Today’s episode was a real treat. For me, I have the pleasure of talking to David C. Baker, who is a legend in the agency world. We discussed everything to do with account management, including why David thinks the account management role is the most difficult role in the whole agency. Also the problem with account managers doing project management tasks, where he sees performance deficiencies in account management, and some brilliant advice for how to address those deficiencies, and also up your account management game. Why he suggests agencies asked their clients to take personality profile tests, why account management don’t receive guidance from agency owners, and so many more topics.
David has lots of high quality useful resources on his site including recordings of past webinars, his books and also you can sign up for his live events. You can also find out more about his consultancy services here.
I hope you come away with lots of new ideas about the account management role. Now if you are an account manager, and you want to raise your value, increase your confidence, improve your consultancy skills, and grow your existing accounts, then come and join me at the Account Accelerator Programme. The next one starts on 15th April. It’s for three months, and I take your agency from unpredictable project revenue to more predictable account growth. If you want some more details, please contact me on LinkedIn at Jenny Plant or drop me an email at jenny@accountmanagementskills.com. I’ll see you on the next episode.
Transcript:
Jenny
So, I’m beyond thrilled today to have David C. Baker with me today. David is a leading authority on positioning, reinventing and selling firms in the creative and digital space. He’s author of five books, including The Business of Expertise, a book Dan Pink described as essential reading for entrepreneurs in any space. And he’s considered the experts expert. David describes himself as part researcher, part scientist and part educator. He’s advised over 900 agencies and co hosts probably one of the most well known podcasts in the agency world 2Bobs with Blair Enns. He also happens to be a lifetime member of Mensa which is incredible. I’m honoured to have him on the show today to talk about everything to do with account management. So David, a big warm welcome.
David
Thank you, it’s really good to be here. Account management, now 80% of the people just left, except for the day to day- they tune in to you because of account management, right? But if anybody else said that we’re going talk about account management today, zoom, everybody’s gone!
Jenny
That is so true! I know that you’ve written a lot about this. I’m a massive fan, I’ve followed your work for a long time. And I know that you have a really strong point of view on many things. And I often find myself listening to your podcast, and kind of nodding and saying, yes, so there were several where I just felt, ‘Yes, David’s actually said things that I’ve been thinking’. So I’m so excited about this interview. So, would you mind by starting off by, I know you are a legend in the industry, so many people know you. But just giving a little bit more detail about how you work with agencies.
David
Sure. So I had my own firm for, I can’t remember, it was five or six years. And through a strange set of circumstances, I started advising my peers. And so, I do that, I’ve worked in 30 countries. I only work with the smaller, independent firms. So, I don’t work for the ones that are a part of holding companies and so on. And now I only help them with how to make better business decisions around their positioning, around staffing, merger, acquisition, succession stuff. I’m not qualified to help them do better work, there’s lots of good help for that. So one of the strange, I never would have predicted this, but one of the strange areas where they seem to really soak up whatever sort of insight I and others can give, is around roles, particularly account management and project management. So, when you invited me to come on your podcast, I was eager to do that, because I just think it’s such an interesting topic. To me it is and it should be more interesting to other people. But it’s also so much more relevant than some of the things that we spend a lot of time worrying about. In other words, your clients will notice poor account management long before they notice work that isn’t up to your standards. But we focus on the work more than we focus on how it’s delivered and how we lead clients. So that’s sort of why this is important to me.
Jenny
You’ve described the agency account management role as the most difficult job in the agency. Can you tell me a bit more about why you think that?
David
Yeah, and the last thing they need is a bigger head, right! So, account management people are strange, power hungry, very persuasive. The last thing they need is to hear that, but it’s true, because it’s the only role, well, I guess the principal has a little bit of this, but it’s the only role where they have one foot firmly planted on both sides of the fence. I think of it as sort of like an ambassador, but it’s even worse. So if I’m the US ambassador to China, then my allegiance is to the US. But I still have to see things through China’s eyes. But then an account person has to be a lot more balanced than that. They can’t give away the firm, but they have to be the clients advocate within the agency. And so that’s why it’s the most, I don’t think it’s the most important role, I think that’s a PM, but I think it’s the most difficult role for sure. And it’s very few people who can do that role well. Let me just insert something, this strikes me every time I say this, I think, if somebody else were saying this, I’m not sure I would believe it, and it’s that, everybody who is a great account person, is a failed something else. That’s because you don’t go to school to be an account person. You don’t. And nobody says when I grow up, I want to be an account person. They always went to school for something else. We know that because there is no schooling, I mean there’s training and so on, but there’s no schooling for it like formal schooling. So they’ve tried something else and discovered that they were really good at account management and they adopted that life. So it’s strange, it’s so important and yet we don’t have a formal educational track for it. Isn’t that strange, like we do for design and advertising?
