In this week’s In-Ear Insights (the Trust Insights podcast), we conclude our series of interviews with successful agency owners. We talk with Gini Dietrich. Gini Dietrich is the founder, CEO, and author of Spin Sucks, host of the Spin Sucks podcast, and author of Spin Sucks. She has run and grown an agency for the past 14 years. She is co-author of Marketing in the Round, co-host of Inside PR, and co-host of The Agency Leadership podcast. Gini talks scope creep, alternate sources of revenue, and what your business priorities should be right now.
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Machine-Generated Transcript
What follows is an AI-generated transcript. The transcript may contain errors and is not a substitute for listening to the episode.
Christopher Penn
This is In-Ear Insights the Trust Insights podcast. This episode of In-Ear Insights is brought to you by spin sucks. If you work in communications or public relations you’ve heard of the peso media model paid, earned, shared owned, pioneered by Gini Dietrich and a team at spin sucks. take the next step and level up your career by earning a professional PESO model certification from Spin sucks at Syracuse University, and an eight week online course you’ll learn PESO model strategy, effective use of all four media types, how peso forms the foundation of your overall communication strategy, and how to tie communications to business impacts like lead generation and overall business goals. When you complete the course, you’ll earn an accredited certificate from Syracuse University’s si Newhouse School of Public communications, a powerful tool for setting yourself apart and above in the job market. Learn more about the certification today at Trust insights.ai slash pay so that’s Trust insights.ai slash p s. o In this special episode of in ear insights, we’re doing a series talking about customer and client retention with some of the most successful agency owners. We know. Today’s guest is our friend, colleague and BOARD MEMBER Gini Dietrich She is the founder, CEO and author of spin sucks host with a spin sucks podcast and author of spin sucks. She has run and run an agency Arma Dietrich for the last 15 years. She’s co author of marketing and the round co host of inside PR, and co host of the agency leadership podcast. So welcome, Jenny to kick things off. Let’s talk about quiet services experience. Katie.
Katie Robbert
Wow. I mean, that’s an exhaustive bio. So I’m tired just listening to it. Yeah. Thank you for making it a time in your very busy schedule.
Unknown Speaker
Not so busy right now. Like you know,
Katie Robbert
I’m so where this all came about was that a few weeks ago, Chris and I were just talking about general client retention for ourselves. And we realized that we know a lot of really smart people who’ve been doing this longer than we have. So we want to open up the conversation. To see if we could get some really good practical tips and tricks for client retention, but also just get some of the stories. from your experience, you know, for someone who’s been doing it for as long as you have. So obviously, you’ve been doing Client Services for at least 15 years. But have you been doing it longer than that? What is your background in it?
Gini Dietrich
Yeah, I mean, I always say that even though we do communications for a living, digital marketing, whatever you whatever you want to call it. And our real job is client service, because it’s professional services. We’re selling our time, and it’s about helping a client grow their business or their organization. So I’ve been doing it my entire career.
Unknown Speaker
Without tell you how long it’s been. But it’s been more than 15 years
Christopher Penn
that we were replaced with Hillard right.
Gini Dietrich
I was a freshman. Yeah, yeah.
Katie Robbert
So one of the big questions that we’ve been asking Our friends is how do you protect against scope creep? Because services scope creep is something that we all deal with. But also you have right now this added layer of the pandemic and crisis. So what is your general philosophy about scope creep, but then how do you also go above and beyond to serve your clients when they’re in crisis?
