Why (Most) Agencies Suck! Part 1 with Guest: Bianca Lopez Valdez

There is a terrible stigma against agencies in the marketing world. And honestly? A lot of it is justified... but there are many shops that do things the right way and generate massive revenue for their clients. Why? Because they truly love what they do and care about their client's success. Tune into this episode to learn about what red flags to look for and how to identify agencies that are great partners to work with.

Transcript

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You are listening to the D D and Jelly Marketing Podcast. I am here with guest Bianca Lopez Valdez. She is an agency owner based in Australia. Bianca, did you want to give a little intro about yourself and the kind of clients you work with? Uh, yeah, absolutely. Thank you, Chris. Uh, so I'm Bianca. I'm based in Melbourne. I'm the founder of Seed and Arama, digital advertising manager of 10 plus years. So the types of businesses we work with are services-based businesses from financial services to medical uh technology, along with software. And we also work with trades. So our whole speciality is focusing on uh profitability and advertising. And then to do that, we live in our C like our client CRMs, and we also specialize in cross-channel platform advertising. So when someone works with us, they're typically not advertising on one platform either. So we like to bring them all together and then look in the back end to make sure they're actually getting a return on what they're spending. Perfect. Yeah, no, that's awesome. I've been following Bianca for a little bit now on LinkedIn. Always love the content that she posts, so feel free to check her out on LinkedIn if you're just interested in more marketing content. But today we're going to talk about a really interesting topic that's something I'm pretty passionate about. I know Bianca's passionate about. I know like it's something a lot of operators probably have had a poor experience with before. Um, but today's topic is why agencies suck. And it's from two agency owners. So, you know, we're, you know, we have a lot of the same, you know, kind of kind of stigmas about agencies ourselves. That's kind of like why I started Happy Hub about six years ago. And I believe Bianca, that's kind of like why she wanted to start her own thing, just from all the things that we saw in the agency environment from places that we worked at in the past that just weren't as good as we thought they could be. Um, and just like being in the agency world for however long now, both of us, we've seen a lot of really bad practices. So we know that it's not all awesome out there, but there are people who are doing it the right way. So we'll kind of get down into that. But without further ado, let's just get into the prompts that we have here today. The first prompt is agencies care more about making money than about making the client successful. How do you feel about that, Bianca? I agree. Uh, I think it just comes down to being a business, although it's not something I think people like to hear, but I also believe it comes down to just bad experiences. And it's not that people, I think, are bothered that they make money or they just care about making money because it's a business at the end of the day. I think what bothers people is that they care about making money and there's no accountability to deliver the work. So people sign on to have services delivered and then they're not delivered. So it's not even, I'm saying, overselling, it's not even delivering what's contractually applied. And then that's the breakdown, personally, I've seen. Yeah, yeah. No, I would agree. Um, and kind of like you're saying, as any business owner, even you know, operators are maybe listening right now, you do have to be prioritized on your revenue no matter what kind of business you have. So that is something that you always have to be focused on in order to grow, whether it's an agency or D2C brand or whatever else. But um, at the end of the day, the agency really should have your best interest in mind. That's why you're hiring them. You want to be able to work with someone that you can trust, a partner like that, that's gonna give you honest and direct feedback, that's not gonna be, you know, telling you to increase your ad spend just because they want to get like a larger fee or larger percentage back. So um it's you know, it's it's kind of like something you have to align, I guess you have to tow as any type of business owner. But the best agencies really do have your best interest in mind. A lot of people got into marketing, I know myself, because I love supporting other businesses and helping people really um who are struggling with marketing and who have an awesome product or are just great brand owners, not deal with something they don't want to deal with in terms of marketing and really pass off to someone that they can trust to help grow their business. So all the people in this for the right reasons, and there are more than it may seem like, um, really do have owners' best interest in mind. Um, are there any red flag things that you have seen, Bianca, from agencies that you've either worked with or partnered with or heard from other clients? Absolutely. As someone who's worked in agencies and hired agencies myself when I've worked in-house, I feel like I'm in a pretty good position to answer this. So I have a bit of a list and I post a lot about it on LinkedIn. The number one, and I have seen over the years people like the leaders in our industry or the best practitioners, I've seen yourself just promote, own your own ad account. So this is like the number one, and it's almost like the boring topic. Like I gotta like imagine being in-house, someone's like, oh yeah, yeah, yeah, and like scrolling by, and then you can see the enragement from people who've been working in this industry for years. And it's because when we meet people, they've already had this experience and they can't leave. They're in this position, and they can leave. So I don't know if someone's listening to this. It's not that you can't, but they're starting again, they're gonna have to build it up, and it's something they should have. And it's people, individuals out there who've created agencies who prey on people's like lack of knowledge, and it's just not right. It's not an ethical thing to do, it's not uh like it's not done in the industry, like it's done as in people do it, but it's not as in the ethical way to