Episode #25: How to Manage Client & Agency Change

In this episode, Julia & Kelly discuss the 5 ingredients for success in a client-agency relationship and how to navigate change when you know it’s inevitable. They also talk about what to do when you have been sent in to “right the ship.”

Alright, welcome to the marketing moms podcast today, Kelly has indulged me on this topic. She’ll talk about what she feels about this topic, but I’m really pumped because I was saying I think as maybe a more inexperienced person, or maybe just younger, this was a hard place for me to navigate. And it’s very specific situation happened, which that’s kind of what spurred all my thoughts about this episode. So today, we’re going to focus on the things that change the dynamic of an account that you may be working on. Whether you’re an I think this will be focused mostly on an account person, but honestly, it can be anyone working on the account from the low level to the highest level, and all the things that you can do to successfully navigate it. And I’ll tell you about the story of when I had a long-time client relationship kind of imploded before my eyes, and I was just way too timid to even say one thing to myself.

Kelly

Well, again, I will admit that I avoided your four or five emails on this. And I, I think maybe I had one responses, and they were basically like, not excited about this, don’t like it, don’t want to talk about it. But after I looked at your notes, I realized it’s an important talk of topic to talk about and worthy of a conversation. But it’s a tough conversation, it’s that it’s not a conversation that a lot of people want to have or talk about. So I think it’s worth delving into some of our personal experiences, and telling some of those stories to see, you know, to bring it to life and the mistakes that we made, which is the purpose of this podcast, and how you can learn from them and not make the same ones.

Julia   

Yeah, this is a good mistakes episode for me. And definitely the hindsight is 2020. And I also think that when you are working on an account, and you kind of start, you see things even subtly start to shift, where you get that gut reaction that like something doesn’t feel right, or the client is pulling away or doesn’t seem happy. I think ultimately, you’ve got to trust your instinct, which I did not do for a long time. Get out of your own way, meaning your ego, or your overwhelm, or your hesitation even and go with what your what your instinct in your gut is saying, because usually that’s right. In a lot of cases, so. Okay, let’s first talk about the things that might change over time, that are ingredients for account success. So I’ll start with two, and then I’ll ping it over to you, Kelly. So and I think we’re on the same page with these, right? So like, the number one thing, I think, is an account, person and client person meshing, like, do they have complementary personalities? Can they, you know, work well together and collaborate? do their can they also have fun and laugh and keep the work? balanced? You know, and that is a hard thing to do when there’s turnover, which we’ll talk about in a second. Yeah, either client-side or account side. Second one is kind of like a subset of that it’s communication. Like, what is your communication style, if you’re a you know, if you’re an ABC communicator, and the other person is a D, E, F communicator, you know, you might not have some synergies that could lead to some strife, or could lead to a client being unhappy. This one I feel like we can really delve into because so many people, I think genders have different ways of communicating, I think, allergies, seniority, seniority. For instance, I always felt like that younger people did not want to pick up the phone and call the client, or I was always taught, pick up the phone, you know, nowadays, I feel like I get so many like, when I’m in work, people are like, well, let’s talk on the phone and I’m like, why can’t this just be an email, so I’m like, swinging back lately. Lately I found that like one of my clients like really like when we’re in the thick of the work, she wants, like a quick phone call at 9am every day just like, like a scrum meeting, like five minutes do to do to do you know, and that helps her stay on track. I don’t necessarily love it. But I do it because it’s helpful. Anything else you want to say about that one? Kelly?

Kelly

Well, yeah, I mean, I think I’m the first side of you talked about account client personality mash and, and the truth is, is that most of the time, your personalities are not going to match. I mean, that’s just the way life is when you bring two people together, right? And so how do you account for that you account for that by making up for it by listening, listening is the most the number one most underrated skill, but the most important, important skill and if you can really listen well to your clients, then that may make up for the fact that they’re your personalities don’t mesh. So that’s kind of the first thing that I wanted to start with. And with regards to communication, frequency and style, we had this conversation. In a previous episode, we were talking about how to manage up and masses. And so it’s a very similar conversation. Yeah. And, and, of course, it’s a combination of email and phone and in person, but the reality is, the more senior the client is that you’re working with, the more often that they want to communicate by phone or in person. And with COVID, we stopped doing that. And I think, you know, we need to get back to that as soon as one feels like it’s safe. And we’re clear to do that. Because things do get misinterpreted by email. And people develop relationships in person, it’s difficult to even develop a relationship by phone. So I think that’s really important. And so if you live within driving or living distance, a reasonable driving distance of your client, you need to make an effort to meet with them on a regular basis so that you can develop that relationship. So that’s the first thing. And the other thing in terms of communication style is, are you maximizing your time with your client? Are you not wasting their time in meetings, you have an agenda? Have you put that agenda to gather for them ahead of the meeting so they can anticipate what’s going to be covered? And are you running your meetings efficiently? Are they organized? Well, you know, do doesn’t do every meeting? Does every meeting need to be one hour? Can we start, you know, moving to 30 minute meetings, for example, and be more efficient with our time? So those are some of the things that that came up to me in terms of communication. Initially,

