S1 E4 - Seeking the perfect agency partners - A Dilemma or a Dream?

In today’s fast-paced world, maintaining healthy client relationships is just as important for B2B marketers. If you're struggling to maintain a positive client relationship, we have something special in store for you! Tune in to Episode 4 of The B2B POD with our host Radwa Hassan and guest Jason Gladu where they discuss the pain points related to how consumers are disconnected from brands or companies-and elaborate on how you can fix it.

In this Episode, 

• We introduce you to our host Radwa Hassan and guest Jason Gladu.
• Give you a checklist of dos and don'ts for keeping a positive customer relationship.
• Our guest offers advice and guidance on how to reconnect with clients.

 In closing, we'd like to say thank you for tuning in to The B2B POD this week. We hope to see you for Episode 5. 

 Episode highlight:
 
 [00:31]   Radwa Hassan  introduces the guest Jason Gladu
 [00:55]   About Jason Gladu
 [02:06]   Radwa asks about the great disconnect between B2B marketers and  agencies  
 [02:55]   Jason explains the disconnect between clients and the agencies

 [04:10]   Radwa asks Jason  who should incentivize the agency? Should it be the client  or
                    agency.

 [04:32]   Jason explains his views and opinions on who should incentivize the agencies
 [05:39]   Radwa speaks about the perceptions of agencies
 [06:15]   Jason explains his perceptions of agencies
 [12:00]   Jason talks about the importance of having empathy towards the client
 [13:45]   Radwa talks about how agencies perceive difficult clients
 [15:23]   Radwa asks Jason what is a good lead  and how to reach the end of the funnel
 [15:30]   Jason explains his views on  how to reach the  end of the funnel
 
 [18:44]   Radwa talks about the importance of understanding how every client is different

 [24:40]   Radwa talks about A players and C players from an Agency perspective
 [27:02]   Jason gives  five tips and tricks on what makes an agency successful 

 [39:20]   The End 

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Podcast Description:

The B2B POD is the next big source of information about what’s happening in the B2B industry. The podcast is a one-stop shop for everyone interested in updating themselves with the latest news, trends, and technologies of the B2B industry. Tune in and listen to the intriguing conversations with our 

Transcript

[00:01] Radwa: Hello and welcome everyone to another great episode by the B2B POD. Hosts  Radwa Hassan and I'm hosting for this episode Jason Gladu. So our topic is about the great disconnect between b2b marketeers and the agencies. Jason is an operator by nature. He is president at Avanti media, one of the fastest-growing demand generation and marketing agencies in the US, and an expert in content syndication in B2B marketing. His company of all sizes from startups, with a series of funding from fortune 200 companies targeted and personalized campaigns.  Jason has been in digital marketing, since 2009, working for companies like Spiceworks, Ziff Davis, and Mindshare. He's always eager to learn, always looking for solutions to problems rather than letting problems persist. This allows him to think about new ways to take demand generation further into the modern age and to empower his employees so they can deliver their best in operative work. As president, he is responsible for making sure his workforce is productive. In addition to running Avani media, he speaks on podcasts and at conferences, usually on demand and lead generation, and invests in commercial real estate. But if he had it his way,it might be more about. Wine, soccer, Ideally Liverpool football, which we are not going to talk abou and definitely he is excited to use podcasting to spread awareness about the work he does and also his journey of busines and marketing. Jason, thank you so much for joining this episode and being my guest, I’m really happy to have you here.

[02:03] Jason Gladu: Thanks for having me here.

[02:06] Radwa: And our topic today is really one that's close to my heart because I have really gone through a lot of different instances and situations with my agencies and through my work. So our topic is about the great disconnect between B2B marketers and agencies. So. Really, I see it as a challenge, but also I see it as an opportunity. If both sides really take the right approach, they can do magical stuff together. I'm seeing that in  large enterprises that marketing typically works with large full-stack agencies that have the skillset as well as the manpower to support campaigns big and small. But the challenge with the large agencies is the legacy of retainers with agencies that restrict marketers to seek innovation outside. So, this, especially with the growing demand to get in front of the customers.