work, it's not something that's promoted, it's usually hid behind shady like practices. So I'd say that's like the biggest one. And the next one I would say is like locked-in contracts, and there's nothing bad about having a contractual term, but if it's not forthcoming, so big thing I've seen in Australia is having six or 12 month contracts and then giving away months for free. So that would be another one, and then people not knowing their contractual term, so it's very quick in advertisers, and I'm not saying you'll notice this with most, like they move pretty quickly and that's a good thing. If they're moving too slowly, that's also a bit of cause for alarm. But if they're moving very quickly, that's normal. But think of that when you're going through the signing on an onboarding process, just to read that contract and don't be afraid to change things. Like, like anyone else or any other partner, you can go, hey, actually, I want this change. Make sure that you own your own work that they're producing. Like it makes sense that they own their IP and their frameworks, that makes sense. So you're not going out and selling it. There's a lot of courses out there, so I wouldn't think anyone would, but most people just have to have that in their contracts around with performing, like they have to protect themselves. But if you're signing on, you want to make sure you own your ad accounts, you want to make sure everything they're producing, every ad or the ad copy, any of like the frameworks they put together, you get to take those away. Uh, ask about offboarding. Like, what does it include? Because some agencies they get told to jump off. So even if you're paying for that last month, you may be better just switching because they're not going to touch the account. So, what's involved in that off much? Are you still like, are they still contractually obliged? And I use that word a lot with people. I'm not a lawyer. Please always get legal, legal feedback from an actual lawyer. But it's just what I've seen. So those would be the biggest takeaways. Own your own ad accounts. Uh, make sure that you know the terms that you're signing up for, make sure you know like what you're contractually obliged if you want to leave, because even though people say, Well, I'm happy to commit to this time frame, like front time frame, you never know what may change on your side or their side. I've seen instances where people can't get in contact. They have performance, who they spoke to, or they had someone great on the account doing the work and then it changed. They never had someone great on the account who they spoke to in the beginning and who they were told was gonna be doing the work, they never saw again. And then the third one is um, you know, just making sure that, you know, we know what they're contractually obliged to do in terms of do you get to own the actual work produced? Because that's really important. Yeah, no, I think all those are really good points. It's a very good list. Um, that's something I come across a lot too, is when a client's like transferring from a different agency to ours, um, or even just as a kind of like a freelancer, and then that agency says something along the lines of, oh no, those are our ad accounts, or that's our like proprietary information. And that should never be the way it goes for just so many different reasons. But if an agency is ever really protective of the ad account and doesn't want you to get into it, um I I have heard from some owners of agencies like that where they say, Oh, it's just such a headache to have people who don't really understand the platforms in there looking over everything and then micromanaging us. And I can understand that a little bit, but frankly, if you're setting the expectations properly and just communicating with people, which I laugh at because this is such a people business, and I feel like so many of these agencies that we're talking about right now have these red flags, just like aren't really good at communicating with their clients in an authentic and transparent way. As long as you do that, as long as you're, like you said, Bianca, setting expectations properly and really just being proactive about how you're handling the relationship, it really should never be a problem to give them access and really make it make them own the ad account. What I've even done more recently, partly because meta can just be such a pain, and a lot of the other platforms do, but meta specifically in terms of like sharing access, and now there's like you know, have to share a page and um an ad account, a pixel, and just like so many other things. And I feel like month after month they just make it more complex for people. Um, but I actually just say, give me admin access to your account, I'll set up like your business manager, um, and I'll you know have them set up everything there. Then I'll set up the ad account, set up the pixel, and so it's like all kind of like under their ownership. And then after that, if they want to, you know, take away my admin privileges and just let me, you know, have ad account access and page access and the things I need to run ads, that's perfectly fine. Um, but it should always be set up like that in the beginning. And another thing, like you mentioned, Bianca, is really don't be afraid to push the agencies back on those things that are in the contracts. I've never had an issue if I had to edit things in the contract. Um, it's really there just to almost have like more of a formal handshake and have like kind of like you said, the terms that we're agreeing on, like in terms of deliverables and payment, when payment is due, that sort of thing, and just kind of formalize it a little bit more. But there really isn't anything in a contract that should be ironclad in the sense of, you know, kind of like we were talking about proprietary information or owning the copy or all the work that they do. The only reason an agency should be able to keep you is by having amazing work and a great client relationship. Um, there really shouldn't be anything else that's holding you obligated to be working with them. 100% agree. If you hear the word proprietary, like you people laugh. Like you and I would laugh. Like you see people laughing online, they're like, what do you mean proprietary? Like it's not, it's not something that's it's just not. And the reason why it's not is because nowadays so much, and I mean 80, 90% of the strategy is really like how you're thinking about it, how you're