How to 'Date' Your Clients with Mark Young

Have you ever thought about the comparison of going on a date with going on a prospect meeting? And have you ever compared managing a client relationship to being in a relationship yourself personally? Well, after listening to today's episode of the podcast, you definitely will because the comparisons between the two are striking. And I'm joined by Mark Young, who has written a book called Dating your Clients. And in the book he talks about the journey that you go on in a relationship and how that is very comparable to the journey you go on with a new client from the point where you're first meeting them, you're courting them, you convert them into a client, and then you want to have a long term relationship with them. So a really interesting episode today. I learned a lot, so I know you will too. So let's dive in. I'm Rob Da Costa and this is the Agency Accelerator Podcast. As someone who has stood in your shoes, having started, grown and sold my own agency, I know just how it feels in the ups, downs and and downs of agency life. So this podcast aims to ease your journey just a little by sharing mine and my guests experiences and advice as you navigate your way to growing a profitable, sustainable and enjoyable business. Hey everybody and welcome to this week's episode of the Agency Accelerator Podcast. And this week we're going to dig into the topic of maximizing the value of client relationships. And to discuss this topic, I'm excited to be joined by Mark Young. And Mark is the author of Date youe Clients. And Mark also grew up in a family business, so he's seen entrepreneurship and running a business from all sides. So welcome to the podcast, Mark.

Thank you, Rob. I appreciate the invite.

Great, great to have you here. Now, Date youe Clients is the name of your book, which is a fascinating title. So tell us a little bit first of all about how that came about.

Yeah, the title, the title's a little provocative and I think it's pretty funny because most people are like, oh, date your clients. And then they're like, okay, wa. Must be something else behind this. I'll kind of tell you the story. And I love the fact when you told me ahead of time that your audience is really agency owners and people who are familiar in the, in the marketing and advertising world, which is where I come from. Also as an agency owner myself, most of the stories that are given in this book are probably very relatable to your audience. They've probably lived most of them with other characters, which is kind of fun for me. But date your clients. So I'll tell You the background story. This is kind of funny. I was talking to a client, and perhaps this resonates with. With some of your listeners. But while sitting in a conference room with a client of mine who is a national brand that does great business, multi million dollar company. And I was working with the marketing director, and they had had ads running on a TV commercial. And she says, well, I don't think TVs working anymore. And I. And I said to her, I'm like, I think you're throwing out the baby with the bath water. Metaphorically speaking, I think you're kind of making a pretty big reach there. And she says, well, there's a problem with sales. And I went, well, there's really a problem with attribution, which is a different problem. Ent that just means you're not counting your sales correctly. I said, but the bigger problem is television is nothing but to get people to your website. Like, I need people to go to the website. I need people to. To call me. I need. I need to contact them. I said, this is nothing but an intrigue point. Like, television should create enough interest that the person takes the next step. I said, the problem is when the person goes to your website, you just play the television commercial for them. But I've already watched the television commercial. I'm like, in your TV commercial, frankly, says everything there is to know about you in two minutes. Like, so you're not creating intrigue. You're trying to sell people. And I'm like, that's the wrong message. And I said to her, imagine it's like your dating profile online. I only put out the best pictures. I only tell the highlights of the story because I want to intrigue you enough to get to know me. I said, all I need you to do is swipe right, okay? And for those who have been in the tinder world, you'll understand that it's like, I just need you to swipe right. I need you to be interested enough because my photo looked nice, my personality seemed nice. I told you that I love puppies and I love Jesus, and I love, you know, long walks on the beach. And you swipe because you're like, oh, me too. You know? So I start making this, and she goes, I don't know. And I am certain that your audience is going to understand that because they've been in the same position. I'm certain where they've had tried to explain something to a client, and the client just wasn't sophisticated enough on the topic to follow along. And I said to her, you know what? Let me do this, let me go back, and I'm going to write you all of what I'm talking about in an email. And that way you can read the email at your own pace and maybe you can absorb that a little bit differently and maybe that'll help. So I went back to my office and I started writing this email. And pretty much, honestly, Rob, this email is now contained between the covers of this book. Because as I started writing, I just wrote and wrote and wrote. And the allegorical connections that I was making for her just seemed so pervasive because the difference between relationships in business and relationships and our personal lives are not that different. It and, and I, I said on a podcast recently, I said, you know, I've got two truths that have held true my entire life, and that is I've only dated humans and I've only worked with people who also are humans. Which means this. There's a parallel automatically, because anytime you're dealing with a human, you're dealing with emotions, you're dealing with expectations, you're dealing with a needs and a values, propositions, you're dealing with these types of things. And the truth is, is the same holds true in the business world, right? You get into a new dating relationship and you're automatically going to be saddled with the expectations that every other person she's ever dated has created because she has do's and don'ts and things she likes and things she doesn't like. And they've all been created from all of these past men that she's dated. The same thing with your client, right? The client comes to an agency and the first thing you have to do truthfully is try to figure out what is it that the client has already experienced from all their other agencies. You know, when we deal with matters such as reporting, sure, we have our own reporting structure, but every client comes to us and what's the first thing they want to see? They want to see a report that looks like the report they used to see because that's what they're comfortable with. That's what they know how to interpret, that's what they know how to read. So we have those expectations. Sometimes a client wants to have a, have a weekly call to talk about everything. Sometimes the client wants a monthly call. Sometimes it all changes, right? It's no different than when you're dating somebody. Some people want to talk on the telephone every day. Some people prefer text messages. It's different. But the point is, it's all the same in so many ways.

