Guest Post by Drew McLellan of AMI

Every day one of you is telling me that you wished your employees cared about the business or the clients like you and some of your more seasoned employees do. You want them to have initiative, be self starters and go above and beyond.

I think sometimes we forget (or never realized) that we were taught to be like that. You had a mentor or a manager who helped you recognize the importance, to both the agency and your own career, of you showing up that way. Of you taking ownership. Of you going the extra mile for a client or co-worker.

Some of you may have naturally been wired that way. But for most of us, someone invested some time and energy into helping us develop your work ethic and sense of responsibility.

One of my earliest jobs was bagging groceries. I often worked with a store manager named Regis. Regis made it a point to show me how to do my job better. He also taught me to take pride in bagging the groceries in a way that protected the purchased items and make it easier for the customer when they got home. (Cold foods together, using the boxes corners to build structure, etc.) He was much more persnickety than any of the other managers. At the time, he seemed very uptight to me. Every detail mattered.

But then customers started to notice my efforts. They’d comment when they came back or they’d specifically choose the check out lane where I was bagging. It felt good to be recognized and appreciated. After that, I paid attention when Regis had me re-do something or caught me doing something right. I took pride in how I put groceries into a bag. If I can care about all of the bags being of equal weight and shape so they’re easier to carry into the house, we can help our employees care about their output too.

How do we do the same for our team members?

• Talk about accountability and why it matters to both the agency and each team member’s professional growth
• Build in accountability check points into your processes
• Publicly reward people who showing up the way you hope they would (taking ownership and showing initiative)
• Make it a topic in your one on one conversations, reviews, and a criteria for raises and bonuses
• Assign specific projects and tasks (beyond their day job) and be very clear that you’re giving them ownership and expect them to solve the challenge/own the success.

If you want them to show up and be committed and that’s super important to you, then invest the time and effort to create both the behavior and the understanding of why that behavior matters.

I think you’ll be surprised how contagious it is.

As human beings, we crave recognition and acceptance.  It’s wired into our DNA.  We want to be a valued member of our pack — be it our family, our tribe of friends or our workplace.

While it would be lovely if everyone could simply recognize their own worth to the team, that’s not how we pesky human beings work. We need validation. We need the “atta boy.” We need the public acknowledgement.

And your employees need it from you. Even if you never work with them.

This is even more critical if you are not fully back in the office. Remote work means nothing happens by lucky accident. You don’t just walk by someone and remember to thank them for staying late or knocking it out of the park at the team training.

I know for some of you this feels ridiculous. I’ve had agency owners say to me, “I keep paying them. That means they’re doing a good job.”  While it may not be in your nature to demonstrate your gratitude or call out the behaviors you want to reinforce in your team — it pays off.  If it’s not your style, think of it like eating vegetables or walking 10,000 steps even though you don’t want to.

It’s an investment in the longevity of your agency and that employee.

Drew points the way

If you naturally love to catch your people doing things right and shouting it to the moon — awesome. Except, you aren’t doing enough of it. And odds are, it’s not as universally spread out as it could be. You need to schedule and track it, to make sure you’re spreading the love evenly among your people.

I know…it feels artificial. And it is. But with a good outcome. I have a lot of friends who schedule date night with their main squeeze. Is that artificial? Sure…but you know who gets quality time with their mate every week? Right, the date night schedulers.

It can be as simple as a spreadsheet. Make sure your favorites don’t get all of the praise. Put a note to yourself on your calendar on Wednesday or Thursday. Use some code to remind yourself to go out of your way to pat someone on the back before the week is out.

As I mentioned last week — agencies are struggling to find good hires. If you have good people on your team, you want to keep them. If you don’t shower them with praise, someone else will…as they are wooing them away from your shop.

Spread the love people, spread the love!

Says our friend Drew McLellan, CEO of Agency Management Institute
 

Retirement. Now there’s a loaded word. For some — it’s the holy grail that they’re working toward. For others, it’s the epitome of boredom and obsolescence. Others believe it’s an impossible goal.

Whatever your feeling about retirement, there’s one thing we know for sure. You can’t work at your agency forever. So what’s the plan?

