. And so you, you’re adding on that layer of strategic oversight. So then you’re getting paid for that too. So I think there’s a really big opportunity for us to be thinking about how we create our own AI and how we train existing models to be able to quote unquote, sell it to our clients.
Chip Griffin: Absolutely. And, and the opportunities really do abound. And if you look past the immediate fear and, and you start to say, okay, well, how can I take advantage of this, you end up in a better place. And so I think about agencies that do a lot of creation, whether those that’s writing or video or photography or audio or all of those kinds of things.
And, and I hear a lot of folks in those communities saying, oh my God, AI is going to take away my job as a writer because nobody’s going to pay me to do this. And guess what? If it’s run of the mill SEO volume work. Yeah. You, I mean, absolutely. You’re not going to be able to make a living writing that kind of schlock.
The fact that you could up until now is just, you know, you were lucky. That, but that’s, if you’re writing original stuff, things that can only be done by someone who actually has the knowledge and that you’re tapping into your expertise or the expertise of your clients, and you’re communicating that in an original way, you’ll be fine.
It’s like photographers. People know I do photography on the side for the most part. And so in that photography community, there are a lot of folks who are like, well, this generative AI, it’s destroying it. I don’t want them taking my images because it’s going to put me out of business.
Well, then come up with photographs that can’t just be duplicated. If you’re taking a photograph of the exact same thing as everybody else, if you’re just doing stock photography, yes. Those are the kinds of things that are going to go away, but there’s still plenty of opportunity to be had if you look for it and you think creatively.
Gini Dietrich: I think that’s a really good example too, because you know, everybody freaked out when the camera was introduced on the iPhone and later the Android, right? All the photography industry was like, Oh my gosh, we’re going to be replaced because everybody can take a picture. And that’s true. We can all take pictures. But Chip, you started your side business,
what, three years ago, four years ago, after all of this came about. So people have their phones, their cameras on their phones, and you’re still able to do professional photography work because you’re doing different things and you’re doing it in a way that’s appealing to your community. So I think to your point, that’s a great example of things change. Technology is coming at us really fast, and the way that we adapt to it is what’s going to set us apart.
Chip Griffin: Yeah, I mean the photography that I do is sports photography. I mean, you can’t you can’t do AI images of a game because the game hasn’t happened. And in order for it to do it, it would need to be able to tap into something, in other words, video or photos that someone had already done of the game.
Right. So as long as you’re creating original stuff, or I do senior and family photos.
Gini Dietrich: Yep.
Chip Griffin: AI is not going to create, you know, your family photo for you. Right. It may help improve it, and most photographers I know use generative AI to improve images. Sure, sure. And so it’s kind of hypocritical for you to use it in your product that you’re creating and, and say, well, I don’t, I don’t want my stuff to be helping to train it. I don’t want others to have access to it because it’s going to put me out of work. Right. So, and if we think about these things, and we’re so protective of the way that we do things, whether it’s our job or our agency or whatever.
We lose out on everything that takes place. And we’ve been going through this cycle for a long time. I mean, how many blacksmiths are there out there today? A lot fewer than there were 150 years ago. Have you, have you found a horse and buggy driver outside of Central Park in the last, you know, 50 years?
Probably not. They all, things shift as technology shifts. We need to adapt with it and not freak out by it. And I think it’s the overreaction that’s going to put a lot of individuals and agencies into trouble because you’re either because you’re going to lean so heavily into it and say, well, this changes everything.
Right. And I can just do everything entirely differently, or you resist it all. And you say, no, I need to protect the way things were. There’s a happy middle ground in there where you’ll have a thriving business that does great work for clients.
Gini Dietrich: Yeah, and I don’t think there’s anything wrong with that. I mean, yes, we have continued to evolve.
If we don’t evolve, we’re dead. So, the idea that we’re going to bury our heads in the sand and pretend this isn’t happening is the wrong thing to do, because it’s happening. And this, I may have already said this on this podcast, but it reminds me of like 2010 ish when I started speaking and to groups of CEOs and, and we, I would talk about social media and they’d all be like, no, it’s for the kids.
It’s a fad. It’s not going to affect my business. And I would be like, no, it is going to affect your business and you are going to have to use it. And, and the, the mass majority of them would be like, no. Don’t have to worry about it. I don’t need to hear this. La la la la la. They’d stick their fingers in their ears. And look where we are today.
So it’s, this is the same thing. Like, don’t stick your fingers in your ears and, and yell, la la la la la. Don’t stick your head in the sand. It’s too late to put the genie back in the bottle. It’s here. So figure out ways to grasp the opportunity and make the best out of it for your agency.
Chip Griffin: Yeah. And look, I mean, the reality is that in the agency world, jobs have gone away in our lifetimes in the course of my career.
Yes. If I look back 30 years ago, every agency had an admin assistant or secretary or something like that who handled all of these things like faxes and photocopies and answering the phone and filling out the while you were out slips and, and all of these things. That doesn’t happen. I can’t think of an agency that has a pure admin.
I, there are ones who have maybe some office manager type responsibilities, but usually with substantive stuff alongside of it, because you can’t fill 40 hours a week.
Gini Dietrich: Yep. Yep.
Chip Griffin: And so we’ve seen these changes take place in our lifetimes, but we’ve also seen the creation of new jobs. When I first started out, nobody was doing digital media.
Nobody was doing social media. PR agencies tended not to get into paid media at all. And now we have the lovely PESO model that informs you how you can go out and do a bunch of different things under the same umbrella in order to help your clients most effectively.
Gini Dietrich: Yeah, you’re absolutely right. I mean, I, I’m thinking about, you know, when I worked at Fleishman Hillard and there was a receptionist and all she did all day long was answer the phone. That doesn’t exist anymore.
Because we all use our cell phones. Like I remember a time where it felt weird to give your cell phone number to clients or to use your cell phone for business purposes because you had a desk phone. Well, that hasn’t happened in years, right? At least not for me. So the idea that. You would have a recipient sitting there at the front desk only answering phones is antiquated.
Are there other things that person can do? For sure, but it’s not the same role that was 10, 15 years ago.
Chip Griffin: Yeah. I mean, when I worked on Capitol Hill, there were literally people in my office who did nothing but answer the phone cause it just rang
all day long. And, and on my desk, I had one of those big metal spokes where you just, every time you returned a phone call on the pink message slip, you just, the satisfying feel of putting it down on the spike and you’d see it grow and you’re like, well, I did a lot of work.
Gini Dietrich: Oh, man, I was productive today.
Chip Griffin: Yeah. I mean, and, I mean, most, I think a lot of people listening probably never experienced that and probably don’t even understand what the heck I’m talking about.
I mean, I, a significant number of agency employees, at least, if not owners don’t know what a while you were out slip looks like. But those of us who were around 20 or 30 years ago. It’s etched into our brain because we had so many of them sitting on our desks in our offices. You know, when you come back from lunch and you’re like, Oh, here’s a stack.
Great. Fantastic.
Gini Dietrich: Right.
Chip Griffin: So you just need to learn to evolve. And, and instead of freaking out about artificial intelligence, you need to use the other kind of AI – actual intelligence to come up with an actual plan to move forward. And, and for those of you who are not watching on video right now, we are getting a cameo appearance from Gini’s daughter, who is on her first day of summer break.
And
Gini Dietrich: yeah,
Chip Griffin: apparently really likes the camera.
Gini Dietrich: It’s going to be a long week.
Chip Griffin: I wouldn’t have said a long week, you have the whole summer.
Gini Dietrich: Camp starts next week.
Chip Griffin: Ah, okay. Well, so you only have a week to get through this then.
I guess this is a backdoor way for her to get some screen time though.
Yeah, she’s trying.
If her screen time is watching me, I feel really sorry for her.
Gini Dietrich: I was telling Chip before we started. I don’t like, I don’t allow the screen, so she’s
Chip Griffin: Yeah, well, before this totally devolves and goes downhill because the AI isn’t going to help you manage that situation, so we probably should wrap up this episode. I think I feel like I’ve gotten this rant off my chest.
Don’t be afraid of it.
It’s not our first time talking about AI. I will be consistent in my messaging. You know, we’ll come back to this periodically because it’s, it’s going to be something that, that you all need to be thinking about and truly it is all technology. It is not just, we’re talking about AI and, and AI is the popular one today.
But as you point out, we’ve had these, we had this with social media, right? You had the same kind of thing. You had the overreaction in both directions. Social media destroys everything else media relations wise, or, Oh my God, it’s a huge threat. The truth is almost always somewhere in the middle. So find that middle ground and you’ll be successful.
Gini Dietrich: Yeah. And like I said, I think there’s a big, big opportunity for agencies right now. So huge opportunity. Yeah.
Chip Griffin: Huge. Absolutely. On that note, we’ll wrap up this episode of the Agency Leadership Podcast. I’m almost speechless here. We now have a dog on the video here. So if you, if you really want an entertaining show, watch the video version, don’t just listen to us.
Gini Dietrich: This is like a replay of 2020 all over again,
Chip Griffin: it does feel a bit like that On that note, I’m Chip Griffin.
Gini Dietrich: I’m Gini Dietrich.
Chip Griffin: And it depends.
In this episode, Chip and Gini discuss the widespread apprehension about AI in the agency world, urging listeners to embrace the technology rather than fear it. They emphasize that AI will not replace jobs but will change the nature of work, making tasks more efficient and allowing for more strategic focus. The conversation also explores how agency owners can leverage AI to create new service models and improve client offerings.
Are you finding biz dev harder in 2024 than you expected?
In this episode, Chip and Gini discuss the increased risk aversion and prolonged decision-making processes among clients and prospects in the agency industry, especially in light of economic uncertainties and the 2024 U.S. election. They emphasize the importance of agencies adapting by providing project-based work and suggest looking into using AI for optimizing tasks and offering new services.
The conversation also explores the benefits of flexible, short-term engagements and the potential pitfalls of long-term contracts.
"If an employee is too critical to take vacation, your problem isn't the employee."
In this episode, Chip and Gini discuss the importance of ensuring that no one in an agency, including owners and key employees, is too indispensable to take time off. They explore the belief versus reality of being irreplaceable, and provide actionable strategies for agency owners to create processes allowing team members to take vacations without disrupting operations.
The conversation touches on company culture, employee empowerment, and the benefits of experimenting with practices like four-day work weeks and dedicated days for business focus.
Don't sugarcoat it when writing up a job description or interviewing potential new hires - painting a rosy picture that doesn't match reality will only cause you headaches down the road.
In this episode, Chip and Gini discuss the importance of being open and honest about work expectations at your agency, including hours, tasks, and working conditions. They emphasize the need for clear communication during the hiring process to ensure the best fit between you and your employees.
None of this gives you license to abuse your team members, but it is better to acknowledge things that new employees may not like before you bring them on board and have a much bigger problem to solve.
Gen Z employees tend to have a different (not worse!) approach to their jobs than the older generations do. Which means that as an owner, you need to evolve the way you communicate with and manage them.
In this episode, Chip and Gini discuss those differences and the importance of effective communication and feedback in managing and leading. They highlight the need for two-way feedback and setting clear expectations, which will in turn foster a culture of trust and creativity in the workplace.
It must be nice to own an agency because then you're earning the big bucks, right? Many agency employees complain that clients pay so much more than they are making, so the owner must be reaping a huge profit. It makes it easy to think that setting out on your own and working for clients directly is the right answer. In this episode, Chip and Gini discuss the realities of quitting your job to start your own agency, emphasizing the importance of understanding the costs of owning a business, and how as an owner it's up to you to communicate transparently to your team how revenue is not the same as profit.
Hiring seasoned professionals sounds like it will solve a lot of headaches you have as an agency owner. But will it? In this episode, Chip and Gini discuss the importance of balancing senior and junior hires in agencies, highlighting the pros and cons of primarily staffing with senior level talent. They emphasize the need for clear expectations, relevant experience, and the importance of understanding what each hire truly needs to do before you commit to senior level hires.
Chip and Gini discuss recent updates from the federal government affecting agency owners, including a ban on non-compete agreements and changes to salary thresholds for overtime exempt employees. It emphasizes the importance of compliance, working with professional advisors, and making necessary adjustments to HR policies.
You trust your team, right? In this episode, Chip and Gini discuss the importance of agency owners letting go of micromanaging, trusting their team, and focusing on building a scalable business. They emphasize the need for owners to delegate tasks and avoid being bottlenecks. They also touch on the challenges and benefits of transitioning from being deeply involved in all aspects of the business to taking on a more strategic role. The conversation underscores the significance of balancing involvement while ensuring clients feel supported and valued.
Chip and Gini discuss the intricacies of fractional leadership roles within clients.
They share their experiences and provide advice on managing relationships, setting clear boundaries, handling administrative tasks, and positioning oneself accurately in these roles.
Start-up clients may not have the funds to pay you, but still need service, so why not consider receiving equity as payment? In this episode, Chip and Gini discuss the potential pitfalls of that approach. They caution against exotic payment schemes such as equity or pay for performance, emphasizing the risks and complexities involved. They also highlight the importance of legal and tax considerations when entering into equity deals.
In this episode, Chip and Gini discuss the fear of hiring employees, the implications of using contractors, the financial considerations, and the benefits of having employees.
They emphasize the need to align hiring decisions with long-term business goals and not to be afraid of hiring employees when it makes sense financially.
Employee complaints? Accountable only to yourself? Trying to create a work culture? Welcome to agency ownership! In this episode, Chip and Gini discuss the challenges and frustrations of owning an agency, emphasizing the importance of seeking accountability and support, and reflecting on one's own role in addressing issues. The discussion also includes reflections on past experiences and lessons learned, as they share insights for agency owners to effectively navigate their responsibilities and address issues in a constructive manner.
How do you deal with clients who ask for different payment terms than the ones your agency offers?
In this episode, Chip and Gini discuss the importance of setting clear expectations from the start and being proactive in following up on overdue invoices. They offer different approaches and creative strategies for handling payment terms with clients.
Are you and your agency team spending too much time writing proposals, creating capabilities decks, and building brand personas?
It may seem productive, but clients value results - and so should you.
In this episode, Chip and Gini discuss how to get your agency's time under control and offer advice on managing business development and project management to avoid the unnecessary and focus on real value creation.
In this episode, Chip and Gini discuss the recent wave of layoffs in the media industry and its implications for PR agencies. They explore the challenges of securing earned media in a landscape with fewer journalists and offer insights on evolving strategies to effectively reach target audiences through alternative channels. Emphasizing the importance of setting realistic client expectations and embracing creativity, they highlight the need for agencies to adapt and innovate amidst industry changes.
A lot of agencies have told Chip and Gini that 2023 was a bad year for them. Fellow agency adviser Karl Sakas posted on LinkedIn that he has been asked if it was bad for everyone. In this episode, Chip and Gini share their perspectives — along with things that positioned some agencies for success in what many experienced as a down year. Whether you had a good or bad year, there are lessons to take away to make 2024 and future years more successful.
When Gini shared in a recent episode that her success has come from doing the same thing for 15 years, a listener pointed out that she has continued to evolve. The two are not mutually exclusive. In fact, the best agencies usually combine the two. Rather than chasing trends, successful agencies consistently produce excellent results for a well-defined set of clients. At the same time, these high-performing agencies continue to evolve and adapt as tools and techniques change. In this episode, Chip and Gini elaborate on how to blend the two effectively — and pitfalls to avoid.
The Wall Street Journal recently suggested that the era of digital agencies may be over. It's not that digital services are no longer required, but the label for agencies may no longer make sense. In this episode, Chip and Gini talk about the need for agencies to find a sustainable focus and be cautious of riding the wave of the latest type of "hot" agency — including digital, social media, cannabis, crypto, and many others that have come and gone. As digital services become table stakes for most agencies, it is more important than ever when positioning your business to focus on the results that clients are seeking rather than the tactics being employed.
It's not uncommon to hear agency owners talk about wanting to target small businesses because there are so many of them and you can talk with the decision-maker more easily. While it may be an appealing target, there are reasons to be cautious. There's a good chance that you will be dealing with the owner, which can help lead to a faster sale since they may treat it as an impulse purchase. On the flip side, every penny you get is out of the owner's pocket so they will be scrutinizing results far more closely than an employee in a larger organization. Chip and Gini talk about these and other issues, while also noting that there is a time and place for focusing on smaller organizations as an agency as long as you have a clear plan and model to make it successful.
It seems so alluring to be able to put a Fortune 500 logo on your agency's website. Many of us dream of the creative things that we can do for these household names. Yet often these big brands end up being bad deals for small agencies. They are time-consuming to sell, difficult to service, and often subject to onerous contractual terms. In this episode, Chip and Gini take a look at the appeal presented by these opportunities, along with the risk that they present.
In this episode, Chip and Gini take a question from the SAGA Community on Slack about ways to motivate freelancers just as you do with employees. The reality is that freelancers and employees aren't the same and contractors should treat your agency as a client and produce excellent results — just the same way you do for your own clients. The real question ought to be how to engage freelancers more effectively, and that comes down to clear communication. As long as both parties understand the relationship and expectations are well-established, both agency and freelancer should be able to prosper from the relationship.
It's easy for all of us to get stuck inside our own heads. Having someone we trust who can help to provide some independent insight and challenge our own beliefs can be very helpful. In this episode, Chip and Gini talk about why it is important for agency owners to have someone outside of the business — a mentor, consultant, coach, friend, or even another agency owner — who can help to play that role. In addition to getting a different opinion and perspective, that individual can help hold you accountable. After all, who wants to report to their advisor that they haven't met their commitments?
If you're anything like Chip and Gini, you have discovered employees doing work for clients that is outside of the scope of work you have agreed to. There are many reasons for this behavior and this episode explores those as well as potential solutions. Whether your team just wants to make clients happy, enjoys doing some work more than others, or simply isn't aware of the actual scope of work for a project, you will get some practical tips on what to do — as well as a bit of reassurance that you aren't alone in this.
Most small agencies at some point experience the sinking feeling of losing a whale client or seeing a sudden sharp reduction in revenue. When you get that kind of news, what do you do? That's what Chip and Gini discuss on this week's episode — especially for agencies that may not have an active pipeline of prospects in place. Ramping up revenue quickly means focusing on the right things and not wasting time on tactics that will only pay off in the long-term (if ever).
Many agencies overvalue their websites and spend too much time thinking about and working on them. In this episode, Chip and Gini talk about what matters — and what doesn't — when it comes to your website design and content. They share some of their experience about the areas in which the most time (and money) get wasted and how to make sure that you get the best ROI possible on your agency's website.
Agency leaders need to stop casually discussing the chaotic environment common to so many agencies. Too often you will hear firm owners and others talk about agencies as hectic and fast-paced environments. Chip and Gini have had enough of this talk — and they both admit that they, too, used to embrace the idea that it was an unavoidable circumstance for agency life. Chaos is the sign of a problem that needs to be solved, not an acceptable condition that leaders and their teams should adapt to.