Yeah. Actually, it's really interesting. I'll be interested to hear what you think about this because I inadvertently use a dating analogy with some clients, and I talk about that first prospect meeting when you're going to meet this potential client. I said, imagine if you're on a date, and all you did on that date was tell them all about you. Then they'd quickly look at their phone and go, I'm really sorry, my dog's ill. I've got to go. So when we're on that date or we're on that first prospect meeting with the client, we have to make it all about them, because then there's more chance that they're going to want to have a second date with you. So I don't know if that's what you talk about in the book, but I'm sure you agree.

Absolutely. As talked about in the book. And each chapter, you know, funny enough, starts with that. Make them swipe right. That's literally the name of chapter one. But we go into all these first dates, and I mean one of those things. The first date is one of the following chapters. And one of the things I talk about in there is, you know, one of my words is the power of preparation. And for instance, you're going into a new client meeting, as you just described to you. It's Tuesday, right? This. This is just another Tuesday at the office. You're meeting somebody new to them. It's a first impression. And this is the first time they've met you. This is the first impression they get of you. And yet making that comparison, like on a first date, when that girl shows up on the first date, I assume that's the best she's ever going to look, right? Because. Because I knew she spent an extra half hour getting ready. She put on the extra makeup, she wore her best outfit, the best perfume. Like all of that stuff is implied when you prepare for a first date. But when I'm meeting a client for the first time, do I do that same type of preparation, or is it just another Tuesday? And the truth of the matter is, is when you show up to the client meeting, did you wear your best suit? Did you take extra time getting ready? Did you do your research on the client to know about their business before you showed up? Did you. Did you learn about them before you came in, or you just walk in figuring you could wing it and impress them? And again, like a dating relationship, if I show up for a first date and I'm unimpressed with what I See, or what I hear, there's no second date. And. And I use the. I use the. The analogy all the time that the goal of a first date is to get a second date, and the goal of a second date is to get a third date. You know, the goal of the first date is not marriage.

And.

And too often we go into a client meeting with this, I need to sign a deal. I need to land this kind of mentality. And the reality is, is that the client's mind is not there. The client's still getting to know you. The client is still trying to figure out if you're a good personality match. The client's still wondering if they can wake up every morning comfortable that you're on their team, and particularly in the agency world, because that's a big responsibility for an agency to take over that kind of work for a. For a client. But likewise, that's a big decision for a client to make. And too often we go in for the hard clothes. And the reality is, is, I mean, we laughingly see movies out there, right, where, you know, they go on a first date, and all of a sudden he pulls a ring out and proposes to her, and you're the one I'm going to marry. And she's like, whoa, too much, too soon. And my argument, particularly through this book, is that courtship needs to happen very organically. And that's the case in business. That's the case in relationships. That's the case even in friendships. All of those things are all part of the recipe, right? You build relationships through organic interaction.