Jenny
It’s so true. And what do you think are those magic skills that an account manager discovers that they’re good at?
David
Listening for sure. I think that’s really critical. The ability to push back on a client without causing unnecessary offence. So, I think of it as sending a client to hell and helping them enjoy the trip, so to speak. So we’re not losing the client, but we’re definitely communicating something that needs to be said. I think also, the ability to grow an account, which I’m sure we’ll talk more about at some point. So the client will have questions and you try to answer them, and then you ask questions. But the ability to ask really smart questions is, I don’t think anybody is better at that than account people. Those would be probably the core skills, I think. And there are some core skills that don’t exist in account people. That’s great organisation, it’s very rare to find a great account person who doesn’t also need somebody following around behind them to clean up the mess, just honestly.
Jenny
You made me chuckle with this. What do you think the problem is with expecting account managers to also do the project management role? Because when I work with agency account managers, they come to me with the title of account manager, but actually what they’re doing is this hybrid role of managing projects and having to grow the account.
David
Right? Well, part of the challenge there is simply ability to do both of those things. And this was a complete surprise to me in that when I was doing research around this, in the early 2000s, I wanted to see if there was a pattern, a personality profile pattern, that match certain roles at firms. And I started out because I had a conference in San Francisco for 50 creative directors. And I thought, all right, I have all these victims in one place, I’ll just give them all this personality profile. And there was no pattern whatsoever. And it was kind of an expensive process, it cost me about 4000 bucks. So I thought, well, I’ll just drop this, or maybe I should try one more thing. And I had an event coming up in Dallas with 40 account people. And I decided to give them all a personality profile again. And the difference was staggeringly different. I think it was 85/ 86%, whatever, that almost all, but two or three people, had the same personality profile. And that personality profile was not, it didn’t indicate strengths around organisation, or objectivity, or process orientation. What it indicated was an ability to communicate well, to know where to push back, to take a relationship over forcefully to lead it. So, there are some people, maybe 20% of account people who are really good at PMing as well. But in most cases, what makes you a great AM, makes you a pretty terrible PM. To take this a little bit further, when you have an AM who’s functioning in the role of a PM, often things get dropped, that’s kind of obvious, but they also have a propensity to give away too much of the shop because they get lost in this desire to make the client happy, sometimes at the expense of the firm. And that’s where that role gets a little bit weird where they’re trying to straddle both sides of the fence. So when you have an AM doing a PM role, sometimes the work isn’t as organised or buttoned up. And also they need the PM to be a balancing force so that we don’t give away too much to the client.
Jenny
I’m nodding because this is so true, and I think it’s going to come as a really big food for thought for many agency owners who are actually thinking about this role. So, I mean, what happens for an agency that has the PM leading that client relationship?
David
And that’s particularly true with newer firms that are more slanted towards digital work for sure. But what happens there is two things. And the first could happen at any point and it tends to happen sooner rather than later. And that’s that a PM will miss some cues that maybe the relationship is slightly off course. Their focus is on competence and objectivity and delivery, and they don’t read some of the signals that the client is needing a slightly different treatment, they need a little bit more coddling and so on, a little bit more wrapped in relationship, that’s the first thing that happens. The second thing that happens, and this doesn’t show up for quite a while, it could be a year or a year and a half, but it’s that the client typically doesn’t grow as much as it could have if it was being managed by an AM. So a PMs perspective is to do great work and to not mess up. It’s not to take risks and grow the account. The account person’s job, the way they view it, is to constantly take risks and see what else we could do for the client. Not in a way that is a misuse of client funds, but like they just see opportunity in there. And they’re not worried about messing up from time to time, because they have enough confidence in their abilities to sort of save the account, and most of the time, that actually does happen. But they have this outlook of always wanting to grow an account. So that’s what happens when you have a PM, functioning as an AM, is that they miss some personal cues sometimes, and in other cases, they don’t grow the account. I want to mention, though, that we can’t just rely on the fact that somebody is called a PM or an AM because people use those phrases. There are a lot of people called PMs who are actually functioning as AMs. And the opposite is true as well, there’s quite a bit of confusion in this space I think.