[02:55] Jason Gladu: Yeah. I think that there is a large disconnect between what clients expect out of their agencies and the work that they get. I think that the retainer agreements, lock clients into relationships with agencies, and it's sort of an asymmetrical balance where the agencies tend to get a lot of the value of future revenue and the clients don't really get a whole lot of value out of that retainer agreement because they’re more or less locked in with an agency. And often can't seek outside support for projects, whether that's bringing on another agency or bringing on specialists to help with the work because it's all wrapped up in this retainer agreement. And ultimately what that leads to is sort of subpar work and misaligned results because agencies don't have to show up and fight every day. And also it just largely means that the agencies aren't pushing hard enough to get their clients in front of the right people. Whether that's the right audience or the right customers, or they're just not incentivized to move quickly and to move sort of in parallel with their client.

[04:10] Radwa: You tapped into a very great point here and that word of incentivized. Whose role is it to really put that angle on the agency? Who should incentivize the agency? Should it be the client or should it be the agency itself as a president? How would you handle that for a media agency?

[04:32] Jason Gladu: My personal view is that I think it's the agency's responsibility.Yeah, sure. You could structure contracts and we've seen some of them where there are performance-based incentives for the agency. If they hit certain thresholds, whether that's pipeline generated or whether that's revenue, whether that unit, whatever the case is. I would prefer to have an agency and a team and a workforce who shows up every day and is made up of A players and just fundamentally gives the client a plus level  service, strategy, execution, and support because they want to do, rather than having to dangle a carrot and incentive in front of the agency to get that out of them. Well, just with the intrinsic drive who want to do their best work. And because I think that is going to drive the best outcomes and high alignment with the agency. That's not governed by a contract because I think if you need to put it in the contract, I feel like you're just going to get into a position where the work still is not going to be where you need it, because you're going to be fighting over language and a contract to try to get paid and, or dispute payments.

[05:39] Radwa: Yeah, certainly. And really, I'm sitting in the client's seat and I'm telling you that some of the agencies, when you, as a client push for more creativity, they frame you as a hard to please client. And they say, oh, well they never like anything. Whatever we show them, they don't like it. And then you become the bad guy and psychologically puts them in a space where their pressured, but also they see the client as hard to please, oh, it's all right. Whatever we're going to present is, is not going to be good enough. So how do you relate to that?

[06:15] Jason Gladu: Yeah, I think there are a few points there, which is you've got agencies who view the sort of change or pivot or additional work as bad as like, I can't believe they're trying to give me more work, even though it's going to make the agency more money. I just can't believe it. Which is a line of thinking that I can't agree with. I wouldn't ever allow it here. Because at the end of the day, the ideal partnership would be you have an agency and a client who are pushing, , like rowing in the same direction. The technology landscape We are an agency that primarily deals with B2B technology clients, but the B2B tech landscape changes so quickly, even for large enterprises. I mean, they're making tweaks and pivots to whether that's targeting, whether that's, manufacturing and supply chain issues, right? There are all of these changes that are happening. And if you, as an agency take the line of, well, that is out of scope. That is not something we want to do or, oh my gosh there's more work and the client's difficult. That just doesn't sound like a healthy relationship to me. I think a healthy relationship is one that is a highly aligned, one where it's a true partnership where neither side feels like they're getting taken advantage of and both sides understand there are changes happening in all aspects of this, whether that's technology and publishers and things on the agency side, or targeting internal changes, supply chain issues, or what have you on the client side. And our goal in this relationship is to move together, to get the best business results. Not, for one of us to win the upper hand and say,  I got more out of this relationship than the other side, because that doesn't right, that seems like a very big misalignment and an unhealthy relationship. And it won't be a long-standing relationship for the agency.

[08:00]  Radwa: Yeah, certainly. And to that point, remember from our discussions also, when we were talking about that the B2B marketers often are stuck with their partner agencies. And when they shift directives and ask for any additional work, it becomes like, Oh My God, you're asking for additional work.This is as you said, this is a different scope. This is outside of my scope. And understanding really the environment at your client and how everything works and how things could change from one day to the other. And I think during COVID everybody spoke a lot about all the lessons learned, but we have all learned the lesson that if you're agile, you're quick, you're fast and if you can move, then you can really meet your customers where they are, and really be there for them. But not all the agencies get it. I'm really happy to be hearing from you how you're handling this in your own company. And that you're so forward thinking with that, because many talk about it, but few execute on that and understanding that sweet spot of winning together is really what would get agencies and marketer’s to a great relationship.