Gini Dietrich
Well, I think I think it’s two different scenarios when they’re in crisis. You end up typically working 24 seven in some cases, and so that that has to be a separate scope. It has to be separate from what you’re already being paid to do, unless you have a crisis retainer. My little intern has just typed up about squirrels great, awesome. She knows I love them not. Um, so I do think that from a crisis perspective, it’s a different conversation and it’s a it’s a conversation with the client to say, Hey, listen, you know, this, this is beyond scope. And these are the kinds of things that we need to be thinking about. We have one client in particular, who I would say we go through four or five major things every year, when one year an employee was shot at work and, and a plant blew up at the same year. So massives kinds of massive kind of stuff. And so we have a separate crisis retainer for that for him. But for everyone else, it’s just a conversation to say, Hey, this is outside of scope and how how can we best help we can either put all this other stuff on hold and use the retainer for that or And typically, they’ll they’ll find budget for the for the specific project. So I think that’s different. Right now in this pandemic, and I think this is a different situation. We tried to be really flexible and also because everybody’s experiencing but we’re all experiencing clients have been very kind, because they don’t want to, they don’t want us to go out of business because if we go out of business, they have to go through the whole process of finding a new firm. But they also can’t afford to pay, in most cases, what they have been. And so we’ve been trying to be really flexible in terms of, you know, we can pause for 60 days and add that onto the back end of the contract. I have one client that we’ve paused, but he’s paying by the hour for certain things and I joked with him that it was going to actually cost him more and he was like, Oh, I’m aware. So it probably will end up costing him more because he want he’s it’s specific stuff that he wants me and I’m more expensive than you know, my mid level team that would normally work on his business. So I think it’s just having conversations and and being flexible and understanding that everybody’s in a bad situation right now and just trying to figure out what works and what doesn’t and you know, you’ve got to protect your number one job is to protect protect your business and if you can do that and still be flexible for your clients do it
Christopher Penn
Are you seeing the nature of the work changing? We were talking to some other friends. And they were saying, Yeah, they went from, you know, delivering high level strategic stuff to Hey, please come fix this specific thing. And and they’re finding their work is much more tactical in nature for the time being
Gini Dietrich
far more tactical. And I think part of that is because it’s impossible to plan and you just don’t know, right? You have no idea. We have one client, that furloughed 4000 employees because their manufacturing facility and they can’t take care of their plants running right now. And we don’t know when that’s going to come back online. And he and they have plants in six different states. So you know, certain plants will come back online at certain different times. Nobody’s there yet. But you know that Illinois will probably be one of the last ones that comes back. So yeah, it’s it’s really tactical right now. It’s just too hard to plan.
Katie Robbert
Having been through crisis comms multiple times over in your career. And also you mentioned you have a client who goes through it at least four times a year. I would imagine fact that you have a plan A, Plan B, Plan C, plan d? What are some of the things that have thrown you for a loop? Like what are some of the things that people don’t expect to have the plan for in crisis columns? Like, what did you see? Well, I was gonna say yes. So like, what are some things that you see people just not having a plan for?
Gini Dietrich
We see more that they just don’t have a plan. And that they, they haven’t thought through scenarios. So and it’s really challenging to get people to think about it because it’s scary and it’s unnerving. But we have found that when you do have a plan, and you do look at different scenarios, and we have three different risk levels, so you know, three is a global pandemic, right and one is an executive is going to prison for money laundering or something embezzlement or something. So you have the different levels of risk, and you just tried to Sit in every scenario that you can and say, here’s how we will respond, and then have different messaging and all of that ready to go. So that when it does happen, the emotion is taken out. Because what happens typically is when you’re caught off guard and something surprises you, there’s there’s a lot of emotion involved. And when you when you’ve been able to plan for it, you can take the emotion out and just work the plan. And it’s far more effective that way. But yeah, I mean, we were just talking about this week, like 2019 was pretty crappy. And our industry tends to be a leading indicator. And because 2019 was so crappy, I kept saying, something’s coming. Something’s coming. Something’s coming. I thought it was going to be a recession. I never I mean, nobody would have predicted where we’re at right now. Right. But we were just talking about how the the you have to pay attention to those leading indicators and what that means and and for sure, we I really did think a recession was coming and certainly we are will have one and the economy is going to be than I could have imagined. But the idea being that there are triggers and there are things that happen in your industry that you can and should pay attention to that will give you information that helps you plan.
Christopher Penn
Having been through the last great recession, and then looking at the what’s likely a bit of a depression that we’re going to be having. Are you seeing common themes and common lessons from the last one you can apply to this one? Or is this one such a different game that even even lessons learned from the Great Recession may or may not apply?
Gini Dietrich
Um, hmm. I think it’s Look, it’s it’s the same in that, you know, unemployment is going to be really high, probably higher. People, people aren’t going to be spending the money it’s in certainly in marketing and PR budgets are slashed and nobody’s outsourcing. And the one thing I learned in the great recession was to have multiple revenue sources. So even though we’ve lost six percent of our agency business, the spin sock side of the business is still thriving. And so that has has helped save us. I also serve on your board and a couple of others. And I was on a board last year that the business sold. And so having that revenue source has been helpful as well. So just having different revenue sources that allow you to not have to live paycheck to paycheck and not have to rely on you know, what if clients go away, or what if we lose our our biggest client? What happens then? Because that could happen with or without a recession? Right. So those are the lessons I learned. And I’m glad that I spent the last 10 years building that kind of stuff. And that those are the lessons I think that will continue You know what, how can you add additional revenue sources? What do they look like? Certainly, the spin select site isn’t doing as well as we had anticipated it would this year. But it is still thriving and and because of that we’re able to, quote unquote, stay in business right now.
Christopher Penn
When Well, if you’re the person say, who didn’t spend the last 10 years developing multiple revenue sources, and you got caught flat footed for the average, you know, agency owner or business owner, what is the scratch plan for them right now? What is you know? Because obviously, you know, it’s very difficult to plug the holes in the boat as it’s sinking. For sure.