The truth is — most of you don’t have a plan. You might have a vague idea or two, but in terms of a concrete plan, not so much (if you don’t have SMART goals and deadlines, it is not a plan!).

We do a lot of work with agency owners to get their agency in a desirable position for someone to buy it. And in most cases – it’s tough going for awhile. Most owners wait too long to get started. They want to be out in a year or two but haven’t prepped the shop for that. Waiting too long diminishes their options. I can tell you horror stories of agency owners who wanted to be out five years ago…and are still running their agency today.

So let’s make sure that is not you. For the next few weeks, I am going to focus on one aspect of your agency that needs to be in place before anyone will considering buying it. I don’t care if you’re 35 and just launched your business. You should still be building your shop so that it can stand on its own. Just like Stephen Covey taught us — begin with the end in mind.

Is your agency sellable element #1:

The more specialized your agency is, the more likely it is to sell.

I know you’re sick of the niche propaganda but hear me out. Outside buyers are much more attracted to agencies who serve a specific niche or a couple of related niches. The competition is much lighter, you can command a premium price, and the target market is clearly defined and contained. It typically also means you have fewer clients with a higher AGI and either consistent project work or a retainer agreement of some kind. Which also delights a buyer!

If you’re a generalist agency, your only real option is going to be an internal sale. Odds are your clients are local/regional and you have a lot of smaller clients with one gorilla or two.

There are a couple exceptions to the generalist rule. If you are a PPC/Paid search/lead gen. agency — then your clients aren’t typically local and you’ve got a lot of retainer clients. That makes you more attractive than a generalist marketing agency. You’ve also probably put 20-25% profit to the bottom line for the last several years, so that’s also in your favor.

For this to be a selling point for you — you have to embrace it. Your website, content, and client roster all need to support your specialization claim. You can’t hid it under a bushel because you don’t want to say no to any/all prospects who do not fall into the specialty area.

Of course, I am just scratching the surface here — but you get the message. When you’re talking about selling an agency — there are riches in the niches.

OK Drew, we’re ready to hear more! 

Today’s post by Drew McLellan of AMI

For the past year, you have done everything you could to protect your team. Many of you have made some pretty significant sacrifices to make sure your folks had a job, health insurance, etc. during the pandemic.

But as I told you last week, their gratitude for all you’ve done was worn a little thin by November and now, you’ve got people asking for raises, leaving you for other opportunities, and just tapping out.

Behind closed doors, agency owners bemoan their employees behavior and admit that they’re taking the departure personally. It hurts when someone you’ve bent over backwards to help and to grow decides they want to leave. And the conversation usually starts like this, “After everything I’ve done for XYZ, they do this?

The answer is because they don’t think about you the way you think about them. Many agency owners think of their employees as family. As such, they go way above the call of duty to care for and nurture their employees. You might even refer to them as the kids or some other family colloquialism.

But they don’t think of you in the same way. Now, if you have a partner of the opposite gender, they might jokingly refer to you as mom and dad. But that’s in the “if dad says no, ask mom” sort of way.

They like and respect you. They might even love you. But they’re much better at separating their feelings for you from the job itself than agency owners are.

This was true before the pandemic and now that the crisis has passed, it’s true again. In last week’s newsletter I wrote about the shift from gratitude for having a job to asking for a raise. Again — they see the relationship differently. And, may I suggest, they view the relationship in a healthier way than some of us owners do.

Before I get hate mail, I want to be clear. I want you to love your team members. I want you to treat them well, pay them fairly, and create an amazing work environment. I want you to be invested in their growth. My personal goal is to ruin my employees for all others. But some have still left. Because it was the right thing for them, for their family, for their career, etc. We have to know that sooner or later, every employee is going to walk. No one can be indispensable.

We can’t think of the agency as our other family. It’s not healthy for us or the agency. When we think of them as family, we make bad business decisions. We keep a C player because we’re not sure they can get a job anywhere else. We tolerate lousy, corrosive behavior. We neglect to cut payroll when we don’t have the business to support it. We don’t call individuals out when someone disrespects the agency’s values. We go without a paycheck so everyone else gets paid.

