FIR Podcast Network

Agency owners want clients to be happy with the results they provide – that’s one of the reasons they are in the business. A recent research project about the RFP process shows that one out of three clients are dissatisfied with their agencies.

In this episode, Chip and Gini discuss why a third of your clients may be unhappy, and what you can do about it. They tackle the topics of RFPs, communication, and managing expectations.

QUOTES

* Chip: “Oftentimes, the reason why someone is dissatisfied is because there’s a disconnect between what their expectations are, and what your expectations are, what you can deliver. And so you’ve got to get those things meshed together from the very earliest stages of the relationship.”

* Gini, on building processes: “You start to realize, Oh, I almost need a recipe, and a recipe can be replicated. And from my interns all the way up through my vice presidents the work is the same level, no matter who’s doing it.”

* Chip: “There are very few agencies that have no staff turnover. And if you have no staff turnover, that’s probably a bad sign. There is a healthy amount of turnover, it brings in fresh ideas. And it also validates that you’ve got a great team, because people are pursuing them.”

* Gini: “When a prospect knows how the sausage is made, kind of like knowing how hot dogs are made, you really just don’t want to do it anymore.”

RESOURCES

* Read Chip’s summary of the research

* View the full report (PDF)

* View the press release (PDF)

* Listen to Robert Udowitz and Steve Drake of RFP Associates discuss the RFP process on the Chats with Chip podcast

* Listen to Chip Griffin and Gini Dietrich discuss the pros and cons of the RFP process on the Agency Leadership Podcast

* RFP Associates

* CommunicationsMatch

* Researchscape

* Institute for Public Relations

* Built to Sell

[read the transcript]

The September episode of “The Hobson and Holtz Report” features Shel and Neville discussing these topics:

* Voice assistants have reached critical mass (and adoption of smart speakers is soaring)

* Thieves are using AI deepfakes to trick employees into sending them money

* Electric car owners could be able to choose fake sounds their cars make

* Not one PR agency was willing to take on the Hong Kong government as a client

* A new podcasting tool makes it easy to fix recorded flubs without needing to re-record

* Neville and Shel have a face-to-face chat in Winchester — and you can listen in

* Dan York reports on Google’s new algorithm, the low rate of Google search clickthroughs, the private Web Google wants to build (and the one developers want), the search for alternatives to advertising to monetize web content, and news from the WordPress world.

Special thanks to Jay Moonah for the opening and closing music.

You can find the stories from which Shel’s FIR content is selected at Shel’s Link Blog.

The next episode of For Immediate Release will be posted on Monday, September 23 (we think).

Links from This Week’s Episode

* Descript, the new podcast editing tool

* 33% of People Are Now Using Voice Assistants Regularly

* The Smart Audio Report, Spring 2019 (PDF)

* Thieves are now using AI deepfakes to trick companies into sending them money

* Electric car owners could choose which fake sounds their cars make under new proposal

* Here’s the fake noise the Jaguar I-Pace makes when you hit the throttle

* Hong Kong protests: government fails to find PR firm to rescue battered image

Links from Dan York’s Tech Report

* Elevating original reporting in Search

* Google now gives more preference to original reporting in search

* Less than Half of Google Searches Now Result in a Click

* Sooner or later, the shark gets jumped

* Building a more private web

* Web feature developers told to dial up attention on privacy and security

* In a swipe at Chrome, Firefox now blocks ad trackers by default

* ‘I can’t see how my ads work if I can’t target people’: Confessions of a marketer

* Grant for the Web

Harness the power of inbound and social media marketing safely and in compliance with the regulations of your industry. This episode features #ThoughtLeader and #Expert Brad Friedman (http://aha.pub/BradFriedman), founder and president of The Friedman Group and the Amazon bestselling author of “The Social Business Owner’s Guide to Inbound Marketing” and “Brad Friedman on Digital Marketing.”

Brad helps business owners and professionals in regulated industries harness the power of inbound and social media marketing to create business and generate revenue. He understands the need to maintain a professional online presence while complying with various regulations. He also trains and assists his clients in engaging prospects and referrals through social networks. Brad is dedicated to using social media in a way that reflects his client’s professional image and personality.

To learn more about Brad, go to http://aha.pub/BradFriedman. To get in touch with him, visit https://friedmansocialmedia.com/.

