Welcome to Episode 38. This is part two of a two part interview with Simon Rhind-Tutt and Carey Evans from Relationship Audits and Management.
If you didn’t catch the first part, I would urge you to go back to Episode 37 and make sure that you listen to that one, because we covered the three themes of their interviews with hundreds of clients over the last year:
– Is your agency fit for purpose?
– Are you nimble enough?
– Are you communicating in the best way?
This episode, we’re going to cover three new themes:
– Are you sharing learnings from other clients?
– Are you better or worse at tech?
– And did you realise that what drives perception of value for money has changed.
I hope you enjoy this final part of the interview with Simon and Carey and come away with some ideas for what you could perhaps be doing differently with your agency right now, as a result of the insights that they both shared.
If you have been listening to this podcast for a while, I would really love you to go and leave a review on Apple podcasts so that more people can get to hear it. I would love your review to be very honest.
Transcript:
Jenny 00:00
So I want to move on to the next theme, if that’s okay, which particularly stood out for me, is all about the question around ‘Are you sharing learnings from other clients?’ So can you tell me the background to this question and some of your recommendations?
Carey 00:15
Yeah. I mean, it’s fascinating. Whenever there’s uncertainty, people want to know what the best thing to do is. And if you’re an agency, you’ve got loads of clients generally, or at least you’ve got more than one. And so if you’re working with different clients, you may be coming across different ways of dealing with things like the pandemic. Now, this of course, is not just about the pandemic, this is something that’s we’ve noticed over the years, has been around for a long time, where a client will say to an agency, ‘I tell you what, what are you doing for others of your clients that I can use and reapply to my business?’ And they just go ‘Oh, yeah. Okay’. And then if asked, the agency will think about it and go to them. But the real opportunity here is to just turn that round. You know, 25%, sorry,
100% of clients want their agencies to leverage their learning with other clients to their benefit. 25% of agencies do so. 100 versus 25. It’s dead easy, right? If you’re doing stuff for a certain client that works, and you see an analogous situation with another client that could benefit from a similar sort of situation, then why not share, confidentiality being prime of course, but you can certainly talk broad principles as and when you do it. And of course, the great thing is you can also turn these things into case studies, whereby it becomes an agency library of how to apply, reapply learning from one situation to another one while making adjustments at the margin. Now, all clients want, everybody wants the inside track right? Now, this is such an easy thing for agencies to do. It’s true of service providers in every market we’ve looked at, the clients want them to leverage their learning.
Jenny 02:19
I absolutely agree and I love that you’re making this point. And I just hope everyone takes it on board, because it’s such an easy win. But do you know what? One agency account manager told me, I talk about this in my programme, and we talk about using client stories and talking about what other clients are benefiting from and what you’re seeing, the trends, the patterns. And you know what she said? I’ve always been told in client service, you shouldn’t be talking about other clients, because the client you’re with wants to feel like the only client. So up until that point, she hadn’t ever referred to what she’s doing with other clients. So that’s a little bit inside the mind. Now what she actually did, was she did tell the client a story about what she was doing with other clients. And because this particular client, he was ambitious, he wanted to look good within the company, he started leaning in and saying, ‘So tell me, what else are you doing for the other clients? Yes, I want to know that and send me a proposal to this and what else what else?’ She came away from that meeting, no word of a lie because I’ve got it recorded, for a proposal to write for £150,000 worth of new business. So what you’re saying, when I read that in your report, I just thought yes, finally, kind of it’s official!
Carey 03:38
Yeah. And, there’s a great example, two months ago, I was interviewing a lady client of one of my clients. And she said that when she had gone into this role, they had two B2B agencies and the split was roughly 50/50. Six months in, the split is now 65/35 in favour of the agency that employed us last year, took our advice and started sharing learning. So they’ve increased their share. And the other thing that agencies kind of get very nervous about and very timid about, is the concept that the clients of the agencies should in fact meet in some way. Club clients together, what they might say?! Clients love it! Clients want to do it because they want an opportunity to network, they want an opportunity to learn and reapply. It’s all about learn and reapply. Get the shortcut, get the journey.
