Onboarding agency clients the right way

Agency Leadership Podcast

In this episode, Chip and Gini discuss the critical aspects of onboarding new clients in the agency world. They emphasize the importance of setting clear expectations, proactive communication, and understanding client processes.

The conversation includes tips for achieving quick wins without overburdening clients, integrating with client systems, and maintaining a sustainable pace. Both hosts highlight the significance of being adaptable and helpful, ensuring a successful long-term partnership with clients. They also share insights into balancing immediate results with strategic long-term goals.

Key takeaways

• Chip Griffin: “Setting clear expectations is fundamentally the absolute most important thing to do with any kind of relationship, but particularly the agency client relationship.”
• Gini Dietrich: “There are lots of things that you can do really quickly to provide some tangible results that help clients understand that you’re doing work leading up to the longer play stuff.”
• Chip Griffin: “It is a real balancing act to get this right in those early stages, because you need to show enough that it’s worth keeping you around, but not so much that you have nothing left to do.”
• Gini Dietrich: “Our job is to make their jobs easier, and if you’re accustomed to G Suite and Zoom, which I am, going into a Microsoft environment is challenging, but I think it’s important to be able to do those things for the client to make things as easy as possible.”

Related

• Setting expectations for agency clients
• How to onboard new agency clients

View Transcript

The following is a computer-generated transcript. Please listen to the audio to confirm accuracy.

Chip Griffin: Hello and welcome to another episode of the Agency Leadership Podcast. I’m Chip Griffin.

Gini Dietrich: And I’m GIni Dietrich.

Chip Griffin: And GIni, we have a new client of this podcast. We’re going to have to onboard them. I don’t know what a client of the podcast would do, actually, though.

Gini Dietrich: I don’t, yeah, maybe it’s a sponsor.

Chip Griffin: Could be. We get asked about sponsorships pretty regularly, but most of them are pretty sketchy, so.

Gini Dietrich: Yeah. Kind of like link backs.

Chip Griffin: Having a sponsor would be more trouble than it’s worth, I think, so.

Gini Dietrich: I think so too. Yeah.

Chip Griffin: I kind of like that we’re free to say whatever we want and we don’t have to suck up to sponsors.

Gini Dietrich: And we can be honest about vendors in the industry and stuff like that.

Chip Griffin: Yes. But we’re not going to talk about vendors in the industry today because that would probably get us into trouble with or without a sponsor. So, instead Why don’t we talk about onboarding clients because this is a topic that came up recently in the Spin Sucks community and of course if you are not a member of the Spin Sucks community you should absolutely join it over conversations in there and so where do you go to do that Gini?

Gini Dietrich: Oh, Spinsucks.com/Spinsuckscommunity.

Chip Griffin: Because after all these years, you still can’t get the URL Spinsucks.com/community to make it simple for everybody. No,

Gini Dietrich: it doesn’t work. I don’t know why.

Chip Griffin: In any case, go to her website and you’ll be able to sign up for it. And it’s a great place for conversations with people in house, in agencies, all that kind of stuff.

But one of the conversations recently was about how to effectively onboard new clients for your agency. And so since we are all, according to our research, optimistic about what business development holds for the future, we’re going to be onboarding a lot of clients in the agency world. So yeah, we got to figure out how to do it correctly.

Gini Dietrich: Yes. Yeah. Yeah. I actually, it was a really good question. You know, he said, there’s been a substantial amount of digital ink that’s been spilled about how to foster a successful relationship between an agency and a new client partner. But I am interested in the unique perspectives of the agency leaders here beyond the usual setting clear expectations for success in both directions, proactive communication, deep understanding of the client’s business and products.

What are your top battle proven tips for ensuring a successful agency client relationship in, say, the first six months?

Chip Griffin: I mean, the first thing I would do is not just gloss over the setting clear expectations part. Right. I mean, that is, that is fundamentally the absolute most important thing to do with any kind of relationship, but particularly the agency client relationship.