[09:17] Jason Gladu: Yeah, I think it's so much about winning together and it's understanding what, instead of taking every client and saying here's a one size fits all approach, it's understanding what does this client need from us? What are their drivers internally? How are they rewarded? What does our individual client ,if we're sitting in marketing, like what does their organization look like? How do we help them win? But also understanding who are their  coworkers? and What do their sales look like? What does marketing ops and what does, , the sales ops and sales tech stack look like? All of those pieces are necessary because if we can be a partner to our client. Then part of that relationship dynamic is being highly aligned. Making sure we are setting us up for success by winning together and making sure we know what we're driving towards and if what we're driving towards changes, being okay to adjust and adapt because at the end of the day, that is how the agency wins. And if we are winning and the client is winning, then it's a recipe for success. I think the challenge is a retainer makes that really chat. I think you can have folks who get complacent and take advantage of the relationship because they no longer feel like they've got to show up and fight. And if you work on, , the opposite of the retainer is like a project based scope of work or contract. A quarter, six months it's sort of immaterial because what it does is it that, that project or scope of work, and you've got to show up and resell yourself every day. Every day, you're showing up and fighting and wanting to make sure you're bringing your A plus game and, or at least our goals are to make the client's life easier and to drive business outcomes and in order to do that we have to be agile and highly aligned.

[11:13] Radwa: Yeah, absolutely. I really love that because making the client's life easier is a very important point because I personally work with multiple agencies and I can tell that there is one agency that talks the talk and walks the walk. They say we want to make your life easier. We want to make you really winning and shiny and they don't do that. They just say it. But then when it comes to delivery on that, out of their old space and what they're doing day to day. So it's very uncomfortable, but then you go to another agency and then you find that yeah, they could just like deliver anything last minute because they understand your requirements and that they want you really to succeed.

[12:00] Jason Gladu: Yeah, I think a lot of it's understanding what's the north star, what that KPI is, having an agency which actually, it sounds sort of odd, but just having a group of folks that just care, likecare about the client as people, and as, , as an individual person, care about what their outcome.Directives are as a business, understanding the business climate that your client finds himself in, and then obviously understanding and valuing the people of the agency as well. And I think if you can do that and just show that you care starting off with transparency and, and  you've gotta be agile. You've gotta be able to move quickly and pivot with the client. That's sort of the table stakes, but it's funny how the table stakes aren't always even delivered. And I think because when you're in a retainer relationship, sometimes people bring their B or C game and feel like, well,  what? We've got the client locked in for 18 months or a year or two years, and the work will get done. And if it takes two-three weeks, four or five revisions, or two months at the end of the day, it doesn't matter. We're getting paid every month. We're getting paid six figures every month on a retainer who cares, which I think is the wrong approach. Right? If you, I mean, I think that relationship and retainer agreement can give you sort of subpar work, lack of innovation because again you don't have to show up and sell yourself on a project basis. If we delivered subpar work to a client or didn't bring our A game, every day, the client could just simply walk away and there's no recourse because that's, I mean, that's how I would want it to, if we don't show up in delivering value, I want the client to walk away because we're not doing our job to keep the client happy and deliver on the promise we gave them. And if we can't do that, then we don't deserve the relationship.

[13:45] Radwa: So true. And then there are some agencies they're just like if you, as a client, you go and you look for a different agency and you do any project than they see it out. It would come to you like, Oh, Why did you go to a different agency? What have we done? I mean, we've been talking for ages about what really we want to fix, but then once they say they take it as you're cheating on them. That's a different agency, but Hey, I mean, you have to get out of your comfort zone if you don't fix it, then we're going to leave.

[14:20] Jason Gladu: Yeah. It's like as every client should, right. If it's not being addressed and not being fixed, then  there's no reason for the client to stay. And I think the project based contracting and scope of work, right. Shorter-term, I think a better incentive and alignment between the agency and the client rather than a retainer.

[14:40]  Radwa: 100 percent. So the demand generation and the quality of leads, the expectations on the client side, understanding how the funnel operates. And also defining and agreeing on the quality of the deliverables. I think this is very important thing of every project, but again, with a retainer, it may not happen because they sort of say oh we know what they need, but with your approach as on a project basis. And if you show it every day, then I think aligning and realigning expectations and defining what a good Lead is and how really to reach the end of the funnel. What's your view on that? And tips there.