Simon 04:50
I don’t know whether we mentioned this last time, but it’s probably worth telling the story again. There is an agency we work with in the States who want to bring thought leadership and added value to the client relationships. And what they do every quarter is they invite I think, four or five, let’s say other marketing managers or marketing directors to a meeting, where they bring the creative director and the strategic planning director, and generally the managing director of the agency And the client is asked to bring one business challenge or problem that they are facing. Prior to the meeting, everybody has signed an NDA. And so the way it works is, let’s say client ‘A’ has 10 minutes to talk about the background and the issue that they are facing. And then either 20 minutes or half an hour, the group then discuss different views on how that problem might be addressed. But the idea is that people come with problems and it’s basically brainstormed not just with the agency, but with their peers. Now, obviously, their peers don’t come from the similar categories or similar markets. But everybody walks out with something. The agency has a better view of the issues that’s driving the business. And those clients have actually also met some peers and contacts that they can keep in contact with. And that is a very different mechanism but from everything that we hear with this agency, it works really, really well.
Jenny 06:28
Wow, that shows a level of confidence that also demonstrates that you are a true trusted advisor, aren’t you? Because you’re helping them ultimately solve their business problem.
Simon 06:38
It does, it does. You know, one of the things that staggers me is, Carey and I have been running relationship audits for over 20 years now. And what Carey said is absolutely true that,
agencies seem to be fearful of introducing their clients to each other. It beats me why agencies don’t do conferences, and actually bring all their clients together, because clients like to meet other clients. And it’s one thing in the old sales promotion industry, now the activation industry or whatever, it used to be fantastic at partnering and bringing people together. And you know, it’s one of the things that we’re seeing particularly in the professional services arena, we work for a number of big law firms, one of the big added value areas, is making pertinent introductions. Introducing one client to another, or other people that they have contact with within an industry. It adds an enormous amount of value. And also, it also shows how confident the agency or the firm is. Something to possibly think about.
Jenny 06:43
I think it’s a great, great tip. Is there any kind of watch outs for doing that though? For example, is the reason that that’s so pertinent is because the majority of your clients tend to have the title of Marketing Director? And therefore, of course they’re going to be interested in meeting other marketers from other industries to share learnings. Is it necessary that they have the same category background or not category, but title?
Simon 08:20
Yes, the two big watch outs are nobody in the faintest way could be considered conflicts. Point one. And point two is you have people at the same level. So there wouldn’t be any problem of having marketing directors and marketing managers, but you wouldn’t invite let’s say, a managing director from one company, and a product manager from another. And then thirdly, it’s the same when we’re doing interviews, be they online, or deep dive interviews, you invite everybody from the same level, you just don’t pick one or two. And, you know what, again it’s something you can learn from the professional services firms, we’re talking about a conference, but in a sense it’s kind of training and adding value through some form of thought leadership. It’s a fantastic way to not only embed yourself with the clients that you actually currently work with, but also to get attendance from other people that may never have heard of the agency. It’s something that the social agencies and the digital agencies, a few have done well, a few haven’t really taken the opportunity because it’s something that anybody, particularly in marketing management, needs to actually know about. And those agencies that have offered training and thought leadership have become, in many, many cases, the trusted advisors and experts to their client on that subject.
Jenny 10:02
Brilliant tips. The other thing I’m seeing, and I’d love to hear your thoughts on this, but to that idea about training, some agencies do it and have been doing it during the sort of COVID era, running sort of educational webinars, but they tend to just do it for prospective clients rather than their existing clients. Are you seeing that trend as well?
Simon 10:24
No, but that’s just utter, utter, utter madness.
Carey 10:26
I couldn’t agree more.
Simon 10:30
And that really says a lot about agencies like that, that they undervalue their clients hugely. And you know, as what we said last time, their clients are other people’s new business prospects. And particularly areas like training are a great way, obviously, to actually get clients, but also to actually add value to existing relationships. I mean, frankly, if you think about it, if you’ve got moderately happy, or very happy clients, and you’re inviting a few new business prospects, you will find that your existing clients will be doing the selling of the agency to your prospective clients.