So let's flip that on to the other side, because first of all, I completely agree with you that I see too many people going, hey, I'm Rob. Do you want to marry me? And that's not going to work. But how do we move the customer through that customer journey to get them to a point after date, three or four, whatever it is, where we can actually get them to sign on the dotted line. Because otherwise, the danger is you have lots of conversations with these people. You have. You share lots of your knowledge to demonstrate your credibility, but you never get to the point of actually closing the deal.

And that's understandable. And what I would say in there, Rob, is from an organic relational standpoint, one of the things I would say there, because we have clients like that, too, where you seem to constantly date and date and date and, you know, sometimes wonder to yourself, is it going anywhere? And the reality is, is that there is a time to let it go. You know, there is There is a time that all of the free advice that you're giving people is just free advice. And we've had plenty of relationships like that where, you know, we've gone out and paid for plenty of dinners with a client that never paid us a dime to do work because they just got free advice all the time and free dinners on it. And there is a, there's a healthy balance in there. And what I will say is from a courtship perspective, every client is different. And the reality is, is I think one of the dangers that we have in the is we stop relying on our own intuition and we start trying to rely on, you know, the five Steps to a Perfect Sale type books. And unfortunately those, you know, 10 steps to success and you know, seven ways to win a Client and those types of, you know, self help books that are published, they publish them as if these are universal truths. And the reality is they aren't because it may work on one client and it may completely fail with another. And my, my contention is that too many people are trying to find perfect algorithm to relationships when in fact the perfect algorithm doesn't exist. One of the things I will tell you, when I was in grad school, I did one of my graduate degrees is actually in clinical psychology. And I had a grad advisor and he would always use a phrase that has stuck with me for this many years later and he would always use the phrase trust your instrument. And of course the logic behind that is that we all have an instrument or a gut check, if you will, that there, there's an, there's some kind of intrinsic feeling that we get when we're around certain people. And sometimes it's a warning sign, sometimes it's, it's an immediate connection. And his point was that if you're in a clinical setting and you working with an individual and that person just gets on your nerves or that person, it's just not gelling. The reality is, is that his point was quit trying to logic your way out of that feeling. Because we start, as soon as we get that feeling, we start to stack logic and we start saying, well, did the person check this box, this box, this box, this box? And if all those boxes are checked, then my gut must be wrong. And the reality is, is his contention, and it has proven true for me over and over again, is your gut's probably right. And it reminds me of a book, I don't know if you've ever read the book by Malcolm Gladwell. There's a book called Blink. And one of the best books I've ever read, and it's helped me tremendously. And he uses a term that he coined called thin slicing. And Gladwell talks about the thin slice, meaning your subconscious mind is able to process information faster than your conscious mind can understand it. So when you feel a gut check, it's not an emotional reaction, it's a very logical subconscious reaction because your, your brain picks up a stimulus that it's experienced once before. It says, you know, there's a danger point or there's a something going on, and your brain processed it faster than your conscious mind is able to make that connection, which is fascinating on so many levels. And he discusses it in so much detail. But in terms of these types of business relationships, your original question was, how do you know at the third, fourth, fifth date, when is it time to sign a deal versus walk away? And the best advice I would give you is trust your instrument. And a savvy business person knows when to make that happen. My caution in it for agency owners and entrepreneurs in general is, as entrepreneurs, we have a tendency to never want to say no to cash, right? If there's a chance that someone's going to write me a check, I will exhaust myself trying to get that check signed. And it's very hard to walk away from a potential deal. As an entrepreneur, and one of the things I would tell you is structure. And we talk about this in the book also, but structure your business around good business decisions, not good cash flow decisions. Because if you're chasing cash, you will make bad business decisions all the time. You will end up with clients that you are going to live with who are going to be miserable. And it's the idea that 20% of your clients are going to take up 80% of your time. And those are the relationships you end up in. It's those needy type relationships. And unfortunately, in the world of cash flow, sometimes we tend to believe that something is better than nothing. And that's not necessarily true.

