How to Quit Following Client Demands

Hey, welcome into the Agency Vision Show. This is Gray. I've got Andrew with me. Bounce over to Split Screen. Andrew, how are you, sir?

I'm doing well. How you doing, buddy?

I'm doing great. Happy Friday to you as we record this. Hey, this is the eighth point already in the Agency Freedom Manifesto. We've been doing this series of live videos and podcast episodes, walking through it point by point. Our last one was around training better clients with your sales process, but this one is around what happens after the sales process, shortly titled Lead don't follow client demands.

Bingo.

We lived through that for long enough. Where the agency we talk about all the time, the digital yes man model. That's the agency business model that we're attacking. The broken business model that many agencies employ, which is where the client pays you, ergo ladder, therefore, ergo, they tell you what to do or submit requests and you comply because you want to keep the client happy. So this one will probably be a pretty quick one. It's just a continuation of exactly what we talked about last time, which is if you want better fit clients, you got to start that. The expectations for those relationships early.

Yeah.

You have any favorite bad examples of following client demands or being slave to the whims of clients?

Well, I think it's. I think it starts with this presumption that if I do what they ask, they'll be happy.

Yeah.

But I like anyone who takes an honest look at those clients will see that almost every single time. They don't appreciate the extra value. They don't appreciate you staying up until 9 o' clock on a Friday night to crank out that project that they just gave you on Wednesday. They. It just trains them on how to behave poorly again in the future. So it's. I think it's kind of. It's about confronting our inner urges to do what we think we need to do to keep happy clients in a healthy relationship. But it's when you cave in those situations, it really just comes back to bite you and bite you in the bum in the future.

Nice.

I've ever said bum on the podcast.

Yeah, bum, man. How many times have we lived through that or seen that, where that response that you think is doing someone a favor is just turned into like, oh, wow, I thought that was the way things worked. Because every time you do something, you're setting expectations. If you don't point out that something is a bonus, which is awkward for most of us to do, but if there's not some note that, hey, we'll take care of it for you this time, but just so you know.

Yep.

It goes awry. Have you ever heard that this phrase, like, there's no such thing as a bad client, there's only bad process.

I've not heard that before. Well, but it makes sense.

I don't know if I've heard that exact phrase. I've heard different variations of that type of message. Like there's no such thing as a bad kid, only bad parents, or no guilt for you. I don't know if I've heard that one exactly either. But different variations of that. Obviously, there's bad clients, there's clients we don't want to work with, but where do those clients come from? And that's really what we're trying to avoid here is like the clients that you hate working with. And it stems from the sales process, but all of our bad clients pretty much come from, or the bad client relationships pretty much stem from either bad process, which we'll dive into, or bad judgment, which is from the sales process. Like, you had your better judgment. This client is not an ideal fit. That happened to us yesterday. This client's not an ideal fit. But they're ready to pay money and want to get in. And it's hard to say, no, we're not going to take you on. Fortunately, you had the right judgment. But in bad judgment situation, this client's ready to pay money and say, I'm in. Like, sign me up. Here's my money. Take my money. It serves me. They're not the right fit, and it may not even be that they would be unhappy, but just that you're not going to deliver the results that you want. It's not the type of work that you want. There's a whole bunch of reasons going back to prior episodes that we've done, which do you feel like? Is it. Are there any other reasons that pop to mind other than process and judgment? I'll let you think.

Yeah, like scope. You could say scope. Like if. If you're saying yes to things that are outside your scope and so you're delivering product that takes longer to deliver because you've never done it before, and quality is poor because there's no expertise there. But I think that falls in line with process, too. I think it's an important frame to approach this conversation and to remember that your greatest risk as an agency is saying yes to a client, bringing them into the your world. Like you're. You're affirming expectations for them that you'll deliver results, and you're exposing your team to that influence now. And so that's. Those are two, like very toxic things if they're not all in alignment. And if you're not leading the way, there's. And you let your clients lead the way. Like there's always this leadership vacuum in an agency client relationship and with an owner or leadership and the team as well, someone's going to fill that vacuum. And you've got to be one step ahead of the client in the journey. Even if that's asking them what would you like us to do from here? If that's where you're at, at least it's not the client coming to you and telling you what to do. Like that's. We would want more authoritative leadership there from the agency. But even if you're just, you've got to be leading the way there because someone's going to fill that power vacuum.

Yeah, I do think both of those. Bad judgment, bad process. What you're talking about is connecting the two is all of that stems from a lack of leadership or from poor leadership, which I think are pretty much the same thing. When you don't have a process mapped out for them. Like you haven't taken the time or put in the effort to lead. Even if you're, this is your first time servicing a new client, you're a brand new agency, like mapping out, well, here's what I think the process would be. The only way to improve something is to have some initial hypothesis. Like, here's what I think it should be. Not just follow whatever the client wants you to do. And obviously bad judgment, whether you take on something that you weren't qualified for or there was a cultural disconnect between you and the client, there's all these different reasons that could be causing a bad fit and bad judgment to take someone on. But you bring them, but you bring them in. So we talk about the right way. If that's like the wrong way, the antidote to this, the way to solve this. How do you, how do we lead our clients? I think I've got a couple steps mapped out and I'd be curious to hear your thoughts on the right way to lead clients.