approaching the campaigns, how you're planning everything out, how you're doing creative strategy, website, offer strategy, basically all the things that happen outside of the platform. So there really isn't anything unique in the ad account that it's going to be different from um one provider versus another, or at least there shouldn't be like really huge changes um unless you know they're just using some like outdated strategies. But definitely nothing, there's no like secret sauce. And I think that's like another thing that you should kind of like be wary of if an agency is claiming, like, oh, we know how to hack the ad account and we know how to set up a structure that no one else knows, or any lines like that. Like it's and I know a lot of owners don't always love to hear this, but it's really just doing the the boring, consistent stuff over and over again the right way, really nailing the fundamentals. Um, and we all would wish there was kind of like a you know rocket ship, um, if you will, that can kind of just like get you there a lot faster, like some type of like really cool hack. Yeah, like that'd that'd be awesome. I'd be leaning into that so much um if that was if that was truly possible. But a lot of times that's just a sales tactic, right? 100%. Um and something you and I really bunded over as well is that you know, two people like you and I could have the same strategy, but how we execute and implement those fundamentals over time can be completely different. So that's really where the value is, and you should be hearing that from someone you want to work with. Yeah, no, I think that's a really good point. So let's go on to our next prompt. Agencies manipulate data to make them look better. How do you feel about that? I agree. I think normally I should probably be a bit on the fence, but I don't want to do that today. Um, and I think they do. I like normally you'll hear someone be like, oh, it's not intentional. Like they're not trying to be malicious and they're not trying to do. I think they do. I think it's in their best practice to retain um from early on in my career I've worked in agencies. And you're taught how like your whole goal is to retain clients month to month. They have something called a churn rate, they have something they know how long the average client stays. And so those are the key metrics they're looking for. Unless you're one of their golden uh eggs in terms of we need this as a label, we need this as a growth client, you need to know how you're gonna be categorized, which is why earlier when you said, hey, don't be shy away from some of the smaller non-name providers, why it's really important, because they will go into bat for you a lot more. Like you will see that agency really feel the impact of you coming on board and really want to, and you'll notice the different in their work and you'll notice in the different how they show up behind like before that you won't be treated as a number because they're really invested in your success. So, in terms of like manipulating data, what I've seen is um branded search being used to help prop up performance in meta. I've been seeing like use like, hey, we have our own proprietary, the word again, attribution tool internally when it's not a North Beam or Triple Whale. So I'm not speaking to those. Real attribution tools do have a lot of value. So if they use something like that and you hear an agency speaking about using tools, they're definitely showing a lot of like validity and a lot of value there in terms of what they're bringing to you as an agency. But I'm speaking about ones who make their own and they'll show you something in a spreadsheet. And so what they're doing is they're pulling in the data from these platforms. What I've personally experienced is they're using something like Channel or Zapia, again, great tools, but then putting their own like benchmarks. And so what I've seen is like these benchmarks weren't even updated. So there's something typically you'll use in the beginning, and then you'll start using your own clients' data to find and like predict, and then you use it that way. But to use it as a benchmark and not going in the platforms on a regular basis and just using uh, you know, Google Sheet and then finding it that way, and then using it to be like, oh look, here is your mer, and this is how you're profitable, and look how great Meta is. But they're using it to push Meta up and push either Google down if there's anything in the e-commerce, or use only branded search and meta and be like, oh, look how much revenue you brought overall, and then not speak to any of the platform metrics. Like it's important to speak to both. And so that's what I've seen in terms of manipulating of data. Is it everyone? No, it's not everyone. And then you can see that in the reports, how they speak to data and the dashboards have a working dashboard. I've seen a lot of agencies just have eight like dashboards that just don't work. So it's okay if they break, that's fine. But do they fix it? Or is it three to six months later and your widgets still a broken? So that's what I would say. Like, that's the problem. Yeah, no, I see that all the time too. And I think something with all the when you when you don't something a lot of marketers do is like they'll find like a metric that is like in the green for whatever reason, or like you said, like brand search results that will just like naturally have a lot of revenue or direct conversions associated with them. And they won't really get into the nuance of what those metrics actually mean and going kind of like a layer deeper. And that's something that I try to tell everyone, marketing or owner-wise, is you can't just take these metrics at face value. You really have to understand, are they actually driving an incremental lift to my business? Are they actually um correlated, like directly correlated to more revenue in my business? Or is the marketing team just saying, like, all these metrics are are up, but then at the um when I look into my my revenue, I'm actually losing money or I'm actually plateauing, or I'm not you know making the same amount of money I made last month, even though you know the click-through rate went up or branded search revenue went up or whatever it really is. And there should really never be that kind of disconnect with the metrics, at least the way that they're being explained to you as someone who owns a brand. There should always be some correlation or or kind of like I said, that that