They like/love and respect us. And many of them will stick around for a long time. But when they get a job offer for $10K more than we’re paying them, or they can get a promotion they might not get at our place for years — they will leave. Because it helps them get where they want to be.

We need to find a way to have that same healthy view of our employees. We can still love them as people but not be beholden to them for life. Next week we’ll explore how we can begin to make that shift.

Note: Critical Thinking by Drew McLellan of AMI

Never Before

The invisible threat to your agency. I’ve owned my agency for 25 years, and we’ve never faced anything like 2020. A pandemic, having to abandon our offices, a recession, and the social unrest that much of the world has experienced for the last several months. All of them have tested and taxed our leadership chops like nothing we’ve lived through before.

Each of them on their own poses a threat, but the combination of all of the 2020 bizarre realities has created what I think is the most dangerous threat of all. What makes the threat even more insidious is that it can go undetected for a long time until it’s really taken hold.

The threat is the fragility of your team’s mental health, not to mention your own.

Many agency owners are talking to me about the overall malaise among their team members. I think when the pandemic hit, we all stood tall and were determined to endure the 2-3 month lockdown. But as we approach the 9th month of this, no one is unaffected. Productivity is lagging, tempers are flaring, and the fatigue is hard to ignore. We are all juggling more at home/work than is humanly possible, and we’ve been doing it for the better part of a year. This isn’t a problem we can just wish away or ignore.

Here’s how some agencies are helping their teams hold it together.

Mandatory days off: Some agencies are shutting down on certain days or limiting access to email/servers after 5 pm to force their employees to take some downtime. Other agencies are strongly encouraging their people to use their vacation time rather than lose it.

The zoom cocktail parties are passe but fun is still being had: Most agencies abandoned the zoom cocktail hours sometime during the summer. But they are finding ways to be creative/have fun with contests (pumpkin carving, BBQ cookouts, etc.).

Giving employees access to mental health resources: Many agencies are reminding their employees that their insurance covers mental health treatments and even providing employees with a list of providers.

Talking about it: The truth is, most of what is stressing out your team has nothing to do with work. But it is still seeping into the agency and impacting our work. Investing in meaningful conversations with your team members and talking about it as a group (crowdsourcing solutions) is helpful and healthy. It’s not just your employees. It’s you too. I feel it. You are bone tired. Physically, mentally, and emotionally. You’ve been surviving on fumes for a while now. And unfortunately, it isn’t over yet. Whether your agency is incredibly busy and scrambling to manage the growth or you are still struggling to rebuild after this past spring – you are worn out.

No one is going to mandate you do something about this. If I thought you’d listen – I would. But you’ve got to recognize that you’re dangerously close to crashing and do what you need to do to refuel and replenish.

For some of you, that might be a complete detox from your agency for a few days and hiding out in a cabin. For others, it will be getting on a plane and being anywhere but home. You’re going to have to self-diagnose. But I’m telling you – this can’t wait until you take time off in late December.

I know you’re looking longingly at 2021. But don’t ignore this threat in 2020.

Lovingly contributed by Drew McLellan of AMI

Guest Contributor – Drew McLellan of AMI

If there has ever been a year when our confidence has taken a knock to the chin, it’s this one. If you are like most agency owners, January and February gave every indication that 2020 was going to be a break-out year for you.

Many agencies reported the most robust January they’d had in a decade and were looking to exceed year-end goals. And then COVID hit. Many of us went two to three months, feeling it was inappropriate to sell at all, and when we did, it was a bit apologetically.

As if that was not enough, the combination of COVID, racial tensions, economic challenges, back to school maybes, and just feeling like we are still being restricted and contained at every turn has caused an underlying malaise in just about every human I know.

Muster Up the Courage – Given everything we’re all carrying on our shoulders right now, how in the world do we muster up the confidence to sell?

Marketing and sales are all about confidence. When you believe in what you’re selling, know it is the right answer for the prospect, and can see the benefits the prospect could enjoy – it’s much easier to approach a new opportunity and offer your assistance.