Jenny
I agree, absolutely. I agree. Was there anything in your findings, in your research, to show that the pure account manager enjoyed more the client interactions? Because sometimes when I’ve met the role of an account manager, but actually it’s a PM role, they like to be very transactional, I’ve done that tick off the list. They’re not the ones that naturally want to speak to the client or engage as much. Have you found anything in your research to show that that’s true?
David
Yes, it’s absolutely true. And in DISC language, that’s the personality profile that I use, that would be somebody typically, with a low ‘I’. They don’t need a lot of social interaction to be satisfied. And what they’re doing is motivated by a genuine desire to serve and please the client, but they don’t see the need for all of the relationship side, to them that’s inefficient, and it’s also not all that welcome. It takes energy for them to do that. Whereas the best account people are not always energetically from a relationship standpoint. What they do is they are really good at seeing how the individual client on the other end of the line wants to be interacted with. And then they adapt their style to that. So if the client prefers a brief email with two choices, that’s what they get. If they prefer a long lunch or a drink to discuss a tough topic, then that’s what they do. Relationship driven people are really good at seeing what other folks need and want and they deliver in that way. Somebody with a PM profile will default to less relationship management. Now the best ones can adapt a little bit, but they find it exhausting to have to pretend to be like an AM when in their hearts, they’re PMs.
Jenny
I just love this so much. During COVID, you ran multiple free webinars, and I know you attracted hundreds and hundreds of people from the agency space. During those webinars, you advised firms to keep the AMs and PMs and flex with the skill players. Can you tell me a little bit more about why you why you advise that?
David
Yeah, it doesn’t make sense on the surface. It doesn’t seem obvious to me that that would be the right thing to do. It seems to me like we’re in the business of doing advertising or creative or digital. So we got to keep those people and that the AMs and PMs are sort of redundant. And I don’t believe that at all. I think that the core in American football, we call it role players and skill players. So the role players in this example are AMs PMs, and in some cases some strategists and also new business people. Those are the ones that make the core of your firm. And if that strikes you as odd, it’s because you don’t believe that that contribution is as billable as the other things, but like I said before, clients notice deficiencies in AMing and PMing long before they notice deficiencies in the work. They also won’t notice much in their experience if you’re working with a contractor who’s a writer, as opposed to an account person who is a writer. So the core staff, the people that are with you all the time, the ones that they get used to are the AM and the PM roles, and then new business and in some cases strategy. And then all the skill players are the ones that you can assemble for a particular team at a certain time. Ideally, I think a client wants all those people full time and on staff. But when that’s not possible, it’s better to flex with the skill players and not the role players.
Jenny
Lovely, thank you for explaining that. So when you start working with an agency, where do you typically see deficiencies in the performance of the account management team?
David
Well, it always starts with having the right people in those seats. So if you’re working with a firm, and they don’t believe in account management, and this comes because they worked at an agency, for instance, and they wondered what they did, and they called them suits, and they thought they just needed expense accounts and ate up the budget. Right? That’s a perspective that still lingers in this field. And it’s, and that’s because it, there are a lot of cases where that’s actually true. So in that world, they diminish the role of an account manager, and they don’t have one, that’s one thing I see frequently. Another thing I think I see, and this just blows my mind, is the occasional firm where they don’t think account management or project management is billable. Really, that’s crazy. And there were a couple firms in the US, especially around the packaging side, where their clients wouldn’t allow them to charge for it. So they discharged $400 an hour for design or something right, and those days are gone. I’m talking about modern firms who don’t think that it’s billable, or they just tack on some percentage on top of it. The other that I see, is assigning PMs to AMs and in that scenario, AMs are more powerful and persuasive. And so the PMs don’t typically have as much power as they need in those relationships. And so the AM is sort of ordering the PM around and in my world AMs and PMs are exactly equivalent and need to create this healthy joint tension. Another area I see pretty frequently is, and this one makes me really angry honestly, and it’s that we don’t see separate career paths for PMs and AMs. Instead, we think that you start out as kind of an assistant to an AM, and then eventually, maybe we’ll let you talk with a client every once in a while. And then when you’re really good, you get to talk with a client. And that just diminishes the role of PMs. I think PMs are just as important as AMs and their career paths are completely different because, now you may start out as a PM and discover that wasn’t the right fit for you and you bounce to an AM or vice versa, but the roles and the personalities and the outlooks are very different. That’s one thing I see very frequently.