Gini Dietrich
Yeah. Um, I would say that a couple of things. And I will preface this by saying it depends on your mental capacity, because I recognize that not everybody has the mental capacity right now to create. I don’t I don’t have the mental capacity right now. I would love it if I did, but I don’t. And so I preface it by saying that but I think there there are some things interesting things I’m saying like my agency leadership co host chip Griffin is offering free consultation, free coaching to small agency owners, so one to five employees, and helping them just through an issue. What do you do? With right now what how can I help? Is it the payroll protection plan and figuring that out? Is it you know, you have three employees and you don’t you don’t know if you’re going to get an SBA loan so what do you do like he’s so whatever the the issue is, he’s helping them through that. I have one client who is offering one hour zoom consultations with her leadership team for $300. So I mean, it’s not you know, it’s not gonna be something that she she can write home about, but it is bringing in enough money every month to pay someone salary. And it’s it’s enough strategic insight, because it’s there’s three people on her leadership team who you wouldn’t normally get have access to, and certainly not for $300. Another one is another friend of mine I saw is helping nonprofits in sort of the same way but where it’s, you know, a really, really short term like two week project that helps them get unstuck on something and so it’s it’s it’s not stuff that’s going to make make you a lot of money but it is stuff that’s going to be helpful and keep you top of mind so that when things start to when we figure out whatever our new normal is whatever, you know that happens to be and people start hiring it again you will be top of mind.
Katie Robbert
One of the things we heard when we talked with Mitch Joel about client retention was you know, during times of crisis, don’t become one more thing for your clients to do so you know, you had better communication. How do you have How do you find ways to keep the clients engaged when their hair’s on fire over here, they’ve asked you for help with giving you like no direction no detail and you just want to be helpful and valuable to them.
Gini Dietrich
Um, I agree with that sentiment not giving them one more thing to do. I think it’s just taking as much off their plate as you can. You know, I think I’ll I mean, the three of us certainly Mitchell’s another one that is experienced enough to be able to do that with a lot out of a lot of a lot of direction. Certainly we’ll make some mistakes. And it won’t be exactly right if we’re not getting any direction. But I think we’re experienced enough to be able to do that. So it’s just having a conversation, excuse me having a conversation to say, Hey, I’m going to take this and I literally just had a conversation with a client about that. I’m going to take these five things off of your plate. And let me handle it. And I’ll let you know. And I sent her some stuff this morning. And she was like, Oh, thank you. I mean, she didn’t even have to think about it. And it may not be exactly right. But the fact that it’s probably 98% of the way there and she doesn’t have to worry, it’s just something that’s not on her task list. And it’s taken care of.
Christopher Penn
At what point this is something we brought up with with Jay Baer as well. At what point do you say no to a client in a situation where everything is on fire? And you know, how do you balance it, you know, Jays perspective was, you do whatever you have to do to save the client. relationship because as you don’t know, if if and when you’ll be able to get it back.
Gini Dietrich
I love Jake. And I’m not sure I agree with that totally, um, I do agree that you should do whatever you can to save it, but at the same time, there’s still value that you provide, and there’s still expertise that you provide. And you also have other stuff going on there in some cases, you just might not have the mental capacity the time you know, you might not have the same number of colleagues, teammates employees to be able to do that. And so I think it’s, it’s saving the relationship best you can, but also being honest and saying, hey, look, we just went from five people servicing your account to two we we can’t do that. So I it has to be fair, I always say this and I think I already said this once before, but your number one job is to protect your business. And if it means that You have two people doing the work of five, and you’re gonna burn those two people out and then you have nobody. That’s that’s not okay. Because you may have saved the client relationship, but you’ve burned your employees out. So you have to think about it from that perspective, what is the best thing for the business right in this moment? And what is the and I wouldn’t even say a year from now. But what is the best thing for this business in the next 30 days?
Christopher Penn
Okay, what do you see? And this is one that we haven’t asked anyone else? I’m curious to get your perspective on this. What do you see as the silver linings of the hidden opportunities in situations like this, obviously, with everybody and their cousin, sort of giving away your free consulting, that’s sort of the obvious thing, you may get to be able to talk to people that you otherwise would not be able to because the gatekeepers are in the way I know a lot of our friends who had professional speaking are like, I’m doing zoom calls, because I literally have nowhere to go.
Gini Dietrich
Yeah, yeah.
Christopher Penn
Yeah. What are some of the other silver linings that you think people should keep their eyes open for?