Focus on the facts – That’s where I think we can regain our confidence – by focusing on the fact that we have something valuable to offer and seeing sales as us offering assistance. Your marketing should be helpful and useful, which builds trust. Once the trust is seeded, sales is about continuing the trust-building while offering tailored solutions that are going to exceed expectations.

Barbara Corcoran, from ABC’s Shark Tank, recently shared a letter that she wrote to the show’s producer Mark Burnett. It’s clear from the letter than she had received a “thanks, but no thanks” response to her audition and I’m sure Mark expected her to exit gracefully.

Instead, she sent him this letter, outlining very respectfully why this was not the right decision. Her arguments were not about her but how he was taking a more significant risk by not allowing her to come to LA for the final tryout, even though her rival for the position would be there as well.

She called Burnett’s rejection a lucky charm and then gave him point by point suggestions of how his final decision would be more reliable if he reconsidered her for a role on the show.

The entire letter exudes confidence. There’s nothing arrogant about it, but as she builds her case, you begin to understand what a formidable force she really is. She ends the letter acknowledging that it is his decision, but she’s already booked her flight and hopes he invites her to get on that plane.

While the letter may not be your style — I know you can find your own way to exude that level of confidence.

It’s about having faith in yourself and what you sell. It’s about truly understanding what your potential buyer is trying to accomplish, his/her situation, and being helpful to their efforts. And even when you get a “no”, remembering that it’s not really a “no”. You’ve planted a seed that you need to nurture. Sooner or later, it will grow to a “yes”.

How can you bake that confidence into your sales efforts for the rest of the year?

Editor Note: Your paid Manager or EVP Plan will bring qualified opportunities to your door.

Sometimes Amused: As the owner of an agency search consulting service, I’m sometimes amused when an advertiser is surprised when every invited agency wasn’t interested in their opportunity. Maybe that harks back to the days when consultants were guilty of sending out 50+ RPF’s (i.e. – the infamous cattle call) and waiting for the chips to fall. Under today’s circumstances, you might expect agencies to pounce on everything new that comes their way. That’s clearly not the case, and never was, but for any company looking to engage new “marketing outsources”, it helps to know what attracts an agency. Here’s a thumbnail.

What agencies want to know: At the onset, agencies like to know why they were included. Was it their reputation, creative, awards, profile in a database or experience with the consultant.  Agencies expect to be talking directly to the client. Gone are the days where the consultant served as a conduit between the two, screening and interpreting the message content. An impersonal RFP calling for pages of agency detail coupled with an admonishment not to contact anyone at the company is an immediate Red Flag. An agency wants to be speaking and dealing with the person who is managing the review, an individual with authority, well beyond the collection of candidate credentials. An initial due-diligence phone interview saves everyone time and money. It gives the agency a chance to ask and answer and the client to reciprocate.  Here the parties evaluate “chemistry”, the magic elixir that will or will not cement the two in an extended relationship. Questions such as – Is this a project or an extended relationship? What’s the desired measurable outcome? Then budget, that elusive budget.  An agency worth hiring needs to know what funds will be available to manage the assignment. Not precisely but order of magnitude. Don’t shadowbox there. Summarizing, that phone interview should have given the agency sufficient information to produce and send a package of preliminary agency materials with relevant experience, similar client challenges, creative strategies, client testimonials, agency capabilities and credentials.

There’s always fallout: There’s always an immediate fallout from initial invitations; then more will follow phone interviews. Upon receipt of agency materials, corporate colleagues are assigned to examine and evaluate what was received. Some agencies are eliminated (for any reason). Ideally there should be 6-8 firms that remain.  Schedule those for on-site or Zoom visits. Then identify the 2-3 finalists. There’s clearly more to those visits and final presentations than I’ve described; the entire process is where a search consultant earns their stripes!

Editor’s Note: Your agency may already be a member of Drew McLellan’s Agency Management Group. Drew works extremely hard to help and guide his agencies. That’s particularly true now. His advice is good for all.