Julia 

I think we can expect clients to get over something one time, right? Like if a meeting is not well run or not well prepared for they’ll probably get over it one time, maybe two times. But once it starts becoming a pattern, that’s something that can lead to a breakdown in the client relationship.

Kelly

Yes,

Julia 

that’s true. I would say next is, how are you measuring your success? And are you creating the benchmarks upfront? And are you diligent in constantly reporting back to the client about where you are? So maybe you’re not? Maybe your, you know, relationship, or your scope of work is not necessarily, you know, maybe it’s more strategic, right? And there’s not like, specific numerical goals, right? But you should still be reporting to your client about, you know, here’s our 12 month strategy, we’re three months in, and here’s what we’ve accomplished, those types of things, build trust with a client. So if you are faltering on that, if you’re just merely focusing on doing the work, and getting it out the door and not really spending time, you know, reflecting on those goals and measurement that could also lead to some questions.

Kelly

Yeah, I mean, I’m seeing clients are more and more results-oriented. And I’m now doing quarterly reports for the majority of our clients to demonstrate what the results are for each quarter, and we can make optimizations to our campaigns from there, but they want to see those numbers and years past that hasn’t been the case. But they need to report those things up. People want to see that their advertising dollars are being maximized. And and they’re resulting in, you know, hitting some of those KPIs. So I’m going to kind of expand on you know, the analysis and goals thing with with with basic account knowledge, you know, beyond knowing your business, KPIs, your how success is going to be measured. You understand what they do and how they do it. You understand their businesses their their business or products, their services. Do you know them? Well, their target audiences who are they trying to reach the industry cat industry category? I mean basic things that every account person should know even a junior account person who is their competitor set or you subscribe to their email newsletters, you know their hardcopy newsletters? Do you follow them on social media, Google alerts for PR all these things are very basic, but they’re important. And beyond that, a huge part of what we do is being a steward of their brand. Do you know, their brand standards? Do you understand their business policies and those sort of things? And do you also understand what is and isn’t in the contract, because that comes up a lot as well. So there’s a lot of things baked inside of, you know, this analysis and basic account knowledge. But, you know, if you don’t understand the basics of a client’s business, like you haven’t read their annual report, or you’re not seeing what their regular news are, or it’s an aha to you that a major piece of news came out, and you didn’t hear about it. That’s where you could fall short.

Julia 

Well, another really hot tip that I got when I was younger, was and this more applies to you know, Kelly, you and I, Kelly, because we work a lot with nonprofits, but, you know, beyond just getting their e-newsletter and all that great stuff that you mentioned, I was told to make a donation to every one of our one of your clients Oh, that’s a good one, because then you get into a completely different bucket, right? Because we all know there’s the comms bucket, and then there’s the fundraising bucket and those two are normally separate and sometimes intersect. So if you’re only paying attention to comms, you might not know what what is intersecting or what is being shared between you know, the two efforts so I obviously when I was making no money that was like hard right but you know, my boss said just donate $25 and then you’re on the list. So now that now I obviously do bigger donations, but that is one of the most important things that I do really great one I love that in the loop. I think also to build on that is what I wrote down is my next one is like, whatever your specialty is your ability to deliver, right so if you know the scope, you know you these are your deliverables you need to be able to deliver on that and part of that is account management, making sure that you have the right people staffed that you they know the timelines for things so that they have available time to dedicate to it. And then also having an understanding of when to bring in those specialty people and have client-facing meetings. clients may not want to necessarily hear from creative people all the time but maybe there’s a one time a year when you’re working on a big campaign that it is appropriate and that is the place where someone really needs to be honed in on personality and communication styles because you’re bringing someone new in who is working on the business but may not have as you know the deep knowledge that you as an account person have

Kelly

You know, we’re going to talk about this in a couple of minutes with regards to this whole idea of what if someone quits and you know like your account person quits and I think a lot of what you’re talking about is the relationship isn’t just an account person and a client relationship the relationship should be with your agency and that is multiple people so your creative team should be presenting regularly to the client they’re the best at presenting their own creative your media person should be presenting the media plan so that way you’re all in or matched and it’s not one person it’s a team of people that that are working on their business and they know that team and that way if when you lose one person it’s not so powerful because the rest of that historical knowledge is was the earth the rest of that team

Julia 

Yeah, okay so the last I agree with that completely, the last thing before we move on is are you building value insights and innovation Do you want to talk about this Kelly cuz I know you love this. Yeah, I mean management.