nuance of so we have this metric, and the reason why this metric is good is because X, Y, and Z reasons, and you can see that in your actual revenue that you're looking at every day, it really should all be cohesive like that. Uh and don't be afraid to push agencies, whether it's before you start working them or while you're working with them, on that type of data. And I know it does require owners to have like a little bit of marketing acumen, maybe more than they really want. But because it is so easy to manipulate the data, having like some type of foundation of what the marketing metrics really mean, or kind of like I said, just making sure that they're they're having that nuance or asking those questions kind of like go deeper than just those surface level metrics and really explain how they're correlated to the revenue, that's really important. Um, something that I used to see when I was at agencies that worked with enterprise clients, because it is really, really hard to determine these things when you're like a Fortune 500 company or whatever it is, because you have so much revenue coming in, you have so many tactics that are launched, you've you know been around for so long, it's really difficult to see like what actually is providing a lift and what isn't, especially if you're kind of like just testing on new platforms. And when I was at those agencies, all we would report on are the metrics in the platform themselves and would never really look at the revenue. I mean, sometimes the you know, whoever I was talking to at that company wouldn't even care because they're like, that's not my department. So all I really care about is the amount of leads coming in or cost per click or click through rate or whatever they're kind of scored on. So a lot of marketers who come from you know that that background of working with those large companies kind of get complacent almost. Um, I do think part of it is almost an an ignorance piece of it where they just haven't really like seen what drives lift on those types of companies, like you know, smaller companies, and and by small I don't mean, you know, tiny tiny, only spending $500 a month, really in that $10 million to $50 million revenue range, you can st you should still be able to prove where that actual lift is coming from with your with your ad strategy. But um any companies in that range, uh, once you start working with those, you can really start to see, oh, we ran this campaign, we spent this amount of budget, and even though in meta it's saying how much ever return on ad spend or branded Google search, same thing, it's not going up in the same clip on on the actual revenue side for the client. 100% agree. In fact, I worked at one agency, and when I came in, um, it's one of the first things I flagged in one of their prestige golden clients. And so that wasn't well received. And so giving them that feedback and it wasn't taken on board. I'm like, hey, I can see this, this even though everything's up, like everything's in the green, you know, year on year, this they're like, no, we're doing really well. And then a couple months past, there's an investigation because it's a global company, that it's the worst performance and that they're hemorrhaged, it's like really bad, but they just didn't know because the leads were coming in at such an alarming rate. But Hens was being propped up by branded search, and the number of leads coming in were such poor quality leads, they had actually been declining since coming on board. Which is like people are surprised when you see that because if you don't hack that chance of looking at what's profitable, and if you only look at profitability, it could be some other efforts in the business. They could have been around for years, especially if, like you're saying, like different positions in business, they could also be there and not the results of the agency. So you need to be able to like put the like put, you need to be able to like combine the metrics together, being able to speak to work. And that is a skill set in itself. And I would say if someone's speaking to someone who is earlier in their career, that asking questions a couple of times are in different ways because earlier on in someone's career and what we do, they're gonna be a lot more literal. So they will answer your question, but they may answer your question and not give the caveat. So do you don't be like afraid to ask again or that you're being pushy. Someone who is a good operator and someone who loves what they do will be happy to explain the work. You'll know someone who likes the skill set and experience will not, and they'll get defensive and they won't be able to explain themselves. Yeah, no, I've had, and I mean, even I was like this for a while, kind of like you're saying, like early in my career, I was like, oh, well, like the cost per lead is so low, and like all of our metrics are doing so great. Like, what are you complaining about? I think I was um to it a little bit earlier because I did start in sales, so I was like one of those people who would get those just like terrible leads that marketing was like so happy about, and like this person has no idea who we even are. Like, how did this even get into the system? How are you calling it like a marketing qualified lead? Um, so that was something I was always, you know, investigating a little bit further once I was on the marketing side of things. Um, but yeah, it's it's really important to make sure that they're not going to be defensive because their job isn't just to make all the metrics in the dashboard green, their job is to drive actual revenue for your. Business. So it's really important to ask those tough questions. Not in a micromanaged sense. I mean, if you are just micromanaging the agency, that's another red flag where you feel like they're just saying yes to everything instead of actually pushing back on you. But definitely don't be afraid to ask those tougher questions because they are important. And if they they are the right partner, they should have a thoughtful response to that question. And like Bianca said, being able to really bring it back to your overall revenue or kind of combining the metrics, making it a cohesive story that makes sense. Even if you don't understand all the marketing metrics and you know all the weeds of everything, you shouldn't walk away from meetings feeling more confused than when you got to the meeting. And that's something that I saw all the time when I was working at a lot of agencies. We'd