And so I, while it is table stakes, I suppose. And so therefore, you know, as, as part of the question in the community, looking beyond that for other things, I think at first you need to make sure you’re doing that. So if you, if you’re not getting clear expectations, don’t worry about any of the other things that you can do for effective onboarding, because you got to get the expectations right to begin with.

Gini Dietrich: Yeah, absolutely. And I think, you know, One of the things that we’ve seen, and part of the reason I created the PESO model is because so much of the work that we do takes time, and a lot of the work that we do isn’t tangible. And so we have always looked for ways to have really quick wins and to provide tangible results very quickly.

So we can’t, if we’re doing media relations, we might not be able to get you stories placed in the first six months, but we can audit your content and create a content strategy. We can audit your social media networks and create a social media strategy. We can look at what you’re doing from a social media advertising or Google ads perspective and make some tweaks there.

There are lots of things that you can do really quickly to provide some tangible results that help clients understand that you’re doing work leading up to the longer play stuff. So that’s what we always look at is what can we, what’s sort of the, I mean, this is a terrible term, but what’s the low hanging fruit that we can grab onto and get those quick wins really fast while we’re working on the more strategic longer term things.

Chip Griffin: Yeah. And I think the key is to find that low hanging fruit in a way where you can show the results, but also where you’re engaging the client team.

Gini Dietrich: Yes, yes, yes, yes.

Chip Griffin: And I would say, but engaging just the right amount, right? I mean, it really is sort of the Goldilocks principle here. You don’t want to engage them so much that they’re like, Oh my God, they’re asking for so much for me, which I see a lot of agencies do.

They go in and they’re like, they, they asked for this laundry list of resources and giant questionnaires and all that kind of stuff, you know, you’ve got to make sure that what you’re asking for is what you really need in the moment. But you do need to do that because otherwise they’re not having that interaction.

You’re not learning how they work. They’re not seeing how you work. And so you need to do the right amount of that in order to be effective.

Gini Dietrich: Yeah, and I think it’s really about you know, understanding how they work. I see a lot of agencies say, well, this is the process we use. This is the project management software we use.

This is, you know, we won’t use Teams or Outlook or Microsoft documents. I think that’s a mistake. Our job is to make their jobs easier, and if you’re accustomed to G Suite and Zoom, which I am, going into a Microsoft environment is challenging, but I think it’s important to be able to do those things for the client to make things as easy as possible.

So one of the first questions we ask is, usually you know, if they’re using teams or, or zoom, or if they’re using Microsoft or Google, but do you have a project management software that you prefer to use? Can we incorporate ourselves into that? I actually just had this conversation with somebody and they’re like, we still use spreadsheets.

And I was like, okay, well, maybe we could. evolve to software so that we’re not using spreadsheets anymore. But so there are some caveats to that, right? But it’s really about under trying to integrate yourself into their process. What, when are their meetings that you can glom onto without having to have more meetings. Those kinds of things without being able to do the, do your job without giving them more work to do.

Chip Griffin: Yeah, and look, I mean, I do think that it’s, it’s reasonable for you to suggest your solutions, but you can’t force your solutions. So if you do have a preferred project management thing, I’m okay with you saying to the client, typically we use this, does that work for you?

Gini Dietrich: Yep.

Chip Griffin: And, and that’s fine, but telling them this is what we use, period.

You need to adapt to us. That’s wrong. Your role as an agency is to serve the client. That doesn’t mean you need to just, you know, capitulate on absolutely everything. There are certainly, you know, bright lines that you don’t want to cross because it becomes unprofitable work or ineffective work.

But you need to figure out what those really are and not just because, well, we always use zoom and I’m, I’m never using Teams. I mean, I’ll be honest. I hate Teams. Teams hates me. Teams logs me out all the time. It doesn’t let me use my camera correctly. It’ll shut my camera off in the middle of the, it does awful things to me.

Gini Dietrich: Yes.

Chip Griffin: So be it. If I have a client who uses Teams,

I suck it up and I use Teams. Right? You just learn to deal with it.

Gini Dietrich: Right. Right.