Kelly

So I read a lot of books as you know, and business books and real insights, insights, and innovation drive business growth. That’s the best way to say it. And insights are, you know, customer experiences, information and insights that you learn about your target audience through research. Usually, innovation can be everything from New Media that’s out there media options that you haven’t tried before, are you checking out to your fencing and geolocation and Ott and CCTV and you know, digital radio and next door, etc, increased productivity with the use of technology solutions? Is there anything that you can help to optimize something and do things faster or easier and make your team and the client more productive? And then, of course, you know, using the client’s competitive advantages, are you really maximizing those, so being able to regularly drive and provide those insights to your client and help them drive business growth is a key part of that relationship and solidifying that relationship and demonstrates that yours adding strategic value to their business and, and these are, you know, ideas that are really above and beyond your standard contract, but if you want to maintain a business, you know, you really do need to come up with these moments a couple times a year, or even quarterly, where you’re coming up with something new that may be outside of your scope of work. But it’s demonstrating that you really are thoughtful about what they do, and you understand what they do. And, and hopefully, you know, of course, if they like your ideas, it could build, bring to something else that you would get paid for. But again, that idea of insights, driving business growth is something that we all need to work on.

Julia 

Yeah, as I always say, like always be learning. But this is kind of like always be pitching, right? Don’t get so comfortable, that you’re just cranking it, right, you need to, I kind of, I kind of think about it as like a like a quarterly or even like, twice a year, like just kind of doing the marketing plan. Again, just like a check-in looking at competition, coming up with new ideas and making sure that there, there are some wacky ones in there, there’s some hard ones in there, there’s some impossible ones in there. But it shows that you are not just worried about executing the contract, but you are worried as you’re thinking about, you know, the future, and how things will evolve.

Kelly

I’ve talked about this in another episode. And I have to admit, we did get this idea from another agency, through the icon network, a small or network of small advertising agencies. And what we do on an annual basis is do something called 10 big ideas, and we present our clients with 10 completely out of the box ideas that are not in our contract of things that they could think about for that year. And usually, they you know, it can be anything from assault, small social media idea to, you know, really big, out of the box thing that would require budgets and dollars behind. And most of the time, the client is willing to do at least a couple of those things. And they appreciate it. In fact, one of our clients actually added it into our contract, we like your teammate, guys ideas so much, we’re gonna pay you to do it every year. And that’s a good thing.

Julia 

It’s awesome. That’s how you grow, right? Always be pitching, right? It’s either gonna fall in line with something that kind of, you know, fizzled, or it’s going to help you grow. Yes. Okay, so I’m going to get into storytime, because it kind of it kind of sets up, I thought it would be helpful to identify the things that can change in a relationship between a client and an agency that can lead to issues. And in this one particular instance, I had like a whole lot of them going on. And I just was too timid and felt too junior to really say what I was thinking. And I wish I had because it might have turned into a different and different outcome. Okay, so here are some of the things that changed with this account. First, there was turnover at the client, the client themselves actually changed. So if you go back to the first thing we were talking about, like personality matching, if you’re like, you’re in line with your client, you have like a groove and you love it, and then that client leaves, it can be hard to re-evaluate and say, Okay, now I have a new person or starting from scratch, I have to learn them, you can’t just necessarily pick up where the last person left off, right? So in this situation, we got a new client, they ended up being the complete opposite of the last client in terms of personalities, and goals. So what they saw is the goals of the marketing plan. They were like, well, I’m ready to change this. And as an agency, we were on the treadmill, you know, and we’re not pressing the stop button to re-calibrate, I would say that led to a bad dynamic that as I said, when we started, like, you can probably get over some missteps, right? Couple, a handful. But once it becomes a pattern, that new dynamic is created, and it’s really hard to go back on and fix it. I would say the third thing is, as I said, we were on the treadmill, we didn’t, I’m the new client didn’t want to do things the way that we have always done them. So even though we were, you know, a couple months into, you know, a year where we had planned all of our activities, and we were on the straight and narrow, they really wanted to switch that up. And instead of saying, You’re right, new clients, new goals, let’s take a pause almost almost on our work, and work with this client to create a new way forward. And really, that just comes down to that the agency was not we were not able to pivot quick enough and respond to the things that I mean, from my perspective, were really obvious. But sometimes people are in it, and they can’t see those things. Let’s see, are there any other takeaways? I think those are the four the four things. So new client new goals, new dynamic, and eventual breakdown of you know, just completely on aligned? Do you have a situation like this in your past? Kelly?