even have sometimes these like literally and again, these were like larger companies, so in in some way, maybe like a lot of more meetings make sense. But I remember we'd always have like a four-hour um meeting, sometimes even an eight-hour, like just like quarterly meeting that we would do with um with their team, and it always felt like they had more questions, and not good questions, just like confusing questions after we did that giant presentation than what they entered with um because we were you know talking so much about metrics that didn't really correlate to what they were seeing on the back end of everything. Complete, yeah. I think, yeah, absolutely. There's um what I've seen with like a lot of meetings is that it becomes a metric they can track, right? So a lot of agencies, people are quite like siloed in what they do, and it becomes like how much juice can we get from this like orange? Like, how much can we get out of a person? And so something in sort of feedback as well. I'm I'm don't know if you've experienced this, but if they get negative feedback in terms of, hey, we didn't hear from someone, there was other feedback that came with that. There wasn't just that one. They're like, oh, we'll cherry pick this one bit of feedback, and now we'll do all the meetings, and now we'll we can actually measure this and track how many phone calls, how many left messages, how many emails, how many times we're having a meeting, and have someone in that role that it's just on blast. And then someone's like, you know, I I don't, I wouldn't. I don't want to speak to someone who doesn't have access to my account. Like they can't even explain the data, let alone they can't get in there and make any changes or any meaningful changes. And that was early on in my career. Like I didn't have access to the account until I was just annoying them internally, but I wasn't allowed to change anything. And so it's nothing wrong with the role itself, but it's just how it's measured internally in terms of like what success is, that it's sort of formed as part of this like KPI. And so for owners, I can see how like that's annoying. Yeah, yeah. No, it's um the way I've heard it from some places I've worked at, honestly, mostly in sales, but I've seen it in the agency world too, it's just like activity metrics, and kind of like you're saying, you know, they've done all their analysis, and um, with all the data they have, they're like clients stay longer if we email them five times a week and we hop on four meetings a month, and they're a certain length of period and X, Y, and Z. Um, I think something we talked about before was that it's really important to tailor your communication strategy for the client specifically. Like that's really the key. Um, there isn't any like you know, staple formula of, you know, like I said, activity metrics for how many meetings you need to be having, how many times you need to be responding, or sending things out per week. It really is just like dependent on the specific situation. And that does require someone who has experience, you know, being an account manager, working with clients, um, and and that's why like the junior employees or just like whatever that role is, like you can kind of feel like, oh, we'll just set that, we'll meet these metrics that we've determined from you know all of our analysis, but you'll lose a lot of clients that way because um, like you said, you'll just like annoy a lot of them. And on I mean, the the way I always think about communication with people is just like just be natural, right? Like if there's a reason to respond, perfect. If there's something that you have worthwhile to share with them, great. If you need to get on a call to like go over something that's more complex, awesome. But if you can give that client their time back because everything's already been taken care of through message or everything's going really smoothly and they don't really need to get on that clo on that call, they'll respect you so much more that you're actually being human and not just you know feeling like someone who's going through the motions because you have to, um, but you're actually tailoring everything, the whole client experience for for that specific person or specific brand. Completely agree. And something's important to see in a contract from an agency is SLAs. So that stands for service level agreements. So what is their response time to you? But then that's a skill set as well. So number one is just like reading the room, but do they ask you? Like, how do you like to be communicated for me? I have a monthly report, but I also can increase that to fortnightly and weekly when I work with clients. They also have like a calendarly link with me in terms of if they want to have it, they can email and call me as well. Um, but in terms of like working together, they can choose the time to have direct access to my emails. Oh, not email, sorry, they have direct access to my calendar, so they can put book a time. They don't actually have to, you know, that back and forth. That's just from my experience. I found like, oh, that must be so annoying on their end. When you're going, hey, what time? You're like, oh, are you free? Are you free? And then you're going that back and forth, you're like, oh, that's it, it's annoying. Um, and that back and forth. Whereas what I have seen on the rise in terms of, you know, you've got someone experienced, they know how to read the room, but online I've been seeing other agencies working with like coaches, and nothing wrong with that. They've come from bigger agencies, but they're now bringing these bigger agency practices of these KPIs into smaller agencies, which is quite funny. So, like, hey, we got to this size by doing these practices in terms of number of calls. Now, I've worked in like some of these bigger agencies too, so it did make me laugh. Like, are they all bad? No, they give some good advice to smaller agencies in terms of like trust factors, how to increase levels of trust. And to increase levels of trust, the funny thing is they actually have to go through the motions of earning that trust. So they have to get the number of reviews, they have to get the good performance to do the case studies. So, in terms of that, I think that's really beneficial because it makes smaller agencies go out and do that work and then publicly showcase it. Sometimes marketing ourselves, marketers often aren't good at marketing themselves. They're too close to the product, it's