With labor costs usually accounting for the largest share of agency expenses, it is no surprise that owners are particularly sensitive to any indication that salaries might be creeping up. Recent conversations that Chip and Gini have had with agency leaders suggest that both prospective hires and current employees are asking for much higher salaries than many owners feel comfortable paying. In this episode, Chip and Gini talk about why salary expectations are on the rise and what agencies can — and should — do about it. Often the problem is that agencies have held their own rates steady even as salaries have increased, effectively reducing the firm's profits. Paying more without charging more is a recipe for disaster. Beyond that, agency owners need to understand the realities of the current labor market and ensure that their expectations are reasonable and not based on their own recollections of what they might have earned in similar roles 10 or 20 years ago.
One of the biggest sources of friction between agencies and clients comes from mismatched expectations. Too often agency leaders don't do enough to set realistic expectations during the business development phase of the relationship. It's exciting to get a deal done so we often allow prospective clients to entertain inflated expectations without correcting them — or to avoid discussion of expectations altogether. Chip and Gini explain that for healthy, sustainable relationships with clients, agencies must get agreement on shared expectations every step of the way. The agency's process and timeline should be clearly explained so that everyone knows what will happen and when results can be expected. Avoiding the expectations conversation may lead to short-term business wins, but they often produce bad-fit clients and high churn rates.
In this episode, Chip and Gini react to a blog post from their friend Christopher S. Penn who writes and speaks frequently and intelligently on new trends in communications and technology. In his piece, Chris argued that agencies should review their business model and pricing structure in response to AI developments in 2023. While the co-hosts see artificial intelligence as a force that will (and already is) impacting agencies, they're not on board with a wholesale change to agency models as a result. They argue that the value pricing approach advocated by Chris is far more difficult to implement in practice and doesn't necessarily address the fundamental changes that AI may cause. Instead, Chip and Gini argue that agencies should be looking to better integrate AI into their own processes and understanding how it is transforming how their clients approach the challenges that agencies address. The path they recommend results in agencies evolving their solutions and delivery mechanisms rather than abruptly shifting course dramatically.
Chip and Gini understand the excitement of closing a deal and the desire that agencies have to just get started with the creative process. But it's important to get the contracting process done right, including setting the best terms and having a signature before any work gets going. In this episode, Chip and Gini talk about some of the common mistakes that they have seen agency owners make with contracts and how to go about it in the best way.
In this episode, Chip and Gini discuss when you should (and shouldn't) terminate an employee for cause. They explain the perils of allowing emotion to impact termination decisions and how you should approach these difficult circumstances. When an employee is terminated for cause, it can also cause agency leaders to wonder if they can trust others, so Chip and Gini explore the ramifications of that fear.
All agencies experience turnover, so it makes sense to have a process for when employees leave. The exit interview is an important part of that sequence. In this episode, Chip and Gini discuss best practices for conducting effective exit interviews, including who should run them and what they should include. The co-hosts also offer advice on the importance of ongoing employee communication to avoid surprises in the exit interviews that could have been avoided.
Chip and Gini are tired of all of the bad pitches from agencies that they find in their inboxes. They simply can’t take any more.
In this episode, they examine some of the really poor sales emails and pitches to have guests on their podcasts that they have seen lately.
It’s time for agencies to knock it off and put more thought into how they pitch themselves and their clients.
Key takeaways* Chip Griffin: “It’s not a numbers game, it’s a relationships game. And so you need to think about how you scale relationships, not how you scale outreach.” * Gini Dietrich: “Know what your staff is doing from the perspective of creating content and using models and processes that they’ve scraped off the internet, and make sure they’re giving credit.” * Chip Griffin: “Outreach shouldn’t be blasting out as much as you can to as many people as you can and just hoping that enough of that sticks to the wall that you actually are able to generate business over the long run. Because in the meantime, you’ve done tremendous damage to your reputation.” * Gini Dietrich: “It’s about developing relationships and spending the time to build those relationships with your target audience, versus sending out as many pitches as you possibly can.”
Related* Common mistakes agencies make when pursuing new business * Creating winning new business strategies for your agency (featuring Shannyn Lee)
View TranscriptThe following is a computer-generated transcript. Please listen to the audio to confirm accuracy.
Chip Griffin: Hello and welcome to another episode of the Agency Leadership Podcast. I’m Chip Griffin.
Gini Dietrich: And I’m Gini Dietrich.
Chip Griffin: And Gini, I think that you need to buy, buy, buy anything I’m going to sell right now, right? And just don’t even think about it. Just buy, right? Okay, no problem. Right after this.
You know, I get really annoyed. I could probably just stop right there.
Gini Dietrich: You could stop right there. Yes, you could.
Chip Griffin: Regular listeners. Anyone who knows me will just probably be like, yeah, yes you do.
Gini Dietrich: Yes you do.
Chip Griffin: But I’ve been getting particularly annoyed lately because it seems like there are more and more of these just awful pitches that I get on email and LinkedIn from agencies trying to do business and it just boggles my mind that people are actually getting results because I presume if they’re sending this stuff out that they’re getting some level of result off of these just awful, awful sales pitches.
Gini Dietrich: So, yes, I agree, and I have been receiving some as well, but I’d love an example of some of the awful sales pitches you’re getting.
Chip Griffin: I, I mean, some of my favorites that, that are, that are ever present from web development firms, for example where they basically say your website sucks. Huh. We want to fix it. I don’t think that’s, I mean, that, that would be like, you know, a cosmetologist going out there and saying you’re ugly, but I can make that better.
Do you think you’re going to buy from that person? I, I don’t know. I just, I don’t understand the mindset of, of coming in within with what is essentially an insult of the, for all, you know, the person that you’re contacting is the person who oversaw the building of the website.
Gini Dietrich: That’s actually a great point. That’s a great point.
That’s a great point. Yep.
Chip Griffin: So, I don’t understand that kind of tactic. I don’t understand the tactic of the agencies. Again, we’re on the web dev side of things. It’s not limited to web dev, but there’s some of the examples that come to mind. Where they come in and they say, you know, I found some things on your site that are broken.
If you schedule a call with me, I’ll tell you what they are, right? I mean, again, that’s like saying, you know, you, you’ve got something unzipped, but I’m not going to tell you what, unless you schedule a call with me, how about you just tell me, you know?
Gini Dietrich: I had a really good one like that too, that they actually made a video, they made a video and they went to my website.
And they said, we’ve noticed there’s some things that need to be fixed on your website. And they were going through each page. It was like a five minute video. And saying, there are three things on this page that need to be fixed and five things on this page. And I was like, okay, like give me a taste of something.
I’m not just gonna randomly schedule a call with you. Right. And then like the follow up is obnoxious as well. The, I got, there is, the follow up to one of them I got last week that just made me roll my eyes was the typical, you know I’m, A, click one of these answers, A, I’m not interested, B, I’m too busy, C, a bookcase fell on me and I can’t get up.
Like, dumb! Dumb, dumb.
Chip Griffin: Yeah. Yeah. Those are dumb and they’re copied straight out of some, you know, someone’s sales manual. That’s exactly right. How to do these things. That’s right. I think some of the worst pitching and this is sales pitching and pitching otherwise is from podcast agencies and, and, you know, with all due respect to anyone out there who’s running a podcast agency, I’m sorry if you’re running one of the good ones, because most of them suck.
Most of them suck. And, and the pitches are just awful. Terrible. They’re terrible for me on the receiving end as a host of multiple shows where, I mean, we’ve talked about this before. We get pitches to be on the Agency Leadership Podcast, you know, cause of all those guests that we’ve had over the five years we’ve been doing this show. All zero of them.
All zero guests.
But they’re regular listeners and they love what they hear. Right. Okay. Okay. We’re starting the relationship by me understanding that you are a liar. That’s right. A lying liar who lies. And, and then you get the ones who pitch, you know, someone who’s already been on one of my shows.
Would you like to have so and so on Chats with Chip? Well, I already did, so… No, I don’t want to have that person on again. And now I’m going to blacklist them. I mean…
Gini Dietrich: I get those for Spin Sucks too, where they’re like, I loved your episode with so and so! And they’ll actually say an episode that I have done recently, but then add a guest.
I don’t do guests either. And I’m like, again, to your point, you were starting off this relationship by me understanding that you’re a liar. That’s really terrible. But my favorite Oh, go ahead. I was gonna say, my favorite is when clients forward me emails from agencies that are pitching them. And there are things like, we know you have an agency, but we can do better.
And here’s what we can do. Not only can we get you in the New York Times and USA Today and the Wall Street Journal, but we can do it for free and we won’t charge until you are placed in one of those publications all the time. Yeah. All the time.
Chip Griffin: Yeah. No, I’ve, I’ve seen. In fact, in fact, I think that may be where this, the, the idea for this show came from, because I think a week or two ago, I forwarded you one of those ones where I got a pitch from a pay for performance PR agency where they didn’t even use the agency name in the pitch.
They wanted to set up a meeting, but I had to copy whoever was in the CC because clearly they’re using some kind of appointment setter. That’s right. Yeah. Yeah. And when, when your appointment setter set up is just so bad that you have to tell someone that they have to reply all because otherwise, like you’re trying to sell me, don’t tell me what I need to do in order to have you sell to me.
Yes. That just doesn’t make any sense to me. Yeah. I mean, I also love the podcast agencies who, you know, who’ll send the pitch to me, you know, have you ever thought about being on podcasts? You know, we can help, we can help get you on to podcasts. They were a great thing. You know, did they walk through how great podcasts are?
I’m like, Oh, really? What are these podcast things? I’ve never heard of them. Two seconds of research. It’s not that hard.
Gini Dietrich: Yeah. Or the ones that are like, I can help you with your social media following. Did you look me up?
Chip Griffin: Right.
Gini Dietrich: I don’t need any help, but thank you.
Chip Griffin: I mean, it’s just, it’s, it’s, it is abominable.
The way that, that so many agencies, not all, not all of our listeners, probably most of our listeners are not this way, but you’re competing out there against people who are doing this kind of thing. And part of it is because people read these articles and textbooks that say sales is a numbers game. And you’ve got to do so many contacts each day to generate so many meetings per week, which then leads to so many proposals, I mean, on one level, yes.
Technically true, maybe kind of, but if you reduce it to a numbers game, you’re making a mistake because a good agency, we’ve talked about this, has 10, 15 clients, tops. Tops, right. That’s not a numbers game, that’s a relationships game. That’s right. And so you need to think about how you scale relationships.
Not how you scale outreach.
Gini Dietrich: Yeah, and I think we’re also competing with the, I mean, I don’t know how many of these emails you get, but I probably get 20 or 30 of these emails a day of the, there’s a broken link on your website, we’d like to replace it, or we have this, this manual that could be great for this blog post, or it’s just like, oh my god, I can’t.
Chip Griffin: We’d love to write an article for your website and we’ll give you a link back to it. And I’m like, but this article is on lawn mowing. Like,
and I get all sorts of crazy stuff like that because in part, because like on this show, we go off on random tangents and so there’s all sorts of crud that’s in the transcript and they’ve used some automated email generator that says, if you mention a lawnmower, we’re going to send this to you so that we can have you link the words lawnmower to our lawnmower service.
No, no, read it. Right. In fact, I’ve probably invited that now just by talking about lawnmower so many times on this lawnmower, lawnmower, lawnmower. Let’s wait and see what happens. Let’s see when the next one comes through. Let’s test this theory. I will be sure to report back when and if we get that SEO request to include a lawnmower article link.
Oh my God. It just, I, I don’t understand the mindset and I would encourage you if you are listening. Do not think about business development that way. No. It is not the way to do it. But also, know what your team is doing. Because this is true, not just of sales pitches, but the pitches that are going out to members of the media.
That’s right. Or social media folks, or, you know, influencers, whatever we want to call them today. Make sure you understand what your team is doing and make sure that you are not guilty of these bad pitches even on the media side of things because it’s very easy to fall into these traps, particularly if you’re reading up on all these people who just say, well, you just need to blast out there.
You need to get out there and get out in front of many people as possible. Don’t be that person.
Gini Dietrich: Well, and I would add to that. Yeah, yes. On the media pitching for sure, because I get lots, lots of those as well. And they’re really bad. But also on things like, you know, we have the trademark and copyright on the PESO model.
And I honestly
Chip Griffin: You do? Oh, I never I didn’t know that.
Gini Dietrich: We do. I could employ an attorney full time just to follow up with the people who do not credit us. And so typically – because I’m not going to employ a full-time attorney – the process that we go through is if I know the leader of the organization, and a lot of times I do, then I send a note and I just say, Hey, listen, this isn’t, I’m sure this is an oversight.
Blah blah blah. And 95% of the time they’re like, Oh my gosh, I’m so sorry. And they fix it. Every time though, it’s the younger staff that are blamed every single time. So know what your staff is doing from the perspective of creating content and using models and processes and things like that, that they’ve scraped off the internet and make sure they’re giving credit because that that’s part of what we have to be thinking about as leaders is you know, not just bad sales pitches and not just bad pitches to the media, but everything that we’re doing has to be good and above board. We can’t just be letting our younger generation scrape stuff on the internet and us post it and be like, we are the ones that created the PESO model. No, you’re not.
You’re not.
Chip Griffin: Right. And you have to remember that any of this stuff that is going on in the name of your agency impacts your reputation. Yep. And so. You know, one of the things that I hear from agency owners a lot is, you know, Hey, I, I really need some help with my business development. I talked to someone who can do, you know, appointment setting or can help us with lead generation or outreach or those kinds of things.
And look, I mean, I’ve got good friends in some of those businesses who, who do legitimate work in helping to build and scale real relationships with prospects. But there are a lot of people out there that are just treating it as a numbers game. And so if you’re thinking about getting that kind of external help.
Make sure you understand what is their targeting process? What is their messaging process? You know, the, these folks who will go out there and just spam you on LinkedIn. I mean, I’ve gotten to the point now where I don’t even read my direct messages on LinkedIn. So if you’re, if you’re out there and you’re trying to reach me legitimately through direct messages on LinkedIn.
Don’t bother. Send me an email separately because you’ve got a much better chance of me seeing it because my LinkedIn is just full of people requesting to connect. And, and by the way, in the, in the actual connection request, there’s a sales pitch. Yeah, knock it off. Right. Knock it off. Just try to, let’s get to know each other first before you start selling to me.
That’s the value, I mean, LinkedIn can be really valuable in trying to help you, you know, make more connections, legitimate, real world connections with other people. If you’re not using it that way, you’re making a mistake. It shouldn’t be just another spam platform.
Gini Dietrich: That’s right. Yeah, it’s, I mean, the funny thing about it is, and I say this about marketers in general as well, is that we all hate this stuff.
Like, we all experience this. We all experience the sales pitch on LinkedIn, and it makes all of us feel icky. And yet, we tend to get behind our computer screens and go, oh, well, this must be the way it’s done. And then we do it. Don’t do it. Because, just because it’s done that way, or you’ve seen it’s done that way, A, doesn’t mean it’s successful.
And B, think about it, how it makes you feel. You don’t, it doesn’t make you feel good. So if you’re doing that as well, it’s not going to make the receiver of your message feel good either.
Chip Griffin: And don’t get me wrong. I am not discouraging all forms of outreach because I am not, I am not of them as much as I love content marketing and things like that.
I don’t believe that most agencies can completely just sit back, publish articles, or even podcasts or videos, and just sit back and wait for business to come in. You need to do more than that in order to be getting out in front of people. And so you do need to have a real, honest outreach strategy. But it is not based on just blasting out as much as you can to as many people as you can and just hoping that enough of that sticks to the wall that you actually are able to generate business over the long run.
Because in the meantime, you’ve done tremendous damage to your reputation.
Gini Dietrich: To your reputation. To your reputation.
Chip Griffin: And you’ve taken real thought out of the process. Because when you do that, you’re inevitably hitting people that probably aren’t good fits. And then they come across and, and, and, and maybe they, they nibble at your email and so they say, sure, let’s have a conversation and all of a sudden, now you’re marching down that path and we’ve talked previously about the problem is once you get into a business development conversation most agencies are really bad at exiting even if there are red flags and flashing lights all over the place that tell them they should walk away because once you get in, you put the blinders on and you say, okay, my goal now is to close this.
In part because again, they’ve read articles and books and heard videos that say, that’s what you do, right? You know, it’s just how do you take them to the next step of the sales process when in fact that next step may very well be an exit ramp that you should be taking. So if you’re the kind of person who’s doing this high volume low quality pitching for new business.
You’re probably going to be a blinders on. Let’s just march through it. And you’re going to end up with clients. Sure. You’re going to end up with revenue. Yes, it’s going to be bad revenue. It’s going to make you miserable. It’s going to make your team miserable. It’s probably not going to be profitable.
They’re probably not going to stick around because the expectations are probably all messed up. As you can tell, I’m a little bit wound up about this.
Gini Dietrich: No, you’re absolutely right. You know, we, I have tried it all and we’ve talked about this, you and I, in both of our businesses, we’ve tried it all. And I have tried all of the lead generation.
I’ve tried the lead generation agencies. I’ve tried having a sales team. I’ve tried it all. And what I have discovered is that that kind of stuff is great for businesses that sell something. But in service businesses, to your point earlier, it’s all about relationships. So even if, like I’ve even noticed that when I am pitching something with another agency and they’re the lead agency.
We rarely win. And we rarely win because the the lead agency hasn’t taken the time to build the relationship. They’re like, Oh, I met with this person. They need this. I need to bring in somebody who can do X and we’re going to do Y. And then they go for, we go forth and prosper and to prosper. And it doesn’t prosper.
Like there’s no, you can’t. And. You know, as I get older and more wise in my old age, I’ve learned that it really is about the relationship and it’s about developing that relationship and you’re developed, you can develop a relationship first online, you can build trust and you can build credibility.
Through your content and through your podcast, all of that builds trust and credibility. You can start that relationship that way. So that by the time a person comes to you, they’re pretty, a pretty qualified warm lead. Now it’s your job to your, to your point to say, okay, is this a great client for us? Or do we need to take the exit ramp?
And that’s what you should be focusing on. You should not be focusing on trying to go out and get as many leads as possible, and have as many meetings as possible, and write as many proposals as possible. It’s really about who is the right fit. And how do you find those people and build relationships with them?
Chip Griffin: And I think the distinction that you drew between when you’re selling something versus selling a service. I, I think that’s a huge difference because the type of sale is different. It is. And even, you know, even when it is still somewhat of a consultative sale, but you’ve got an underlying product that you’re selling.
That is fundamentally different from what agencies do. And so, a lot of these things that we’re talking about, I mean, I, I have tried them all in the agency context, and like you, they just don’t work. Period. And, and I don’t think it’s because, I mean, I probably implemented them wrong, but I don’t think it’s because I implemented them wrong.