[15:30] Jason Gladu: Yeah, I think it's, , it comes back to just showing up and really wanting to win together right. So aligning on the KPIs of the campaign or whatever sort of marketing activity you're running cause I flutter, whatever it is, setting the goalposts down and saying here's the goal. And then understanding what do I need to know in order to make this happen? And, I think an inquisitive agency and one that really wants to make sure that the client is successful is going to start asking the questions around What does that funnel look like? What are your definitions internally? What does that lead scoring algorithm look like? We might have feedback on how other clients have done it. Non-competitive of course, tips, and tricks. But at the end of the day, I'm not here to argue with a client about their, definitions internally. Our job is to understand how the client defines their MQL or whatever  acronym they're using  and try to build programs that generate the desired result. And so It's understanding what those are, how they interact with each other, what are their historical conversion rates? And if the client doesn't know them, helping them find them and we've got a lot of clients who either don't know, or don't have access or don't know where the data would be stored or don't have the time or the people to do the sort of manual analytical, deep dive into their data. And so in order for us to build a winning formula, we've got to go do that for them. And all of that is usually done before the project, before the contract is even signed, because we want to make sure that, Hey, if you say you want to see a 20% increase in sales qualified opportunities. Cool. That sounds great. What are you at today? What has worked? What has it, what, what are some of those successes that you've had in the past? We want to understand that and engineer a program that is going to help us get there and set up different lines to test and do some of those things. And I think that by having those conversations and really wanting deep understanding. I mean, we do a lot of this work even talking about getting paid. And I think part of that builds trust. I think part of it is transparent to the client. We're going to talk to them about how we think and how we do things. There's just talking to the client and showing up and saying, look, let's be a long-term partnership. And we're going to go out of our way to try to uncover all of this information upfront, because this is how we work. We want to make sure you're successful. We need to know how this operates. And if we can't find some of these metrics and we've got to realign on a different KPI, because there's nothing in place to track this and measure it. And so I think having that conversation, and doing that deep dive are some of the things that I would highly recommend. , if you're a marketer working with an agency, Hi, you want the agency to be asking those questions and trying to find that information? Because if not, they're probably going to give you some campaign in a box and that's just not, Every client is different.

[18:44] Radwa: Yeah every client is different. Understanding the differences is one key element here. That few really get it's oh, we have done the successful campaign with another client here's a campaign. We can run it different. And if there's a modification, the whole new concept from the beginning.

[19:03] Jason Gladu: And it could be a whole separate customer base. I could be a whole lot of trying to dive deep and understanding who's the customer. What are we trying to get them to do we and how do we think about trying to get in front of them or surrounding them or whatever the case is and there's so much that goes into that. Whether that's, you can't take a very large fortune 100 brand, A brand’s campaign results that was great had great results and give that to A series of start up because nobody knows who that series A is. Right? Like you can't expect them to have the same results because they don't have the Dell brand or they're not an HP or a Microsoft. But some people just want to give a campaign in a box, which is not innovative. And at the end of the day, it's just not helpful.

[19:49] Radwa: Absolutely. And I think as part of building that relationship and for agencies and corporate marketing teams have to reiterate that relationship progressively also understanding the different stakeholders you deal with and the goals of the organization. Where is the organization? Is it in maturity level or they're transforming. This is where the agency becomes a consultant, like to try and hear something. Why don't you try this? Why don't you try that? And when you come to that point in a relationship, you trust the agency so much, and you believe they're a part of your team because they're going to bring you the latest and greatest and they are really keen on making you succeed.

[20:40] Jason Gladu: Yeah, I think having that consultative mindset as a group of folks who work on behalf of a client or with a client, I think is key because if we view ourselves as an extension of our client teams and the best teams have people on them who are constantly digging for what's new what's going on in this space. And so it's imperative for us as an agency to learn everything we can about our clients, about where they sit in the market, where they want to go, what are we trying to do as a group? And then bringing in insights from market, whether that’s, industry insights or is it, Hey, there's a best practice that, , we saw a client increase their lead conversion rate by X percent and here is some of the way they did it. And I think one of the things that I like to do is take it one step further and say hey would you like me to connect you with our other client? They're non-competitive, they're in a very different, be happy to host a workshop where you guys can jam on Marketing, nurture sequences or landing page design or whatever the case is and at the end of the day, bring people together so we can solve more problems and make our clients' lives easier and more successful.