Jenny
Where do you see it working really well? Have you got an example of where you’ve witnessed a PM and AM working seamlessly together? Because this is something that often a lot of people talk to me about, how do we actually establish roles and responsibilities? And who’s going to speak to the client, who’s going to lead the meeting? Where does one stop, start and the other one finish, etc.
David
I think the aim should be the primary interface with the client all the time. Not because we’re trying to protect the client from anybody else. In fact, the PM should be the primary backup contact and we’re not trying to keep the PM from interfacing with the client at all, it’s fine. But nothing should happen with the client that the AM doesn’t know about. That’s one of the basic ways to divide labour. I think one of the things that I’m hoping that people will get, is how to work better together and to create sort of that healthy tension. 30 years ago, before I was in the advisory business, I remember I won’t mention his name but he used to say this all the time, that, and this was before there was much research about what made a great PM, and he would say, if you like your PM, you’ve got the wrong one. That’s what he would say. And the idea was, that the very best PMs are sort of like taxi cab dispatchers, they’re short, abrupt, to the point, matter of fact, and to some extent they are, but in the best scenarios, the AMs feel like, I could never get my job done without great PMs behind me. And PMs are so grateful that they’re not AMs because that’s not what they want to do. So there’s this healthy tension that comes about between them. But it’s not just about AMs and PMs working really well together, there are other systemic issues that can get in the way. So for instance, if you have an AM, who’s having to manage a lot of accounts, they can’t give the right attention to that, they can’t be expected to grow those. I found that kind of the ideal number is one to four, one to five accounts. Or if, the salespeople are consistently delivering clients who are not a great fit, who don’t trust the firm, they aren’t spending enough money, they can’t corral the decision makers, then as an AM you can’t be responsible for those results, right. So it really is a picture of teamwork all working together. And, moving the firm forward, together, I have a lot of respect for both AMs and PMs. But I would say that, between those two, the one that needs more respect in our field than they get now is the PM side. The AM’s are going to be okay on their own. They amass respect, that’s part of what makes them good at what they do. The PMs don’t, they’re labouring in the background doing great work. And we notice them when something fails, but we don’t necessarily notice something when things are great.
Jenny
Have you seen evidence of how it affects a PM then, if they’re not given the right attention, or they’re not being recognised? What have you seen from firms that have that scenario playing out?
David
Well, fortunately, PMs are often self motivated. And they’re going to do a great job regardless until they just leave the firm. AM’s get their feelings hurt, and you’ll know if they’re unhappy, right, a PM will just keep doing their job! But if you’re going to stand out in this marketplace, first of all you’ve got to have a really brilliant positioning that sets you apart, I’m just assuming that, but after that, once you land a client, what clients really notice is brilliant account management and brilliant PMing, and the better, you can manage that with both of those branches, then the better off you’ll be, it’ll really give you a leg up in the marketplace.
Jenny
I’ve got a little side question. You mentioned the sales team earlier on. Just curious, in your experience, where have you seen a good pass-over between the sales team and the account management team? Where do you see that?
David
A lot sooner than it is?
Jenny
I was expecting you were going to say that!
David
This is such a mistake we make. So I view sales, not marketing, but sales as essentially assessing fit, and answering objections, and so on and setting the table. Once it looks like that prospect is going to begin working with the firm, then sales continue, but those sales are led by the account person. So the account person needs to be introduced very early in the process. If you don’t do that, then these are the problems that occur. One is that the client will get attached or will bond with the salesperson who needs to leave the cave and go kill something else and drag it back. They can’t afford to get dragged into being the account person. So that’s one problem. The second problem is you don’t want to count people to feel like they’re inheriting all these promises that a salesperson made, right? It’s just resentful. And a salesperson has no incentive not to make crazy promises just to close an account, right. And the third reason is that we really want to let the salesperson focus on what they’re great at. So I’m a firm believer in introducing an account person very early in the process, and they actually close the first project with the client. And then the salesperson should never be seen by the client again. Now the only time you have a salesperson who feels obligated to insert themselves into the relationship is if the account person is not a capable seller or grower of that account, in which case they have to rely on the salesperson. That’s a fault with the AM. That’s not the way sales should work. Sales should only be about new business, not existing business.