I don’t think that for 99% of agencies, and certainly most of the PR agencies who are listening, I don’t think it, it can really work. Yep. The asterisk is always, you know, those high volume digital agencies that are doing SEO and stuff like that. That is, that is a different thing. And we’ve talked about that previously.
So, you know, mileage will vary distinctly in that arena. It does work. And some of these tactics have worked for me, like with CustomScoop. When I had that business, right? Absolutely. Because we had a software as a service thing that we were selling. And they still, most of them, frankly, didn’t work as well as, you know, more traditional.
You know, relationship driven outreach, but they did work in ways that they would never work in my view in an agency world. So be careful when you’re out there and you’re, you’re gobbling up this sales advice, make sure you understand what that person’s background is, what were they selling? And even if they are an agency sales expert make sure you understand what kind of agency it was, because when you dig into a lot of them, a lot of the agency sales gurus out there, they do have good advice, but they really are targeted to that SEO, SEM, PPC, high volume digital, those kinds of things. And if you are not a high volume agency, and you can pick this up usually just by listening to their pitch, right?
You know, if they’re talking about signing multiple clients per month, chances are they’re not talking about the kinds of agencies that are typically listening to this show, right? Because if you’re signing multiple clients a month, you’re probably not in the PR space, right? I mean, that’s just not typical of PR agencies to do that kind of volume.
Gini Dietrich: Yeah. And I would say having worked for a global PR firm, they don’t have sales teams. They build relationships and they go after new business that way. And their quote unquote salespeople are the leadership team and whoever’s going to work on the account. So they could bring in account executives all the way up to the general manager, but that’s who the quote unquote sales team is.
It’s never a traditional salesperson ever.
Chip Griffin: Right. I mean, to the extent they have anybody in that space, sometimes they have like RFP teams that spend their time just Right. You know, wasting time and money. Yes. You know, responding to RFPs because it makes everybody feel good to say that you did it.
Gini Dietrich: Yeah.
Chip Griffin: Had to get in an RFP dig somewhere? You know.
Gini Dietrich: I, it’s really sage advice, you know, it’s, it’s really about relationships. It’s about developing those relationships and spending the time to build those relationships, both online and off. With the, with your target audience versus sending out as many pitches as you possibly can.
Chip Griffin: Yeah, and the next time that you are inclined to say, hey, I need to try something like this or, you know, that sounds like a good idea. I encourage you, open up your inbox and look through all those emails that you skipped over. Great. Click on them. Great advice. Read them. Yep. Ask yourself why you skipped over them.
Do you want to be that person? I don’t think so. If it doesn’t work with you, chances are, it’s not going to work with your ideal prospect.
Such good advice. Yes.
In any case, that will draw to an end this episode of the Agency Leadership Podcast. I will stop ranting and raving. I love it. Move on with my day. And I encourage you to as well.
Gini Dietrich: It’s very cathartic. It’s very cathartic.
Chip Griffin: I’m Chip Griffin.
Gini Dietrich: I’m Gini Dietrich.
Chip Griffin: And it depends.
Chip and Gini are tired of all of the bad pitches from agencies that they find in their inboxes. They simply can't take any more. In this episode, they examine some of the really poor sales emails and pitches to have guests on their podcasts that they have seen lately. It's time for agencies to knock it off and put more thought into how they pitch themselves and their clients.
Chip and Gini recently spoke about the challenge of small agencies seeking to hire unicorns who excel at everything. In this episode, they look at when you should be looking for specific kinds of hires and whether they should be specialists, generalists, or fractional support. Knowing the level of expertise needed and understanding how much demand your agency will have for their time helps you to make a smarter decision about how to obtain the resources needed to serve clients and manage your business. In some cases, you may want to hire a contractor with specific skills that you require but not with enough volume or consistency to justify hiring in-house. For those positions you do choose to fill with part- or full-time employees, you need to decide what level of expertise in which skills will give you the best value and help to meet your specific requirements.
Agency owners tend to be good at a little bit of everything — that's typically how they ended up as owners in the first place. They're used to rolling up their sleeves and digging into client work, business development, management, and just about anything else that's needed. As they staff up their teams, they often look for people who can check several boxes at once. Part of it is because that's what they do, and part of it is because that's what they need. Most small agencies don't have the budget — or need — to hire lots of individual specialists. But it is important to recognize the must-haves vs the nice-to-haves with new hires since someone who checks every box you'd like is pretty rare indeed. In this episode, Chip and Gini talk about the unicorn hunting problem and what you can do about it as an agency owner.
Agency owners ask Chip and Gini all the time how they can figure out what to delegate — and how to do it — to free up time in their days. In this episode, they talk about why agency owners should change their mindset to assume they will delegate anything that comes across their desks — then only keep it for themselves if they can't find any viable alternative. It's a subtle but important shift in thinking that can help you get more time to work on your business or even simply get some more rest.
Have you ever given serious thought to the structure of the titles at your agency? Or have you dealt with them simply as one-off decisions with individual employees? In this episode, Chip and Gini explore how — and why — you should be more thoughtful about how you hand out titles to employees. More important, they discuss how a mindful approach to titles can help you to retain your best employees. Of course, there's also discussion around the problems that come from title inflation that can be quite common in small agencies.
Does your agency regularly survey your clients to see how happy they are with the services that they are receiving and how likely they are to recommend you to someone else? Is it even worth doing these surveys? That's the question that Chip and Gini explore in this week's episode. Spoiler alert: they're not big fans of formal surveys, so they offer some alternative approaches. For those who still insist on sending questions to clients, they do have some practical advice on how to make the approach more effective.
Too many agencies focus on reporting the amount of time and effort that they put in on behalf of clients rather than talking about the strategy and the results it produces. When agencies tell a client how many hours were spent on work that is not billed by the hour, it serves little or no purpose. If you talk about how many reporters you pitched rather than the number of stories you generated, you are missing the point. In this episode, Chip and Gini talk about the perils of transactional relationships with your agency's clients along with how to become more collaborative to produce better results.
In this episode, Chip and Gini explore some of the things that PR and marketing agency owners focus on that probably aren't worth the time. For example, do you fret over fractional days off taken by employees or trading out paid holidays when a new one gets widespread recognition? Getting lost in the weeds — especially the wrong ones — can really hold back your agency's growth and negatively impact employee retention, so Chip and Gini offer some advice on how to combat the urge when it arises.
Chip and Gini get asked frequently about the state of the economy, the prospects of a recession, and what it means for agency owners. Not just now in 2023, but all the time. For years. But what is the state of things right now, in Q2 of 2023? The co-hosts explore what they're hearing and seeing from agencies that they're talking to. If prospects are being more cautious and more risk-averse, what does that mean for the length of agency sales cycles and the types of projects that are more likely to succeed? How can you find opportunity in the mix and what can you do to protect yourself?
While many agencies believe that recurring revenue is the answer to all of their problems, the reality is that many agencies become quite successful by generating most of their income from individual projects. However, project work comes with a unique set of challenges, especially as it relates to dealing with clients who may end up inadvertently delaying completion of a project. The unpredictability of resourcing and revenue that these delays can create mean that agency owners need to find ways to account for that. Chip and Gini offer tips for improving cash flow, minimizing delays, and increasing your flexibility to handle the ebbs and flows common with project-focused agencies.
In this episode, Chip and Gini review the recently released PR Council guidelines for the use of generative AI by agencies. They explore which elements small agencies might consider adopting, as well as identifying others that may warrant more of a "wait and see" approach. As the use of AI by communicators continues to expand, there will be many thorny issues to navigate. The PR Council guidelines provide a useful starting point for some of these discussions.
Agency owners often micromanage their employees without even realizing it. They think that they are merely seeking better results, when in fact, they are slowing things down and demoralizing their teams. When Chip and Gini speak with many owners, they express frustration with how many hours they work and how they can't spend enough time on building the business because they are so deeply in the weeds. The reality is that leaders need to trust their team members to do a good job — and then support them in that effort. Constant editing and fussing over the details adds little value. Chip and Gini offer tips on how to break the cycle of micromanagement and empower your team to produce the best results possible.
In this episode, Chip and Gini offer up some tough love for many agency owners who aren't compensating themselves fairly. The co-hosts discuss the need for two income streams: compensation for work provided to the agency and profit-taking as a reward for entrepreneurial risk. They talk about the different ways that owners can take compensation, the value of getting professional advice, and specific areas where they have seen owners miss opportunities.
Most public relations agencies hire employees with a mix of experience. Some already have a proven track record in generating media coverage, while others have only just begun to learn the ropes. In this episode, Chip and Gini explore how agency leaders can help their team members to develop the skills and knowledge needed to produce excellent results for clients. The key is understanding the needs and learning styles of each individual so that the appropriate type and level of support can be provided.
It's no secret that Chip rants about the importance of weekly 1:1 meetings between agency managers and their direct reports. So he and GIni dedicated this episode entirely to the topic — including why they matter and how to run them correctly. This isn't simply a checkbox that you need to tick off, it needs to become a fundamental part of the culture of your agency if you want to see the best performance from your team and the best results for your clients (and your business).
Another day, another rant from Chip and Gini. This time they have references and case studies on their minds. The co-hosts come down firmly against spending time developing and publishing case studies, explaining that agencies are better off demonstrating expertise in conversations with prospects by tying past experiences to current challenges. When it comes to references, both Chip and Gini have regularly provided them in the past. However, they both question the value of them — as well as the burden it places on those who agree to serve as references.
The past few weeks have been full of headlines about bank runs, government takeovers, and financial pandemonium. Even if you don't use Silicon Valley Bank, Credit Suisse, or any of the other banks at the center of the news, there could be broader implications for banks and the overall economy. How long it will last and what it all means remain open questions at the time of this episode, but Chip and Gini tackle what is known and how agencies should be thinking about what they should be doing.
Chip and Gini frequently hear from PR agency owners who want to move beyond just offering media relations services, but aren't sure how best to do it. They may love the idea of Gini's PESO Model, but they also recognize that they probably can't get there all at once. In this episode, Chip and Gini share some of their tips for how to supplement media relations services and better position yourself for success in an environment in which media hits are harder to come by and clients expect a more integrated approach.
Agency owners can be reluctant to involve employees or contractors in managing financial aspects of their businesses, especially anything that involves access to bank accounts or credit cards.
The concern is understandable, especially with recent examples of even large agency financial team members stealing from their firms.
Chip and Gini argue that the solution isn’t to hold on to these administrative tasks yourself, but rather to set up some reasonable controls coupled with periodic checks to confirm that everything is running properly.
The co-hosts share some specific examples of what they do or have seen others incorporate into their processes to help prevent your success from getting sidetracked by someone else’s dishonesty.
Key takeaways* Chip Griffin: “Don’t get consumed by it. But put some reasonable controls in place, keep an eye on it and hopefully you will not be the next news story in the agency community.” * Gini Dietrich: “You should not be balancing your checkbook. You should not. I don’t. I personally don’t think owners should be sending invoices or having that money conversation because I think separating the money conversation with the actual work is important.” * Chip Griffin: “Don’t be overly concerned about it, to the point where you do control everything day to day because that’s not productive. But you do need to have checks and balances.” * Gini DIetrich: “You’re working with people. Something bad will happen eventually. You won’t be able to predict it. Be ready and prepared and minimize risk as much as you can.”
View TranscriptChip Griffin: [00:00:00] Hello, and welcome to another episode of the Agency Leadership Podcast. I’m Chip Griffin.
Gini Dietrich: I’m Gini Dietrich.
Chip Griffin: And Gini, I think I just need some access to your checking account. You don’t mind, do you?
Gini Dietrich: Sure. No. Don’t mind at all.
Chip Griffin: All right. Right after this,
That pause may or may not come out of the final version.
Gini Dietrich: Did you lose the button there?
Chip Griffin: I, I forgot to, I forgot to cue up the intro music, so.
Gini Dietrich: Got it. I was like, where?
Chip Griffin: I had to go fishing for it after I made my witty little introduction, which was, you know, not, not one of my better ones anyway. But.
Gini Dietrich: You don’t want access to my checking account, is that what you’re saying?
Chip Griffin: I mean, I wouldn’t mind having access to your checking account. I think you’d be a fool to give it to me, but…
Gini Dietrich: No, you cannot have access to my checking account.
Chip Griffin: Oh, darn.
Gini Dietrich: Sorry.
Chip Griffin: You know, I can try. You know, just, [00:01:00] just, just like, we need checks and balances on this show to make sure that I don’t screw up. We need checks and balances in the financial life of our agencies.
How’s that for a better segue?
Gini Dietrich: I kind of like your, the first one better.
Chip Griffin: You like the checking account better?
Yeah. Okay. Yeah. Well, in any case, what we’re gonna talk about today is keeping an eye on your agency’s finances without getting to the point where you’re micromanaging everything. Because as the owner, you probably shouldn’t be in your checkbook on a day-to-day basis, but you do need to know what’s going on because, well, let’s face it, there are dishonest people out there, and we don’t necessarily spot them right off the bat.
Gini Dietrich: Yes. I actually had this experience very, very, very early on in my agency life. I hired an accounting firm to handle all the bookkeeping and invoicing and bill pay and all that, and they stole for me. Now, I was in the early stages of my business, so it wasn’t a lot of money. It was a lot of money for me at the time, but it wasn’t a lot of money for somebody to steal.
And [00:02:00] the CPA who did it is still in prison, I would like to say. But, it’s a very valuable…
Chip Griffin: I’m assuming they probably were not just stealing from you, if they were a CPA. They, they probably had a whole operation they were going on.
Gini Dietrich: Not just from me. Yes they were stealing from a lot of people. But it’s, it was a really good lesson for me in checks and balances and figuring out what to give access to and what not to give access to.
Chip Griffin: Right. And we’ve talked previously about the importance of giving other people access to your financial accounts as a business, because otherwise, if something happens to you, if you get hit by the proverbial bus or an actual bus, you want someone to have access to that sort of thing in order to keep things running, at least in the short term.
And if nobody else has access, that’s a problem. But if you start giving people access, then you need to think about what could happen and how to protect yourself.
Gini Dietrich: So one of the things that we do now is we have… you can give limited control on your banking accounts to certain people, and that’s what we [00:03:00] do.
So like I, our bookkeeper on our team can handle QuickBooks. She can balance the checkbook, she can do all that. She can pay bills, so she can, but only a pre-approved list of bills. So she can’t just like randomly send checks to whomever and she can’t randomly, she can’t do any wire transfers. And she can’t do any checking account balances or anything like that. So it’s very limited in what she has access to. My husband is the only one who has full access should something happen, but nobody on my team has full access to the banking account.
Chip Griffin: Yeah. And, and, and modern bank account logins often have that ability on business accounts so that it’s a lot more flexible than it was, say, even 10 or 15 years ago, where you could, you know, you might have a shared login that you had to use with your bookkeeper or whomever.
Sometimes you could have a separate login, but you couldn’t control access levels. Now there’s a lot more flexibility in it, [00:04:00] and so to the extent that you have that, you should absolutely use that because that minimizes the risk. It doesn’t eliminate it. There are still things, obviously with that level of ability that you still could do, but it’s, it would, it would be less catastrophic because they can typically only bleed off small amounts of cash at a time as opposed to just walking away with your entire bank account.
Gini Dietrich: Right. And the other thing you can do is set up controls so that if somebody wants to send a wire or a bill pay that’s not on your list it texts you or emails you or calls you. So you can set that up as well. And it asks, and it only can come to you. So unless they have access to your cell phone as well, and I do it to my cell phone because my assistant has access to my email.
So I’m really careful about who has access to what. So you can set up those kinds of controls too, to make sure that, like you said, to minimize your, your risk.
Chip Griffin: Yeah. And look, I mean, this is unfortunately not an uncommon problem in the agency world. Obviously you described your personal situation, but there have been some large agencies that have had [00:05:00] issues with even CFO level individuals.
So this isn’t necessarily limited to just, you know, your run of the mill bookkeeper type. It can be very senior officers who you wouldn’t even imagine would be doing this kind of thing, but they might, and we’ve seen several cases in recent years where large agency CFOs or other financial officials have gone to prison for this very sort of thing where they’ve been funneling money to themselves.
And it doesn’t necessarily even have to be someone who’s directly responsible for finances. It can sometimes be, you know, an operations person who oversees the finance team. So, obviously for small agencies it’s more likely to be a bookkeeper, accountant, someone like that who might do something, but you know, it’s something you need to be aware of.
You shouldn’t be overly concerned about it, to the point where you do control everything day to day because that’s not productive. But you do need to have checks and balances like the ones that you’ve described. Another suggestion that I typically have for owners is make sure that you’re looking at an actual [00:06:00] bank statement from time to time.
Not just reports prepared by your bookkeeper or accountant, but something that comes directly from the bank, whether that’s you logging into the account and just kind of skimming through and seeing if there’s anything unusual there. If you have company credit cards, make sure that you’re looking through the statements to make sure that there’s nothing in there that pops out at you and you say, Hmm. Now that those skimming type exercises don’t necessarily find everything, because they can still sometimes be, you know, small transactions that will add up over time.
They can come back to bite you, but at least you will spot any large scale things that might be taking place if you’re looking at the actual original documents yourself and not relying on prepared reports that can be cooked to hide these kinds of things.
Gini Dietrich: The other thing I will say is that I have a really good friend whose assistant was stealing money for a very long time out of petty cash. And would just take a couple hundred bucks a week and was just compiling it all. And when they finally caught her, [00:07:00] she, my friend, said, well, I don’t understand why you did this. Like, you’ve been my assistant for 20 years. What’s going on? And she said, When I first did it, it’s because I really needed a refrigerator and I couldn’t afford it, and then I just kept going.
And I remember my friend saying, if she had told me she needed a refrigerator, we probably would’ve bought her one. Because that’s how, what she, what she thought from a loyal employee perspective. So even stuff like that, if you, you know, many of us don’t have offices and petty cash anymore, but if you do those are places where people can skim money as well.
Chip Griffin: Right. I was, I was gonna, I, I don’t know many businesses that have petty cash anymore, at least on the agency side of things. But I suppose, maybe there are still some, but that, that’s obviously a very logical place where money can go missing. Just it, it gains feet and walks away. But yeah, a as you grow, even looking at the original statements may not be enough.
And so you may want to think about having a more formalized system for doing spot checks on certain transactions. Just randomly [00:08:00] select certain ones to dig into them and just make sure that they are on the up and up and whether that’s something that you do or maybe you have your accounting firms, you know, double check your bookkeeper or something like that.