Jenny 11:16
Perfect point. Absolutely. So I’m just conscious of time, and I know that I could talk to you two all day, we know that already. I want to cover these themes, because you’ve got six themes. And so far, we’ve covered four. Theme five was all about, ‘Are you better or worse at technology?’
Carey 11:35
I’m not going to spend a lot of time on this, because I think this is a pretty kind of black and white situation. Technology, as Simon said, people were talking about our use of technology and technology has changed business, more in five weeks than 8 or 10 weeks, and in 10 years. So technology was a big theme last year. And we’ve got some examples of where people get that right, and where they get it wrong. So, a lot of companies, 70% of companies say technology is important, but it’s around about 40%/ 42% of clients who say they really understand the technological competencies of their agencies. And that technology thing is important. We’re working with a company, for example, for whom we create reports in fine detail. But we also have a dashboard, and this is for our radar product. We expose the dashboard, a new bunch of people at the client hadn’t been exposed to the dashboard previously. We exposed them to the dashboard and they went, ‘Wow, this can make our life so much easier. Wow!’ And they said, ‘Well, why didn’t you tell us ‘ and we said, ‘Well, we did tell you, but the people we told have moved on, and the people that are still there haven’t bothered to tell you’. You know, it was one of these things. So you never assume. And then the two examples I wanted to bring, was that we came across one example last year, an agency that had developed a fantastic intranet. And what they were able to do is a global relationship. And they were able to use that intranet to provide access to clients on a local basis, to the library of assets that had been created, and make it really easy for them to download it on a local basis, and so on and so forth. So made the process simpler. And something that will withstand and go past the whole pandemic thing because it’s just a good idea. And now the other side of the technology is when you when you haven’t really thought it through. And there’s a great example we heard last year of our of an agency that was down to the sort of the final stages of a pitch for a big UK grocery retailer. And when it came to the sort of the technological audit, the process people were wanting to put in place, what they found was that the agency’s capabilities and technology could not deliver what the client wanted, because there was so much, more re-engineering would be needed. And so the agency lost, even though they were in the final shortlist, they lost out because they did not have the competence and capabilities to be able to deliver what that particular client wanted. So, the whole thing about technology, I can go on and on about this, but the reality is, you need to understand whether your technological process and systems and capabilities is fit for the purpose of what your clients want, and are there any ways in which you can leverage your technology to actually gain competitive advantage?
Jenny 14:51
Wow.
Simon 14:53
And Carey, can I just add to that? In the same way that Diversity and Inclusion it used to be a tick box on a RFP but now it’s switched to rather than a nod, unless you can prove it you won’t get through to the shortlist or won’t get appointed. It is worth checking out the clients expectations in terms of technological capabilities before you decide to pitch.
Carey 15:23
There’s another bit to that too, which is that, if you’ve got a client and the client works with different agencies in different organisations, one of things you can do quite simply is ask the client, ‘Can you give us an example of another supplier with whom you work, that has a fantastic technological solution to a problem that you may have had in the past?’ That gives you, ‘Aha, we should go and talk to those people’. So that’s, again, that’s a simple thing you can do.
Simon 15:53
Jenny could just add one other thing. I think that there will be a lot of account managers, account directors listening to this podcast and the analogy I would give is understanding what a car can do rather than how the engine works. Understand what technology you have within your agency and the benefits it can bring. Because also, we find with a lot of agencies and service providers, the people that are representing the agency aren’t communicating the technology that the agency actually has, to the client. And you never know, you may have competitive points of advantage in terms of the technology you use, and how you do it over and above the competitive set.
Jenny 16:46
Great advice again. I’ve got so many more questions, but I do want to get through the themes. I’m just jotting them down, so if we have time. The theme number six was ‘Do you realise what drives perception of value?’ I mean now, do you realise what’s changed?
Simon 17:06
I mean, the simple thing is that value for money appears to becoming less transactional. And what I mean by that is, less transactional in terms of what’s paid, versus the deliverables that are given to the client. What we’re seeing is soft factors. And by soft factors, what I mean is the quality of staff, people’s attitude. As Carey said earlier, flexibility and agility and going the extra mile, are becoming increasingly more valued. And for many clients, this is reflecting the growing desire for true business partnerships in these uncertain times. And that’s probably why our data suggests that value for money is highly correlated with a propensity to award more business alongside the quality of the team. So this is really, really important.