Jenny
Thank you. I’m sure a lot of agency leaders listening to this, we’ll be thinking about that. That’s great advice. And so, something that I read on one of your blogs, you said that you suggest agencies ask their clients to take a personality test, which I think is absolute genius idea. Can you tell me a bit more about that?
David
Yeah. And if there’s any qualms about it, you just give them yours and say, ‘Hey, we’re really big at this firm in trying to match up how we work with you based on what you prefer’. And so I don’t know you well enough to know what those preferences are. But if you would be interested in taking this, then I’d love to set you up. And you might enjoy it. Here’s mine, if you want to look it over and see what it says, And invariably, they’ll take it. And then they’ll say, ‘Hey, could I get one of those for my partner too, I mean life partner…’ And then there’s lots of fun discussion. But even if you don’t want to do that, there are some very simple two question sort of quizzes that you can ask yourself without ever talking to them to see what kind of personality profile they are. That way you’ll know how to manage conflict, you’ll know how to be efficient, but also give them the attention that they want. Are they somebody who likes to be in charge, and they want to have options? Is it somebody who wants to see all the details? Or maybe it’s somebody who wants to see all the process step by step? Or it could be somebody that just wants to be inspired? You know, so it’s important to understand how each client is different, and then treat them differently. You’re not in the service business, you’re in the expertise business, but there isn’t any reason to not make the process as smooth as possible for clients, to whatever extent you can.
Jenny
You mentioned earlier on that you use the DISC profile, do you recommend that one for clients as well? Is that your go to recommendation?
David
It’s not the most accurate one, the most accurate one is Kolbe or PI. But DISC is very accessible and inexpensive. It’s where I did most of my research. There’s some other pretty good ones too, like Myers Briggs, Indra. There’s five or six that are really, very accurate scientifically, the rest are kind of not. But even some of those will be sort of useful, if nothing else it will be interesting.
Jenny
Great, okay, thank you for that. So one of the observations that I’ve made from training account managers, is the lack of coaching and guidance from the agency leadership team. Can you tell me if you’ve experienced the same?
David
Yeah, I have. And I would say, it’s not just a failure in coaching, it’s that they just don’t know what they’re doing. You know, they don’t have anything to add to it right? That’s not something that’s common across all successful principals. The only thing that’s common across all successful principals is that they are risk takers. Some of them are great account people, and a lot of them are not. They feel like, in the early days that their firm is successful because of their account management, which is not true at all. It’s more because of their strategic insight. And so when they finally give that up and let somebody else do the account management, they discover how good that person is. And it’s beyond what they ever could have imagined themselves. So I don’t think it’s so much a failure of leadership, I think it’s just simply not having a lot to add to it. A lot of principals are really bad at account management, and they’re even worse at project management. So it doesn’t surprise me that it happens. I think that’s why advisory practices like yours have so much opportunity out there, because there are principals who care about this, but they don’t know what to do. And so they rely on an outside expert to help.
Jenny
I think it’s definitely a big gap. And that’s why my programmes are at least three months, because I like to work with that manager over a period of time. So going back to the account management role, what would be your advice for someone listening, thinking, I really want to up my game, I really want to develop my career in account management. What’s your advice for how they should do that to be successful in account management?
David
Well, I think having an articulated point of view around, and this would be a lot easier if if, as an account manager you’re working with firms who consistently are in the same space, whether that’s vertical or horizontal positioning, if you’re working for seven clients, and none of them have anything in common then I think it’s very difficult for you to be a great account person. But if there’s some commonality between them, then learning their field as much as possible, staying in touch with what’s happening around it would be critical. And then learning great communication skills, maybe even signing up for some personal therapy, understanding yourself, understanding what your hot buttons are and how to talk yourself down off the ledge. I think networking with other account people is really good. Widely read as well, get feedback from right after a meeting, get feedbacks- anybody else from your team that was in there- like what went well there? What didn’t go well? That’s one of the difficulties with this field is that there’s not just one very specific body of knowledge you go learn, it’s really about being a better human more than anything. There’s no role that’s more human than the account person. And, so being self aware, learning how to read, learning how to de-escalate, those are all really critical. And I’m not even talking about like, understanding the particular nuances of your of your client work, which is big enough, right?