Here are a couple of AHAmessages from this episode:

* The pain point of many business professionals is not knowing how to do inbound and #SocialMediaMarketing safely and in compliance with the regulations that govern their industry. https://friedmansocialmedia.com @BradFriedman

* Inbound and #SocialMediaMarketing are powerful ways to create business and generate revenue. Business professionals should consider getting an expert to help them harness these powers. http://aha.pub/BradFriedman

* Are you working with an expert who knows your industry’s regulations? Knowledge of industry regulations can give a person the expertise to help business professionals harness the power of inbound and #SocialMediaMarketing safely. http://aha.pub/BradFriedman

* Having a chatbot strategy can help business owners and professionals engage with their audience, develop relationships, and generate revenue. Are you utilizing chatbots to grow your business? https://friedmansocialmedia.com/thebradbot/ @BradFriedman

* Doing inbound and #SocialMediaMarketing can give someone the credibility to guide business professionals safely. Are you being guided by someone who practices what they teach? https://friedmansocialmedia.com @BradFriedman

To learn more about Thought Leadership and how it can help you be successful, subscribe to the channel: http://youtube.com/user/thoughtleaderlife.

With dramatic, unpredictable change as a constant in business and technology, how can communication professionals help build resilient organizations and increase the resilience of employees in enterprise transformations?

On episode 49 of Circle of Fellows, four IABC Fellows discussed the role of communication in facilitating change, including…

* How to incorporate storytelling to help people make sense of change

* How to engage employees in the change process

* The role of listening in preparing for change

* How a connection to the marketplace will help employees anticipate change

About the Panel

Dr. Amanda Hamilton-Attwell, accredited by both IABC and PRSA. She is Managing Director of Business DNA, based in South Africa, which provides strategic research and consulting, including communication audits, customer service, and women’s leadership topics. She is licensed in Adobe Connect and WebEx, using these to conduct virtual professional learning and education sessions. and other focused research and training in communication skills. Her career has also included a 15-year stint as a research manager for the National Productivity Institute.

Mark Schumann is vice president of Culture and Communications at Sabre. He is also the co-author of Brand from the Inside and Brand for Talent. Before joining Sabre, he was Director of Graduate Communication Studies at the Zicklin School of Business at Baruch College in New York City, as well as a managing principal and global communication practice leader at Towers Perrin. He served as IABC’s chair in 2009-2010 and is the winner of 17 Gold Quill awards.

Jim Shaffer is a business advisor, leadership coach, author, and speaker. As leader of the Jim Shaffer Group, he helps organizations accelerate results through superior strategy execution. The Jim Shaffer Group creates hard business results by translating the business strategy to the people who need to implement it, aligning systems, processes, and culture to make the gains sustainable. Jim was an architect and leading practitioner of Towers Perrin’s (now Towers Willis Watson) change management consulting practice. He designed and produced the IABC Academy Course, “Managing Change Communication to Drive Results and Value.” Some of his change management clients have included: Abbott, ConAgra Foods, FedEx, IBM, ITT, Mayo Clinic, Medtronic, Owens Corning, Pfizer, Toyota.

Brad Whitworth is a communication manager at Hitachi Vantara.  A communication coach at the Stanford Graduate School of Business, Brad was most recently an executive communication manager at Hewlett Packard Enterprise. Before that, he was senior communication manager at Cisco Systems. Before Cisco, Brad led communication programs at HP, PeopleSoft, and AAA. He earned undergraduate degrees in both journalism and speech at the University of Missouri and an MBA at Santa Clara University. A former broadcaster, Brad has made more than 300 presentations to executives, communicators, and university classes around the world. Brad has a long history with IABC, including serving as chairman of the international board and president of two local chapters. He is one of the authors of The IABC Handbook of Organizational Communication.

Take your business to the next level through digital marketing.

This episode features #ThoughtLeader and #Expert Jamie Palmer (http://aha.pub/JamiePalmer), a digital business strategist and coach for entrepreneurs who want to succeed online. Jamie has an in-depth understanding of the use of specialized digital marketing methods necessary for hypercompetitive industries, including IT, marketing, consulting, financial, hospitality, and professional services. She is highly informed in the wide variety of methods and techniques used in corporate training and is an expert at building highly engaged online communities with leadership techniques.

To learn more about Jamie and her services, visit: https://outliermarketinggroup.com/.

Here are a few AHAmessages from this episode:

* The pain point of many entrepreneurs is not having an integrated approach to market their business online. #DigitalMarketing https://outliermarketinggroup.com/ @JamieLPalmer_

* Entrepreneurs who strive for greatness can reach greater heights with effective #DigitalMarketing strategies. https://outliermarketinggroup.com/ @JamieLPalmer_

* Business growth and sales can come as a result of having systems in place. Have you added systems in your business that can help it grow? https://youtu.be/aOPsFyC88No @JamieLPalmer_

* Identifying the right #KPIs and consistently measuring progress against them can result in business growth and sales. Work with someone who can identify the right KPIs for your business. https://outliermarketinggroup.com/ @JamieLPalmer_

* Working with thousands of entrepreneurs at every stage of their business can give a person the expertise to market businesses online. Choose an expert to help your business. http://aha.pub/JamiePalmer

To learn more about Thought Leadership and how it can help you be successful, subscribe to the channel: http://youtube.com/user/thoughtleaderlife.