awkward. Hey, like it's it's not something we're used to, you know, making other people shine and other businesses shine. But one of the practices I'm a little bit, oh, I don't know how great that is, is in terms of these response times and KPI metrics. I only say that because I've seen how they operate in chat. I think they can be great in some cases, but when you're holding people and you have someone who doesn't have the skill set, so that would be the biggest takeaway that I'd share with people, is if someone doesn't have the skill set and experience, and so it doesn't matter how many years they've been in it, but if they don't have the ability to communicate what's going on, then the client isn't gonna get the value from it. Like, does this person have the ability to go into your ad account and then come back to you and be able to say, hey, we've seen if there's a drop in performance, whether you should be concerned or not? Can they read the market in terms of like over Easter? You're like, cool, a lot of people went away. It's the same like this every other year. Oh, look, the following week we had a bounce back. And are they gonna give you an update on that? Even though it's not scheduled, even though it's not marked off in the calendar as a KPI, or are they gonna email you with something else being like, hey, there's been like a different, like just a rent? Would you like to have a like a call, or would you like to have this, like, this is your new report? And then it's not contentional like contextual to the market. And I would say that's the key one. Yeah, no, and just like to um tag on to that coaching point that you brought up for like all those other smaller agencies. I mean, I'm always someone who is like, you know, no matter how much like I learn and I feel like I know, um, I'm always open to like education and you know, looking at like what all like the people who have grown agencies or whatever it is really, um, so I can just like make sure that I'm not getting stale with you know what I just like know myself. And one experience I had is I did have, I don't even want to call them a coach or a mentor or whoever it was. Um I was talking through my the way I I do my sales process with prospects, and what I've transitioned to just because I really want the prospect to be, especially like before any contract is signed, I want to learn about them. I want to be asking questions, and they should be really talking almost 80% of those calls because I have no right to really pitch them anything until I know all those things about their business. Um, but with all that kind of aside, these this mentor was telling me you you gotta have a deck, you've gotta have like an official deck. And I know those work for some people. Some people are like really comfortable with it or have like really um fun visuals and they make it like super interactive, but I am just not a deck person. I just cannot, I just cannot sell that way. And so I'm like, all right, fine, I'll try one sales conversation with a deck. Um, it was like a lead that I was like more sure about was gonna kind of like come across the line no matter really what we did. Um, and it went terribly. It did it did not go well at all. Um, and they're like, okay, that was a lot. And I'm like, oh God, that's not what I wanted to hear from the client. Um so you know, like really it and I with all this communication stuff, um, kind of like I said about being natural, like everyone has their own style that like really works with them, that like feels natural. Kind of like we both said about tailoring that experience for the client. You also want to still make it make it feel like it is it is really you. And sometimes it takes that trial and error. Um now I I will never use a deck again to present information. They're off. No, like I'm a big Google Doc person and just kind of like going through that like live with them. It feels like supernatural to me. But like I said, a deck may feel supernatural to you. Um, and I think more of the point that I'm getting at is like um take a look at don't don't ignore that advice that you're getting from mentors or coaches or other agencies or whoever it is, but like in the same sense, take it kind of like with a grain of salt or or make sure you tailor it to how you how you really feel natural and like to do things because um that's really the key with any type of communication or any type of client relationship. It's just making it feel organic, making it not feel forced, uh, and not just doing things because you feel like you have to. Even if you put on the best face, when you have that kind of like seed in the back of your head, you're always going to do things that like feel a little cringy. And if they feel cringy to you, they feel that same way to the client, um, and that it doesn't that doesn't create a good experience for anybody. Absolutely. And it's taking that joke, like just because it's worked in another business doesn't mean it'll work for you. Likewise, you can't be so defensive and stuck in your ways that you're not willing to change. So even though it's it's sitting on the fence and saying both things at the same time, I I believe a lot of people are intelligent enough to be able to understand the difference in different circumstances, like they're able to read, hey, this makes sense in a big like agency or a large company because of the number of people I have, because of the number like like it has to be very well documented to that degree. Whereas in smaller agencies, you still have processes that are clear, so someone knows what to do and what's expected because clear is kind. But at the same time, it doesn't need that level of being as regimented because people are typically brought on either more experience or the training they get is going to be a more level of hands-on that things won't fall through the tracks. Tracks, like yeah, cracks. Cracks, there we go. Things don't uh fall through the cracks as much as a large agency. So I think it's peeking and choosing. Like for me, I'm speaking with another agency owner in Australia today. Um, and we're speaking about, and I was explaining how I work a bit differently, where she's very like regimen in terms of like number of hours that each person does. And I think it's very important in terms of as an agency that you try like tracking hours and how much work's done. When I start working with a client in the first three months, my goal is I have to make this client as like profitable as soon as