Not necessarily a full fledged audit. I don’t think most small agencies need the expense and, and complication of doing a proper audit, but, You know, some sort of a partial audit might be beneficial just to, to keep an eye on things and, and make sure that there aren’t any little issues that crop up, or if there are, you can spot them before they become big issues. Because it’s, it can be really surprising who, you know, who does this sort of thing.
I know people, frankly, who have been caught doing this, and I was shocked when I found out. It was not something I would’ve ever imagined. And, You know, whether it’s because someone needed a refrigerator and found that, that, you know, you could just take one step and then you take the next one and the next one you keep going, or whether it’s someone who’s just really good at hiding stuff, you just don’t know.
And so it’s, it’s worthwhile putting some measures in place for the peace of mind that it gives you. [00:09:00]
Gini Dietrich: Wasn’t it the CFO at Weber Shandwick that was just a few months ago arrested?
Chip Griffin: Yes. Yep. And, and there was another senior level accounting person who worked for two different agencies in the New York, New Jersey area. I think this was just two or three years ago, got arrested for the same. And, and these were large sums of money in those cases. This was not, you know, a thousand here, a thousand there. I mean, this was substantial amounts of money that, you know, and, and intricate operations as well, if I recall correctly, where they were basically bogus contracts created and purchase orders and things like that to cover up the tracks.
So, I mean, that’s one of the things you have to keep in mind is that people who are at all good at this don’t simply go and withdraw the cash and send it to themselves. You know, they, they send it to a family member’s company or something like that, that, so it, it may appear to be legit on the surface, which is why, you know, at least a, a partial spot check audit kind of thing can be beneficial as you grow just to, to look in on particular expenses and make sure that [00:10:00] they are what they appear to be.
Gini Dietrich: The other thing that I like to do is once a year sit down with my banker. And have him go through with me all of the controls that we have in place. And then he also gives, so we go through everything and make sure, you know, everything looks good and then he’ll say, okay, we’ve introduced this, this, and this this year.
It might be valuable for you to do these kinds of things. So he helps me sort of stay ahead of what else is off out there, you know, two factor authentification or whatever it happens to be that allows us to, that allows me as the owner to stay ahead of all of that and continue to minimize my risk.
Chip Griffin: Yeah, and, and, and having those kinds of professional relationships, whether it’s with a banker, a lawyer, an accounting firm that is not directly touching your bank accounts, those kinds of things, it can be helpful because they can give you good advice and, and particularly if you’ve got an accounting firm that is not involved in directly touching your bank accounts, but just deals with reports to prepare taxes and forecasts and that kind of stuff, [00:11:00] they can be helpful because they can tell you what they’ve seen in terms of problems and solutions at other similarly sized businesses, and so they can provide some really useful practical tips on what you might do in order to avoid getting bitten by these kinds of scenarios.
Gini Dietrich: Yeah, having the outside accounting firm double check is advice I could have used 10 years ago.
Chip Griffin: Yeah. And, and it’s, I mean, it, it is one of those things where unfortunately, a lot of folks don’t deal with problems until they experience it themselves. And that’s understandable. Right. And you do have to be careful because you don’t really become paralyzed by fear about, you know, oh, this might happen or that might happen.
It’s one of the reasons why a lot of small agency owners keep too many things on their plates. Because they don’t trust the people around them. And so, you know, if, if you don’t trust anybody around you, that means that you will be micromanaging, that you will be doing a lot of low value work because you don’t want to hand it off to somebody else.
So you do need to find that healthy balance of how do you hand it off. [00:12:00] But still keep an eye on it. And this is true not just of financial controls. This is true of any of the things that you’re doing, client service, business development, anything that you’re passing on to someone else, you need to think about how do you pass it on?
Still maintain the level of trust, but also as Ronald Reagan would say, trust but verify. And I’m not gonna try to say that in Russian.
Gini Dietrich: A friend of mine does training of chief operating officers, so your second in command, and he has a really robust business that does this. And he posted a, a quote the other day that said, and I can’t remember who it was by, but essentially it said, if you are doing, if you don’t have an administrative assistant and you’re doing admin work, you are the administrative assistant.
And for some reason that really hit me where I was like, that’s actually true. And that’s not work I should be doing. Like I should have somebody handling that. And I think this is the same thing, like you should not be balancing your checkbook. You should not. I don’t, I personally don’t think owners should be sending invoices or having that money conversation because I [00:13:00] think separating the money conversation with the actual work is important.
So having somebody who does that, that you can trust, but making sure to your point, verify and making sure you have the the controls in place is extraordinarily important.
Chip Griffin: Right. And, you know, obviously you, you know, hand in hand with this is making sure you’re vetting the people that you’re hiring or contracting out the work to. Make sure that you’re, you know, checking references.
Particularly if it’s, you know, someone that you’re gonna be entrusting with your bank accounts. Make sure that at, at least you Google them if not, you know, do a more formal background check over anybody who has financial control access. But again, you’ve got to take some reasonable level of risk by delegating, and at some point, if something bad’s gonna happen, it’s gonna happen.
Just do your best to try to spot it quickly.
Gini Dietrich: Right. I mean, you’re working with people. Something bad will happen eventually. You won’t be able to predict it. But if you’re ready and prepared and you are minimizing risk as much as you [00:14:00] can, that’s so be it.
Chip Griffin: And, and every person who does something bad does something bad for the first time, so you can’t always find out that someone is bad, because maybe you’re the first person that they do it with. Like in the example of the, the refrigerator stealer.
Gini Dietrich: Right. She was like, I would’ve bought you a refrigerator. Right. And she would have, oh yi yi yi yi. People.
Chip Griffin: Yeah. You just, you just don’t know. You just don’t know.
Don’t get consumed by it. But put some reasonable controls in place, keep an eye on it and hopefully you will not be the next news story in the agency community.
Gini Dietrich: Hopefully not. And if you are, call me and I will let you cry on my shoulder because I have been there.
Chip Griffin: And with that, I think we’ll draw this episode of the Agency Leadership Podcast to a close. I’m Chip Griffin.
Gini Dietrich: I’m Gini Dietrich.
Chip Griffin: And it depends.
Agency owners can be reluctant to involve employees or contractors in managing financial aspects of their businesses, especially anything that involves access to bank accounts or credit cards. The concern is understandable, especially with recent examples of even large agency financial team members stealing from their firms. Chip and Gini argue that the solution isn't to hold on to these administrative tasks yourself, but rather to set up some reasonable controls coupled with periodic checks to confirm that everything is running properly.
Most agencies love awards. Larger agencies even have teams devoted to seeking them. In this episode, Chip and Gini discuss why the time and money spent on awards may be misplaced. They even have a suggestion for those of you who may disagree so that you can make a more informed decision about your future investment in awards.
Like many of us, agency owners can fall into the trap of believing that tools solve problems. The reality is that we use tools to implement the processes that solve problems. Rather than falling in love with the latest and greatest, start by understanding what you want the tool to do for you. Whether you are considering switching project management systems or implementing a new time tracking program or just exploring some new innovation you just heard about, the advice that Gini and Chip have to offer in this week's episode will help.
Agency owners frequently lament to Chip and Gini that their employees don't have a proper sense of urgency and don't seem to work hard enough. The co-hosts explore whether this is specific to Gen Z or if it has broader applications. At the same time, Chip and Gini look at the causes for this concern and potential solutions. (Fair warning: a big piece of the answer lies in the mirror.)
Do you have a plan for what others should do if you should suddenly become unavailable due to illness, accident, or even death? It's not a fun thing to think about, but it is important to think ahead and make sure that you have at least a few essential steps in place for handling these unexpected events. Chip and Gini tackle this topic, and while they encourage you to keep it simple they do walk you through some things that you should be considering in a "hit by a bus" plan for yourself that will set you, your team, and your loved ones up for an easier time.
Most agencies depend on vendors and contracts to help provide at least some of the results that their clients expect. Any time you rely on these third parties, you need to consider what happens if they don't deliver as expected. As more agencies consider using AI tools like ChatGPT to deliver services at reduced costs or shorter timeframes, these dependencies pose an even greater risk if they fail to perform as expected. Chip and Gini discuss options, including having fallback plans or making clear to a client that results are contingent upon that other company or organization doing their part.
Regular listeners know that Chip and Gini aren't fans of most agency RFP processes and believe that most of them should be avoided. But if you choose to play the game, you need to watch out for onerous terms and conditions — especially ridiculously slow payment terms. The co-hosts pick up on news reports about 1-year payment terms being proposed (and defended) by Dr. Pepper. This turns agencies into banks, something for which they are ill-suited. Rather than focusing primarily on price, with a secondary interest in scope, agencies need to look at the entirety of the contract terms that they are agreeing to with prospective clients.
You have decided to take the leap and build your own agency. But how do you find clients?
In this episode, Chip and Gini share their thoughts on how to acquire your earliest clients.
They also look at the steps you should take to build a consistent new business engine that will serve you well for years to come.
Key takeaways:* Gini Dietrich: “Figure out where it is that you excel and then focus on building your network that way.” * Chip Griffin: “When you’re starting out, if you’ve got three or four decent clients, you’re probably in really good shape. So don’t focus on the quantity side. Focus on the quality side.” * Gini Dietrich: “It’s a lot easier to grow and scale as a new agency owner than it is for somebody who’s been in business for a very long time.” * Chip Griffin: “From day one, carve out that time to continue to network, to continue to have meaningful conversations with prospects or people who can refer work to you, because that’s how you will make sure that you’ve got a real engine for growth in the future.”
View TranscriptThe following is a computer-generated transcript. Please listen to the audio to confirm accuracy.
Chip Griffin: Hello and welcome to another episode of the Agency Leadership Podcast. I’m Chip Griffin.
Gini Dietrich: And I’m Gini Dietrich.
Chip Griffin: And we’re gonna talk about getting started with business development today, because I have nothing… I, I don’t have a funny intro, so I’m just telling you that’s what the topic is. Getting started with business development. That’s it. After this,
Gini Dietrich: You’re on your, on your game today.
Chip Griffin: I, yeah, I mean, I, I screwed up the intro, so we had to, to restart the recording. Y’all will never hear that. Sorry. But, you know, it’s, and, and I, it threw me off my game, and I wasn’t able to come up with a cutesy little intro. So we’re talking about business development.
When you’re just getting started, you just, you’re just starting your agency. You wanna know how to grow business and do it consistently. That’s what we’re gonna talk about. Easy peasy.
Gini Dietrich: Easy peasy. All right. How do you do it?
Chip Griffin: Oh, I have to have an answer? I, I thought I was just introducing the topic.
Gini Dietrich: No, you have to, you have to have an answer.
Chip Griffin: Well, so I mean, really the, the, the first and best answer is that you started with at least one client. Yes. Which is I think true of the vast majority of agencies. Most, most folks don’t hang out the shingle without a client already on the line, usually, or not usually. Sometimes that may be your last employer.
Yep. Sometimes it may be someone who was a client of that last employer. Yep. Sometimes it may be someone that you’ve had a previous business relationship with and you’ve talked to them, and so now you can use that as your jumping off point. Yep. So chances are you’ve got some kind of revenue right out of the gate. Not enough to sustain you, probably.
Not enough to, to sit there and say, oh, I’m happy now, but at least it gets you started. And so it’s helpful to, to figure out how to get that first client. If you don’t have it, if you’re just hanging that shingle out and you don’t have a client, just focus on getting that first one in the door because part of growing it is having that initial client to start getting used to how you win a client, how you sign the contract, how you start servicing them and onboarding them. You’ve got to get all that out of the way before you can really look to the longer term.
Gini Dietrich: Yeah, absolutely. So when I started my business, I did that exact thing. I, I started with a client and my goal was to have my salary, my benefits, and my car covered.
Um, because I think we all know that I have a car fetish. So I had to have those three things.
Chip Griffin: But until recently, no license.
Gini Dietrich: I had a driver’s license until 10 years ago, and then I never drove the car because I live in the city. And so it came due. I had to go like to the D M V to get it renewed. It was a big pain in the butt.
And I was like, I literally never drive. I always take the train and when I travel, I take Uber, so I’m not getting it renewed. And then Covid hit and I had to get the dumb thing renewed. So now I have a driver’s license again. But I still love my car.
Chip Griffin: Okay. It’s just, it’s most car people have licenses and don’t go without them for 10 years, that’s all. I realize I’ve taken us off track, but that’s my role here.
Gini Dietrich: So I wanted to make sure that I had salary, benefits, and my car covered, and then, then I was ready to, to go out on my own. And I had one client that was, that their retainer covered that, which was great. I joined PRSA.
The board of PRSA so that I could network that way. I did a lot of community events and networking and that kind of stuff. But the biggest thing for me was I developed relationships with the big agencies, and for them a $200,000 client, they wouldn’t even look at. But they would say they had a referral list and they’d say, well call Gini or call so-and-so, so-and-so, and I got a ton of, of referrals from that, just from that.
Then we got to the point where we got big enough that they were like, yeah, we’re not sending you our scraps anymore. But that was probably one of the – between PRSA, being on the board of PRSA and having the relationships with the big agencies. Those were the two big things that really helped fuel my growth in the first couple years.
Chip Griffin: Well, I think when you’re getting started, it’s, it’s really critical to find those one or two things that are gonna give you the opportunity to connect with more people and it’s not, it’s not gonna be the same for everyone. Sure. Some people may join groups as you did or may tap into previous networks.
In my case, when I started my first agency, I started writing a blog/newsletter called Primary Scoop that was about the New Hampshire primary because my clients were all in the public affairs space and so in trying to stay in touch with them. I took advantage of the fact that I had moved from DC to New Hampshire.
I had a great network of folks in DC who knew nothing about what was, what was going on in the New Hampshire primary back in the late 1990s, because there wasn’t nearly as much internet coverage of things back 20 years ago as there is today. And so it was a great way for me to remain top of mind for the people in my network who would be prospective clients or could refer prospective clients.
And so you need to find the things that are gonna give you the opportunity to be out in front of people. And so that could be any number of different tactics, but the, the key is not to focus on too many things. Focus on things that, that you know you like, that you know have worked for you in the past as far as developing relationships and just lean into them in the early days, because otherwise you’ll just be going in a million different directions and, and dilute all of your efforts.
Gini Dietrich: Yeah, and I would say, you know, blogging for us today is probably the general driver of business. So to your point, like, try different things and, you know, say, okay, well I’m going to go and I’m going to serve on the board of an organization, or I’m gonna go and I’m gonna build relationships with, you know, people that can refer business to me at from the big agencies.
Or I’m going to blog and I’m gonna be really consistent about it. Or, heck, I’m gonna create a TikTok series and I’m gonna be really consistent about that and reach the right audiences. Like figure out where …it has to be something that you’re going to enjoy and that you’re passionate about. Because if you, if you really hate blogging or you really hate TikTok or you really hate networking, it’s not going to work.
So figure out where it is that you excel and then focus on that and building, building your network that way.
Chip Griffin: Well you touched on something important there too, which I think folks need to, to think about, which is where your prospects are. Yeah. So you, you have to be careful about doing something that, that you enjoy, but ends up talking more to your peers than to your prospects.
And I think we’ve talked about this on the show before. I’ve often made the mistake of talking to my peers instead of prospects because it’s kind of fun. Right. And it, and, and you, you can speak in a different way when you’re with peers because they have a base level of knowledge and so you can, you know, it’s sort of like the graduate level conversations, right, that you have with them.
But you need to have the undergraduate conversations oftentimes with prospects. And so you need to think about that when you’re creating content, when you’re doing networking, when you’re participating in events. And if you don’t have a match with your prospective client, then a lot of your energy may be wasted.
Gini Dietrich: Absolutely. Yeah. I mean that just like you’re gonna do with your clients. Figure out where your audience hangs out and then spend the time there. But it does have to be something that you enjoy doing. So if your audience hangs out, if your audience hangs out at. . Like there’s a group of people here in Chicago that go to this specific bar every, every Thursday, and they drink and they play cards, and, and that’s how some of them network.
For me, that sounds miserable, so I, I never join that. But for some people that’s, they get a lot of business. They refer business back and forth, and it’s a really great networking point for them. You know, for me, for someone like me, I tend to be a little bit more introverted. I would prefer to sit behind my computer screen and write.
So, blogging works for us. And our audience of course is, is reading. They’re reading about the PESO model. They’re trying to understand, you know, how they implement it inside their organizations. If they’re big corporations, they’re trying to figure out how to educate their internal teams on it so that, that works for us.
So it has to be something that you enjoy as well as being where your audience is.
Chip Griffin: Right. And, and I think it’s also important to consider that, particularly when you’re just getting started, you don’t need a huge roster. No. We, we often talk about how successful agencies usually have 10 to 15 clients. When you’re just getting started you don’t even need that many. No. If you, if you’ve got three or four decent clients, you’re probably in really good shape. So don’t focus on the quantity side. Focus on the quality side. And focus on consistency. And, and the consistency is something that’s really easy to lose sight of because as you start getting clients on board, you start focusing so much on keeping them happy because you’re like, well, I need to make a good impression.
I need to make sure that I’m retaining them. I need, I need them to say good things about me. And so you overinvest in the the client service side of the business. Often to the detriment of business development. And you need to make sure that from day one, you’re carving out that time to continue to network, to continue to have meaningful conversations with prospects or people who can refer work to you, because that’s how you will make sure that you’ve got a real engine for growth in the future.
And you’re not just focused on, you know, bandaiding a problem today because, oh my God, I lost a client. Or Oh my God, you know, I need some more revenue because you know, I’ve got to pay this bill or whatever.
Gini Dietrich: That’s such great advice because you know, I came from the big agency world and we had to bill 90% of our time, and so I went into starting my own business and I was like, oh, I have to bill 90% of my time, which was great as long as we had the clients to fulfill that capacity.
Right? But. What I, what, it was a really hard habit for me to break and a really hard lesson for me to learn is that I had to scale that back and about 50% of my time should have been billable to clients and 50% should have been spent spent on working on the business. So you’ll read lots of books, you’ll read lots of articles, you’ll hear lots of podcasts of people advising that you should work on the business not in it.
And that’s what they mean is you’ve got to, you’ve got to carve out the time to do business development. So that when you lose a client or when you -you know, because things happen. It’s not like you’re gonna go around and lose, be fired all the time, but, you know, we have bad economies. People are, there’s mergers and acquisitions, people like your direct day-to-day contact may leave the organization.
There are lots of reasons you can unexpectedly lose a client and you have to have that pipeline full to be able to replace it.
Chip Griffin: Right. And it’s really just a matter of consistently having these meaningful conversations. And I think that a lot of folks think that it needs to be a, a very defined sales process and we need to, to target companies A, B, and C and, you know, I need to go in there and I need to ask for their business, and I need to propose this or that.
And, it’s really not that. Growing an agency is not about traditional sales, and so if, if you start going and buying a bunch of sales books and think about sales funnels and all that kind of stuff, you’re gonna be miserable. Yes. Most, most agency owners hate that kind of thing. Frankly, with good reason.