For the next two weeks we talk with Charley Spektor, principal at Saratoga B2B Group. Charley and his partner, veteran tech writer Paul Desmond, bring clients the one-two punch of SEO and content expertise for B2B lead generation. Charley was formerly lead managing consultant at Stone Temple Consulting for Home Depot, which has been one of the few great success stories of a brick-and-mortar retailer embracing e-commerce. In these two podcasts, we discuss what are the elements of success in a discipline that changes constantly, how B2B buyers use search differently than consumers and how even small companies can dominate search results if they pick their targets carefully. Read this this blog post about two recent Saratoga B2B customer success stories for further background on the case studies we discuss.

Nobody enjoys a negative customer experience.

Not the unhappy customers, nor the business owner.

But it’s something we’ll experience on one side of the fence or the other, over and over again.

Back in the day, word of mouth was all we had to really worry about.

Now, the internet and social media take any and all privacy out of negative customer experiences if the customer feels like venting to an audience.

Off the top of your head can you think of an instance when a bad customer experience made the news?

I can. 

The amount of sites people complain on is staggering.

Not just your basic social media platforms like Facebook and Twitter.

People leave reviews on Google, Yahoo, and even job search sites like Glassdoor and Indeed.

Social media has given everyone their own version of a megaphone. 

A soapbox.

A sounding horn.

Whatever you want to call it.

Of course, organizations would love to deal with the problems in private.

But whether we like it or not, that isn’t how things work anymore.

So, let’s talk about what to do with unhappy customers who make sure everyone hears about their negative experience.

Dealing with Unhappy Customers

When a customer is unhappy with your products or services, you probably have an ideal image in your head about how this will all play out.

You’ll apologize, they’ll be grateful, and you’ll rectify the situation and keep a valued customer. 

That is ONE of a whole spectrum of possibilities.

And the chance a customer chooses this scenario is pretty darn slim.

Because of this, you should be prepared to deal with as much as you can.

Above all else, you want unhappy customers to come to you with their problem so you can fix it.

You’re the expert on the subject and (hopefully) they trust you to know how to handle it.

This is a topic you should cover during your onboarding process.

We have a great blog post on the subject called Extraordinary Onboarding and talked about it in episode 60 of the podcast. 

Do You Have a Customer Service Policy?

If your organization doesn’t have a policy to handle customer complaints, it’s something you need to add. 

It will give you a solid set of guidelines to follow in situations where you might get rattled or thrown off your game.

Plus, you’re not the only person who handles customer complaints. 

You can’t be everywhere at once and at some point, a complaint is going to arise when you aren’t available. 

This will help your customer-facing team members know what to do and follow the guidelines as well.

And it keeps your reactions consistent, which is a bonus.

What if They Take it Public?

That said, it’s likely unhappy customers will take their complaints online.

Whether they’re angry and want a group of people standing behind them or they aren’t sure exactly where to go to address their complaint, there’s a pretty good chance they’re going to air their grievances publicly and loudly on social media.

Some industries are more prone to it than others, but all organizations run the risk of it happening to them.

And it’s important to know how to calm the emotions and solve the customer’s problem in a way that shows your community you’re listening and committed to helping.

On This Episode of the Spin Sucks Podcast…

We’ve packed a lot of great information into this podcast including:

* How to make handling customer complaints easier

* Why you should have a process for handling complaints

It’s a never-ending battle for agency managers to keep their teams on track. With the volume and pace of work that everyone is trying to get done, it can sometimes be frustrating to figure out what needs to be done next.

This is a topic that came up in a recent conversation in r/agency on Reddit. Chip and Gini found some of the responses to be just a bit off the mark, so they highlight some bad advice that they saw — then offer up their own take on the challenge.

Spoiler alert: secret lists are never the answer.

QUOTES

* Chip: “Keeping secret lists really is never a good management tactic. No, I can’t think of an occasion where there is a good secret list to be kept. So let’s just start with that concept that if you’re hiding something, or being secretive about something that probably suggests there’s something amiss.”