possible. So typically you don't have the full three months to do that, but everything's different depending on the client, like the type of client and the size. But that three-month period for anyone who works in an agency knows that's a critical period that you need to get over to earn trust, to show performance, to show the level of work that you are capable of doing. So if there is a history in the past or if there's a number of things to be resolved, it can take more time than was initially allocated. And for me, I'm willing to do that as an agency. Not all agencies are, and sometimes that means having a conversation, and sometimes that means they don't have the conversation. But everyone is different in terms of like I have like a window of hours on a low and a higher end than I expect. And if it goes over that, I'm prepared to do that or I'm prepared to have the conversation with the client, be like, hey, look, it's out of scope. And that's that's okay. It's just being willing to have those conversations, but in some other agencies, because they're so narrowly scoped in, it means that level of flexibility isn't there. Yeah, and I think that's a really important part to like as an agency owner, I guess, on that side of things, to be firm when you are doing things out of scope. Because it's it's not for the reason of you like deserve that money necessarily. It's really like a resources thing. And if you are putting in so much more time and you can't either like pay your team to do it, or you, as the agency owner or director of media, whoever that position is, has to be like spending, you know, after hours like doing all this extra work and like burning you out, it's going to affect all of your other clients. And I know it can kind of be a scary thing at times because no one wants to, you know, ask a client for more money necessarily, but as long as you're doing things the right way, um, honestly, I find like a lot of clients respect that you are willing to say, like, hey, I spent a lot more hours on this than you know, we originally talked about. And as long as you're just giving like the real reasons as to why you spent those hours and they just didn't come like made up magically somewhere, um, they're usually all gonna be completely fine with that. Um, and for the operators too, like I think that's honestly a good sign when an agency is saying this is out of scope, this you know, this isn't out of scope. Um, I think it's a lot more rare that an agency is gonna say, Oh, we actually, you know, save 10 hours so we can lower your fees this month or whatever it is. But that that that can honestly happen, happen too. Um, but either way, an agency that respects their time and their team's time is gonna be so much better for you because if they're treating you that way, they're treating all the other clients that way, so that you're never going to be kind of like, you know, left left aside um for someone else because they're over-resourcing something that they actually don't have the hours or money to resource properly. I completely agree. And some of the areas you can see an agency have that, uh, number one, it's gonna be in the contract. So it's gonna show you what's out of scope. Like this is what's in scope, and this is what's out of scope, like quite specifically. And the next one you're gonna see is for me, I share a project management system with my clients called Asana, but there's a lot out there. Doesn't mean you have to have a project management system shared with you, but it shows what work is scope, what's coming up in the following month. Sometimes this changes based on like what's required, but then they can see that they get to see like when I'm in the accounts, any notes from that. So they know how often I'm in their accounts, they know when like work is coming up, they know when reports are, and so it really helps. So if it's ever in the situation of, okay, well, what's gonna happen? I can show them what the commitments are. And I'm like, cool. Uh if it's something new, here is a list. Um, this is what I recommend we prioritize. And then I talk to them as well because they may have a different priority on their end. So I can talk in terms of priorities in terms of performance, but they may have a new campaign coming up. So I'm like, that's okay. We can just arrange it. And it stops from being this, which comes with experience, but it stops from being this like hard conversation of being like, oh, they're, you know, the client's being demanding, they expect us to have this new campaign live. I've not had that experience personally. Have I had people go, hey, this is urgent and stress? Yes. But when you show someone how much work is expected, sometimes they don't even realize the other work that you're working on that's coming up because they're busy with their own jobs and their own lives and they have their own commitments that's taking up all their time. And this is something that they pay someone to have sorted. They, you know, they pay an agency to take this off their hands. So when they're speaking to us, it's not always top of mind what we're working on. So as long as they have a straight, like a clear understanding of what's coming up, they'll generally be like, cool. Well, if we want to do all this work at once, it's going to cost this much extra. And don't be the longer, the more awkward it is. I find the more it's just logistics and just having a logistical mind to it. Cool, this is the amount of work. If we want to get this additional campaign or additional number of campaigns live, this is how much it'll cost. If otherwise, I propose we move this up. And it sounds very boring, but when you just take all the emotion out of it, it just becomes work. Then I find people take that very well because I don't believe any of them are unreasonable on that occasion. Like it makes sense, like, cool, we've got this much time and this much to be profitable. They don't have the resources unless we pay them more or we reallocate the work. Because it's the same in all businesses. Yeah, yeah. No, absolutely. I think that's a really good point. And kind of also um makes me think about, and I think you were kind of like talking about this too, on how some agencies will just or agency or freelancer will just kind of like rush to get everything done and just like say yes, yes, yes to everything that client is like asking them to do. Because in the client's world, um, they may have like this long list of things that they really want to get done. And