And it’s, it’s not the way that you grow an agency. You grow an agency by developing relationships, right? Agencies are a relationship business, both on the client service side as well as on the business development side. And so you need to find people that are good matches for you. And so that means that you just need to try to find a reason, an excuse to go have a meaningful conversation in person, on Zoom, on the old-fashioned telephone on a regular basis.
Have two or three of those a week and good things are going to start to happen because it’s about being at the right place at the right time with the right person.
Gini Dietrich: And you are, I’m, I’m not as so much of an advocate of this as you are, but I think this is smart advice coming from you. Is that you, you don’t mind the, can I pick your brain conversations.
Chip Griffin: I love them.
Gini Dietrich: You don’t mind, yeah. Like that doesn’t bother you, you love, because I think, I think you’re right that things come out of those kinds of things that you don’t expect. So be willing and open to have conversations that may never amount to anything. Or maybe they do, or maybe they’re one of your number one referral sources because you had that one can I pick your brain meeting? .
Chip Griffin: Right. And, and I mean, I even go so far as with my current business, I give away free 30 minute consultations for whatever anybody wants, anytime. I don’t care. Basically no questions asked. Yeah. And if you, if you read classical sales literature and you listen to all of the so-called experts, they’ll all tell you that’s a terrible idea.
You shouldn’t do it. Guess what? I get most of my business on the backs of those calls. Right. And, and they are truly what they, what I describe them as. They’re free consultations. You can talk to me about anything. I’m not going to pitch you on my services. You want to ask about it. And most people do at the end of the call, they’ll ask, how can I work with you?
And the close rate on that is astronomical. If they ask, how can I work with you? Most of those close within 24 hours.
Gini Dietrich: Hundred percent. Right. That’s great.
Chip Griffin: So, and if they don’t, that’s fine. You know, but I’ve still built Goodwill. I’ve learned a lot because I’ve learned about what the challenges their agency is facing, and I can use that in the rest of the work that I do.
And so I’m not telling everybody here that they should offer free consultations. It doesn’t work for every agency and every agency owner, but think about the kinds of things that you can do. Think about how you can be just generally helpful to your target audience. If you’re helpful, good things will come back to you. I guarantee it.
Gini Dietrich: Yeah, that’s absolutely true. I mean, we help galore and it it does, it does come back. You also get taken advantage of, but I think that, that’s less…
Chip Griffin: It’s relatively small, particularly for something like this where I do the free consultation because they have to invest their time too.
Sure, sure. Right. And, and so if, if they’re saying, Hey, it’s worth 30 minutes of my time to talk with you. You know, the odds of it being, you know, useless or scammy or being taken advantage of is, is really small. And frankly, if I can solve someone’s problem in that period of time and they don’t ever need to talk to me again, they probably weren’t going to be a particularly good fit for a client anyway.
Right, right. They’re just not. So, you know, I think people are, are far too afraid of having these kinds of conversations and particularly when you’re just getting started, I would use any excuse to be on the phone with somebody. Any excuse whatsoever because you just don’t know where it’s going to lead.
Particularly if you’re new and you haven’t run a business before, you haven’t run an agency before. You can’t accurately predict in advance which calls are going to be useful and which aren’t. Right? So do more of them. Right. Also, try different kinds of clients. You’re going to come in with an idea of, this is the kind of client I want to work for, and it’s probably going to be, oh, I want to work for the Fortune 100, because they have the big budgets and the great logos and all this kind of stuff.
Guess what? That may not be the best fit. At the same time, you may say, Hey, it’s easier to work for small businesses. They can just say yes on the spot. Yeah, sort of. You know, there’s usually a happy middle ground that you’ll end up gravitating to eventually, but try different things so that you can find out what works.
Don’t feel that you’re so locked into one point of view when you get started with business development that that is your singular focus, and that’s the only thing that you’re going to do, because you have a lot to learn. I still have a lot to learn, and I’ve been advising businesses and running my own businesses for a long time.
Gini Dietrich: Yeah, I mean, things change consistently, so you’re right. There are, there are things you’re learning constantly and things that used to work don’t anymore. I mean, you know, I, like I said, I started my business kind of on the backs of the big agencies where they were sending me their “scraps”, and that didn’t last very long.
It lasted maybe three years and then I had to switch, switch my, I had to shift my strategy. So you will continue to evolve and the industry or your industry focus that you start out with now will evolve. You know, we, we started out by saying we really, my background was food and so I really wanted to work with restaurants and I found out fairly quickly that’s not such a great audience. It’s not, they don’t make a great client. I got, I got fed lots of great food, but unfortunately that doesn’t pay the bills. So I found that out pretty quickly and had to shift my strategy. So you will, you will always evolve, you will continue to shift and where you start to get good is when you’ve done enough calls that you understand, okay, these are the things that are going to convert, these are the types of questions I should be asking. These are the types of conversations I should be having, and you’ll be able to gauge that. But you won’t know that unless you actually do it.
Chip Griffin: Right.
And, and if you view all of these things, all of the change that’s coming at you, view them as opportunities. Don’t view them as problems, you know. There are a lot of things that, that you can do today that you couldn’t do three or four years ago. Yeah. Right. And, and some of these things really help from a business development standpoint because business development used to mean that you had to go meet somebody in person.
That’s a much larger time investment than what we can do now where we can meet by video conference. And, you know, pre pandemic, I couldn’t get anybody to get on a zoom call with me, even though I personally loved the technology. Everybody wanted to either do a phone call or coffee in person.
Yep. So, and now you can, you can meet that way, which means you can talk to a lot more people, a lot more efficiently, because you’re no longer investing two hours to do a 20 minute coffee with somebody. Right, right. You can do a 20 minute conversation and it’s 20 minutes.
Gini Dietrich: 20 minutes. And I think you know, pre pandemic, you’re right that not many people wanted to, to do video chat.
And now it’s pretty much what everybody does. Like, it, it’s not even a question. And I, you know, when I’m setting up meetings, I don’t even ask. I say, okay, I’ll send a link. And then, and people just expect that. They’re not expecting that I’m going to meet them in person. Almost never.
Chip Griffin: Yeah. I, I can’t tell you the last time I did a work call on, well now my cell phone because I don’t even have a phone on my desk.
And the cell phone doesn’t even really work here because of where I live. So I, and so I just, I do everything by, and same thing. Nobody even, they don’t bat an eye. And yet it’s so much more effective, particularly when you’re dealing with someone you’ve never talked with before.
Being able to see each other on screen is so much better than just being on a, a plain old no video, telephone call. It just makes a giant difference. Yep. And so from a business development perspective, it allows you to cast a much wider net to have more conversations, which means that ultimately business development becomes a lot easier to do at scale and to do consistently.
Gini Dietrich: Absolutely. Yeah. I am a, I’m a big, big fan. You know, when we, even like internally when we were able to start using video chat for meetings and one-to-ones and things like that, it changed. It completely changed the dynamic and the culture. So I’m a big fan of that for sure.
Chip Griffin: So find the things that, that you like to do. Find the things that you can do consistently. Make sure you’re carving out that time. Cast a wide net. Talk to lots of people. Try a lot of different things. And you’re going to end up with success as a new agency owner. Or an old agency owner.
Gini Dietrich: Yeah. And guess what? It’s a lot easier to grow and scale as a new agency owner than it is for somebody like me who’s been in business for a very long time.
Chip Griffin: Absolutely. Yeah. I mean it’s, and so you as a new agency owner, look at this as an opportunity. You have, you have a ton of flexibility in front of you and you should be able to take advantage of that and not have to deal with all of the baggage that us old timers have to deal with.
Gini Dietrich: That’s right. That’s right. Yep. That’s awesome. Congratulations. Do your thing. It’s awesome.
Chip Griffin: And with that, that will draw to an end, this episode of the Agency Leadership Podcast. I’m Chip Griffin.
Gini Dietrich: I’m Gini Dietrich.
Chip Griffin: And it depends.
You have decided to take the leap and build your own agency. But how do you find clients? In this episode, Chip and Gini share their thoughts on how to acquire your earliest clients. They also look at the steps you should take to build a consistent new business engine that will serve you well for years to come.
The communications world has been abuzz with discussion about the impact that AI-generated content may have on their roles.
Some agency owners are concerned about tools like ChatGPT taking away revenue from their businesses, while others see those same services as an opportunity to increase efficiency and profitability.
In this episode, Chip and Gini discuss the questions that they have been hearing from agency leaders and share some of their insights on where the technology stands today — and what the future may hold.
Resources* ChatGPT
Key takeaways* Gini Dietrich: “Where we add the value is in the storytelling and the engagement. And the process that it takes to engage and nurture somebody from a website visitor to a customer. That’s where we add the value from a content perspective. And this AI doesn’t do that.” * Chip Griffin: “Agencies should be focused on working with their clients on longer term plays to try to figure out how do we create engaging content that creates a relationship with the reader that draws them in, that shows off our actual individual expertise that we have within our organization. And if you’re doing those things, then AI is not nearly as much of a threat.” * Gini Dietrich: “This is an opportunity, just like when social media was launched and when blogging was launched, and we’ve had all of these changes in the last 10 or 15 years that have affected the way that we run our businesses. And it hasn’t created this whole crisis where we all go out of business.” * Chip Griffin: “It’s sort of like when we brought along combustion engines and if you were going to be determined that all you were ever going to do was run a horse and buggy, well, you’ve probably got an issue there.”
View TranscriptThe following is a computer-generated transcript. Please listen to the audio to confirm accuracy.
Chip Griffin: Hello and welcome to another episode of the Agency Leadership Podcast. I’m Chip Griffin.
Gini Dietrich: And I’m Gini Dietrich.
Chip Griffin: Gini, today I think we’re gonna be artificially intelligent, because let’s face it, we can’t be intelligent on our own.
Gini Dietrich: No, we cannot. I agree with you.
Chip Griffin: Right after this.
So we’ll call this the, uh, the NutraSweet episode, of the Agency Leadership Podcast.
Gini Dietrich: I love it.
Chip Griffin: Does NutraSweet even still exist?
Gini Dietrich: I don’t know. I was just gonna say, I think you just aged yourself. I don’t know that. I don’t know if it does.
Chip Griffin: I remember as a kid that was, they were the pink packets, right?
Gini Dietrich: Yeah, I, yeah, I think so.
Chip Griffin: Yeah. Yeah.
Gini Dietrich: It might still exist. It might.
Chip Griffin: It, I, you know, I, I’m sure it probably exists right along. I mean, Sanka has still gotta be out there too. I remember all of the grandparents and that sort of thing, drank Sanka, which was just super nasty. Instant coffee.
Gini Dietrich: Well, she loved it. Ugh.
Chip Griffin: Yeah. So Sanka with Nutrasweet. Mm, tasty.
Gini Dietrich: Good for you too.
Chip Griffin: Oh, absolutely, absolutely. No, but we are, we are gonna talk about, Artificial intelligence because it’s something that you and I are getting asked a lot about by agency owners, and so this way we can just have an episode and point them here so that we don’t have to keep saying the same thing over and over and over again because there are a lot of people who are freaking out over ChatGPT, which is, if you’ve been living in a cave. And, and I suspect that most of our listeners have heard of ChatGPT, but if you haven’t, ChatGPT is artificial intelligence with an asterisk. I don’t like AI as a term in most cases, but it will write things for you. It will do other things, but largely it writes things for you.
So you can say, give me a 750 word article on some topic and it will spit it out at you in just a couple of minutes. If, if even that long.
Gini Dietrich: Yeah, it’s, it’s fast and it can take on almost any topic. And I mean, for first draft it’s pretty credible.
Chip Griffin: Yeah. I mean, it’s, it’s, it’s not bad. I mean, I’ve tried it on a couple things and you know, it’s, it is, I, I would say it is, it is workmanlike in what it produces.
Gini Dietrich: Yes, yes, yes, yes.
Chip Griffin: I would, for the things that I’ve seen, I would describe it as sort of Wikipedia esque as far as how…
Gini Dietrich: yeah, that’s a great, that’s right.
Chip Griffin: …it puts things out. It’s not, it’s not particularly entertaining. I’ve seen some people ask for it to write things in a more entertaining form. Eh, it feels kind of to me like a computer wrote something that it thought was entertaining.
Gini Dietrich: Yeah. I feel like, so I actually last year now, 2022, I did a Spin Sucks podcast episode on it, and I had it write the first half of the script. And I asked it about writer’s block. So I asked it, you know, what is writer’s block? What are some symptoms of writer’s block? What are some things that you can do to get around writer’s block. And it was actually pretty good, but it was definitely, you could definitely tell a robot a computer had written it. And so the second half of the, the episode I talked about how, you know, it’s a great first draft, but there it’s missing many things. It’s missing context, it’s missing storytelling, it’s missing personality, it’s missing sources.
It doesn’t cite sources. So you start to get into a little bit of trouble with it because, especially if you’re using that as your final draft, because it’s not something that can be used without human interaction in it as a final draft. So it’s a great place to start and if you do have writer’s block, it’s a great place to get started so that you have something on the page, but it’s not something you would end with.
Chip Griffin: Yeah, and, and I think a, as far as something to, to get you unstuck or to, to just get you started. Absolutely. I, I think it’s got some real value there and it may help you unearth some things that you hadn’t thought of that maybe you want to include in a blog post, article, press release, what have you. But at the same time, I think you also need to be careful because I’ve seen a number of stories where it has made mistakes, right?
And so you need to make sure that you’re not taking whatever comes out of it as infallible because it writes things in a very authoritative way and, and it sounds like an expert, but it may or may not be correct. And a couple of examples that I’ve seen recently. One was someone had asked it to put together a playlist of 20 songs.
I believe it was artists from New Jersey, and, and it said, don’t repeat the same artist more than once. Well, first of all, it repeated an artist more than once, and, and I’ve seen it having some difficulty with these simple instructions. I asked it to write a 750 word article and it gave me a 600 word article, for example.
Yeah. You can say, well, that’s only 150 words, but that’s 20%. Right, right. So it’s a substantial difference in what was a pretty simple portion of the request. In this particular case of the, the playlist, it repeated the, the artist, but it also confused towns in New Jersey in the United States with towns with the same name in England.
Okay. And so, so that’s, that’s a problem. I, I saw, I saw someone who had asked it to write something on political philosophy and it confused the views of two different philosophers who were often mentioned in tandem in a lot of academic writing. And of course, as we know, academic writing is sometimes not the most clear, can be a little too verbose.
And so, natural language processing may have some difficulty in properly understanding the nuances of philosophical beliefs. And so you need to be careful that whatever you take out of it, you’re checking and don’t just assume that it says, you know, so-and-so is from New Jersey. Confirm that so-and-so was from New Jersey before you publish it.
Or you share it with a client for them to publish.
Gini Dietrich: Right. And, and to the, the, the political philosopher standpoint as well, make sure that you’re quoting the right philosopher or expert or thought leader before you publish it.
Chip Griffin: Right. And, and that’s why it’s important, particularly the, the more…the more expertise driven an article is, or piece of content is, the more you need to make sure that someone with that level of expertise is reviewing it and/or you’ve actually done the research to back it up yourself.
Yeah, so, so this is, while it can be a, a shortcut to getting started, it’s not an overall shortcut because you still need to be confident in everything that goes in the file product.
Gini Dietrich: Yeah. So I mean, if you’re creating things like listicles or how-tos or things like that, I think it’s probably a great place to start.
But like I said, and, and to your point as well, you have to cite sources. You can’t just write content and then, and not cite sources or quote people. You, you can’t do that. You can’t have quotes in there and not say who they’re by. You. It, it doesn’t have any storytelling or personality to it. So you have to go be able to go in and add that.
So there’s a lot of nuance, I think, to it in terms of being able to say, okay, here it is. But is it a great place to start? I think it is. Like it’s, it, it gives you a really, I mean, a lot of people have writer’s block and they stare at a blank page, and it’s a lot easier to do something and go in and add and, you know, correct or change once you have something on the page. So it’s a great place to start from that perspective. You have to also ask it really smart questions. You can’t just be like, write me an article about writer’s block and expect that it’s going to be something perfect, that you’re gonna have 100% done.
But if you ask it really smart questions to get to that point, then I think it gives you enough to at least be able to go in and start editing.
Chip Griffin: Yep. I’ve talked with a, a number of agency owners who have enthusiasm about what this platform means for them as far as being able to give them this start and to, to help them out in creating content because we’re all facing this challenge to feed the, the content beast for our clients.
And so finding ways that can. Reduce the amount of labor hours that it takes to, to achieve that is helpful. On the flip side, I’ve, I’ve also talked to agency owners who are freaking out about this. Yes. And saying, oh my God, you know, we, right now we do lots of writing for our clients. If, if this is, if this is out there, our clients aren’t going to need us.
Or they’re not gonna pay us as much because they’ll figure we can just use this and, and they don’t need to pay for quality writers or writing. It’s just, we just need this. So, Are you seeing people freaking out? And if so, what are you telling them?
Gini Dietrich: Yeah, I, I am seeing people freak out about it. Not just, not just clients, but also friends on social media.
But here a, a couple of things. So 10 years ago, I remember meeting a business owner who told me that they didn’t need any marketing or communications because they just had a firm in India go and scrape content off of their competitor’s websites. And then that’s the content they used on their website.
And I was like, is that so? And he’s like, yeah, so why would I pay somebody to do that when that’s what I can do? And I was like, well, I, for all of these reasons. Let’s start with the fact that Google won’t allow it. And he’s like, no, it’s great. It’s fine. His website eventually did get shut down, because of that practice.
But you are going to have clients out there that say, we can just use this. And that’s fine. Great. Okay. And from my perspective, not a client we want to have, because they’re not valuing the actual work that we do. If they’re creating content with ChatG… I never get it right. G P T?G T P?
Chip Griffin: Yes. G P T.
Gini Dietrich: G P T I never get it right,.
Chip Griffin: But now, now you’re making me second guess myself. Thanks.
Gini Dietrich: I know I know, I always change the letters anyway. If you’re using, if they’re using AI to create content and as their final product, everybody else in their industry is gonna be doing the same thing and all of their content’s gonna be the same. So there’s not gonna be any engagement, there’s not gonna be any thought leadership, there’s not gonna be any of the things that, as an agency, we add the value in.
And if that’s the, that’s what they wanna do, great. But eventually they’re all gonna look the same. They’re all going to sound the same and it’s not going to work. Where we add the value is in the storytelling and the engagement. And the process that it takes to engage and nurture somebody from a website visitor to a customer. That’s where we add the value from a content perspective.