[22:05] Radwa: Yeah, absolutely. I mean, that's a different level of connecting with the agencies. It surprises me sometimes that some of the agencies because of the, if we go back to the retainer point that because they know that your log, the quality of work that they deliver to you, they just like really becomes so mediocre to the point that you find typos, errors, grammar mistakes, they overlook so many things just because they know you are in this relationship and you're not getting out. And it even comes from big agencies and you'll be really surprised how can they fall into that trap? And it's frustrating as little as it is, but it's frustrating. It takes me as a client.

[22:57] Jason Gladu: Yeah. There are certain things that when you've got this retainer when there's no risk to the business, from an agency perspective, leaving it feels like people get complacent and either it is that because the staff, the team in place, isn't A players. Have, they moved more C players on the team as they feel like the account's safe and they don't need to worry about it. But then the client ends up getting subpar at it. In this case, you mentioned that incredibly subpar work to the point that there's just like the basics are being missed. The typos, the having to go round and round and round on revisions that should have been caught like as an agency, your job is not just to take what you're, , if, if you're working with a publisher and they're giving you something, , that you need the client to approve your job is not to just be the middleman and just pass the piece of work over your job is to take the first path out of it and find all of the very obvious mistakes, wrong logo, wrong font, wrong colors, , grammar, typos. I think there's something odd with spacing here, all of those easy things that by the time you give it to the client to approve, they are catching things that maybe the agency is not as adapt as catching brand voice, or maybe there's nothing for them to catch in the ideal world. And I think that like the retainer, sometimes the retainer just makes that it disincentivizes that to happen. And it's incredibly frustrating when you see what, when you hear stories of clients getting this subpar work  from their agencies and agency partners, because of just a lack of caring and the lack of effort.

[24:40] Radwa: It's again. Yes. Lack of caring, lack of effort, complacent. Taking you for granted as a client. They know you're going to be there. I believe nothing grows in a comfort zone when they reach this space then, and I like the point so much about the A-players and C-players from an agency site. Like they could put one of their A-players as an account manager, but then again, those who are, you're dealing with day-to-day or juniors, they want to involve with your execution skills, have enough skills, to start the little details or to know how to manage you as a client. Or when they only get you in touch with the A player or when things escalate that you go back to that senior people and you should not be going down that path and be okay. Yeah just to escalate.

[25:30] Jason Gladu: So yeah. It's like that. That's not making the client's life easy. Right? Like that's just challenging. And that in my view, none of those things are what an agency and client relationships should want and strive for. You should want your agency to like see around the curve, sort of anticipate your needs that way they can service you better not cause you more work and more meetings and more escalations and any of those things.

[25:56] Radwa: Exactly you are already doing that internally with your internal teams, you shouldn't be doing it with the agency because at that point the agency is bringing you more noise than making your life easier. And I like, I really like when you mentioned that one of your KPI’s with your clients is, how do you want to make their life easier? Which is great. 

[26:33] Radwa:  So if we our to give our audience and listeners five tips and tricks. And your thoughts around what really makes immediate agency very successful from your experience, what you're doing with your clients at Avanti media and what would get them to be successful? So maybe your tips from, uh, uh, uh, an agency side and also what you would believe if marketeers also do, would help build a great relationship and get  amazing campaigns out?

[27:02] Jason Gladu: Yeah, I think in order to drive the most value for the agency, I think it's the alignment. So aligning with your clients on what they want you to be in this moment. How do they want you? How do they view you and your team? And so, for example, we don't treat any of our clients the same way we want to approach every relationship as currently client, how do we best support you in your goals? Do you want us to be largely execution focused? Do you largely want us to handle contracts and suggestions? Do you want us to do strategy and campaign development? Do you want us to do all of that? Any of those are fine. We want to understand how best to serve you to save you time. It's not about how we work or hey, we always staff our teams or our client teams   down the path of campaign in a box. And I, I just don't think that that is the best way to, to service your clients. The second point is be an extension of the client team and this….The directions it builds off the first point. You can't be an extension if you don't understand how they want, how they operate and how they want to operate with you. But once you do that, if you can become an extension of their team, which means fitting into their business rhythm, right? There's no sense in giving reporting to a client on Thursday when they have their weekly marketing meetings on Wednesday. Right? None of that, none of that is helpful. And so some agencies stick to their guns.