I mean, something I've always found in marketing is like there's like a never-ending list of things that can be done. You know, it's really I've never gotten like to the very bottom of my list and be like, all right, I'm done. Now I can take a break for two weeks. There's no other projects to like be proactive on or think about something. Open marketing, like yeah. And that's kind of like why one of the reasons I like marketing is because it just kind of like always evolves like that. Um, but if you're just constantly rushing to do things and kind of like we're talking about, like then like you know, not having enough resources to really do that properly, then the execution part of it isn't going to be as pristine as it could be. And I know from the client side, sometimes it can sound like they're really stressed, and they may be like they may be having like a boss who's like you know, saying that very demanding on them, or they may have just like really um aggressive goals that they meet need to meet. But in the same sense, I've never had a client have an issue when I'm like, hey, that's actually gonna take us two extra days, or like you said, that's gonna toss like a certain amount of extra money to like really get it done the way that you need it to get done, and then the results are what they need or better than what they need because you actually gave the time or the resources to do the job properly. Um, I've never had a client be upset about that, but I've had tons of clients upset when you rush to get the things done, and then the execution isn't nearly as good as it's expected to be. Then you have to almost like redo everything after that, and then you're just like taking so much longer because you weren't able to be firm in the beginning of that. That's what really gets clients clients upset, um, as opposed to just like setting those expectations and being firm about like what is needed, just like get the job done. Because at the end of the day, we're not emergency room doctors, or no, we're not, you know, we're not saving the world as much as you know, I wanna wanna say that like I like working with purpose-driven brands and and everything like that. Um, but there really isn't anything in marketing unless it's like you know, Black Friday or something, something of that nature that does have like some type of more firm deadline around it. Um, but even then, there's never anything in marketing that is like truly a emergency, especially never on like a life or death level. Um, so it really shouldn't be a bad thing if you take a couple of extra days to get things done, or you know, if you want to get it done faster or have more work done that month, um, just resource it more appropriately with extra investment. Um that, like you said, Bianca, that's just like the nature of any business. So it it just makes sense to do things that way. Absolutely. And sometimes taking things into other businesses helps when you provide that context. Like, you know, sometimes you'll have like a builder come in and what they initially quote, they're like, Oh, actually, your house has all these problems, and to do that, but I couldn't quote that earlier because I couldn't see that. And I know it's not the same, but just drawing a parallel, it's okay to start working on something and then go back and go, look, we actually just need more time. Like, that's that's okay. You can just just talk to them though. Like they just find it weird when you don't talk to them, and what they get, they're like, Cool, but I this isn't what I wanted, or they don't even get that. You know, I have had experience with clients that when they're working with other agencies, like they don't show their work. And I've worked in agencies where they said no, like they don't want to show the work because they end up getting defensive, and that's a skill set and experience part as well. Like, can this person explain their work? But will they be willing to show the work? Again, it's not proprietary. If you're paying for work, you should at least have like the documentation that goes along with it in situations where it exists, and you should understand as well, not because you should, but in terms of the agency or the people you work with, need to have the ability to communicate what your strategy is. Like, what does that mean? Why is it good? Why is it bad? And then speak to the performance, not hey, this will cause too many questions, and we don't want to do that. Yeah, no. Um, anytime an agency or freelancer is hesitant to answer questions or like bring up conflict, like that. I mean, sometimes that is just like the nature of that person's personality. Um, but still, like with such a people-oriented business like this is, like with how much communication is a part of just making everything work, you really need someone who's like willing to, you know, not afraid of those, you know, potential conflict conversations, um, not afraid to answer like the difficult questions. And it's even pushing the clients to like ask some of those difficult questions as well, um, which is like another prompt that I wanted to get to is agencies are never going to push clients to think differently if their current mindset benefits them. And kind of just like an example there is I've worked with a lot of clients who have this ROAS mindset of everything, um, kind of like we were talking about with like the brand search attribution where that will just have like a huge return on ad spend, and clients will be like, Oh, that's where we should shift all of our budget. And it's like the agency or freelancer feels easier to just be like, sure, that's what we should do. That's what you decided to do. Like, let's just push all our budget there. It's gonna make our results look great, and that I don't have to do all you know this extra work explaining things or you know, working harder on meta or whatever it really is. Um but like how do you how do you feel about that one, Bianca? Well, that's all the time that we're gonna have for today. I've been trying to keep these episodes to only 30 minutes. We're already at the 45-minute point of this one. I actually was trying to find a way to cut some things out that I didn't feel like were needed in this episode, but the conversation was honestly just so worthwhile and so fun. I'm deciding to split it up into two different episodes. So stay tuned for part two of why most agencies suck. It will be released either later this week or early next week. Thanks for joining in next week.