* Gini: “Tell them what the priorities are, have monthly company wide meetings to say, hey, these are the priorities for next month. Let’s talk through who needs to do what and what we’re going to be focused on.”

* Chip: “And like so many things, it almost doesn’t matter which tool you’re using, as long as you’re using it consistently. Because the reason why most project management tools fail is not because there’s something inherently wrong with the tool, it’s because the team isn’t using it. They’re not updating on a regular basis.”

* Gini: “Please do not keep secrets from the team.”

RESOURCES

* Reddit post with original question

* Ken Jacobs episode

* Karl Sakas episode

* Trello

* Asana

* CoSchedule

* Basecamp

* 60+ project management tools for agencies (by Karl Sakas)

[read the transcript]

Steve Parker, Jr. brings extensive digital marketing and business experience as CEO and co-founder of Levelwing. He is an industry leader, trendsetter, and occasional provocateur.

In this episode of Chats with Chip, Steve discusses his recent video Uncommon Transparency, and how internal and external transparency will benefit all agency relationships. He explores his own experiences and why he chose to produce a series of videos examining Levelwing’s values.

The discussion will provide agency owners a lot of food for though in how they interact with clients and their own teams.

QUOTES

* Steve: “We had to find those tent poles that we believed in, and said, these are the things that are going to hold us up via good weather or bad weather and in the world of our business, which always has its ups and downs. And so those three things that we settled upon were transparency, fundamentals, and setting expectations, or in other words, really good communication, internally and externally.”

* Chip: “If you think about transparency, from an agency perspective, it’s a thread that runs through the entirety to the business, particularly for anyone in the digital portion of marketing, because transparency has to do with the techniques that you’re using and how consumers or audiences are seeing that transparency, how you’re being transparent with your own teams, how you’re being transparent with clients, or with partners.”

* Steve: “To steal from Jeff Adelson-Yan’s words, he would say you’re either transparent or you’re not, there’s no sort of in between.”

* Chip: “This is not something that’s just cropped up, it’s something that has been part of the business model of agencies, particularly those who engage on the advertising and creative side, for a long time. And it’s how money is made.”

RESOURCES

* Levelwing

* Uncommon Transparency short film

* Steve on LinkedIn | Twitter

* Catch Me If You Can

* American Greed

ABOUT STEVE PARKER

Steve Parker, Jr. is the CEO and Co-Founder of Levelwing, an independent digital marketing agency specializing in analytics, media, creative and social. Levelwing was born in New York City and today operates in New York, Charleston (HQ) and San Francisco, serving some of the world’s most recognizable brands.

Parker has led the company since it was founded and he has produced record-setting and award-winning advertising campaigns on the largest global stages including cultural moments such as the Super Bowl and the Olympic Games. He has also been a part of the leadership team that has garnered recognition for the agency’s growth, including four consecutive years on the Inc. 500|5000 list of Fastest-Growing Private Companies in America.

[read the transcript]

The numbers are in and, well, when it comes to loving work, things aren’t looking so hot.

More than half of us aren’t happy with our jobs says a Conference Board report.

To add insult to injury, 79% of people who quit their jobs do so because they don’t feel appreciated.

According to a Harvard Business Review survey, 58% of us more comfortable trusting strangers than our own boss.

Strangers!

It’s not shocking most workers hate their jobs.

But what do you do if you’re the boss?

Who do you turn to and how do you fix things?

It can feel like you’ve backed yourself into a corner.

Plus, it’s incredibly discouraging to feel like you’re doing everything you possibly can to make your team happy only to read stats like these.

Who’s taking care of you?

What Happens If Your Boss is Miserable, and You’re the Boss?

It seems like everything we read about entrepreneurship tells us we should be happy.

We’ve achieved one of our dreams so why on earth would we not? How could we not be passionate about our career?

But this isn’t true.

There are times when we need to put ourselves first in order to make sure the rest of our team gets what they need too.

In this episode of the Spin Sucks podcast, we talk about what to do if you don’t like your boss, but the boss is you.

The Spin Sucks Podcast

Today’s show covers:

* Why you don’t have to work 24/7 to love your job as a boss

* What makes us get sucked into thinking we should sacrifice everything in the first place

* Why the slow times in your organization can sometimes feel like the end of the world

* How to delegate, delegate, delegate

* Tools you can use to help categorize your tasks and make your life easier

Are You the Boss?

Even if you achieved the ultimate dream of running an agency or organization in an industry we’re passionate about, it’s OK to feel like you need a breather.

Do you ever wish you loved your job more? What do you do to get out of those slumps? Tell us in the comments or over in our Spin Sucks community.

We can’t wait to hear from you.

Until next time!