[28:38] Radwa: Absolutely, I really love that because and I'm sorry to stop you, but you spot a very important point. You give them something on Thursday, they're meeting as on one Wednesday, poor alignment from the agency. They really don't understand what you are working within. So yeah.

[28:53] Jason Gladu: And sometimes its having an agency, you can ask the questions and articulate the reason behind the question and provide the context of the client. It's not, I think sometimes when, when people ask like, oh, well, so when is your internal meeting? It's it comes off in a way that doesn't feel genuine or the client seems like I don't understand why you're asking. And I think it's all about the reframe and providing the context of Look, we want to make sure that you client are as prepared as you can be going into your weekly or monthly or whatever it is meeting. And so we want to make sure we get you the absolute, latest and greatest information and insights in time for you not only to review it, but to analyze it, to ask questions back to us that you think you're going to get asked so we can provide answers and have that dialogue. So that you walk into that weekly or monthly or quarterly meeting ready to go with all the answers that we, that we could prep for because we're an extension of your team. We want to prep together. We want to make sure that your life is easy….Is that using your, this, this sort of…., builds, but it's the extension of the team it's for most like we have Avanti brand and…, decks and reports and all that. We almost never use them because everything we do is on client branded templates, right? So we want to make sure that whatever we're giving the client, it's on their letterhead, it's on their format using their fonts and colors. That way they can take it and use it internally very seamlessly. There's no sense in giving a client something that they have to screenshot or reproduce or duplicate and put it into their format when we can do that work for them because ultimately the data we're providing and reports we're providing are meant to be consed and distributed at our client level and if the client so chooses and wants and desires, then we should do that on their paperwork and on their letterhead in branding, because that is making their life easier. Our main KPI.

[30:52] Radwa: I love that detail. I really love that. Absolutely. Because, well, that shows that agency understands. They're not in competition with marketing. It's not like they're trying to solve their work internally and show that having content we're having it…on their own templates. So it has to be for internal news. So it has to be unaccompanied template. So a hundred percent that is an awesome detail. So yeah.

[31:15] Jason Gladu: It’s like our goal is not to be like beat our chest and say like, oh, look at us. Our goal is almost to operate in the background as if we don't exist fundamentally because we just want to make our clients business as a whole, but also the teams that we work with more successful…When, if, if that means they want us to show up to internal meetings and be on internal calls. Great. So be it, we will be there. And we're happy to do that. If you want us to operate in the background almost, and really only interface with them and, , finance so be it, we're happy to do it because it's all about alignment. KPIs…the extension of the team. And, and so I think the, kind of the third piece there that continues to build on this is developing. If you're an agency developing these…personas, if you will, for what your client looks like. And so it's like, what is the, what does that marketing persona? If you're selling, if you're. How are they structured? Do they have a center of excellence? Are they a more traditional marketing org structure? How do they operate? Do they have a great relationship with the sales team? Is it strained? What those personas look like? Who do they deal with on a day-to-day basis?  What is marketing ops and sales ops look like? How do they function and work together or not? Because. Again. The more that we, as an agency understand about our client, the better we can structure recommendations, the better  we can just structure how we operate and work together because at the end of the day, if we're providing, if we design a campaign and it's providing leads and we don't have an idea or relationship with the marketing ops team…putting more work for our client because we're having to provide them. And there it's just not going to end well, because all of that is time wasted and those leads are not getting to where they need to go. And so our job is to make our client's life easier. So it's doing the research to figure…out what marketing automation are they using? How can we build the API to automatically tie in data? How, what data do we get out of it? How can we, how does that enhance reporting? We had a client that didn't realize that ….integration we had with them that we could do all of their funnel metric reporting for them because we could get, we got all of their movement in their pipeline. We could see when somebody changed stages and our marketing team like they would have to go to somebody else to request that data. And we just started providing that to them on our weekly call saying, here's what we're seeing. We're making optimizations based on this data and that was a huge win for them. It was showing that we knew that they were data-driven, which is excellent. We were showing them that we are being proactive and being data-driven as well to help make informed recommendations and optimization decisions.