Jenny
This is such good advice. I wish in my career, I’d started reading and seeking external counsel much, much earlier in my career. You know, I feel that much of my career, I started in the early 90s, in an account management role, and you feel like you’re being pulled from pillar to post, not really having any commercial guidance as to what your role is. And so that’s fantastic advice. And also understanding yourself because we are the principal communicators and that’s our currency.
David
Right. Something else I would add would be, and this is going to strike people as pretty strange, but go to Google and look up Theory of Change or Model of Change, and then flip to the image tab and see the 1000s of theories of change. And peruse those someday and come up with a model that’s unique to your firm, about how you as a firm interact with your clients. How you bring them along, what’s your theory of change. It’s an area that not a lot of people have experienced, and we just innately know, at least we think we know, how to present a new idea to somebody and convince them of it. But if you spend a little bit more time, more like a scientist, and think about what is your own perspective on theory or models of change, it would help you as an account manager too.
Jenny
That’s great advice. I recently read a book, and there was some research that came out at the end of last year, about how we should bear that in mind when we’re presenting ideas to clients. And they they use the principle of status quo bias. And they broke it down into what actually constitutes status quo bias. And some, examples of how you can overcome status quo bias. So you’re saying exactly the same thing? I think that’s brilliant, brilliant advice. So, what do you advise agency leaders do when they say to you that they want to grow their accounts? What are your go to pieces of advice for them?
David
The single thing that I think is most important there is to keep simulating the first year you work for the client. So presumably, when you land a client, they were already working with somebody else. If they weren’t, then they probably are not a good client. In other words, you’re not the first agency they’re working with. That’s a sign of a client, that’s a good fit. And they came to you because something about the previous firm was stale. They weren’t reinventing things, they were just doing the minimum, whatever those things were, and you impressed them out of the gate. And you were a little bit surprised you landed it, and now you’re doing everything you can to fill those expectations that they have. But then you slide into the same thing that the other previous agency did, and you have new clients coming along all the time. And you kind of forget these and you don’t every year say, ‘All right, let’s not just modify last year’s plan. Let’s instead look at what would we do completely differently if we inherited this plan from another agency? What could we do differently?’ And I think that’s the biggest thing you can do to grow accounts and to keep them. The goal isn’t to keep them forever. The goal is to keep them for the right amount of time. And that could be for two years or five years, seldom is it longer than that. And the key to that, there are things out of your control obviously, but the key to that is to treat it like it’s a new year every year and this is a client we’re still really trying hard to impress.
Jenny
That’s great advice. And it’s something that we talk about in the account accelerator programme, being proactive, coming up with new ideas. I read a study, and one of the questions to clients in this study was, ‘When you change agencies, what are some of the primary reasons why?’ And the top answer was ‘Because they never gave us anything that we didn’t ask for.’ So it sums up what you’re saying, don’t rest on your laurels. You mentioned that typically on average, an agency would keep a client between two and five years. Just curious, what do you think happens after five years? Where do you see the problems occurring agencies have very long client relationships?
David
So in the early days of a relationship, they’re more likely to listen to you and they’re more likely to pay you some sort of a premium. That tails off in time. It always does, it’s just a matter of how long it takes to happen. I think agencies, especially agencies that are growing, and whose capabilities are changing faster than their client needs are changing, I think a healthy turnover of your client ratio is a really good thing. And it’s not the way it is in the field though, you hear people bragging all the time about how we have our first client still 11 years later. And I think, if you have them for the right reasons, that’s great. But it could be that neither of you is all that ambitious, I don’t know. I think you want to have an episodic relationship with your clients. The more it’s just a steady presence, the less they’re going to listen to you carefully, or pay you much money. You don’t want to be the occupying force that moves into people’s farmhouses and eats their crops and dates their daughters, that’s not what we want. We want the deliberating force that falls from the sky to cheers and fixes things and then moves out. That’s more the relationship we should have with our clients. There’s exceptions to that. But in general, we’re too in love with long clients. And that’s part long term relationships with clients and that’s partly because we suck at new business, and we’re terrified of losing clients.
Jenny
It’s so true. Do you think those ones that get stuck are just disrespected? The respect is somehow diminished if you’ve got the client for too long?
David
Well that’s the default for sure. Now, if you are really good at consistently, over time, looking for ways to grow that clients presence in their marketplace, then that’s very different, right. But it’s not that many firms that do that. Most firms sort of slide into this old couple routine, where I know where I’m supposed to sit on the couch, and like what I’m supposed to do after dinner, and it’s not all that exciting. It’s just what we do, this is not my marriage, this is somebody else, but we’re not taking the risks, it’s not like a dating relationship. And so you don’t want the client relationship to get into the old couple thing where you’re just doing, because nobody wants to pay a lot of money for that. And people aren’t listening too carefully to each other at that point.