The more you can be showing and demonstrating value for money with the hard as well as the soft factors, the more likely you are to actually win more business from an existing client. So there are a couple of points coming out of this. Again, this is a recurring theme from what I’ve been saying, which is take the time to ask your clients. And in this case, what they take into account when they judge value for money. Obviously continue to work on the hard factors such as delivering on brief, on budget and on time, but also consider these soft measures, such as the quality of the business relationships and going the extra mile. Be able to demonstrate the value that you bring against your clients defined criteria. One of the things that we often find is that agencies have a clear view of what they believe value for money is. Well I can tell you, 9 times out of 10 that that won’t accurately measure up against what a client’s definition of value for money is. So ask.
And then thirdly, and probably in passing, even before the pandemic, we heard almost on a weekly basis, our own clients talking about the dearth of quality talent, at junior and middle management level, and clients often airing their frustrations about the churn of staff. The thing to say is that clients put a huge value on the retention of staff, and there is a definite straight line towards the quality of the business relationship and the continuity of the staff. A lot of agencies are going through an awful lot of churn at the moment and one of the ways you can differentiate yourself and your agencies is to have happy, motivated people continuing to work on and know the client’s business.
Jenny 20:01
Where do you see agencies that do particularly well, in retaining their existing staff?
Carey 20:09
It’s an attitude of mind. I think it’s an attitude of mind, it’s about being inclusive. So for example, we do an annual client evaluation audit for one Pharma agency. And what we did this year was, we came out with a whole bunch of kind of conclusions, recommendations. And then what we did was we got involved with the leadership team, but with the whole agency. And we said, so these are the things that you’re doing really well. These are the things that you need to be thinking more deeply about and think about ways of enhancing this. And these are the issues, these are the problems. And what we did, it was fantastic, everybody in the agency was embroiled in this. They developed different cohorts, with each cohort was given a part of these things to review, come up with potential suggestions, and then kind of report back to the group. So the point about all this was that the problems and the issues and the opportunities were all if you like, fed up from the bottom. So everybody in the business, felt they knew what the issues were the clients had, what the clients thought, what the misperceptions were, where they had concerns. And the point is, the agency involved everybody in being part of the solution. That’s a cracking way of doing it.
Jenny 21:39
It’s such a fantastic example of superb leadership isn’t it, to get everyone empowered to feel they’re part of the solution? Because that’s part of it, isn’t it, to make people feel they have some control?
Carey 21:52
I think that the other thing, building on what Simon said too, is that one of the things that comes out when people say, ‘Oh, the agency is expensive, are they worth it?’ ‘Yeah’. ‘Well why they worth it?’ Well, because, for those people who do, because they leverage their learning? Or because they give a regular once a month or once a quarter, they give us a proactive idea. So the point about it is that what you’re doing is, as Simon said, the value for money has got more elements coming into it in terms of expression. But there are some simple things that you can do. If you are being more proactive and regularly coming up with an idea, you don’t have to be proactive every single day of the week it’s nonsense, but if you can come back, maybe once a quarter, or you can go and say, ‘You know what, we just kind of took a look at your competition and what they’re saying. And we put it as a presentation for you. Would you like to see that?’ That builds a perception of getting more bang for your buck.
Simon 22:58
But, and I know we’re tight for time, but it’s making things simple. It’s also bringing people on, and particularly the junior people and giving them experience. Carey, why don’t you just talk briefly about when you came into advertising with Y&R, what you were set up to do?
Carey 23:15
I worked in Young and Rubicam and I was the junior oik on a beer account. And somebody said to me, ‘What you’ve got to do Evans, you’ve got to make yourself somebody that you want to go to for something.’ And so I decided I was going to make myself the expert on the beer advertising, on the competitive beer advertising. So I did a whole bunch of work on that. Did analysis of spend and this, that and the other. And did what we used to call copy evaluations and evaluate the strategy, the communication and all that stuff. And it was great because I built a reputation of being ‘Hang on, we’re talking with a competition, let’s get Evans in here’. So you start to build yourself a perceived competence within the agency. So if you are the go to person on something that helps build your business, your own business and your profile within the agency. And of course, with the client as well.
