Does your agency truly understand your clients' needs? Are you proactive about learning their business? Is your team constantly looking for new, innovative solutions? What can you do to earn clients’ trust to retain and even upsell them? Today’s guest has been an agency owner for 30 years and knows the business well. He understands which questions to ask to gain clients’ trust and teaches other agency owners to do the same. He’ll reveal what clients are looking for in an agency according to a recent survey. Drew McLellan owns Agency Management Institute, which serves small to mid-scale agencies helping them grow. He's on the show sharing insight from a recent survey. Drew’s agency runs an annual survey where agency clients respond to focused questions that give agencies some insight into what they can improve to have a better relationship with them. This year, the survey focused on agencies’ struggles to grow their existing book of business. In this episode, we’ll discuss: What do clients think about agencies? 4 things you can do to build better relationships with clients. 2 big mistakes you should avoid with clients.   Subscribe Apple | Spotify | iHeart Radio | Stitcher | Radio FM Sponsors and Resources E2M Solutions: Today's episode of the Smart Agency Masterclass is sponsored by E2M Solutions, a web design, and development agency that has provided white-label services for the past 10 years to agencies all over the world. Check out e2msolutions.com/smartagency and get 10% off for the first three months of service.   What Do Clients Think About Their Agency Relationship? Most agency owners are great when it comes to their services but don’t have the tools to run a business profitably. Having run an agency for thirty years, Drew knows the industry well and now focuses on helping them. His agency runs an annual research piece called the Agency Edge. In its ten-year history, they’ve mostly talked to people who hire agencies, as was the case this year. The central theme this year was agencies’ struggles to grow their existing book of business. Clients are taking a longer time to hire agencies, and even once they’ve hired them, they’re slow to assign a first project. So how to get more from the clients you already have? Basically, the gist of the research was to get respondents to reveal how, when, and where they give an agency more money. The results were fascinating -- most fell into one of three categories: The ideal agency client: This is the client we all want to have. They want their agency at the table talking about strategy and truly believe they couldn’t run their business as well without the agency. The client looking for a specialist: This was the largest group, accounting for over 45% of the respondents. These are businesses that are pretty happy with their in-house team but are in need of extra sets of hands and depths of expertise in certain areas. They expect the agency to come in and partner with their team. They don’t expect them to get in on big-picture strategy. The client who thinks everything’s too expensive: This was fortunately the smallest group. These clients see agencies as a necessary evil that is too expensive. If they could avoid giving an agency more money, they will choose to do that. Naturally, the research focused on the first two groups, which are the ones likely to spend more money on agencies. What Do Clients Really Want From Their Agency? No matter the different topics they’ve covered over the years, Drew and his team keep finding these same groups. The undesirable clients who see agencies as money-sucking machines are thankfully always the minority. However, Drew does note this was the first year where that minority came off very strongly about their views. This might be an indication that brand leaders are becoming more leery about partnerships. Moreover, there are now more agencies out there than ever before, which means there are more bad agencies too. With more people out there who don