Yeah, I'll just start with a story. This is from one of our accelerator clients who's gone through. And like one of the, one of the key elements of our process is to map out how do you, how do you deliver the service, how do you get the client from where they are to where they're trying to go. And after completing that client journey of visualization this agency took that to their next prospect meeting, and they closed the prospect on a web design deal purely because they had a visualized process that they walked their prospect through. And the prospect said, like, this shows me that you guys know exactly what you're doing, and I feel secure and confident that you guys are going to handle our project well. All they did was took what was up here, what they would have done anyway, visualize it in a clear and concise way, centered around how the prospect views things, shared that with them, and said, okay, that's where you want to go. Here's how we're going to get you there. Not what do you want us to do first, what do you want us to do second, but here's how we'll lead you. And just that one simple step, close the deal for them, even though that person was talking to other agencies in the process. So it's step one is just take the opportunity to show your expertise and explain how you'll leverage that expertise to help the client get to where they're trying to go faster than. Than if they're standing back there throwing darts at the board by themselves.

Right? Yeah. We've talked previously about how we overrate the desirability of custom everything when clients want results. Not everything's brand new for the first time for me, necessarily.

Yep, a hundred percent.

So how you map out that process, though, in order to know what that is, I think the first step is you need to invest in, like, the deep experience, deep expertise into one thing, and then bring on those ideal fit clients who are around that. So you need to narrow your focus down, select who we're gonna help, what problem we're gonna solve for them, and work on mastering that journey. And that's a process. David Baker and I were exchanging tweets the other day around how he hates the phrase proven process, which is Right. Most of the time it's not a proven process. I think it's overused. But proven process is what people are looking for, a process that's actually proven. And the thing to me is, I understand what he was saying. Like, so many people tout a proven process when it's not proven. Yeah, but I don't think we run from that. Like, that's still what we're trying to develop here. Now, you may come up with a different name for it. He didn't give me his preferred moniker, but there's probably something else that would make sense. But basically, hey, here's the path that we know for sure is going to get You, Your results. Short way of saying that would be a proven process.

The answer, social proof. Like, that's the only you. You name your process, whatever you want to call it, and then you. You back that up with social proof of people who look just like me. If I'm the prospect who've gone through this, who were stuck in the same spot, who got to where I'm trying to go, that. That shows me it's proven. You don't need to tell me it's proven. You show me it's proven. That's the big step.

Yep. Well, that we're about to get to that piece here. Number two would be use that expertise that you've developed to standardize a winning client journey, which is that proven path. And then the third piece is demonstrate the value of following your process. So clients do not usually come in expecting to pay a lot of money and then get told what to do. The industry has not trained them to do that because this is not the way that most people operate. So rather than. What you're saying is. Rather than just tell them what. Well, here's what you need to follow. You need to show them why that's beneficial for them. So when they get into your sales process and your sales process looks different than other people's sales processes, that needs to be beneficial to them right away. From day one, I need to benefit from the process that you have. And when I go through your onboarding. How many times do we hear that about the first piece in our onboarding stage? The agency assessment, every time people are like that was really reassuring. I always have that moment of, oh, shoot, what did I just sign up for? Like, I went through this and could tell this process is going to be beneficial. Like the accelerator is for me, because onboarding was good. Or I looked at it and it looked like this was going to take a lot of time. And I enjoyed the process of having to work through that. And I can see where this is headed and where this is going now. Like, there needs to be value right away from following your process.

Yeah.

And exactly what you're saying. You can't just tell them that it's going to be. Don't worry, this will be valuable. Like, it's got to actually be valuable.

Trust me. No, trust is earned.

This is all a cycle, too. The reason that it's valuable from step one is because you've mastered it, because it's gotten better. Our whole goal here is deliver value faster. And then we're going to lead you down that path to do that and the only way that you get to that valuable part is by doing it over and over, is by focusing. This is a quick one. Anything else you want to add in on how to get away from following client demands? And the ultimate answer is like, focus and then stand up and lead.

Step one would be have something to point to. Because if you don't, this is. I get frustrated with agency owners that get mad at their teams because the team isn't like thinking on their feet and being creative and taking ownership and all that stuff. Well, have you defined an expectation for them to follow? And most people have not. So you have no right to get mad at your team until you've given them a standard, a role and an expectation and a process to follow. And the same thing is true with your client. You cannot complain about a bad fit, needy client who asks you to do a ton of things and pulls you out of scope. If you've not taken the time to stand up and give them a process to follow, you've got to have a proven process to point to and then you've got to have the balls to stick to that proven process. When they try to push you out of that, whether it's in the sales process where they want you to bend over and do something custom for them, or if it's when they are your client, they're saying, I'm paying you money, you need to go do this for me. You say no. You point to the sign and say, it's that way or the highway. And a lot of times you'll get those people to sit down in their seat, listen to you, and be a much better behaved client from that point moving forward because you had the guts to stick to what you said you were going to do at the beginning.

There we go. I don't have a better way to end it. I've got a personal story. I'm going to save it for another time. Related to this exact same point though, which is setting the expectation standard. All right, let's wrap this up here. We'll keep this one short and sweet for you. This was point number eight, Lead, don't follow client demands. All the points are in the manifesto. Zenpilot.com manifesto would love to hear any questions that you have that we have not addressed here. Any. There's a million questions about how do the specifics. What are the specifics of this look like? If you are struggling with bad fit clients right now, what you need to do is go to zenpilot.com, watch the video, walk you through the process. See the proof on that page of all the agencies who've gone through the program or a handful of the agencies who've gone through the program and the results that they've had from it. Be the right fit for us. When we say that path is proven, we're not making it up. It's true.

Preach.

All right. Enjoy the weekend. Talk to you all soon.