Listen, there's so much good stuff there to unpack. I really like listening to your instinct. I feel like, like in our school systems that that instinctualness, that knowing behavior gets beaten out of us. And so by the time we're adults, we don't listen to our gut. And yet so many entrepreneurs are successful because they have listened to their instincts. And I think that is a really good piece of advice. I also think not chasing the cash is good advice as well, which is difficult when you're in a place of famine and you desperately need the work. Just to pay the bills. As soon as you're not in that situation, you really want to make sure you are identifying who your ideal target customer is. And just someone that is a good fit for you in terms of their niche and their need, but it's also a good fit in terms of their cultural fit, which is this whole kind of empathy. Do I like you? Do I feel like I can do a good job for you? Do you understand me? I guess all those things that would help you decide that you'd want to go on another date. So let's sort of jump forward a bit. Now we've won the client. What advice do you have for anybody to maximize the length and the value of that client relationship? Because sometimes I feel like we don't pay enough, enough attention to our existing clients and then we're just on to trying to win the next client. And that can mean that we have some sort of short term relationships.

And that's good insight, Rob. There's several chapters in here, but one of the chapters that I love in this book is called Friday Night is Date Night. And it's drawing a parallel to an existing relationship, perhaps even a marriage, and talking about those times that we have to take with our existing relationships to, I'll use the word memorialize our partnership. And that is, you know, my dad always used a phrase and said that if, if we both agree on everything, one of us isn't necessary. And one of the things that I think is beautiful about business relationships, marriages, so on, is the fact that it's two different people with two different opinions overlapping in many ways, but not all. And the reality is that I don't want clients that want to do everything that I think is right. I want them to challenge me. Because often in their challenge, I find better ways of doing things. And I will say that we talk about those types of things because. And in this book, we talk about things about Friday night is date night. And the reason is we need to be able to memorialize those relationships. My clients need to hear from me not just on a business meeting, right? They need to hear from me on a regular basis because I'm not trying to build transactions, I'm trying to build relationships. And I can't build relationships when there's no contact. I can't build relationships when there's no memorializing. I want my clients to wake up in the morning happy. They do business with me. And one of the mistakes that a lot of, I'll say entrepreneurs specifically, but a lot of business people make is they will work twice as hard to win a new client than they will to keep an existing one. And it is so much easier and more cost effective to keep the one you have than it is to go find a new somebody and never take a client for granted. The same way you would never want to take your spouse for granted. Right? Your spouse needs to wake up every morning choosing you. It's easy enough to just go get divorced or find another girlfriend, boyfriend, whatever you want. You can find somebody else. The reality is, is I want my clients. I want, I want my wife to wake up every morning and choose me consciously. And that requires effort on both of our parts. So we talk about that again in date your clients. And the reasoning is, because we need to, we 100% need to take that care and take that nurturing. Sometimes for us, it's a matter of celebrating wins. I want my clients to share their sales reports with me. I want to be able to look into our dashboards and see that there's a month over month or year over year success. I want to see that our campaigns are working. I want my team to provide quality work. But I need to take the time to share that stuff with my client. And I'll give a marriage example and say, you know, if, if your spouse is saying, you know, you never do nice things for me, well, there's a problem because even if you do nice things, does your spouse know that you do nice things for her? Like, do you take the time to talk about the things you do? And frequently I will hear people get into these, these things about, well, you never do these things. And the husband will respond and say, look, I go to work every day. I pay the bills. I'm home on this time. I do, you know, I provide for the family. I. And in his mind, he did everything that a husband was supposed to do. And in her mind, you know, you didn't bring me flowers. And to him, that seems so trivial, but to her, it's a big deal. And it's a getting to know you in a relational context to understand that, yes, you can do all of the things that you think are important, but if you're not doing the things that the client thinks is important, you may have missed the mark. And sometimes those are, I'll say, trivial things. Like, we've had clients that we've done amazing work for, and then we get feedback over something so minute that turns into a big issue for them. And it's, it's so funny that we have a client we do amazing work for A client loves us, absolutely loves us. And we got a feedback from the client the other day saying, you know, we really like the green in our brand colors, but our social media feed just doesn't seem to have enough green in it lately. And I'm going, that's what. What you're concerned about? Like, sure, okay, we'll. We'll put more green in the feed. So, yeah, it's just. It's just very unusual for us to. To get that kind of feedback. But often it is a. It's a matter of managing expectations. What is it that that person wants, and then making sure we're filling that need.