Chip Griffin: That doesn’t mean that if I’m setting up the meeting, I’m probably not going to default to setting it up as Zoom unless they tell me that their organization can’t use Zoom for some reason, which some IT departments do block certain programs just for the heck of it, really, because, you know, IT guys like to do those things.

Gini Dietrich: They do. It actually, as an aside, Scott Monty just posted on threads the other day, I have a meeting on Teams in two hours. So I’m going to log in now so I can be ready. It’s this big joke that it’s terrible. And yet people still use it as that was an aside, but

Chip Griffin: it is what it is. But, but part of that onboarding process is to understand.

You know, what are, what are their pain points? What are the things that they care about? And where do you need to adapt versus where you can simply work with the process that you prefer? And, and it is, there’s going to be give and take in this kind of relationship. It can’t just be, I mean, no side is going to quote unquote win everything, but you need to try to accommodate the client as much as possible and only push back if for some reason it’s going to cause a real problem, not just because it’s inconvenient or you don’t like it or that kind of thing.

Gini Dietrich: Yeah. And I think going back to your setting clear expectations earlier, it, that’s really important too, because there are going to be things that are non negotiables for you, and there are going to be certain things that are non negotiables for them as well.

And so understanding those at the beginning of the relationship helps to ensure that there’s smooth sailing going forward. So part of where we talk about our non-negotiables is in the very first meeting. You know, we don’t do this, this and this. We have to have access to your Google Analytics. We have to have access to your marketing automation software.

We have to have access to your website. We have to have access to your social media accounts. If you’re not willing to give us access to those things, we can’t help you. So, setting those expectations and being very clear about them up front is going to help you in the long run.

Chip Griffin: And by the way, if you’re asking for those things, you darn sure need be able to explain why you need that access and how you’re going to use it.

Because again, I’ve seen a lot of agencies who just have a laundry list of things that they request, even if the particular project may not require that particular kind of access or what have you. So you need to make sure that particularly larger organizations that have IT departments and complicated rules and that kind of stuff.

Don’t make the client go through the process. Don’t go through the process yourself if you’re not actually going to take advantage of what you’re getting access to. So make sure that you’re really targeting those requests appropriately and that you, whoever’s asking for it can explain why you need to have that particular access.

Gini Dietrich: Yeah. Don’t just listen to us and say, Oh, okay, I have to have access to all this stuff and then not know why.

Chip Griffin: Right, because it’s, and it may not be for every project that you need it. There may be some projects where you’re doing work with a client where you simply don’t need to have access to their website or their Google Analytics or whatever.

Probably in most cases you do, but make sure that there’s an actual reason for it and you can articulate that when someone says, Well, wait, why do you actually need that? What are you going to do with that information? And by the way, then you actually have to do what you say you’re going to do. So you don’t just say, well, we need it because it helps us to target effectively, and then six months later, you still haven’t accessed the Google analytics that you have access to.

Right? That’s irresponsible. You’ve caused pain for the client for no good reason. And you need to remember that again, your job is to make the client’s life easier, not more difficult. And in large organizations, having access to these things inevitably causes heartburn on their side because they’ve got to go through some kind of process.

They don’t because they don’t want to It’s not like dealing with a small business, like your own agency, where, oh sure, I’ll just go in, I’ll log in, I’ll give you access to Google Analytics. They probably have to fill out some form and go to some other department and get the access there, and then the IT department says, well, wait a minute, why do we get access to that?

Right, right, right. What is this email address that has access? I don’t understand this, this, that.

Gini Dietrich: Yeah.

Chip Griffin: Don’t do it.

Gini Dietrich: Yes. So, Oh, go ahead. I was going to say, I just wrote a blog post on growth hacking and granted it’s specific to PR firms. So keep, keep that in mind when we, when I talk about this, but I think it works across agencies overall, which is growth hacking or quick wins that you can get.