Simon 23:28
Actually Carey, I haven’t told you this story, but at the same time when we were in different agencies, I saw that the marketing director of one of the big breweries was talking at a conference and I got myself a ticket and went one lunchtime and took notes. And I came back, and I wrote up those notes and sent them to the account director, the head of new business. That immediately went to the MD, that immediately went to the chairman and it was then sent as a new business mailer and I’d actually made my name just by doing that. And it’s just showing that bit of hunger and understanding. And the ironic thing was it was Carey’s client, so I was just trying to nick Carey’s client at the time. But anyway!
Jenny 24:28
Oh, that’s so funny. Talking of hunger, I’ve been talking to agencies recently about their approach to gathering feedback from their clients. Many agencies tell me, ‘Oh yeah, we’re going to do the survey’. And they always assume and default to some kind of survey, whether it be online or, so you made the point Simon, just before we joined the call, that you’re being asked to do so many more deep dive conversations with clients? Why do you think businesses and agencies are concluding that that’s what they want to invest their time in?
Simon 25:52
Because if money was no object and time was no object, talking to people on a one to one basis is the most valuable sort of feedback you can get. Business relationships are getting more complicated. And to be able to if you like, to get the colour rather than just the black of white, through deep dives, in depth interviews, is absolutely now more valuable than it ever has been. Just to fill the picture, our business originally started just in doing deep dive, depth interviews. Then, about 10 years ago it shifted hugely in terms of online. One year, I think we did over 30,000 online interviews with individuals. It now seems to be coming back and a lot of our programmes are if you like, a blend between deep dive interviews with the most important or biggest clients or key decision makers, and then covering everybody else off in terms of online. And obviously, there are common questions for both, but I think the main message is that people are now taking it very, very seriously. And to your point, Jenny, when you opened to say that when we worked with you, we were able to bring back intelligence which kept that client with you for another two years, which I think was a seven figure in terms of fees, it’s got to be worth the investment.
Carey 27:42
It’s a great thing, it’s that moment, and Simon and I both have this, when you’re doing an interview, I think that the reason more people wanted interviews last year is again, based on the uncertainty, they wanted a clear picture of what was going on and they felt the best way of doing that was to ask questions. But there’s that fabulous moment when you’ve been doing an interview, you’ve built a bridge of rapport, the client’s telling you all kinds of stuff, some of which you know already, because the agency told you, and then says that immortal line, and kind of looks at you and looks away and, ‘Shouldn’t tell you this, but blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.’ Yes, that’s a ‘kerching’ moment. That is, you’ve built the trust and you’ve pulled and squeezed that little nugget out, which can make all the difference.
Jenny 28:38
Absolutely.
Simon 28:39
I’m willing to be very biased, but it’s just not tipping up and going, ‘Oh, I’ve got 10 questions to go through with you. So the first question is, for our creative standards like…’ It’s not like that. There is, believe me a real art to actually doing this. And the art is that you actually see the benefit if you like, with the art and the experience in those ‘kerching’ moments.
Carey 29:08
The other important thing is here, we’ve been doing this a long time, right? I know, we don’t look very old, but we’ve been doing it a long time. And so what we’ve learned over the over the years is, which questions to ask, which questions work. You won’t get the right answers unless you ask the right questions.
Jenny 29:28
But you’re also hugely intuitive about responding and knowing when to stop, hold back, knowing when to push. And you read people. I think this is what your years of experience of just, it’s listening for what’s not being said.
Carey 29:44
Yeah, it is. And we have an expression that we’ve got – ‘going off piste’. So if the client wants to go off somewhere and talk about something else, you just kind of go with them when we do the interviews because you never know what’s going to come out the other way, which could be valuable and which you hadn’t intended to even look for. So the interviews are, it’s a way of adding colour. And the other thing that’s important is that, I’ll never forget, again another one last example for me, I was once had to do an interview for agency, and I said to the agency people beforehand, are there any issues I should be aware of, and they said no we’re pretty good. There was a little issue on planning but you know, that’s gone away, years ago. So I went to see this guy and the guy actually was a guy who used to be my client, when I worked for an agency. I said, ‘Tell me about blah agency. What’s the big picture here?’ And he said, ‘Ah, planning, bloody planning, planning, bloody planning!’ Now, I’d been told that the issue was a minor issue that had been resolved six months ago or a year ago. And that’s the benefit of the of the deep dive interview where you sit down in front of someone, you look at their body language, and you get the right volume level. It’s the volume level that matters.