Jenny
Interesting because, you said, unless you’re helping them grow their own presence, which is so true, but in order to do that, you have to have an understanding of their business, and what their challenges are, and what their problems are, so that you can help. And then it comes back to your previous point about, if you’re not specialised enough, and you’re spread so thinly across so many different clients, both in volume, but also in industry, and how you’re going to get to that point where you do have the expertise to offer the right value?
David
Yeah, exactly. In the end, you’re kind of cheating your clients, if you aren’t setting this up in a way that really serves them well. And that’s why I’m such a believer, here’s one thing that just leads to everything I do, and that’s let’s be better business people, there’s a lot of people helping you do better work. I want you to be a better business person, not just for your sake, but for their sake. I want you to force your clients to listen to you, not because of some power trip, but because you know what you’re talking about and it’s in their best interest to do that. You need to amass this sort of power, and then use it for good, not use it for evil (and that’s probably some Bible verse, I don’t mean it in the Bible sense), but there’s something about, we’re an unregulated marketplace. And the barrier to entry is non existent. Tomorrow I could be whatever I want to be in this field. And because of that, there’s this sloppiness around how we do this work. And it’s no wonder that we’re kind of later in the process, we’re not paid as well as other professional service providers. I want to change that because there are a lot of people in this field who are really good at what they do, and they deserve to feel that spotlight of the impact that they’re having on their clients. And that is often mediated through great account management. You don’t find many really successful firms who don’t have great account people as well.
Jenny
I so agree, and I want to up the quality of what we do. I mean, I know you did a whole episode on this, but you talked about the consulting firms, and I was looking at a chart the other day about how much these consulting firms are kind of taking over so many different creative agencies. You’ve got the likes of Accenture, Deloitte, and I can’t help but think it’s only a matter of time before those more proficient consulting skills they have, sort of blend seamlessly with the creative agency component. You know, I can’t believe that. And I don’t know what’s going on behind the scenes with that. But I think we do need to up our game.
David
Yeah, absolutely. The only thing they can’t do is this wild, insane, essential creativity, that they they have not figured out how to do that. That’s the only trump card we have. I need to think of another word than trump card. Right? It’s the only thing we have, and and they keep buying firms. But if we get our act together, and are really good at delivering strategy, in the right context of account management, then we can win that game. I really do believe there’s something this industry has that the consulting industry doesn’t have.
Jenny
How many independent firms that you work with have a planner?
David
An account So you’re coming from the UK, only the agencies here call them account planners. In my structural model, I call them planners and people look at me, like what are you talking about? Because you guys, you guys invented account planning. So they would typically call them strategists, or researchers. And I would say that probably, maybe a third to 40% of them have somebody who is specifically dedicated to that. Otherwise, they kind of throw it into the account management side or they may have a contractor on the outside. So that’s an area where an agency could beef up their offering significantly.
Jenny
Yes Do you advise people to consider having a strategist?
David
Yeah, absolutely. A strategist should be a part of that role player staff that isn’t a contractor and it needs to be an essential part of your offering, it needs to be the first thing you do at the outset of a new client relationship.
Jenny
Fantastic. How do you think the agency business model, David, is going to evolve in the future?
David
Well, we haven’t typically lead much evolution there, we’ve typically more responded to what’s happening. The shakeout from 2020 is a little bit unclear to me. I do think agencies got more comfortable using remote folks. And so there’ll probably be more contractor relationships that they’ll get comfortable using and assembling a team. I do think that’s probably the biggest change that’s coming, in that there’ll be core teams and then it’ll be more like the Hollywood movie studio model where we assemble a team for a year and a half with this client project and then we disassemble or we go to the next thing or something like that. I think that’s one thing that will be different. You have a lot of young people coming along who don’t have any experience in this field. And so there’s a lot of things they need to learn. But I love the fact that they’re not coming with a lot of assumptions. And so they’re thinking very differently around pricing, and around delivery and mix of services. So I think that’s going to be really good for our industry. I wouldn’t want to be running the firm, having done so for 30 years and doing things the way I was 30 years ago. I think that’s probably a recipe for disaster. I do think software is going to take over more and more of what we do from the bottom and from the top, these consulting firms are going to take more and more what we do. I think we’re going to have to get more into the advisory space and less into the implementation space. And all of those things are really good pressures to have because I’m not sure we would change without those pressures.
