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 “Date 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 first meet 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 growing and selling my own agency and just how it feels in the ups 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 maximising 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 Your 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 Your 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 is a little provocative, and I think it's pretty funny because most people are like, “Oh, date your clients”. And they were like, “Okay, wait. There must be something else behind it.” This kind of tells 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 with 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 and I'll tell you the background story. This is kind of funny. I was talking to a client, and perhaps this resonates 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, multimillion-dollar company, and I was working with the marketing director and they had ads running on a TV commercial. And she says, “Well, I don't think TV is working anymore”. And I said to her, like, “I think you're throwing out the baby with the bathwater.” Metaphorically speaking, “I think you're kind of making up 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 entirely. 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 call me. 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. 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. 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 right 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 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 will 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 in our personal lives are not that different. 

And 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 any time you're dealing with a human, you're dealing with emotions, you're dealing with expectations, you're dealing with a need’s and value’s propositions, you're dealing with these types of things.” And the truth 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 the 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 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, it's actually really interesting. I'll be interested to hear what you think about this because I, inadvertently, used 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 quickly look at their phone and go, ‘I'm really sorry. My dogs. Yeah, I've got to go.’” 

So, when we're on that date or on that first prospect between 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. That's what you talked about in the book, but -

I've sure absolutely has talked about in the book. And each chapter, 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. 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 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 is just another Tuesday at the office. You're meeting somebody new. To them, it's the 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 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 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 learn about them before you came in? Or did 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 I used 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 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 clients are 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 client. But likewise, that's a big decision for a client to make. 

And too often, we go in for the hard close, and the reality 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.” 

In 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, you know? It's all of those things that are all part of the recipe, right? That you build relationships through organic interaction.

So, let's flip that on to the other side, because I completely - 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 doesn’t work, but how do we move the customer through that customer journey to get them to a point after date three or four or whatever it is, where we can actually get them to sign on the dotted line because, otherwise, the dangerous 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 relations standpoint, one of the things I would say there is because we have clients like that too, where you seem to constantly date and date and date. And you sometimes wonder to yourself, “Is this going anywhere?” 

And the reality is that there is a time to let it go, you know? 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 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's a healthy balance in there, and what I will say is, from a courtship perspective, every client is different. And the reality is, I think, one of the dangers that we have in the business world is we stop relying on our own intuition, and we start trying to rely on the five steps to a perfect sale type books.

And unfortunately, those you know, “10 steps to success” and, you know, “7 ways to win a client,” and those types of 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 contention is that too many people are trying to find the perfect algorithm to relationships, when in fact, the perfect algorithm doesn't exist. One of the things I would tell you when I was in grad school, I did - one of my graduate degrees is actually in clinical psychology. And I had a grand adviser, who 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'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 an immediate connection. And his point was that if you're in a clinical setting and you're working with an individual and that person just gets on your nerves or that person, it's just not jelling. The reality 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 this person check this box, this box, this box”. And if all those boxes are checked, then my gut must be wrong. And the reality is his contention, and it has proven true for me over and over again, are 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 brain picks up a stimulus that it's experienced once before. It says, “You know there's a danger point or there's something going on.” And your brain process 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 3rd, 4th, 5th or date, when is it time to sign a deal versus walk away?”

And the best advice I would give you is to 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 in our school systems, that instinctualness, that knowing behaviour gets beaten out of us. And so, by the time we're adults, we don't listen to our guard, 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 that isn't just someone that is a good fit for you in terms of their niche and their needs, 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 want to go on another day. 

So, let's jump forward a bit. Now, we've won the client. What advice do you have for anybody to maximise the length and the value of that client relationship? Because sometimes I feel like we don't pay enough attention to our existing clients, and then we're just on two 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, memorialise our partnership. And that is, my dad always used the phrase and said that, “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, you know, 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 memorialise 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 memorialising.

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 I want my clients. 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, 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, if your spouse is saying, “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 things about, “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”. And in his mind, he did everything that a husband was supposed to do. And in her mind, you didn't bring me flowers, and to him, that seems so trivial. But to her, it's a big deal. And it's 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 so funny that we have a client. We do amazing work for a client who loves us, absolutely loves us, and we got feedback from the client the other day saying, “You know, we really like the green in our brand colours. But our social media feed just doesn't seem to have enough green in it lately”. And I'm going, “That's what you're concerned about?” Like “Sure, Okay, we'll put more green in the feed.” 

So, yeah, it's just very unusual for us to get that kind of feedback. But often, it is a matter of managing expectations. What is it that that person wants? And then, making sure fulfilling that need. 

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 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 what we actually share and we get them to do the same, and I get any 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 the human being in a work context or human being in an outside work context, but 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 favourite chapter of this book? And my answer is the first fight, and the “First Fight” is my favourite 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 two 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 had 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 researched 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 the plane took the most fire”. And his answer was, “No, that's the area where the plane could take fire and still survive.” I know you're almost like, “Oh yeah, that's good”. And he's like, “Those are the ones that made it back. 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 exact opposite, the areas where 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’re 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 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 page, and I want you to start by telling me all of the things you like. And usually, what we find is what seems 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 want to change 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 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. 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, we've had some great successes in the past. Yeah, I remember the campaign where we did X, Y, Z. That was great, man. I wish we could do more of that.”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. 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 catastrophise a single incident, but rather let's talk about all the good stuff. You know, let's talk about the ways and 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 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 need. 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 iss 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 we did meet the mark because you told us you wanted ABC had you told me about points D and E, we would have done this differently.” 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 a question I always ask all my guests, which is if they could go back in time and give your younger self who just started out of business a piece of advice, what would it be? 

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,” 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 products to market. 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. This should be 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 your 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 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 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, 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 that “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 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 mark@dateyourclients.com. Anybody can email me. I manage that email box myself so you'll actually get a response from me. My agency is ryzeagency.com. That's RYZE, a bit of a non-traditional spelling there. So, ryzeagency.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.