And this AI doesn’t do it, do that. So if you have clients who are saying, we can do this, so be it. Like, okay, you go do your thing. Kind of like this guy that was scraping competitor websites for his own website. Okay? Like, I, I can’t change that. There’s nothing I can do about that. But where I can add value is in using the AI to make my team more efficient, and then adding in the, the value that we as human beings, as talented, creative, skillful human beings create.
That’s where we can add the value. So let it let it help you start, but it’s not going to be the end.
Chip Griffin: Yeah, I mean, I do think that, that it does present a more clear and direct threat to certain kinds of agencies. So, SEO agencies that are more content mills. I think that, that this is a real threat to them because a lot of the content that many of them churn out is, not that different from what this AI is producing. And so to the extent that you’re putting out filler content, just because it’s got keywords in the headline and it more or less answers the, the question that a searcher might ask. Yeah. I mean, I think that if I were that kind of an agency, I would be concerned about what this means for me. That said, I don’t encourage agencies to be that way, because those are the kinds of agencies that are typically chasing the latest Google algorithm changes and all that. And I think agencies should be focused on working with their clients on longer term plays to try to figure out how do we create engaging content that creates a relationship with the reader that draws them in, that shows off our actual individual expertise that we have within our organization. And if you’re doing those things, then AI is not nearly as much of a threat.
Gini Dietrich: Yeah, I totally agree with you. And you know, I think this is an opportunity, just like when social media was launched and when blogging was launched, and we’ve had all of these changes in the last 10 or 15 years that have affected the way that we run our businesses.
And it hasn’t created the, this whole crisis where we all go out of business. What it has done is allowed us to find ways to evolve and to offer different and, and truthfully more valuable services to our clients. So, yeah, you’re right. If you’re just churning out filler content, and there are plenty of agencies out there that are quote unquote content agency, content marketing agencies, that they write the same content for every dentist in the country and every dentist’s website has the same content on it because they work with this content marketing agency.
That’s probably AI’s probably a threat to your, your business for sure. But for the rest of us that are working on things that are strategic and valuable and results driven, it’s not a threat. It’s going to make us more efficient. It’s going to make us more profitable, but it’s not a threat.
Chip Griffin: Right. And, and I think the evolution that you talk about is absolutely critical for agencies at all times.
And I, and unfortunately, I think agencies, unlike many other businesses, oftentimes think that they can continue doing what’s always worked for them and they don’t have to evolve. Sure, sure. Not true of all agencies, but certainly there are some, particularly in the, in the PR space, where a lot of times I see agencies that say, you know, look, this is, this is how we’ve always done things.
You know, we’ll update a little bit for the, the, the present day, but we’re not, you know, we don’t see a need to, to change radically. I think most agencies need to be looking at much more radical change in the years ahead, in their service offerings and all of that. If, if AI can help you get there, great.
I mean, but, but don’t look at it as something that is a threat to your business. Look at it as an opportunity. And if you approach it from that direction, you’re much more likely to evolve than you are to run away from it. You know, it, it’s sort of like, you know, when the, you know, when we brought along combustion engines and, you know, if, if you were gonna be determined that all you were ever gonna do was, you know, run a horse and buggy, well, you know, you’ve probably got an issue there.
And so maybe you need to think about how to evolve your business to take advantage of the combustion engine. Or alternatively, lean into the fact that you’re a horse and buggy. Understand that your business model is now different though, and so you’re now appealing to somebody who’s looking for the nostalgia of a horse and buggy ride, right.
Right. Versus the convenience and efficiency of a combustion engine. Yeah. And so you know , you can make an informed and intentional decision not to change, but make sure that it’s not because it’s the way you’ve always done it, but rather because you’ve got a strategy behind it.
Gini Dietrich: Right. One of the things that we’re thinking about inside my agency is we’re helping the younger professionals use it to get started. And then we’re, instead of them staring at a blank screen and saying, okay, how do I put this story together? We give, they’re, they’re using the AI to get started, and then we’re teaching them how to add in the storytelling elements. So they’re actually progressing their career faster right now, because that would be something we’d be teaching at three to five years instead of right after they graduated from college.
And right now because of it, we’re able to teach that now because they have the first draft already done. So they’re not having to learn how to do that piece of it. They’re learning now what they would be learning at three to five years into their career. And so from our perspective, we’re saving money because we’re not having to, to spend three years mentoring and coaching somebody.
And they’re happier because they’re progressing much, much more quickly than any of us did in our career.
Chip Griffin: Mm-hmm. Well, I think it’s also important as you’re using these tools to try to figure out what works best for each particular situation, both the individuals involved, the client and all that. And so in some cases it may be a good starting point that you can weave in the storytelling elements.
In some cases it may be good just to, to have it create something that you can read through and, and gives you some ideas for you to effectively start from scratch. So use it as, as research. Yep. Yep. Right. If I were using it, that’s probably how I would do it, because I hate editing someone else’s work and trying to, you know, mold it into something else.
I mean, I just, I’m much faster writing from scratch than I am revising someone else’s copy to get where I want it to go. And so for me, I might have it, you know, spit out 800 words that I can read through and say, okay, yeah, these are key points I wanna make sure that, that I don’t overlook. And now, you know, go off and, and write the piece directly. But however you use it, there are some real opportunities in here.
Yeah. You just need to know what the limitations are at the same time so that you don’t end up using it as a crutch and instead you’re using it as an aid to be better.
Gini Dietrich: Yeah. I, I don’t think there’s any reason to be threatened by it. I think that all of these, all of the technology that we have at our fingertips and that’s coming in the next few years is fantastic.
I think it makes us more efficient. Like I said, it makes us more profitable. And it helps us excel our teams much more quickly than we’ve been been able to in the past. So I don’t think there’s any reason for you to be threatened by it.
Chip Griffin: Yeah, and it’s, it’s gonna be fascinating to see how it evolves and, you know, does it evolve to the point where it can weave in more of the storytelling?
And so maybe, maybe that is something that it can do somewhere down the road. Frankly, it’s developed faster than I thought it would as far as AI being able to write articles that seem like intelligent articles as opposed to what we were seeing, you know, five or 10 years ago where, you know, it, it was basically a template that would fill in data.
Right. So the common usage was for sports stories where you could just, you know, pull from stats or stock earnings reports. There were a number of services out there that did AI generated articles. They really weren’t, they were really templates that just had data filled in from some sort of source.
So it’s, it’s certainly come faster along than I thought it would. Will it continue to, how will it evolve? How is it gonna handle the fact that lots of people are making similar requests? Is it going to churn out all sorts of identical or nearly identical content, or is it going to be able to evolve so that there is some uniqueness built into it in some fashion?
We just don’t know. And, until it’s really being used at scale for real world uses as opposed to what it’s being used for today, whereas most people are just going, kicking the tires saying, Hey, cool. Let’s see what this can do. Let’s see. Let’s have it write a podcast episode. Great. And let’s see. Is this any good?
Gini Dietrich: Yeah. Yeah. I have a friend who did an interview, with Carl Jung. And like, it’s actually pretty fascinating, just the idea that you can have this conversation with a, a dead philosopher, you know, just based on what it’s collecting from conversations, I think is fascinating. But yeah, for sure keep an eye on it. For sure figure out how to use it inside your agency. You know, for sure figure out ways that you can use it to help teach your younge professionals on how to craft a story. And, and pay attention. Like it, it probably is going to get to a point where it might threaten some of the work that we do, but at that point, because you’ve listened to this episode and you’ve, you’ve taken our advice, you will have evolved your agency and it won’t hurt.
Chip Griffin: Absolutely, because you’re using your actual intelligence, not your artificial intelligence. So with that, we will draw this episode of the Agency Leadership Podcast to a close, and you go out and figure out how this AI is gonna help or hurt you in the future. I’m Chip Griffin,
Gini Dietrich: Help, help. And I’m Gini Dietrich.
Chip Griffin: And, and it depends.
Gini Dietrich: It does.
The communications world has been abuzz with discussion about the impact that AI-generated content may have on their roles. Some agency owners are concerned about tools like ChatGPT taking away revenue from their businesses, while others see those same services as an opportunity to increase efficiency and profitability. In this episode, Chip and Gini discuss the questions that have been hearing from agency leaders and share some of their insights on where the technology stands today — and what the future may hold.
How much do you really know about your clients? Not the organization and its goals, but the people you actually work with on a daily basis. In this episode, the co-hosts discuss Gini's recent article with 11 questions you should ask your clients so that you know how they work and how you can best engage with them. It's all part of building stronger, more lasting relationships that will serve you well as you work to produce results and maintain the business.
With all the talk of inflation and recession, agency owners are understandably concerned about maintaining — let alone growing — profitability in the new year. In this episode, Chip and Gini explore how you can correct your pricing to handle shrinking margins due to inflation and other factors. They look at how you should think about client retention as part of the profit mix. Finally, they remind agency leaders that price increases aren't the only way to protect profits and that managing scope and efficiency can have the same effect in some situations.
It can be very tempting to say, "I want my agency to be just like [fill in the blank]."
We all have companies and entrepreneurs that we look up to, but that doesn't mean that we should aspire to be just like them.
In this episode, Chip and Gini explain why you should be yourself and chart a course that works for you. Trying to copy someone else's model is more likely to lead to frustration and disappointment rather than success.
What should agencies advise clients with regard to Twitter today? It has obviously been a very turbulent couple of weeks since Elon Musk took over, but what does that mean for communicators?
Chip and Gini explore this question that they have been hearing from many agency leaders in recent days. They emphasize the need to understand what is right for individual clients and their target audiences rather than substituting our own personal points of view.
There are lessons to be learned from what is going on with Twitter and how it impacts agencies and their clients that go far beyond this individual social platform. Recognizing the value of focusing on client needs while determining your own "red lines" are important things for agency owners to consider.
It's great to have goals and objectives — both for your agency and for your team members. But many agency leaders don't set and implement them correctly.
Chip and Gini explain how bad KPIs can be worse than no KPIs, as well as what you can do to make sure that your goals are actually reasonable.
You will find no shortage of advice on KPIs, OKRs, SMART goals, and all sorts of other trendy topics, but this episode should help you cut through some of the fluff and get to the point of what really matters.
As small agencies grow, individual team members usually begin to take on direct reports — often for the first time in their careers.
These newly-minted managers need mentorship and support to excel. Owners need to make sure that they set aside time and resources to help these talented individuals develop the skills that they need.
Chip and Gini share some of their experiences, including things you may want to avoid with inexperienced managers and some areas where you should focus your efforts for the good of the business.
Have you ever considered expanding to other countries, either by hiring help or signing up clients outside your current borders?
Chip and Gini share some of their experiences in working internationally as an agency, including things that you should consider before you take the leap and the benefits of doing so.
The co-hosts answer some common questions they get from agency owners, and they talk about some of the challenges that they have encountered along the way (and how they handled them).
Many small agencies experience revenue peaks and valleys and wonder how they can break out of the "feast or famine" cycle.
In this episode, Chip and Gini explore the real cause of the revenue roller-coaster and what agency owners can (and should) do about it.
The co-hosts share some of their own experiences and the advice they received years ago — and why it still applies today.
If you have listened to Chip and Gini's advice in the past, you are carefully tracking your team's time to understand how much it costs you to serve your clients.
One of the things that you might discover is that you're spending a lot of time on internal meetings and conversations — something that you may not have considered when you set the initial price for the engagement.
What do you do now? A recent question from an agency owner wondered if they would need to double a client's retainer to capture the hidden costs.
Chip and Gini discuss how to handle this challenge for existing accounts, as well as how to look at internal staff time for client work generally.
In this episode of the Agency Leadership Podcast, Chip and Gini discuss some of the more popular "single number" metrics that some advocate — and then explain why they may not be the best for your purposes.
Maybe the Great Resignation has you thinking about hanging out your own shingle. Or perhaps your dream has always been to own your own agency.
Agency owners love to ask what others are charging or what services they are providing. They dig into the competition for insight on their own planning.
A recent post by a member of the Spin Sucks Community raised the topic of calculating the cost of winning new clients — and determining how to account for that expense properly.
In this episode, Chip and Gini explore how agencies should approach this question, both when developing their own strategies for clients as well as for helping to guide the client on their overall communications planning.
This episode will help you to build or improve your own framework for reporting that should lead to better results, happier clients, and improved retention.
Do you know what your clients really value from their relationship with your agency? Often we know that we are creating real value for a client, but it isn't always aligned with the value that they see
Chip and Gini put this talk off for as long as they could, but many listeners have come to them during the past few weeks asking if they believe a recession is likely and what they should do to prepare their agencies for one.
The truth is that the things that you should do to prepare for a possible recession are the same things that you should be doing to run a successful agency during the good times.
The only difference is that you might want to be slightly more cautious and build in just a little more flexibility. That's it. Don't go overboard investing in the good times or cutting back in the lean ones.
In this episode, Chip and Gini share their perspectives, including what has gone wrong for them in the past — and how you can make sure that you are communicating effectively with your team, clients, and prospects during turbulent times.
How should you handle it when one of your agency's employees — or prospective new hires — comes to you and asks you to match another offer? Or perhaps they approach you and tell you that they need to get a significant pay raise so that they aren't "forced" to go into the marketplace to try to find opportunities that pay more. In this episode, Chip and Gini discuss how to approach these requests, whether you are in a super tight talent market like we see today or even in more "normal" times.
The conversation about hiring traditional employees or independent contractors has been a popular one in the agency community for a long time.
Some advocate the flexibility of using contractors and the ability to stop working with them without incurring unemployment insurance costs.
Others promote employees as a better solution because they help create a real team atmosphere and are willing to do more for success than outside contractors.
In this episode, Chip and Gini discuss the merits of some of these arguments and explain how agency leaders can think about the right mix of contractors and employees in their own businesses.
Sometimes clients just won't take their agency's expert advice. There's nothing inherently wrong with that — after all, we can only offer advice.
But how should you handle it when they ignore your recommended course of action? When should you push back — and how should you do it?
Chip and Gini explore this topic and talk about the importance of understanding the root cause of the client's objection or desire to proceed differently. With that information in hand, it becomes much easier to figure out your own next steps.
In this episode of the Agency Leadership Podcast, Chip and Gini pick up a question from the Spin Sucks Community to dive into this topic.
In this episode of the Agency Leadership Podcast, Chip and Gini look at both the substance and delivery method to help you better understand what works — and what doesn't.
Just because you did everything when you started your business, doesn't mean that you should keep doing it all. It's probably time for you to let go of some of the things that you have your hands in today.
Letting go doesn't just free up time on your schedule to do higher value work, it also empowers your team to produce better results. It drives increased retention of both clients and staff. And it helps you create a business that you are happier with.
In this episode of the Agency Leadership Podcast, Chip Griffin and Gini Dietrich discuss why you need to let go, what you should be looking to give up, and how to do it effectively without losing the secret sauce that helped you grow to where you are today.
Chip and Gini often get asked what size is the right size for an agency. Is there a magic number for revenue or employees that works best?
Of course, the answer is the same as the one that the co-hosts end every episode of the Agency Leadership Podcast with: It Depends.
The truth is that there are many more important factors to consider than how much you bill or how many people you employ. Chip and Gini discuss how you should think about agency size — and why you shouldn't be looking for a secret formula to give you the answer.
Pricing experts provide lots of advice on how agencies should price their services. Some approaches promise greater profits but do come with some added risk.
In this episode of the Agency Leadership Podcast, Chip Griffin and Gini Dietrich discuss why you should master basic, traditional agency pricing before you advance to some of these more advanced techniques.
The co-hosts explain that you need to make sure you can price for at least minimum profitability before you move on to maximizing the profit potential of each engagement.
They also review the need to understand the true risks you are shouldering when you adopt a creative pricing model, and how to make sure that you are prepared for the results regardless of the outcome.
It is not uncommon for agencies to hire other agencies to do work for them. Unfortunately, sometimes that comes with the lead agency telling the subcontractor that they won't be paid until the ultimate client pays.
Chip recently wrote about this on LinkedIn and encouraged agencies not to accept these terms because it transfers too much risk and removes the ability of that agency to do any kind of meaningful collections work since they can't talk to the ultimate payer.
Gini came into the conversation in disagreement because she felt that she shouldn't be paying out funds until she received them from her client.
Ultimately, Chip and Gini found some common ground to help agencies think about how to navigate this tricky issue.
The mental image that many agency owners have when thinking about selling their agencies often differs from the reality that they experience.
In this episode, Chip and Gini share some of the difficult truths that agency owners may end up confronting if they decide to sell to or merge with another agency.
The co-hosts discuss why it is important to build an agency you are happy to own and treat selling as the icing on the cake rather than the primary objective.
If you're looking for insight into the agency M&A process and don't want a sugar-coated perspective, this episode is for you.
Some agency leaders have seen what works for SaaS (Software as a Service) companies and assume they should be doing the same thing to grow their own businesses.
Some agency leaders have seen what works for Saas (Software as a Service) companies and assume they should be doing the same thing to grow their own businesses.
While there may be things to learn from how SaaS businesses generate leads and close new accounts, the reality is that agencies are fundamentally different businesses that usually require a different approach to business development.
In this episode, Chip and Gini explain how the two types of businesses are different, but they also offer ways to use the insights you may glean from studying SaaS marketing.
Many agency experts advocate the idea of "niching down" to accelerate business growth.
In this episode of the Agency Leadership Podcast, Chip and Gini explore the benefits of specializing and finding a focus.
At the same time, the co-hosts emphasize that being focused doesn't necessarily mean limiting yourself to 1 or 2 industries. There are many ways to express your specialization and target a narrower set of ideal clients.
A recent post on Reddit questioned why clients leave their agencies, so Chip and Gini decided to tackle the topic on this episode of the Agency Leadership Podcast.
Usually, agency-client relationships don't end for one simple reason, but rather an accumulation of factors. Some of those can be traced back to the process of winning the business, while others may develop along the way.
Chip and Gini argue that agency leaders should focus their efforts on addressing the things that they can to improve retention, but accept the fact that sometimes an account will leave for reason's out of the agency's control.
Don't respond to an RFP unless you can have a conversation and get your questions answered. That's the simple advice from Chip Griffin and Gini Dietrich in this Agency Leadership Podcast episode.
The co-hosts build on a conversation started on LinkedIn by Parry Headrick of Crackle PR who explained that his agency turned down an RFP because they couldn't get an answer to the question of how many other agencies had been invited to participate.
It was a simple question and should have generated a simple answer. When one wasn't forthcoming, Crackle PR declined to respond. That was the right step.
Chip and Gini took it a step further and suggested that you need to be able to have a real conversation with real human beings — ideally before the RFP is released, but certainly before you begin to invest in a response.
Many agencies don't realize just how much it is costing them to respond to RFPs because they don't accurately track their own time investments. If you take a lot of time to thoughtfully respond to 10 RFP's and only win one of them, then you need to subtract the cost of responding to all 10 of those RFP's from whatever profit you think you're making on that contract you won.