[34:10] Radwa: Yeah. And that's the consultative space that agencies should be at. So that's such a great example exactly. On the reporting because a lot of the marketing professionals, they may struggle internally to get the reports or to link and integrate their campaigns into their CRMs. And then you find them at a point where they cannot properly report the success of their campaigns. So the agencies providing something, however, when they link it to their CRM it is not working. But that example is awesome. And really a great one…

[34:32] Jason Gladu: Yeah. And I think finally all of these things are sort of pointing to wanting like you should want that agency to become a true partner where they understand the client's business. They understand the people, the drivers of those people. They understand the landscape, whether that's competitive, whether it's internal, whether it's sort of the political internal climate, if one exists because all of those things are going to make the recommendations, the planning, the communication, more efficient. So we have some clients where we know they have to do some manual tasks to get things. Whether that's like submitting a ticket to go get some campaign codes created. Well why do they need to do that? Why can't we do that for them? And so that looks like just opening the conversation with, Hey, what would it look like if this was easier? What, what would it look like? If we know the code, we know how it's structured. What if we put that ticket in or watch the ticket for you? That way you didn't have to look and be alerted and then email it to me or slack it to me. Like we could just get the real-time update. And so now that looks like, oh, we're in their system and we're behind the firewall. They have our VPN. So we're all in and they've got the IP address. Then we know how to get access. We can see what we need to see. We don't see more but we've just taken that sort of that right off their plate, but it's a critical task to getting things live. And, and so that's like becoming a true and valued partner. And the other one is we've got clients that want to be in our slack. Great. Happy to do it right. If that's how you want to, if that's how you want to interface with us, we are more than happy to do that. If you'd rather stick to email or daily huddles or whatever it is, we're happy to oblige because at the end of the day, it's all focused on being a true partner in making the client's life easier and also being free to be able to iterate, right? If we try slack and it is not working let us change it no harm, no foul, like if it's not working for the client then we're not living up to our brand promise of wanting to make our client's life easier.

[36:38] Radwa: So that's a great point. And let me ask you, how did you find the communication whether improving or not between having that slack communication or on email do you see that there is a significant difference?

[36:52] Jason Gladu: I think it depends on the client and it depends on how many people at the client are involved. I think there are a nice parts of email, which is maybe more concise you can craft a more tailored up cause very quick and sort of more rapid fire. I feel the benefit of slack is you can move very quickly and we can, the messages don't get lost as easily. Right. So we've got slack channels. I mean, by campaign for one of our clients that's, and there's probably eight people all over the world that sit in these slack channels. And so they can…kind of keep the ball moving throughout the night or during their day and while we're sleeping and our teams, wherever they are in the world can pick it up and kind of keep the ball rolling, but keep everybody feeling like they're getting the real-time information and they're not responding to an email from yesterday or two days ago, that's already been addressed and solved, but they just didn't see the update but at the end of the day, I think the desire to improve our client's life and making sure that whatever tactical that's slack or email or calls or daily huddles, whatever it is, as long as it's improving our client's experience and making their life easier than, than we continue to do it in the minute it's not. Or we get feedback that, hey, this seems more challenging than it's worth. It's like, great. Let's change it. And let's, let's go back to email, go back to whatever the case is and we are happy to do that because it’s going to make the relationship better overall.

[38:14] Radwa: Yeah, certainly. And it does so that flexibility and agility in accepting, or rather trying to accommodate the client needs is great. This is great. All right. So Jason. Yes, absolutely. And I really hope our audience will take all these great takeaways for both sides, for marketing, for agency and act on them and see really how it can improve the relationship and get you to the next level of the agency and client synergy. So great stuff there Jason. We could go forever and you have so many great examples, so happy to have this episode with. And thank you very much.

[38:59] Jason Gladu: Thank you so much for having me. Radwa I had a great time and we could go on for hours on each of these points, so thanks for having me.

[39:06] Radwa: Yeah. Well, thank you so much. And for our guests and audience if you have any questions, please feel free to send them through, anything for Jason we really can get back to you with the answers so thankyou for listening and stay tuned for more episodes.

[39:20] The End