And from a PR perspective, it’s things like creating a database or a bank of statistics that are specific to your industry or your organization that you can use in media relations. It’s having, it’s creating a small group of subject matter experts who will quickly respond to things that you need, like a quote for a journalist request or a quote for a blog post or a quick 30 second video that you’ll post on social media.

Create that group, small group of people that are experts that you can use pretty consistently that will be that are willing to give you that time. Not everybody is. Build an employee advocacy program where you’re working with employees internally to not only understand what their wants, needs and desires are, but also how they will help you promote some of your work.

So there are some things that you can do really quickly. Like I said, as you’re starting out so that you, it gives you a more runway to be able to strategically plan and do the things that you need to do the right way.

Chip Griffin: Absolutely. And I do want to offer a cautionary note on these quick wins though, because you need to be careful that in your zeal to show the client, just how effective you are, that you don’t empty your quiver of arrows too quick, because I see a lot of agencies that come out of the gate really strong and they’re doing lots of great stuff and they’re telling their team, Hey, let’s, you know, let’s bend over backwards. Let’s get everything we can for them. Let’s, you know, we, we got to show them these quick wins in order to, to make the relationship sticky.

It needs to be a sustainable pace. Yeah. So if, if you exhaust every idea you have or every target outlet you get into in the first, you know, three to six months, now, what’s next. Right. So you need, you need to, yes, have those short term wins, but you need to have that longer term understanding of what your plan is.

And it reminds me of a number of years ago, I was running a half marathon in DC. And I had not looked at the course map. In advance, because DC was a place I ran in all the time. I’m like, Oh yeah, I got this. And, and I thought I knew what the route was.

Gini Dietrich: Oh no.

Chip Griffin: And so I came out very strong, not realizing that this course took a weird hook up into some hills in DC.

DC was largely flat. I thought this was going around the monuments, which I ran all the time. It was flat. And instead we all of a sudden made a turn and I’m like, Oh, Oh, there’s a hill here. I should have come out a lot more slowly. So I had a little more gas in the tank here to get up and through these hills in this part of DC.

And so you need to be thinking about those kinds of things and making sure that you’re not coming out so fast and so strong that you either you can’t meet the expectations you’ve now created. Right. Even if they weren’t originally agreed to, and you also need to make sure that you’re not over servicing so much that if you maintain that pace, you can never do the work profitably.

So it is a real balancing act to get this right in those early stages, because you need to show enough that it’s worth keeping you around, but not so much that you have nothing left to do.

Gini Dietrich: Yeah. So think about it like in phases, if you’re going to be doing a content marketing program for instance, then the first phase is doing a really strong content audit.

This is what they have. This is what they need. This is where some gaps are. This is what we can refresh. This is what we can repurpose. And then presenting that to them within the first 30 days. That’s a quick win, but you’re going to use that. And it’s tangible, right? You’re going to use that to propel your content marketing program forward for many months, if not years.

So doing it in phases and saying, okay, if we do this, it’s going to give us a quick win and something tangible to show them that we’re working, but it’s going to do this into the next phase. And then this phase we’ll do this into the next phase. So it allows you to do that without emptying your, all of your arrows.

Chip Griffin: Yeah, I think that’s just so vitally important because if you that we’ve talked about this before. If you start over servicing at any point, whether that’s during the onboarding phase or somewhere in the middle, it’s really difficult to walk that back.

Gini Dietrich: Yep.

Chip Griffin: And so you really need to know what you’re actually putting in in terms of inputs so that you can control that in such a way that you’re still showing results but it is being done profitably. And and if for some reason you know that your process just requires this much extra work up front then you need to figure out how to message that to the client, either by charging an onboarding fee or say, one of the things I used to do was say for this kind of work, because it requires so much upfront, we do have a minimum commitment of time that we don’t usually have. Because I think everybody knows my general view is all agreements ought to be month to month.

And they were generally speaking, but if I knew there was going to be a lot of front loaded work, I’d say, well, look, we need to have a minimum of three to six months or whatever the number was in order to make sure that we broke even. And so they understood that we would be doing more work in those early stages, but it would taper off.