While Chip and Gini don't believe you should always say no to every RFP, you should look at them skeptically and with a real understanding of the likelihood of success (and the cost of doing so).
Finally, agency owners will be able to hear some advice on how to handle RFP processes when they are the incumbent, as well as some discussion of how to see an overall improvement in the climate of agency-client relationships.
In this episode of the Agency Leadership Podcast, Chip Griffin and Gini Dietrich review why hourly billing often doesn't work, but also when you should consider using it.
A popular topic for many agency gurus is the idea that you should stop trading time for money.
Yet that's exactly what agencies do.
What they really mean is that you shouldn't charge by the hour. While there are good arguments against hourly billing, it's not something that you should reject out of hand.
In this episode of the Agency Leadership Podcast, Chip Griffin and Gini Dietrich review why hourly billing often doesn't work, but also when you should consider using it.
If you're taking on all of the risk and stress of running your own business, you need to be getting what you want from it.
But how do you know that without clearly defining what you want to achieve?
In this episode, Chip and Gini discuss SAGA's AIM-GET Framework that starts with defining the owner's Ambition. They look at some questions to ask yourself as you seek to better specify the goals that your business needs to achieve for you in order to be successful and satisfying.
Many agency employees feel overworked, yet it can be difficult to convince them to take a vacation from time to time.
As the agency owner, how do you encourage a team member to take a healthy break to recharge their batteries? If they don't do it on their own, should you force them to take time off?
In this episode, Chip and Gini explore this tricky question, and Gini shares her own experience in this area where things went a bit awry.
Most agencies want to do whatever it takes to win new accounts. There is a natural urge to please prospects and demonstrate your expertise to get that contract signed.
There are some common mistakes that agencies make, especially in the excitement that comes around a pitch or proposal.
Chip and Gini explore some of the mistakes they have seen made, as well as how they suggest avoiding them.
How often should you be meeting with your agency team members and what should you be discussing?
That's the topic that Chip and Gini tackle in this week's episode of the Agency Leadership Podcast.
It is easy to dismiss meetings as unproductive and profess your desire not to tie your team up in endless conversation with each other.
But that's usually a sign that the meetings themselves aren't being held on the right schedule with the right formats and the right attendees.
Well-structured meetings at the proper times can make a big difference in the success of your agency business — and your client engagements.
Get some tips on the kinds of meetings you should hold, the formats you should use, and the outcomes you should expect.
In this episode, recorded in December 2021, Chip and Gini discuss the rapid response ad that Ryan Reynolds helped Peloton create after their product was featured in an unflattering way on a TV show.
Just hours after this episode was recorded, serious allegations became public about actor Chris Noth who was featured both in the original TV episode as well as the ad created by Ryan Reynolds and his agency.
While those allegations certainly cast a different light on the specific situation discussed in this episode, the broader points that Chip and Gini make about how agencies can work with both clients and prospects in crisis situations still hold up.
No, this isn't a predictions episode, but Chip and Gini do take a look at the agency landscape as the new year kicks off.
What should agency leaders be considering as they approach the new year? What challenges and opportunities might lie ahead?
As important, what mindset should owners adopt to have the greatest likelihood of success in this environment?
Most agencies approach the arrival of procurement and legal teams with a sense of dread. And it isn't without good reason.
Those two departments can cause real problems — but all hope is not lost.
In this episode of the Agency Leadership Podcast, Chip and Gini discuss how to navigate these two departments to close more business and facilitate a more successful long-term relationship with your client.
With the Great Resignation putting increased pressure on an already tight labor market, agencies are rightly concerned not just about recruiting new employees, but also retaining the talent they already have. In this episode of the Agency Leadership Podcast, Chip and Gini discuss how agencies should be thinking about this challenge. They emphasize that it isn't as much about finding financial rewards, as it is about creating an environment where your team wants to continue to work. The co-hosts share some of the things that they have seen work -- as well as some that tend to be a waste of time and money.
In this episode, Gini Dietrich shares some of her experience embedded with a client to help agencies understand the other side of the agency-client equation.
In this episode, Gini Dietrich shares some of her experience embedded with a client to help agencies understand the other side of the agency-client equation. Many agency leaders haven't been on the client side, so it is useful to have some perspective about how they perceive some of the things that we think of as standard operating procedure or best practices. Not surprisingly, some of the things that frustrate agency owners may be different from how the client looks at the same things. Listen in for some insight to consider, as well as some tips on how to handle specific situations.
Clients often want to know who at the agency does what. It might be because they want to understand the work that they're getting, but it also might be because they want to go directly to individuals for certain things. Chip and Gini tackle this important topic in this episode of the Agency Leadership Podcast. You need to be clear with your team about what their individual roles are so that there isn't confusion. There needs to be a single person responsible for the completion of each task (even if they need to work with others to accomplish it). But how do you handle clients who want this level of detail? It's fine to communicate the expertise that you have, but be careful about locking yourself in to specific team members doing work for that client. Sometimes the agency's needs change and as long as you continue to deliver a quality product, it shouldn't matter to your clients. Chip and Gini also argue that it is important to have a primary point of contact for each client with your agency so that they aren't asking for lots of individual items from team members that could get lost in the cracks and not done -- or completed but not properly recorded as work done for that client.
With all of the talk about the Great Resignation and the challenges many agencies are having hiring and retaining workers, is now the time to adopt a 4-day work week? What are the pros and cons of this policy -- and is it even feasible for most agencies? Chip and Gini tackle the idea that has become part of the conversation in many workplaces.
Agency owners so often hear about the importance of not just being order-takers and finding ways to be more strategic by understanding a client's real challenges and opportunities. And that's absolutely true. But that doesn't mean that you should veer outside of your lane into areas where the client doesn't want you to go -- or worse where you don't have the expertise to do well. Understanding where those boundaries are will give you the room you need to expand your engagements and the value that you provide, while not becoming something that you're not.
During the past couple of years, we have all learned a lot more about all of our professional connections because of the challenging work conditions many have had to endure. But should you be a completely open book with clients and employees? Or is there still such a thing as TMI? How do you share enough to be human and to provide context for your work without crossing that line? And is transparency really a good thing anyway? Could it cost you more than you think? It's a challenging topic and one that Chip and Gini tackle with their usual blend of insight, anecdotes, and humor.
Do you ever wonder how many clients an individual account executive should be able to handle? How about what percentage of time should be client billable for all levels of employees?
Perhaps you've heard about metrics like revenue per FTE -- what are good numbers for your own agency business?
Chip and Gini discuss these and other questions on this episode of the Agency Leadership Podcast.
How do you handle the cancellation clause of your client contracts?
What type of notice period do you require? What are the exit terms and how do you handle clients who leave on bad terms?
These are questions that Chip and Gini address in this episode of the Agency Leadership Podcast.
It is not uncommon for agency employees to want to do a bit of freelancing on the side. Some even have dreams of starting their own agency or other business.
How do you protect your agency’s interest while not stifling your employee’s ambition? What should you do when an employee comes to you to share what they’re doing or considering? How about the times when you discover what they’re up to and they never disclosed?
Chip and Gini cover these questions and more in this episode of the Agency Leadership Podcast.
The same bottle of water costs the same to make but is priced differently if you get it at a convenience store, grocery chain, or four-star hotel.
What can you learn about that when it comes to pricing and positioning your agency? Are your lower-priced clients that much easier to service than the high-ticket ones?
Is it possible to lose your client's business because you have done too good of a job for them? Should you intentionally underperform in an attempt to keep the client longer?
These questions may seem far-fetched, but they have actually been asked -- so Chip and Gini address them in this week's episode.
We talk with a lot of small PR and marketing agency owners who are weary of their own businesses.
They feel overworked, underpaid, and burned out.
What is the cause of this feeling and what can you do about it?
That's what Chip and Gini explore on this episode of the Agency Leadership Podcast.
In this episode of the Agency Leadership Podcast, Chip and Gini discuss whether or not you should be using waitlists to manage demand for your agency's services.
In this episode, Chip and Gini talk about insurance. Right up there with legal and accounting when it comes to favorite topics for agency owners.
As painful as it may be to talk about, insurance is something that we all need to understand and consider.
Balancing the risks with the costs isn't always easy, but Chip and Gini offer up some perspective for you to consider.
In this episode of the Agency Leadership Podcast, Chip and Gini discuss the importance of using your calendar to set, manage, and achieve your priorities.
The most scarce resource in any agency is the owner's time. How you spend it is one of the best indicators of your likely success.
The Mad Men era of agencies is over. Or is it?
On this episode, Chip and Gini explore the ongoing issues that women face when working at agencies -- from advancement to harassment (and worse).
Have you ever been frustrated with your team's performance? If so, you're not alone.
Many agency owners have had challenges with their employees not doing what they're supposed to do or not achieving the quality of work you expect.
Chip and Gini discuss how to sort out what's going wrong -- and what to do about it.
Interns have been a common sight at many agencies, especially over the summer months. For small agency owners, the idea of hiring interns can be especially appealing because it feels like an easy (and affordable) way to grow your workforce and get more done.
Yet there are many challenges with brining interns on board. While it once was normal to have unpaid interns, that has fallen out of favor -- and may even run afoul of labor laws in your jurisdiction.
It is also important to remember that interns should be learning and growing in their roles, not merely filling needed work hours for the agency and its clients.
In this episode, Chip and Gini discuss their advice for creating and maintaining an internship program that benefits all involved.
You always hear that everyone in your business should be making the best, highest use of their time. But one of the biggest offenders of this objective are the agency owners themselves.
How often have we found ourselves doing low value administrative work that we could easily have someone else do? Perhaps we do it to "save money" or because it is just easier or because we don't trust someone else to do it as well as we do.
The reality is that agency owners need to start with themselves in the drive to improve efficiency and profitability. Tracking the things that you do that aren't as valuable as the hourly rate that you command will help you identify the things that you should delegate.
In this episode, Chip and Gini talk about how to identify these tasks, determine the best candidates to get off your plate, and the impact it can have on you and your business.
Agencies need to be managed. Not just by their own leaders, but by their clients.
Being managed by the client doesn't mean that you're simply an order-taker. Active management by the client tends to ensure better results and stronger relationships.
In this episode, Chip and Gini discuss why it matters so much and what good management looks like.
Small agencies can increase their capabilities and bandwidth by partnering with other small agencies and freelancers. But what are the tricks to doing this successfully?
Owners often struggle with how to make these partnerships profitable without distorting their pricing models.
In this episode, Chip and Gini discuss the benefits of collectives and collaborations, as well as some lessons they have learned over the years about how to make them work well.
Agency leaders often seem fixated on trying to discover the exact budget that a prospective client has available to spend with them.
There is a school of thought in the sales community that you need to get this number to "qualify" the lead and to make sure that you scope an appropriate solution.
That's hogwash.
You need to make sure that the prospect understands what you typically charge for services so that they don't waste their time (and yours) with pointless tire-kicking.
You don't need to zero in on an exact figure.
Chip and Gini explain in this week's episode that tailoring a solution to that (often arbitrary) budget number attacks the problem in precisely the wrong way.
Clients frequently clamor for their agencies to do more. But how do you decide when it makes sense to expand your capabilities -- and when you should say no? If you do decide that there is value in offering a broader solution, how do you go about getting that integrated into your business? In this episode of the Agency Leadership Podcast, Chip and Gini discuss how they have made such decisions in the past, including what worked and what didn't.
Successful agencies consistently find ways to evolve their offerings. This requires increasing skills and knowledge for you and your team.
But how do you go about gaining the knowledge and experience necessary to make the necessary adaptations?
In this episode, Chip and Gini explore ways that you can develop your capabilities to better serve your clients.
In this episode, Chip and Gini discuss the benefits of using the floor-to-ceiling pricing methodology to reap greater profits for your agency business.
The co-hosts discuss the practical benefits of first determining your floor -- the price below which you cannot go without having unacceptably low profit margins.
Then they explore how you probe to find the ceiling for your services so that you avoid unnecessarily leaving money on the table.
Have you ever wished you could take several months -- or even a year -- away from your own agency? Many of you have been reconsidering your priorities over the past year, so you may be wondering how you can explore other passions or simply recharge your batteries in a deeper way.
It's not easy to take time off from any small business, but especially a small agency where others often think of the firm and the individual as one entity.
Taking a proper sabbatical requires great planning, strong processes, and solid rules of the road.
In this episode, Chip and Gini talk about some of the things that you should be considering if this is something you might want to do sooner or later. Many of the steps are the same things you should be doing to get your business operating efficiently anyway, but there are a few things unique to stepping away from your own business temporarily.
What should you consider when you are thinking about changing the name or positioning of your agency?
First, we look at what goes into making the decision to rebrand. Is it worth the time and hassle? Do you need to rebrand, reposition, or both?
Then we consider what goes in to establishing an agency brand, whether that's the first-time brand, a secondary brand, or a re-launch of the agency.
Most agencies have faced the need to move in-person events and meetings into the virtual world over the past year. But it has been challenging to do it well.
In this episode, Gini talks about how she has taken her agency's on-site client strategy workshop onto Zoom. She and Chip talk about how you can't simply copy the IRL experience to video conferencing and instead need to find ways to take advantage of the circumstances to make changes.
Agency employees consistently complain about being overworked. Many of us started out in the agency world with our managers expecting us to work 60-hour weeks.
This culture of overwork doesn't come about because owners and managers are sadistic. It's because too often agencies fail to price their services correctly.
If agencies price work fairly, then there is no need for team members to work excessive hours. If agencies set reasonable client expectations, all-nighters should be the exception, not the rule.
In this episode, Chip and Gini discuss this challenge and why it is so important for agencies to improve their ability to estimate costs and set prices correctly to avoid burning out employees.
In this episode of Chats with Chip, Samantha Deeks of PRgloo talks about finding and reaching out to influencers and journalists who can help your agency's clients.
Samantha explains why she founded PRgloo and looks at the journey they have taken. She also takes a look into the future -- both of her product and the industry.
PRgloo: https://prgloo.com/
Chip and Gini are experts at growing PR and marketing agencies. But you should take everything that they say with a grain of salt. No expert has all of the right answers all of the time. Not every piece of advice is a good one for you to take -- even if it may work for 99% of other people. When you're looking for ideas and perspective, experts can certainly help. But you need to evaluate everything through your own lens. How closely does that person's experience and outlook reflect your own? As a general rule, any time you hear some piece of advice that sounds too good to be true (4-hour work week, anyone?) ... it probably is. Even in bad advice you can still take away nuggets, but if you think that someone has the silver bullet to solve your challenge or maximize your opportunity, you're probably going to be disappointed. So continue listening to the Agency Leadership Podcast to get some wisdom from Chip and Gini. But be prepared to toss it out if it doesn't make sense for you and your business. And do the same with every piece of expert advice you get anywhere.
It’s no secret that the pandemic has disrupted the experiential marketing space. In-person events evaporated almost overnight. Even today, large-scale events haven’t resumed and the future remains uncertain, albeit more hopeful than a year ago.
So how did an experiential marketing agency with a long history of success handle the challenge? Dan Hirsch and Deb Lemon, co-CEOs of On Board Experiential (OBE), share their story in this episode.
From what they have done so far to how they see the future, Dan and Deb have lots of perspective to offer other agency leaders. Chip also explores how they make the co-CEO role work — something they both feel isn’t all that special, but it is something that many agencies have tried and struggled with before.
This episode is a simulcast of a recent Small Agency Talk Show segment featuring Chip Griffin and Gini Dietrich. The show airs at 12 PM ET every Friday on YouTube at SmallAgency.TV.
Chip and Gini take a brief detour on the topic of skinny jeans before getting into the meat of the show.
They talk about how an agency owner can transition themselves out of day-to-day client work, as well as who should be in charge of business development in a small agency.
Many agency owners tell us that they can close business as long as they get in the room with the right prospects. They're confident in their abilities and the skills of their teams.
But how do you get those right prospects in the room (or on the Zoom)?
That's what Chip and Gini tackle in this episode.
When your agency starts working with a new client, chances are they have some existing activities already underway. They have a way of doing things that you need to become part of -- or change to make it more to your liking.
In this episode of the Agency Leadership Podcast, Chip and Gini talk about what happens when you find something that goes against your strategic and tactical judgement.
They look at a real-world example of an agency who found a contractor using a content and social media strategy that seemed nonsensical on the surface. But what might the new agency learn from the existing practices that might help them work more effectively for the client?
Most PR and marketing agency owners have thought about the possibility of selling their business someday.
But what should you be thinking about today if that's an outcome you might want to achieve?
Chip and Gini talk about some of the things to focus on, as well as the potential pitfalls on the road to a sale.
Chip and Gini know that you love to hear about business development. So we're fulfilling that wish with a look at what agencies can do for business development in the reality that is 2021.
Despite continuing challenges, there's a lot of opportunity to be had. Lots of agencies are getting creative -- not just with their clients, but with how they are generating new leads and closing new accounts.
We have all been there. Clients complain about something that your agency is doing. It might be the quality of the work. Or the timeliness of a deliverable. Or something else.
When it is about something that we control ourselves, that's painful -- but easier to address. What do you do when it is one of your team members that is the target of the client's displeasure?
Chip and Gini take a look at this very common challenge and offer some strategies on how to make sure that you keep the client happy while also being fair to your own team.
The smart folks at RSW/US recently surveyed agency owners and marketers to understand their outlook for 2021.
Chip and Gini dig into the data -- and they don't like a lot of what they saw. They believe there is a significant disconnect between the agencies and their clients.
The pair look at some of the highlights from the report, but you can download your own copy from the RSW/US website: https://www.rswus.com/survey/2021-rsw-us-new-year-outlook-report-available-now/
Chip and Gini will also be panelists along with Drew McLellan of the Agency Management Institute at the RSW/US Agency New Business Virtual Conference in February. More info here: https://conference.rswus.com/
Can you -- should you -- run a PR or marketing agency without leveraging the PESO Model in 2021?
Gini obviously has a bias since she created the PESO Model, but it has since become the standard approach for integrated marketing. It brings together Paid, Earned, Shared, and Owned media to help organizations achieve their communications goals.
In this episode, Chip and Gini talk about why this integration is so important for winning business and achieving results -- but also how agencies can achieve the benefits of the PESO Model without having to build out a giant team that has expertise in all of these areas.
Gini noticed that Agency Leadership Advisors rebranded as the Small Agency Growth Alliance (SAGA), so she asked Chip to explain himself in this episode.
You'll hear Chip explain his thinking and how some of the decisions he made may be useful things for agency leaders to consider in the post-pandemic world.
Chip and Gini get asked all the time about hiring project managers. When to do it, how to integrate them with the team and clients, and whether it needs to be a standalone role or one combined with other functions.
The co-hosts take several questions from the community together to lay out their views on how to effectively use project managers and the pros/cons of different models for the role.