Jenny
I agree. Have you noticed a trend in the US as there is here in the UK? I was on a Beamer roundtable and there was a discussion around titles of account managers, and lots of agencies were taking the decision to change the title to consultant. Are you seeing the same trend in the US?
David
Yeah, and it’s a little empty frankly. As if this is really going to change things. For one thing, people don’t want to be consultants when they grew up, trust me on that one! That’s just window dressing, it’s just one of those silly little things we’re doing telling ourselves that we’re really making a difference. I don’t think it matters to clients all that much. You want to act like a consultant for sure. But whatever you call yourself, I don’t think matters. We’ve gone through all kinds of different titles. And to me, that’s all window dressing. I’d concentrate on more the essence of what somebody’s doing.
Jenny
Are you seeing any trend for employees of the agency having the confidence now to set up on their own?
David
Oh, sure. Yeah, whenever you have a widespread disruption, like 2020 was and before that a little bit, and 2011 a lot, 2008 a lot in 2001, people are let go, and they just are forced to essentially work on their own, and they discover they enjoy it, and it goes really well. And so we’ll look back on this time, last half of 2020, and the first half of 2021 and see lots of new firms founded, and that’s good. That’s really good. I think that’s the kind of fresh blood that we need. There’ll be a real distinction though, between, you’re not going to find a lot of people starting firms who weren’t already in this space, so there won’t be quite as much learning as has happened in other high response economic times. So they’re going to bring some bad habits with them because of where they were. The other thing that’s happening is that on the later end of things is that principles are not staying in this space, as long as they did before. It used to be a life sentence, you did this and then then you didn’t do it, and then you didn’t work anywhere else, that’s not the case at all anymore. People are discovering in their 40s, that there’s one or two more careers after this, and they’re leaving the field. So there’s a lot more churn in the space, it’s a lot more to keep up with, a lot more interesting, a lot more change overall I think it’s good.
Jenny
Are you seeing principals, kind of building and selling and then building again, and selling quite quickly.
David
Some of them are, but they’re usually not building on the second run, they’re not building another agency like this. It’s not a great investment to build an agency like this if you already have one and you run it well, there’s a good chance you can sell it if you do things, right, but it’s not the easiest kind of place to sell. So what they’re building instead is like a software company or a product company. They’ve learned how to do those things around the edges, and it’s a lot more interesting to them, it’s a lot more scalable to them. One of the things that they discovered in running the firm is that there are a lot of things that come with it that they just don’t enjoy. And so they’re trying to get out of that requirement, and they’re trying to build a company that is more scalable to them.
Jenny
What kind of things do they tell you that they don’t enjoy?
David
Managing people is top of the list. Nobody got into this field wanting to manage people, nor did they think about what gross would mean. Gross for them means doing less of something that they enjoy, and more of something they don’t in many cases, and that’s managing people. That’s the biggest thing, and especially if you are conflict averse, and you don’t like coaching people, then the staff is just a consistent daily pain in the neck. If you’re really good at those things, and there are a lot of people who are really good at that stuff, they don’t necessarily enjoy the process as much as they enjoy seeing somebody’s career really take off and see how somebody leaves. That’s the other thing that’s happening too is you’ll have more boomerang employees. So somebody who works someplace, goes somewhere else, often for the money or because a family member is moving, and then they come back and they work at the same place that’s happening a lot more than before too. And that’s satisfying, because it gives the principal this sense of how much impact they’re having.
Jenny
Do you see a big impact for those agencies that really establish culture very well in their agency? Really genuinely, putting people first?
David
There’s a really significant benefit to the employees and to their job as a leader. Not so much in terms of the client experience or the effectiveness of the work, and that’s where I think we mix things up. You need to do great from a cultural standpoint, because it’s the right thing to do because your employees deserve it. Not because it’s a point of differentiation in the marketplace. We’re talking about culture way too much publicly instead of just doing it.
Jenny
Totally agree. David, this has been amazing. Thank you so much for sharing so many insights. I’ve made loads and loads of notes, and I know everyone listening here is going to get some a-ha moments! So thank you so much for taking the time to talk to me today. I really appreciate it.
David
You’re welcome, Jenny. Thank you for having me.