And so you need to be really crystal clear about these things. If for some reason your process requires a lot more upfront work so that the client doesn’t expect that you will keep up that pace for a long period of time afterwards.

Gini Dietrich: Yeah, I think it’s really, I mean, it’s smart to look at how can we demonstrate results fairly quickly. How can we ensure that it’s a pace that we can keep up? How can we create trust and accountability quickly? That’s another one. How do we do this in a way that’s beneficial to both parties so that we can, can continue to grow together?

Chip Griffin: Yeah, and the last thing I would add is communication, right?

I mean, we talk all the time about how we are communicators and yet we are often bad at communicating. And, and so we need to be thinking about how we’re communicating these things to the client. Again, it’s that balancing act, you know, not too much, not too little. We need to make sure that it’s sustainable.

We need to make sure that we understand how they prefer to be communicated with, because we’re not going to figure that out during the prospect phase. We’re going to figure that out during the on boarding. We may learn a little bit during the prospecting phase, but we’ve talked before about how prospecting is a really short actual level of interaction with the client.

Now you’re onboarding. Now you need to figure out, how do they prefer? Do they prefer meetings? Do they prefer emails? Do they prefer Slack? What, how do they take that information and it may be different for different levels within that organization that you’re communicating with and so you need to figure those things out.

How long does it take them to respond right? You can’t simply say, well, I’m going to communicate this to you and I expect a response within 24 hours,

Gini Dietrich: Right.

Chip Griffin: If that’s not how they function,

Gini Dietrich: Right.

Chip Griffin: A lot of large organizations, it takes a while for them to respond and no matter how much you say, well, who do you have to get approval from on it?

They may not either want to tell you, or they may not, they may not even fully understand their own process anyway. So you just need to sort of observe things. And if you know that it takes three or four days for them to get back to you on a particular request, leave that amount of time to get the response.

Don’t, don’t. Go to them and say, I need your response in 24 hours or this thing goes away, right? That can happen occasionally if the weird thing just pops up out of the blue, but you can’t be doing that every time.

All the time. Yeah.

You have to make sure that you’re understanding how they are communicating So that you are fitting in again to their system and their way of doing things not forcing them to do it your way

Gini Dietrich: Yeah.

And I think you’ll find, you know, as you do that, there’ll be peaks and valleys and give and go, and sometimes it’ll work and sometimes you’ll have to readjust and, you know, but it’s really about setting the expectations, being clear about it and giving them enough time in their process to be able to respond to you.

Chip Griffin: Right.

Because the last thing that you want them to do is feel that you are burdening them in any way that you’re spamming them, that you’re asking too much of them, that you’re not doing enough for them, that you, you need to be helpful and you need to be viewed as helpful and anything that you do that goes outside of that is going to threaten your successful onboarding.

So keep that in mind that you are there to help, you are there to serve.

Gini Dietrich: Yeah. And the last thing I will say is that most companies hire agencies because they need the extra help and they need the extra thinking. And the bigger the company gets, the client gets. the more you find that their internal teams are really just project managers who understand the process internally and they’re not true comms or marketing professionals.

So you are truly the expert and inserting yourself and your expertise into their process is one of the best things that you can do.

Chip Griffin: Absolutely. You are at the end of the day, arms and legs.

Gini Dietrich: That’s right.

Chip Griffin: Like it or not.

Gini Dietrich: It’s exactly right.

Chip Griffin: And so on that note, we’re done being your arms and legs for today.

Gini Dietrich: Oh boy. Sometimes you nail it and sometimes.

Chip Griffin: No, sometimes I don’t. Today is one of those days where clearly a failure.

Gini Dietrich: It’s because of your cold.

Chip Griffin: Yeah, that’s right. Yes, that’s what I’m blaming it on, you know, the cold has gotten to my brain and Something I don’t know. Anyway, on that note we’re gonna draw this episode to a close because as often what happens we are going way off the rails I’m Chip Griffin.

Gini Dietrich: I’m GIni Dietrich

Chip Griffin: and it depends