Yeah, so just a few things there. I think when you are winning a client, you can't just be a yes person to that client because that's not a relationship of equals. And that, like you said, that's going to quickly fizzle out into nothing. You have to build. I know it's a cliche, but you have to build those partnerships with your clients, not have that imbalanced customer supplier relationship. I also think that it's really important that we do our own PR with our clients so that they understand we don't just assume that they know the great work we're doing, but we actually share and we get them to do the same. And again, like any good relationship, we need to be good listeners as well. So, you know, I can really see those parallels between personal relationships. And like you said, why I have a job as a coach is because I'm dealing with human beings. And, you know, like you said, whether that be human being in a. In a work context or human being in an outside work context, we're still. Businesses are based on humans. So let's step forward again a bit. That we've had this relationship for a while now, and maybe things are starting to go a little bit south with the client. Things aren't going so well. They're starting to kind of complain more. What can we do to bring that relationship back on track?

So I get asked the question all the time, Rob, what is my favorite chapter of this book? And my answer is the first fight. And the first fight is my favorite chapter. And I'll tell you, this is interesting because this was a chapter that it wrote itself after I had seen a meme online. And the meme was a picture, and the illustration is in the book, but it's a picture of a World War II plane. And it actually, this is interesting for you as a resident of the uk, because it was talking about a British fighter Plane that had fleet of planes that had come back from battle. And when they'd come back from battle, there was an engineering corps had gotten together to talk about what are the ways that they could reinforce the plane. So they, they researched the. Where the plane had been hit by enemy fire and decided that they needed to reinforce those areas because those areas were the ones that took the most fire. And there was one guy who argued with them and said, I disagree with the strategy. And they said, but these are the areas that they. The plane took the most fire. And his answer was, no, that's the area where the plane could take fire and still survive. The. I know. You're almost like, oh, yeah, that's, that's good. And he's like, those are the ones that made it back. The, the areas we need to reinforce are the areas on the planes that didn't make it back. And he said, so I would actually argue and say that the inverse of that is true, that the, the exact opposite, the areas that the planes took fire and got back to base are the areas that can take fire. Those are fine. They still made it back. So maybe it's the inverse of those areas that we need to be reinforcing. And when I read that, I'm like, oh, my gosh, that's so parallel to relationships. And often when the disagreements begin, we tend to focus on the points we disagree on, right? That's where our attention goes. We disagree on this topic and we are going to talk it out until it's done. And I sat there thinking, my gosh, that's so much like relationships, right? We, we like it like a dog. We grab onto that bone and we don't let go of the thing that bothers us. And I thought, well, what does that look like? And I started going back. And the analogy that I use in the book is a client comes to us and we send them a website design, right? And the designer puts together this whole site. We send it over to a client, and what do they do? They immediately email us back with all of the things they don't like about it. And as a designer, the designer sits there going, oh, my gosh. Like, I put so much of myself into this work, now my feelings are hurt. You don't understand why I did what I did. You didn't even listen to the reasoning behind my design, like, all of this. And so our. Our take is, I will send you the design so that you can preview it, but we are always going to talk about it, if not in person, at least on a zoom call because we're not going to email on this stuff because too much context is lost. And what I do is I make the client always start, because the client lists for you all the things they don't like. Right? These are all the changes I want. And I always start the client with, we're going to start at the top of the pa and I want you to start by telling me all of the things you like. And usually what we find is what seemed like a bullet list of things I don't like is probably only 5 to 10%, because the majority of it they love because it's beautiful work. It's those types of things. And then usually we find that about half of the things that they wanted changed get removed from the list once they understand contextually why they're like that. So really my advice on that when I talk about that first fight is when disagreements arise. And this is the same for relationships. This is the same marriages, you know, whatever. It's. Instead of focusing on the one thing that you're disagreeing about right now, spend some time paying attention to the reason why you're together. You know, so as an agency, your. Your client comes to you and says, look, I'm really upset. Like, this is not the work that we were accustomed to, so on, so forth. And I normally will take that and say, you know what? I agree with that feedback back. I want to actually talk about what are the things about working with us that are good, you know, and. Well, I mean, you guys are really responsive. You know, we've had some great successes in the past. Oh, yeah, you remember the campaign where we did xyz? That was great, man. I wish we could do more of that. Oh, and about the time we did this, that was fantastic. You're right. That was another good one. Okay, so this is one that you're just not satisfied because it's 90% of that. Well, great. Let's talk about the ways that, you know, we're capable and push it past that other 10% that you think we're missing. Like, let's not. Let's not catastrophize a single incident, but rather, let's talk about all of the good stuff. You know, let's talk about the ways and, you know, making that correlation towards dating or marriage or whatever. It's like, let's talk about all the ways that we are so compatible. And once we get back on a good place now, let's talk about how do we overcome this negative. And. And part of what I Would add there, Rob, is there's. I'm big on the word expectations. I talk about it all the time. And that is disappointment only happens when I have expectations that you don't meet. And the problem is, half the time, I don't know your expectations. And if I don't know your expectations, I don't know when I'm not meeting. And that's one of the things that I would always encourage any of your listeners to pay attention to is what are the expectations of your client? And have you talked about them? Because if you talk about the expectations and you're able to say to the client, look, I'm sorry, I actually thought that. But we did meet the mark because you told us you wanted A, B, C. Had you told me about point D and E, we would have done this differently. So. So making sure that we're able to adequately talk through expectations and then justify how we believe we met them, or at least what we did to try to meet them.