For most of us, we are approaching the six-month mark of the most challenging time of our professional lives. If we’re being honest with each other and ourselves, it is taking its toll. We have to listen to what’s happening in our hearts and give a lot of credence to the nudges that are subconsciously trying to keep us whole and healthy through this.

It doesn’t really matter if your agency has never been busier or you are scrambling to bring in enough new business to keep your team intact — none of us are getting through this unscathed. Everything is just more difficult. We’re not meant to be this isolated, and the cracks are showing. The burden of leading your team through this is a heavy one.

The coping mechanisms we deployed in March are starting to wear thin and everyone is feeling very frayed at the edges.

You may be experiencing it differently, but many of the agency owners I’ve talked to have felt themselves slipping into this odd mix of anger, frustration, and depression. We feel like we have to keep it contained because our team, our family, and our friends are counting on us to lead them through this.

And we will — but we have to lead ourselves through it as well.

The problem is, the pressure of that containment is going to win out if it hasn’t already. I know for me, I had to consciously find ways to release it before it exploded in a really ugly way. I had to take back what control I could and recognize that I do have choices that COVID has not taken away from me.

Every one of us is going to have a different pressure valve. And our own coping skills are whispering to us what they are. You have to listen with intention sometimes to hear the nudges — but they are there.

For some of you, it may be about being with people who fill you up and finding a safe way to do that. For others, it may be getting away from technology and truly unplugging for a few days by a lake or a cabin in the woods. For yet others, it may be forcing yourself to take a few days off and indulging in whatever hobby brings you joy. I believe for most of us, it’s going to require something significant to help you keep your equilibrium.

I know you’ve been coping through this thing in lots of little ways. I’m not talking about another zoom cocktail hour or FaceTime with a friend. All these options are good — but it feels like the pressure is winning out for many. It’s time to truly take a break of some kind to release that pressure valve.

Listen for it. Find it. Give it to yourself. This isn’t about being selfish. It’s about making sure you don’t run empty.

Why this is the Right Time to Hire a New or Replacement Ad Agency and Others

Is your current agency or in-house group providing creative and tactical ideas for developing relevant online content during these COVID-19 and country-wide rioting disruptions in business? Are they thinking about how to use this time to help you creatively drive engagement, traffic or calls to your business? If your business has lost internal marketing support is your agency stepping up to fill in those gaps? Regardless of the challenges we all face, there are ways to continue to market and promote a brand. Finding the right PR, digital or marketing agency can transform these challenges into opportunities.

COVID-19 has given us time to think. If you have anything to do with marketing, this disruption is likely causing a lot of indecision. Hiring a marketing, digital or PR partner is about identifying the right agency and talent that understands your industry and how to mitigate the uncertainty of the pandemic. They must have a firm understanding of what it takes to continue building brand awareness and sales. If you have an agency or in-house department that is not pulling their weight, use this time wisely to consider searching for a new partner.

Your Criteria
There’s the temptation to search for an agency “type.” As in digital, experiential, direct, integrated, public relations and so on. Don’t start with type. Start with experience. Does this agency have relevant experience in your industry, do they understand the nuances and personalities of the people you are targeting? Do they have the right type of talent, experience and background that brings fresh thinking? are they equipped to work remotely with your company and team to turn projects around on budget and deadline? Are they willing to share meaningful insights that can help accelerate the growth of your brand?  Are they the right size, fit, responsive and willing to do what it takes to ensure the seamless execution and implementation of any marketing challenging?

Your Search
In the final analysis, many options exist for identifying a new marketing partner. Many of which are impersonal and lack the insights, details and information necessary to make a good decision. For over 20 years we’ve been connecting marketers and advertisers with agencies and agencies with new clients. We provide an elegantly, curated, powerful, complimentary and efficient, platform to identify and evaluate agencies. The combination of an on-board search engine and extensive agency-produced profiles allows for identifying and targeting the most appropriate candidates.

So is it the right time to find a new marketing partner? See for yourself. There may be the perfect agency just waiting to help through these uncertain times. And the recent turn of events that lead to rioting has added another unheard of challenge. You have nothing to lose and you may be surprised at what you’ll find.

Today’s close look by Drew McLellan of AMI