Jenny 30:57
Totally. Listen, I want to ask you one more thing, because I would love to ask you both about the trends that you’re seeing right now and your advice for agencies to equip them. One of the things you mentioned Simon before was, there’s a lot of acquisition going on, like agencies acquiring other agencies. And I know that you’re involved in that. So I’d love you to maybe speak to that, a little bit about some of the trends that you’re seeing currently.
Simon 31:26
Well, undoubtedly, the M&A sector is very, very busy. Certainly all the mergers and acquisitions consultants that we know and work with say that they’ve frankly never known it busier. What is interesting though, is that some of the some of the work we do, we call relationship diligence, which is working for a buyer to check out somebody that wants to sell their agencies quality of their client relationships. What we’ve seen is a significant growth on behalf of agencies that are looking to sell probably between two and five years time, and putting in place regular independent assessments, so that they will be able to show to their clients that they have a rigorous process. As one of our clients said, ‘Well, the reason I’m working with you guys is because I can’t mark my own homework.’ So that’s certainly something that’s very, very busy. Secondly pitching, we’ve talked about, it’s interesting that looking at many professional services firms, I wouldn’t say automate the pitch process, but certainly in terms of RFIs, they have certain templates ready to go that are actually tweaked on a case by case basis. Thirdly for me, I’m sure Carey’s got some more, the better agencies are doing proportionally a lot better than agencies that really haven’t got their act together. So if things are very, very quiet for you, for those of you listening at the moment, then you’ve got to ask yourself, well are we really positioned as well as we possibly can be? Carey, do you want to add anything to that?
Carey 33:20
Not really, I mean one of the themes that came out and we’ve talked about this before, in when the whole lockdown thing started, clients were saying, there’s the people who work with us through this whole pandemic issue, those are the people if they do it well, that will benefit when the pandemic has moved on. And as we moving out of the pandemic now, I think we’ll see the same thing, which is those people who did these things that we’ve been talking about today, leverage learning, being flexible, being sensitive to communication needs, all that kind of stuff, those people who did that are benefiting. That’s important.
Simon 33:59
And actually, one final thing from me Jenny, we’ve talked about lots of initiatives such as post project reviews, competitive reviews, etc. I can imagine the people listening to this going, ‘Oh, I haven’t got the time to do my day job, let alone the extra!’ And I absolutely get that. The one thing that clients really appreciate, as we all do, is brevity and keeping things short. Trying to do whatever you’re going to do, on one page. And so to have a good one page document, I’m not undermining how difficult that is and how much thought that actually goes into it, but please rest assured, what you can do to add value and build better client relationships doesn’t have to be long.
Jenny 34:53
Great point to finish on, thank you so much, because I’ve been hearing exactly the same thing. Listen, both of you thank you so much for joining me again. As usual, you’ve delivered a huge amount of value, loads of insights. And I’m sure people have been furiously taking notes and have got lots of ideas to go away with. And how can people get hold of you if they want to have a conversation around how you could perhaps help them with their business and auditing relationships?
Simon 35:18
Well, you can get a hold of us at relationshipaudits.com. And that’s probably the easiest way to do that and go on to the contact page. And why don’t we also Jenny, when you post this, put our email addresses both Carey, if you think Carey’s better looking than me!
Carey 35:40
Obviously let’s not go down to looks, we’ll just get down to hair, shall we?
Simon 35:44
All right, okay. So you’ve got a choice, you’ve got either/or so the switch sell.
Jenny 35:52
Fantastic, I will make sure to include both your email addresses and the link to the website. So thank you so much again, I really appreciate it.
carey.evans@relationshipaudits.com
simon@relationshipaudits.com
Simon 36:02
Our pleasure.
Carey 36:03
Our pleasure. Thanks.