Yeah, I think that's a really good piece of advice. And at the end of the day, if you're paying attention to the relationship and you're managing expectations from the beginning, you're hopefully never going to get to that point of big misunderstanding and then having to try and sort things out. But I do like the idea of getting people to have a balanced view of their feedback of the good as well as the bad, because I think human nature tends to make us focus on the things that we don't like rather than the things that we do like. Listen, we could go on talking for ages, and I know we haven't got anywhere near through the whole journey of relationships, but I'm conscious of trying to keep our podcast episode to half an hour. So a couple of things before we share some links. Just I want to ask you the question I always ask all my guests, which is if you could go back in time and give your younger self, who just starting out in business, a piece of advice, what would it be?

Oh, my gosh, you know, what I would say is, my younger self always wants to jump to the finish line faster than I'm ready. And I would say that I expect to win. So when you talk about expectations like I expect to win, I expect to excel. And even if it's something I'm not familiar with or not good at, I hold myself to that standard. And the advice I would give my younger self would be, it's okay to learn for a while. It's, you know, putting in your 10,000 hours is just Part of the journey. There's no fast track through experience. And I watch it all the time as brands develop, as entrepreneurs are trying to get their product to market. And, and I had this conversation with a client the other day. She says, you know, I'm really frustrated with the way our brand is here. You know, should we. This should be this. And she's going through positioning. And what I said is, again, from my vantage point, I said, here's part of what I see and that is you're struggling because you're playing 3D chess in your mind because there's where your brand is right now. There's where your brand needs to be a year from now. But there's also where your brand will be five years from now. And you're struggling to just let your brand be today. You want to do today what you can already see, see in five years, in the future, but you're not there. The brand isn't mature enough yet. So my advice to myself, but also to any of your, of your listeners or their clients is organically maturing and learning is part of the process and you can't accelerate that.

Yeah, good advice. I think when we're young and just starting out, we're all impatient, aren't we? And we're all sometimes focused on the wrong thing, focused on the destination and not enough on the journey. So a good piece of advice. So obviously I'm going to share the link to the book because I'm sure this episode will have intrigued people, including me, to want to go and read the book. So share the link to the book. But how else can people get in contact with you, Mark?

Sure. I'll give you the easiest way and that is date your clients is the name of the book. So anybody can go to dateyourclients.com and there's a link there. You can buy the book right on Amazon and have it sent to you FBA overnight. So that's an exciting thing because it actually is a really fun read. It's not dry business book. It's, it's humorous and it is cheeky in its own way. But the other thing is that I'm just mark@dateyourclients.com that's my recommendation. Market. Date your clients.com. anybody can email me. I manage that email box myself. So you'll actually get a response from me. My agency is riseagency.com that's rise, R, Y, Z, E. A bit of a non traditional spelling there. So riseagency.com if they want to go check out our agency or if they want to collaborate on something. We deal with a lot of direct to consumer and e commerce brands here in the United States, especially. Any listeners that you have that are that are across the pond, I'd love some collaboration and we'll see what we can do to work together.

Perfect. Well, I will share all of those links in the show notes attached to this episode and just want to say a big thank you for giving up some of your time today to share with our listeners that analogy between dating and managing your clients. So that was great. And thanks again for your time.

Thanks so much, Rob. It's been my pleasure.