Many agencies provide e-books, guides, or even free consultations as a way to connect with potential prospects.
These giveaways can be a good way to break the ice -- as long as you don't break the bank in the process.
Chip and Gini review some real-life examples of things that agencies do and some questions that owners have had for them recently about what to give away and how to promote it. They also examine potential pitfalls along the way.
Chip and Gini talked about how things won't magically change once the calendar flips over to January 2021.
Then Brad Farris jumped in with a great post making the same point, albeit more eloquently.
So Chip and Gini decided to pick up the ball and run with it in this episode.
Sometimes you may come across a client who wants more services than your agency provides. Or maybe it happens quite often.
How do you know when it is a good idea to pitch for business in partnership with another agency? What should you be looking for in that collaboration? What are the red flags you need to look out for?
That’s what Chip and Gini talk about in this episode of the Agency Leadership Podcast, leaning on their own experiences to help you avoid the pitfalls and reap the rewards.
Lots of us are working from home these days. Many agencies have transitioned to having their teams work full- or part-time remotely.
This creates new challenges for agency leaders as they try to figure out how to support and get the most from their employees.
Chip and Gini discuss some things that work — and some that don’t — when it comes to leading distributed teams.
But the focus of this episode is on some of the important things that you might overlook, especially if you are new to having employees who don’t work in the office — including some who may now be thinking about moving somewhere else to be closer to family or simply take advantage of the fact that they no longer need to come into the office every day.
What do you do when an employee leaves your agency? In this episode, Chip and Gini talk about how to handle the transition with clients to minimize disruption.
There are definitely some things you want to make sure to do -- as well as to avoid. Gini will even share an example from her past about how employees shouldn't act on their way out the door.
You don't want clients who are too small or too big for the work your agency does. You want them just right. Clients who can just barely afford your services create one set of problems. Those who think your fee is a drop in the bucket will have their own issues. Chip and Gini discuss why you need to follow the Goldilocks Principle when signing up new clients -- and what happens when you don't.
Despite all of the gurus who tout the idea of “value pricing” to agency owners, it may not be the best approach for everyone.
In fact, it is a concept that is often misunderstood and rarely implemented properly.
Chip and Gini talk about what value pricing — and what it isn’t — as well as how and when it may be useful. They also explore some of the pitfalls, misconceptions, and downright bad advice that agencies get.
Chip is joined by Max Borges of the appropriately-named Max Borges Agency who talks about the evolution of his agency, including how he got started with no PR experience.
When he got started, Max was like many agency owners: he did anything for money. Over time, he got smarter to build an agency that worked for him.
Max discusses how he found focus for his agency and the difference it made in driving growth. He also shares the reason why ex-salespeople make great media relations professionals.
Finally, Max offers practical advice on how agency leaders can improve their websites to attract the right clients — and scare off the bad fits.
We often get asked by agency owners and executives about how they can get their team members to improve their performance. They often frame it in terms of "being more accountable."
The reality is that accountability is a two-way street. As a manager, you need to be accountable to your team members, too.
Listen in to learn how.
A week doesn't go by without Chip and Gini being asked about which software to use for sales tracking, media monitoring, time tracking, accounting, and more.
We get it. We like tinkering with tools, too.
But how should you approach making these choices for your own agency business?
In this episode, Chip and Gini discuss whether you should share ideas with prospective clients during the business development process.
If you don’t share ideas, you worry that you can’t prove your expertise and creativity.
If you do share ideas, you worry that the prospect will take your thoughts (for free) and implement them on their own.
So what are you to do?
In this episode, Chip and Gini discuss why they have shifted their advice to agency leaders from focusing on short-term survival to building a new long-term plan. For the past few months, everyone has been focused on doing what needs to be done to get by, but it's now clear that the disruption will not be short-lived. Regardless of how long the health and economic effects linger, we now recognize that the landscape has shifted significantly. In-person events are likely a long way off, workplace structures are likely permanently altered, and businesses are likely to continue to be more cautious with their resources. At the same time, clients realize that they can't remain in a holding pattern and have begun to become more active. These changes create real opportunities for agencies ready to take the steps needed to plan for the future.
On this episode of Chats with Chip, Vin D'Eletto of Word Agents joins the show to discuss his experience building an agency focused on providing writing that drives SEO. The pair discuss lessons for how agencies of all types can better manage the ongoing need for content, including recruiting writers and managing the process to deliver quality results for clients.
On this episode of the Agency Leadership Podcast, Chip and Gini discuss different agency pricing methodologies to help you determine which model or combination of models is the right fit for your business.
They go into the pros and cons of 9 different models used across the industry and apply their own personal experiences, providing a unique take on the topic.
Chip and Gini discuss the drawbacks to pricing wars, and how you can extract fair value for your services as an agency.
Chip and Gini talk about how to make a living while doing something you love. It can be difficult to get to a place where you’re both happy with what you do, and also getting compensated well, but it’s far from impossible. They discuss their past experiences related to this, both the good and the bad, and share what they have learned along the way.
On this episode of the Agency Leadership Podcast, Chip and Gini talk about business development, sales responsibilities, and the importance of defining the roles your team members play in contributing to the growth of the agency.
In this episode of the Agency Leadership Podcast, Chip Griffin and Gini Dietrich discuss reports that Edelman has reversed course and decided to lay off employees in the midst of the current crisis.
What does this news mean for other, smaller agencies? And what does the future look like for the whole agency industry?
To be hired, you have to be known. Chip and Gini discuss how you can make sure that your targeted prospects know about and respect you and your team before they even become clients.
Getting noticed means figuring out where those prospects "live" and what media they consume. Then you must get creative about how you get your name and expertise in front of them.
PR and marketing agencies around the world have been forced to abandon their offices and work together as a team remotely. This can be a challenging transition for many reasons, but the challenge of maintaining a positive company culture is magnified.
Chip Griffin and Gini Dietrich discuss how agency leaders can engage their employees effectively without becoming micromanagers. It starts with strong communication and a willingness to innovate. It improves through feedback and adaptation.
In this episode of the Agency Leadership Podcast, Chip and Gini share their experiences in building culture while running remote and hybrid businesses. The practical advice they share will help you become a more effective manager of your own newly remote team members.
In this episode, Chip and Gini have a candid conversation about the challenges of bring employees back to your agency's office. There's a lot to consider -- starting with when -- for you to consider.
As many states and countries begin to try to resume more usual operations for some businesses, agency owners face some difficult decisions. There's no one-size-fits-all solution, and the show hosts strongly recommend involving your team in the important choices ahead.
Chip and Gini also address one of the elephants in the room: will this cause many/most agencies that have offices to become virtual businesses with everyone working remotely.
Chip and Gini have talked regularly about the need for agencies to adopt a helpful mindset, especially amid these turbulent times.
In this episode, the co-hosts explore some specific ideas that listeners can implement to be helpful to their own clients, prospects, and others.
The sheer magnitude of the health and economic challenge facing every agency leader right now can be a bit overwhelming. The solution is to take it all in manageable chunks instead of solving every problem all at once.
In this episode, Chip and Gini review some of the things that every agency leader should be thinking about and doing in the near-term.
Small PR and marketing agencies may be feeling a disproportionate share of the hurt right now as the Covid-19 crisis ravages the global economy, but there are inherent advantages to being small that will help in recovery.
Chip and Gini spend this episode talking about the small agency advan
Perhaps now more than ever, communicators need to be adopting the PESO model to maximize results. PR agencies, in particular, should be looking at how to leverage the tools beyond traditional earned media since many journalists and news outlets have precious little time and space for non-virus content right now.
As the creator of the PESO model, Gini Dietrich understands its value and has a variety of tools and trainings available to help communicators take advantage of the approach. Chip and Gini discuss the importance of the PESO model and how agencies can better utilize it.
There's no need to sugarcoat it. These are challenging times. But agencies can and should continue to engage in business development.
It requires a delicate balance, so Chip and Gini address how to thread the needle appropriately to make sure you are meeting the needs of prospects without unnecessarily alienating those who may be less receptive to your message right now.
It's an uncertain time for everyone. Business is disrupted. Personal lives are upended. Fear and anxiety are common feelings.
On this episode of the Agency Leadership Podcast, Chip and Gini look at how agencies can and should be handling the situation. There's no one size fits all answer -- it really does depend -- but they have both been through tough times in business and the economy before and they share the lessons they have learned along the way.
From staffing to business development, the pair have helpful advice designed to help you get through this challenge and come out stronger on the other side.
Even though it's a difficult time, Chip and Gini still try to bring some of their trademark humor to lighten the conversation.
Agencies rely on their people to succeed. Ultimately, agencies are selling labor hours, no matter how much we may all try to price things to obscure that fact.
Having the best talent helps make the difference between successful client engagements and those that come up short. But how do you get the quality you want and need?
Chip and Gini review the recruiting and hiring process in this episode of the Agency Leadership Podcast. The pair offer tips on how to find the right prospective hires and how to screen them.
A recent question on the PRSA member discussion forum came from a client who was looking for guidance on setting goals for their PR agency. The individual inquired if "3-5% [growth is] fairly standard."
Chip and Gini tackled this question, along with the broader topic of aligning agency work with client goals. They also discussed how these goals might factor in to agency compensation.
Most agency owners have at least mused about the possibility of selling their business at some point. After all, who wouldn't want someone to get a nice fat check for that recognizes their significant professional accomplishment.
But why would someone buy youragency?
That's the question that Chip and Gini address in this week's episode. They discuss the recent report published by Agency Leadership Advisors that summarizes PR agency M&A transactions that took place in 2019. The co-hosts look at factors like capabilities, talent, geography, and size -- to name just a few.
You can certainly go it alone as an agency owner, but it can quickly get pretty lonely. On this week's episode of the Agency Leadership Podcast, Chip and Gini talk about how coaching can help agency owners get more from their businesses.
Of course, Chip and Gini both provide coaching and advisory services for agency owners, but this episode covers a range of approaches that are available -- well beyond the border of just their two businesses.
The co-hosts explore a range of benefits from coaching, including accountability, second opinions, useful insights, a shoulder to lean on, and more.
Learning how to spot -- and handle -- red flags can make a big difference in your agency business. Knowing what to look for, what not to ignore, and what action to take can mean the difference between getting saddled with a difficult client, bad hire, or otherwise challenging situation.
Chip talks with Gini about an article she recently wrote for Spin Sucks that explored red flags in new business conversations. The co-hosts then looked at other situations that might generate red flags and offered some practical advice for agency leaders in addressing them.
From time to time, every agency gets approached by a nonprofit about discounted pricing. Many vendors of other goods and services extend these types of special deals, so these organizations aren't crazy to ask.
Chip and Gini discuss how agency owners should handle these types of requests. It is easy to get caught in a bad situation by providing what seems like a small 10% discount, only to see that erode all of the agency's profit margin on the work.
There's nothing wrong with doing pro bono work or even offering a discount. The key is to understand all of the ramifications of what you're doing and the impact on your agency's finances.
In this episode, you will hear some tips on how to make relationships with nonprofits a win-win scenario for agency and client alike, as well as pitfalls to try to avoid.
One of the toughest things for agencies to get right is pricing. If it is too high, you scare away good prospects. If it is too low, you sacrifice the profitability and sustainability of the business.
Agencies and their advisers have come up with all sorts of creative approaches. Performance-based pricing. Value-based pricing. Equity-based compensation. It goes on and on.
Chip and Gini talk about some of the options, as well as the underlying motivations of both clients and agencies in seeking new models and approaches.
Buyers purchase agencies for all sorts of reasons -- to expand geographic reach, extend capabilities, grow revenue, or pad profits. Since it's a talent-based industry, the other reason that agencies may be sold is for their people.
When the primary reason for an agency purchase is the team itself, it is often referred to as an "acquihire." It's something that has been popular for many years among tech companies in Silicon Valley who often buy small, struggling startups to quickly augment their engineering teams.
But even without a fancy name, these types of acquisitions have been taking place in the agency space for a long time, too.
Chip and Gini talk about how acquihires work, when they are a good idea, and how to structure it by looking at both sides of the transaction (buyer and seller).
Many agencies struggle with how to flex their capacity up and down as clients and projects come and go. Capacity planning, effective employee utilization, and building flexibility into your business model are all topics covered in this episode.
Chip and Gini stress the importance of elasticity to be able to take on new clients and handle emergency projects. Leveraging contractors and freelancers in addition to in-house staff is one approach, but there also needs to be effective resource management of your employees to manage workload.
Finally, the co-hosts look at how to set expectations, both internally and externally to get the most out of your efforts to maximize capacity and profitability.
Agencies are fundamentally a people business, but managing people is always a challenge. How do you get the best performance and the right results for clients? And what do you do when an individual falls short?
That's topic that Chip and Gini explore on this week's episode. It all stemmed from a post on Reddit asking about "consequences" for agency employees. While the hosts don't like that term, the concept is still an important one to explore.
From time to time a client falls in love with an agency employee so much that they want to hire them directly. The immediate reaction of many agency managers is to fight such a move.
Chip and Gini discuss how to handle situations like these -- and why it might actually be a good thing for the agency in the end.
A recent post on Reddit featured an agency employee venting about his experience working at his firm. The individual wrote:
"I'm basically the whole editorial team (it's a small agency) and the sole account manager now. I told the boss I didn't think this was sustainable in the long run, I was just told to 'stop being negative and get on with it, or leave.'"
Chip and Gini explore what it takes to avoid creating a culture that employees rebel against, as well as ensuring you have the right employees for that stage in your agency's life.
Have you ever wondered what it would be like to sell your agency to one of the big holding companies? How does the dream compare to reality? What should you know before you make that decision?
Mitch Joel shares the perspective of someone who has done just that. He and his partners sold Twist Image to WPP. After remaining with the firm for several years after the acquisition, Mitch is now a prolific writer, podcaster, speaker, and more.
He is the host of one of the longest running podcasts, and he just welcomed Seth Godin as his guest on the 700th episode of his Six Pixels of Separation show. As an accomplished communicator and entrepreneur, he has lots of useful advice for listeners.
In this solo edition of the Agency Leadership Podcast, Chip Griffin shares answers to a wide range of questions put to him in the latest Ask Chip Anything webinar.
It's a departure from our usual format, so we're interested in hearing what you think. Should Chip and Gini do occasional AMA/mailbag style episodes?
Among the topics Chip covers are:
- How to prepare your agency for a recession
- How big your agency needs to be in order to be sold
- How to budget for 2020
- Which time tracking tool to use
- How to decide whether to move from freelancer to agency owner
- Which benchmarks matter to the business
Chip and Gini will be recording a couple of separate solo episodes since scheduling conflicts prevented them from recording together recently. (Of course, we would love to hear your feedback about these and some of the other formats we have experimented with recently, including guest co-hosts.)
In this episode, Gini fields a question from Kevin Anselmo who asks about pitching agency services to prospects, including cold calling and other techniques. She explains her approach which centers around creating VIP lists of potential clients.
After you use such a list to get a meeting, Gini explains her style during initial consultations: "People want to be around people who challenge them. They want to be around people who make them think differently."
Why do PR and advertising agencies feel the need to look down their noses at each other? Why can't everyone just get along?
That's the discussion that Chip and Gini have after an article appeared in AdWeek with the provocative title "PR Agencies Invade Adland."
As the creator of the PESO model that calls for the integration of all forms of media, Gini has some especially strong feelings on the subject. The reality is that the lines between all types of agencies have blurred. It's now more of a question of an agency's primary focus, but there is an increasing need to have some degree of fluency in a range of communications disciplines at any type of agency.
A recent post in the members-only forum of the Public Relations Society of America (PRSA) discussed the benefits of small versus large PR agencies. It stemmed from a remark an agency consultant made on a recent webinar where he referred to small ad agencies as "two guys and a bong."
While we can assure you that Chip and Gini were not smoking anything when they recorded this episode (OK, at least we think we can), they do stand up for small and mid-size agencies. Not that there's anything wrong with being big, since every size and shape of PR firm has its pros and cons.
Chip also reminds agency owners to understand the difference between punching above your weight and fighting in the wrong weight class.
What agency owner hasn't dreamed about telling prospects: here's what I do, here's what it costs, take it or leave it?
That's pretty much what Chip and Gini tackle in this episode of the Agency Leadership Podcast. It all started with a provocative question posted by Gini in the Spin Sucks Community on Slack:
What would happen if we all banded together and stopped sending proposals? We put our pricing on our websites. We became clear about what we do (and who we do it for). And they either buy or they don't.
What does that life look like?
Gini believes passionately that this is the right path, while Chip frames it in more idealistic terms. Wherever you fall in the debate, there's lots of good insight shared in this discussion.
Understanding the evolution of your business and the challenges you face at each step along the way
Podcasts can be powerful tools for agencies to showcase thought leadership, make connections, and build their own brands. New research from Dante32, a podcast production and promotion agency, looks at how brands are deploying their podcasts what that indicates about best practices.
Chip and Gini use this research as a jumping off point to share their insights on using podcasts in the agency context. They review the key findings from Dante32 -- and of course have a little fun along the way.
The co-hosts discuss an article that Gini wrote for Spin Sucks that looks at 6 reasons that agency owners have trouble scaling. The conversation includes lots of actionable ideas -- despite Chip's best efforts to sidetrack things as he struggles to remember high school science basics in making an analogy.
- Reason #1: You Don’t Have a Business Plan
- Reason #2: You Can’t Break Free from Client Work
- Reason #3: Operating In Chaos
- Reason #4: Freakin’ Technology! Who Can Keep Up?
- Reason #5: Not Understanding the Whole “Measurement” Thing
- Reason #6: You Lose Focus
Agency owners are entrepreneurs and Gini notes that tends to come with a certain level of stubbornness. Or as Chip put it: "There's great similarity between a toddler and an entrepreneur."
The pair try to help owners break out of this tendency to find solutions and help them scale.
One of the most frequent questions that Gini and Chip receive from agency clients is "how do I prepare for the recession?"
In this two-part episode, they explore the question of whether/when we should expect an economic downturn and what agencies can do to prepare themselves for it. As important, they also discuss how to help their team prepares for any challenges that lie ahead.
Last week's first part examined the economic outlook, including signs that Chip and Gini are seeing in their work, along with some relevant industry research.
This week, the co-hosts tackle what agencies can do to better prepare their business and their team members for what lies ahead.
One of the most frequent questions that Gini and Chip receive from agency clients is "how do I prepare for the recession?"
In this two-part episode, they explore the question of whether/when we should expect an economic downturn and what agencies can do to prepare themselves for it. As important, they also discuss how to help their team prepares for any challenges that lie ahead.
This week's first part examines the economic outlook, including signs that Chip and Gini are seeing in their work, along with some relevant industry research.
Managing agency projects to make sure everything gets done right, delivered on time, and within budget.