Working in the business vs. on the business

Many of the agency owners I speak to wish they were free from the day-to-day so that they can focus on the agency’s strategy.
They wish they weren’t required in the business, which would allow them to work on the business.
But one thing in particular blurs the line between in the business and on the business: clients.
Many agency owners believe that holding (and growing) client relationships is just part of the agency’s day-to-day operations.
But we reinvent our agencies one client at a time. What could be more strategic than reinventing our agency? The next win can change our fortunes and set us on a path towards a future where growth becomes much easier for us.

The role of the agency owner in client relationship management

The truth is that agencies are services businesses, which means that none of us will ever escape clients. Even the CEO of one of the big five agency networks has to (and definitely should) spend time with some clients. Certain clients should be part of the day-to-day of everyone in the agency, including the owner.

The clients we should be spending our time with typically fall into one of the following two categories:

• They represent a large enough percentage of revenue that the agency would have a serious problem if they were to reduce or stop spending
• We say to ourselves and/or others in our agency that “we need more clients like that one” because they fall within our ICP.

As the agency grows, the owner should be less involved in the delivery of work (unless there are multiple owners, in which case one of the owners might choose to remain involved regardless of the agency’s scale), which makes their role in the client relationship more straightforward: we can make a distinction between “work the agency has” (which, assuming the agency is large enough to have an account manager for the client, the owner should not be talking about) and “work the agency doesn’t have yet” (or “demand” vs. “delivery”, as I’ve termed it in my agencies).

When the owner talks to clients about work the agency is already doing for them, numerous bad things happen:

• We send a message to the client that we believe we’re needed on the account, possibly because we don’t rate the account manager’s abilities
• Worse, we send a message to the client that they should contact us about the work instead of the account manager
• We talk ourselves into making promises that the account manager will have to deliver on and hasn’t scoped or scheduled, creating additional work for them and, if done consistently, contributing to burnout
• We give discounts and freebies that the account manager might have charged for (which, believe it or not, is more common than us charging for things that the account manager would have given away for free)
• We send a message to the account manager that we don’t trust them to own the client relationship
• We waste our prep time on details that we shouldn’t (like memorising delivery dates), instead of researching the bigger picture (like what else the client, or their competitors, might be doing).

Instead, the owner should talk to the client about things that only the owner can talk about:

• We can get direct feedback about our staff that the client wouldn’t share with the staff themselves (I will typically phrase this as a two part question: “is there someone on your account that you want to make sure I know is doing a great job?” and “can you tell me about any instances where we’ve let you down since we last spoke?”)
• If we’re speaking to a senior client (again, something the owner often has more cause to do than other staffers), we can give them feedback on their team too (I’ll solicit that feedback from the account team in advance and share it constructively, including praise). You’re in conversation with someone who has a job to do and probably work with a number of other clients and their teams: the CMO absolutely wants to know if someone in their team is going to be responsible for them getting - or not getting - their bonus
• Regardless of seniority, have a standing call with the main point of contact: you should take the time to show that you care and that this relationship is not just transactional, plus you’ve managed to build a decent sized agency and will have first hand experience of many things this client wrestles with day-to-day…things that your account manager is only experiencing for the first, second or third time themselves
• Generally, you should only have one-to-one meetings with clients, which will help to ensure everyone is being candid (unless you’re there to facilitate some kind of intervention between warring clients)
• We can more easily get permission to talk about the client’s wider business challenges and initiatives and we can offer to do proactive work to unlock new opportunities
• With some clients, we can speak entrepreneur to entrepreneur and empathise with a business owner in a way that our staff can’t: the account manager sharing their opinion on National Insurance increases doesn’t have the same effect.

What this will do for you

Practically speaking, making this work requires you to make some changes:

• You must free up enough of your time to be able to hold those conversations with clients and this does mean letting go of delivery within the firm. Recognise that this is a chicken and egg scenario and bite the bullet (I can easily write a whole post on this as a follow up, so let me know if you want the tips) - this is your opportunity to make it happen
• You must have the confidence to start the conversation by setting the boundaries: you’re not here to talk about delivery dates and your account manager knows better than you do anyway. You should go one further and tell the client that, unless they have grave concerns, you’re not even going to check up on the status of the project after the call. You being a middleman is helping nobody and, if anything, you’re only going to slow the whole thing down - this is you giving yourself permission to trust your team
• You’ll learn of potential risks to the revenue much more quickly: you’re much more likely to get a candid picture of the client’s situation from them directly. Plus, your team’s response to getting that feedback might be to yank the “overservice” lever, when you have the opportunity to look your client in the eye and ask them if you’re past the point of no return in a way that an account manager just won’t
• By asking your client what keeps them up at night, you’ll learn…what keeps them up at night. Maybe this keeps other clients up at night too. Ask enough clients and you can validate your ideas for what your agency should become (or, at the very least, you'll keep finding new things to write about). You will not learn as much asking ChatGPT as asking the people who pay your mortgage.
• What you sell through your client services team is typically polished and well understood; this is your opportunity to sell what might be. Tell the client how your agency is helping another business like them with the next big thing: would they be interested in you exploring that in their situation? Tell them what you’re thinking of investing in: would they be interested in an MVP, before anyone else?

Here’s what I’d recommend you do: pick one client that meets the criteria and ask for a chat. Explain truthfully what the call is (and isn’t) going to be about. Ask to put a follow up in the calendar for next month, or next quarter…

…and do the same thing for each new client you win. It won’t be long before it becomes your new day-to-day.