Kelly

Yeah, I’ll give you a couple of them as the first one was with regards to a communication with the client. And, and I remember, having a situation where I made the mistake of educating a client on a particular subject, trying to explain something and sell her in on this particular idea. And my delivery did not go as I intended it to go. And it was received as if I was demeaning, because she was younger than me. And that I was, in essence, telling her what to do. And so you need to be really careful about how you communicate to people, especially if they are younger than you, and they are your client. So you know why I may think I’m a sage 52 year old, not everyone may feel that way. And so I think how you deliver some of your advice is really important.

Julia 

And that can also be if you’re younger, talking to someone older, too. I mean, yes, absolutely.

Kelly

Yeah. And, and, you know, pivoting into this idea that people change, and there’s going to be changes on the client and agency side. And, you know, we just talked about this, this is super important, because everyone makes this assumption that if an account person leaves that, maybe you’re going to lose the account, right, and there’s a fear there. And if, and I mentioned earlier, if you’re really ingrained in that account, it’s a team effort, and you shouldn’t have a loss of one person, you know, be the responsible for the client wanting to switch advertising agencies. In fact, I have never seen that happen. I’ve feared it in the past, but it’s ever actually actually happened. And sad, but we are all replaceable, to a certain extent. Now, on the client-side there if there are changes on the client-side, though, that’s a completely different matter, especially at the level so if you’re, you have a new head of marketing, you have a new president or executive director or whoever, you know, your client is on either side of those things. You do need to worry because those senior people usually like to bring in people that they’ve worked in the past. And that’s where you start to see some of those turnover happen. And it’s always a warning sign. Oh, gosh, getting a new marketing person getting a new head of the company, they may have a different direction, anticipate that they’re going to have a new direction and want to explore a new direction, even as CEO,

Julia 

Even if you have a CEO right who you don’t even have FaceTime with they can just come in and set this totally new tone and then it trickles down.

Kelly

Yes. And that’s when you need to go back and tap into building value through insights and innovation and have those things ready and anticipate that that day may come. So have those things in your back pocket. And, you know, at the same time, you also need to be agile and flexible and adapt to changes. And I think, you know, COVID showed all of that, to all of us to be extremely flexible. And I watched a situation where we’re one of a head of a marketing firm, that the senior marketing person had to make a significant cut advertising budget. And his number two, in the meeting, when we were informed of this, the reaction that he gave was so much a surprise, and so negative. And he really pushed back against this change of the budget change. And that person, the client, eliminated that person, you know, who worked underneath them. So that just shows you that, you know, you have to be able to support even on the client-side, they need to support each other. And if you had come in underneath that other more junior client and said, you know, we agree with that person take particular client, you got to be able to go with the flow with where the directions coming from on high. And this goes back to one of the things that I always say, which is always have a plan. And I am the plan B’s and so I always try to have a plan B in my head, you know, in case budgets or strategies change, which they do regularly and will change to be able to demonstrate our ability to to be flexible. So those are a couple of my initial thoughts on that.

Julia 

Yeah, I think that all of the things that you depend on every day to kind of lead you down the path of doing good work, whether those are budgets like you said, or marketing strategy, or goals, or even the tactics that you’re going to create to get there. All of those could potentially be in flux. And you need to be able to react in a level headed way to show that, you know, you can come up with new solutions, because change is a constant. Stress, I always loved those times. You know, my most fond memories of some of the accounts that I’ve worked on in the past are always when we kind of get into a nice little groove. And the client relationship is going so smoothly, we have such great rapport, we have a great plan. But when I look back on those, those were only like short snippets of time. Right? Like, for two months, things were, you know, well planned and well oiled. But then a little change came in, and then we had to, you know, scramble and do things new, and then you get New Groove again. So like, it’s just there’s always going to be change. And unfortunately, there’s always going to be turnover. I mean, I

Kelly

think, yes, right now with the what are they What are they calling it the great resignation?

