The Agency Leadership Podcast with Gini Dietrich and Chip Griffin

In this episode, Chip and Gini react to a blog post from their friend Christopher S. Penn who writes and speaks frequently and intelligently on new trends in communications and technology. In his piece, Chris argued that agencies should review their business model and pricing structure in response to AI developments in 2023.

While the co-hosts see artificial intelligence as a force that will (and already is) impacting agencies, they’re not on board with a wholesale change to agency models as a result. They argue that the value pricing approach advocated by Chris is far more difficult to implement in practice and doesn’t necessarily address the fundamental changes that AI may cause.

The post ALP 206: Should AI upend your agency business model today? appeared first on FIR Podcast Network.

Chip and Gini understand the excitement of closing a deal and the desire that agencies have to just get started with the creative process.

But it’s important to get the contracting process done right, including setting the best terms and having a signature before any work gets going.

The post ALP 205: Getting agency-client contracts done right appeared first on FIR Podcast Network.

In this episode, Chip and Gini discuss when you should (and shouldn’t) terminate an employee for cause.

They explain the perils of allowing emotion to impact termination decisions and how you should approach these difficult circumstances.

The post ALP 204: The aftermath of firing agency employees for cause appeared first on FIR Podcast Network.

All agencies experience turnover, so it makes sense to have a process for when employees leave. The exit interview is an important part of that sequence.

In this episode, Chip and Gini discuss best practices for conducting effective exit interviews, including who should run them and what they should include.

The post ALP 203: The value of employee exit interviews for agencies appeared first on FIR Podcast Network.

Chip and Gini are tired of all of the bad pitches from agencies that they find in their inboxes. They simply can’t take any more.

In this episode, they examine some of the really poor sales emails and pitches to have guests on their podcasts that they have seen lately.

The post ALP 202: Let’s talk about bad agency pitches appeared first on FIR Podcast Network.

Chip and Gini recently spoke about the challenge of small agencies seeking to hire unicorns who excel at everything. In this episode, they look at when you should be looking for specific kinds of hires and whether they should be specialists, generalists, or fractional support.

Knowing the level of expertise needed and understanding how much demand your agency will have for their time helps you to make a smarter decision about how to obtain the resources needed to serve clients and manage your business.

The post ALP 201: Should your agency hire specialists, generalists, or fractional team members? appeared first on FIR Podcast Network.

Agency owners tend to be good at a little bit of everything — that’s typically how they ended up as owners in the first place. They’re used to rolling up their sleeves and digging into client work, business development, management, and just about anything else that’s needed.

As they staff up their teams, they often look for people who can check several boxes at once. Part of it is because that’s what they do, and part of it is because that’s what they need.

Most small agencies don’t have the budget — or need — to hire lots of individual specialists.

But it is important to recognize the must-haves vs the nice-to-haves with new hires since someone who checks every box you’d like is pretty rare indeed.

The post ALP 200: Are you trying to hire unicorns for your agency? appeared first on FIR Podcast Network.

Agency owners ask Chip and Gini all the time how they can figure out what to delegate — and how to do it — to free up time in their days.

In this episode, they talk about why agency owners should change their mindset to assume they will delegate anything that comes across their desks — then only keep it for themselves if they can’t find any viable alternative.

The post ALP 199: Stop asking what you can delegate as an agency owner appeared first on FIR Podcast Network.

Have you ever given serious thought to the structure of the titles at your agency? Or have you dealt with them simply as one-off decisions with individual employees?

In this episode, Chip and Gini explore how — and why — you should be more thoughtful about how you hand out titles to employees. More important, they discuss how a mindful approach to titles can help you to retain your best employees.

The post ALP 198: Be smart about titles at your agency appeared first on FIR Podcast Network.

Does your agency regularly survey your clients to see how happy they are with the services that they are receiving and how likely they are to recommend you to someone else?

Is it even worth doing these surveys? That’s the question that Chip and Gini explore in this week’s episode.

Spoiler alert: they’re not big fans of formal surveys, so they offer some alternative approaches. For those who still insist on sending questions to clients, they do have some practical advice on how to make the approach more effective. [read the transcript]

The post ALP 197: Are client satisfaction surveys worthwhile for agencies? appeared first on FIR Podcast Network.