Agency owners so often hear about the importance of not just being order-takers and finding ways to be more strategic by understanding a client’s real challenges and opportunities.

And that’s absolutely true.

But that doesn’t mean that you should veer outside of your lane into areas where the client doesn’t want you to go — or worse where you don’t have the expertise to do well.

Understanding where those boundaries are will give you the room you need to expand your engagements and the value that you provide, while not becoming something that you’re not.

[read the transcript]


ALP 130: Know when (and how) to stay in your own lane as an agency

For Immediate Release: Podcasts for Communicators

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Clients often want to know who at the agency does what. It might be because they want to understand the work that they’re getting, but it also might be because they want to go directly to individuals for certain things.

Chip and Gini tackle this important topic in this episode of the Agency Leadership Podcast.

You need to be clear with your team about what their individual roles are so that there isn’t confusion. There needs to be a single person responsible for the completion of each task (even if they need to work with others to accomplish it).

But how do you handle clients who want this level of detail? It’s fine to communicate the expertise that you have, but be careful about locking yourself in to specific team members doing work for that client. Sometimes the agency’s needs change and as long as you continue to deliver a quality product, it shouldn’t matter to your clients.

Chip and Gini also argue that it is important to have a primary point of contact for each client with your agency so that they aren’t asking for lots of individual items from team members that could get lost in the cracks and not done — or completed but not properly recorded as work done for that client.



[read the transcript]

ALP 132: Assigning and communicating roles for agency team members

One of the things that continue to allude communicators is measurement. Part of the challenge is the industry doesn’t have a uniform way to measure what we do. Then we also have to take into account brand awareness, which is pretty near impossible to measure, and then we’re left with the things we can measure—leads and participation in nurturing them to conversion. 
It’s not a fun topic and I can hear you all groaning. BUT!! It’s extraordinarily important. Pretty much every meeting my team and I have with clients today begins  with, “How many leads did you generate? How many are marketing qualified? How many are sales qualified?” 
And how do you create your goals, and what do you report on weekly, monthly, quarterly, and annually?
It’s rough and, while we’ve figured out the answer for most, there is still the elusive brand awareness, which is required, but challenging to measure—at least without a six-figure budget to do studies every year.
What we talk about is what you can measure and how to set up your comms plans at the start to define the metrics the correct way. And then we’ll use a framework to help you report on the results. 
That’s what we discuss on this week’s episode of the Spin Sucks podcast.
Resources Included

* Christopher S. Penn’s SAINT Framework
*  Spin Sucks Community


Spin Sucks 174: How to Create Accurate PR Measurement

In this episode, I’m joined by author,  communications expert and dear friend David Murray, who recently released his book, An Effort to Understand: Hearing One Another (and Ourselves) in a Nation Cracked in Half. David has written for The New York Times, The Atlantic Monthly and The Chicago Tribune and published several other books. He also leads the global Professional Speechwriters Association and the Executive Communication Council (ECC) and pens the daily blog “Writing Boots.”
In our conversation, we discuss how effective internal communications can foster empathy in oftentimes divided workplaces, as well as:


Why the book is dedicated to communicators: “This is the distillation of all the wisdom I’ve gotten from hanging around with [communicators] in bar rooms and out of bar rooms and at work in a hundred different ways,” he said. “So, this feels like it’s not my book, but really our book.” 
The criticality of internal communications: “There’s endless stuff for an internal communication group to be doing to help employees understand more profoundly what they’re doing in the world and what their organization is doing in the world,” David said. “And what an important thing to do to make people feel like full citizens of their country and of their corporation.” 
How an increased understanding of each other —  and willingness to listen — can help us best navigate differing opinions and find commonality despite individual social and political leanings: “To the extent that we can understand our fellow human beings, we can communicate with them better,” he said. “Or, we could at least understand their behavior better and deal with it.” 
What makes communications “scary”: “You don’t know what’s going to happen. That’s what makes it exciting.” 
The best path forward for internal and executive communications: “That’s how organizations communicate: Take things in, spit it back out and react to the humanity inside the organizations.”

For more from David, head to: 

David’s interview with “The Father of Internal Communications,” Roger D’Aprix, from EE Voice Episode #55. 
His work at ProRhetoric, an organization that includes the global Professional Speechwriters Association, the ECC and Virtal Speeches of the Day.  

 

Episode #58 – David Murray urges comms pros to stop messaging, start listening in an “Effort to Understand”

With all of the talk about the Great Resignation and the challenges many agencies are having hiring and retaining workers, is now the time to adopt a 4-day work week?
What are the pros and cons of this policy — and is it even feasible for most agencies?
Chip and Gini tackle the idea that has become part of the conversation in many workplaces.
[read the transcript]

ALP 131: Moving your agency to a 4-day work week

Every communicator on earth knows the value of the phrase, “No comment.” When we do media training, we coach everyone that the value of “no comment” is pretty much nill—and so is trying to have a conversation off the record. You can always assume that what you say will end up being reported, no matter what was agreed to during the conversation.
When we were kids, my dad always told us we should never, ever put into writing anything we didn’t want to see on the front page of the newspaper. That’s the same philosophy I take to media relations—everything you say or write can, and will, end up in print. 
That’s why I’m always surprised when a communicator is upset that something they gave on background is attributed to them. Or, as we discussed a few weeks ago when a reporter won’t run a story if the communicator won’t approve of being named as a spokesperson. 
It’s a tricky balance we all try to keep—in some cases, there is information we should be able to give on background if only to provide extra context, but it doesn’t add value to the story so shouldn’t need to be printed, let alone attributed. I also understand that journalists have to be able to name their sources, both in the name of ethics and in reporting on the news without bias.
And that, my friends, is what we’re going to discuss on this week’s episode of the Spin Sucks podcast.
Resources Included:

* Spin Sucks Blog Post: The Contentious Relationship Between PR Pros and Journalists
* 
Updating The Verge’s Background Policy

* 
Spin Sucks Blog Post: Maintaining Strong Leadership Through “The Big Quit”



ALP 130: Know when (and how) to stay in your own lane as an agency

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