Julia 

Yes. I mean, the quit rate is the highest it’s been, yeah, in a really long time. And, you know, turnover and employees, and then also clients finding new opportunities, or making drastic changes in their employment status are a given, they will absolutely happen. I think as a junior person, when, let’s say a senior person does leave on the account, it is a very scary time, because as a junior person, you feel like you do not have enough control to affect the outcome of that change. That was kind of how, where I was in my, in my situation, it was a very, it was a 1010 year plus engagement that had weathered many, many storms. And when there was a big change at the top, I felt like I didn’t have a voice. But no one thought that I should speak up about, you know, what my opinion was about what we should do to change it. And so I let upper management really lead the way and I had some insights that I could have lent, at least to put in the hat for people to to mull over before we made our move, right. And so I think it’s natural to feel like Wu B account feels in jeopardy, right? At the same time you have to rely on your agency leadership to make Those decisions if it’s agency side, right to find the right person that’s going to come in and understand what the assignment is. Not only keep everyone calm and moving in the right direction, but also make sure that the client feels comfortable. And as I think all you can do is trust your gut and actually speak up. That is the most important thing I heard the other day that one of the things that people really made Colin Powell endearing, was that when he was in big meetings, he would always ask someone who was on the peripheral, who was not at the table, who was not high level, he would ask them what they thought. And because he truly valued, what that person who was involved, but not maybe a decision-maker actually thought what they observed. And the same thing applies for the account roles, you know, if you have a, you know, a higher level, and then some lower-level people, those your opinion counts, but is what I am here to confirm. So, okay, so before we wrap up, Kelly, let’s talk about that person that comes in, let’s say there is employee turnover, right. And you are the person that is identified to come in, and now be the lead on an account. What are things you can do from the get-go to get over the speed bump.

Kelly

So I’ve been that person, multiple times, and I didn’t know I was going to be that person. In July, it was my first day on the job. So it’s usually something they don’t tell you until you get there and you realize, oh, my goodness, my entire team that he interviewed with is gone, or, you know, XYZ change or this is not the clients that I thought I was gonna be working with. So that happens a lot. And, you know, you talk a lot about, you know, saying the hard things, I think, I think the hard thing is, is that you can’t really come in like a bull in a china shop. Yes, that is number one. And I’ve learned that lesson the hard way where you’re wanting to change things so fast in the first six months, you really need to step back and assess the situation and you know, get everyone’s point of view and understand the lay of the land before make you make changes, because, you know, you may not be aware that the website that was just put up there, and people work so hard on and now you want to change it. So I am aware. Now, those sorts of things, and I’ve made those mistakes in the past.

Julia 

And that leads to building trust. I mean, that’s really hot. That is like, the number one thing you have to do is build trust, and you have to like, you know, poke a little bit here and there to find the place that where you’re going to be able to do that most right? Like you got to maybe just tap on the door of change and see if people are open to it. If they’re not go tap on another door. Right? Kind of get the lay of the land and figure out what’s the top priority to keep on the straight and narrow and then what where and when are the appropriate times to bring in change because I mean, I think change is good, especially when you have turnover like it’s great to come in, be a new person be a new perspective, but you just can’t be the change agent that just lay down because no one’s gonna respond. Right to that.

Kelly

That’s very true. And again, same thing on the client-side. And you know, I think that also leads to the idea of, you know, what happens when you say the hard things and it’s not taken well, or there’s a mistake, and that’s also happened many times of course, and, and in that situation, you need to be very honest, you need to be very transparent. You need to offer to roll up your sleeves and be a team player. and demonstrate that you’re ready with a potential solution to address the problem, and we were counted many of these things in that are the mistakes we’ve made in advertising in a previous episode, you can check out to see how to resolve them, but on a team, you really just need to make sure that you are smoothing everything out and making sure that everyone is, you know, the clients are comfortable. Yep.

Julia 

Agreed. Ultimately, you’re, you’re kind of in the hot seat, right? Like when you come in, I’m introduced as the new, you know, captain of the ship. And it’s okay to say, I don’t know right now, I don’t know enough to give you a good answer that is gonna be the right thing for this right time. Right? It’s, you don’t don’t take the new this new responsibility as, you know, a way to just say everything you’re thinking, you know, it’s okay to say Listen, I need some time. I’m gonna here’s my plan for, for attacking all of these issues, or deliverables, whatever it may be. So, with that, Kelly, thanks for giving so much good advice for this topic. We really hope that this will help everyone navigate, change. It’s coming. It’s coming. Alright, bye. All right.