Gini Dietrich
You know, there’s still opportunity, I think, I think if you are willing to
Unknown Speaker
what’s the word I want
Gini Dietrich
for go your process in your super high retainers. And you’re like, you know, we have a strategic planning process and it costs a lot of money, a lot of money, but I would not charge today for that what I charged three months ago, I just wouldn’t. And and part of it is because I can’t be there in person, right? So I would look for I’m looking for ways to do it as a four hour workshop, or over two days where you do half a day on both days, whatever happens to be but I’m not going to charge as much money for that because I’m not getting on a plane. I’m not coming to your office. I’m not, you know, meeting with your whole executive team, so looking for opportunities where you might be able to unbundle or reduce the amount of work that you would typically do in your process and under unbundle that answer sell those kinds of things because those kinds of things are going to help. It may not be exactly how you do things and you might not get the exact same results as you would like but it will allow you to continue to do your work and stay engaged and and help clients at the same time.
Christopher Penn
How do you go about then? presuming that you know it, we know it will be some time before things do resemble normalcy again, when that does happen. How do you reconcile, you know, the the stuff that you did say like, okay, yeah, now that something close to normal is resuming. We can’t give away, you know, a $50,000 workshop $5,000. How do you reset those expectations without, like, burning the client relationship?
Gini Dietrich
I don’t think you can with existing clients because they sort of they expect it at some point, you know, and you can certainly say, Hey, listen, you know, you got this at a significantly reduced rate and maybe meet the minimum in the middle. I mean, I have one client who When he started his business a year and a half ago, was offering some of his services for $600 a month. And now now now at the same services are two grand a month. And the client was like, yeah, I’m not paying two grand a month, not when I’m paying $600 a month, right? So he negotiated to meet them in the middle. And so I think they ended up at like 1150 or something. So it’s still more right and, and, and it’s already set up and it’s already working. So he’s still making a profit. But it’s it’s not quite where he wants it to be. So I think it’s that kind of stuff, like meeting them in the middle of negotiating, you know, helping them understand that you’re, you know, you’ve now been able to re hire and bring people off furlough and all those kinds of things. So your your costs have gone up as well. It’s not just you anymore.
Katie Robbert
In the best of times, and the worst of times, what are some of your tips for client retention in general like what are some best practices that agents she ate? agencies, it’s easy for me to say agencies should be thinking about
Unknown Speaker
agency.
Katie Robbert
Dammit.
Gini Dietrich
Now we’re all gonna say,
Katie Robbert
how do we do it didn’t
Gini Dietrich
it’s just treating them like human beings. I mean, I think we get so wrapped up in the vendor client relationship that we forget that we’re dealing with humans. And quite honestly, I don’t want a vendor client relationship, I want a friendship. I want a great working relationship. I want a partnership and if I don’t have that with our clients, then it’s not a good relationship. It’s not something that we want to pursue. So it’s treating them like human beings, being interested in them outside of your weekly status calls. it you know, understanding the things that they’re going through, both in the good times and in the bad and it’s it’s paying attention And actually listening to the words that come out of their mouths. And we always joke internally that we’re more therapists than communicator. And we are, you mean some of the stuff we hear. And it’s sometimes it feels like our clients get on our weekly calls with us just to vent. And we allow that. Because it works, and that’s why they stay.
Katie Robbert
I think that’s important. Because, you know, what I’ve seen in my experience is if you do get stuck in that, you know, vendor client relationship, then you can’t grow, you can’t evolve, you know, the retainer program, because they do feel very much like you’re expendable and you don’t care, you’re detached, so we can just cut them loose at any point. So I think that that’s such a smart way to think about it. Like obviously, you don’t have to know every single thing about the person you don’t actually have to be best when they don’t want to know, right, but forgetting that there is A human on the other side of the phone line or the video chat who has their own set of things even just starting with how are you today? And they’re like, Oh, I’m fine, great, but no, really, like, there’s a lot of stuff going on. Like how are you? Great. I think that goes a long way. I mean, like we started this one and Chris said, Why don’t
Unknown Speaker
out and I was like
Katie Robbert
creating those safe places. Preventing it’s important
Gini Dietrich
is important, especially right now but in general it is important
Christopher Penn
do you how do you counterbalance that with to use Katie’s terms you know with with maintaining some set of boundaries with people because some people are fine to work with and some people are less fine to work with in the in that capacity.
Gini Dietrich
Um, that’s a really good point. I’m, I’m I’ve gotten very good at setting boundaries. So I’m, I’m the type of person that doesn’t like to have alerts on my phone or computer. I don’t It really bothers me I don’t like it. So in the past I would just respond and stuff came in and what I discovered is that that was creating no boundary and the expectation that I would respond 24 seven, and I have one client who loves love’s loves to text me before he goes to bed. So he texts around nine o’clock every night with like his his thoughts for the day. And in the past, I would respond to him and now I I’ve set the boundary, and I don’t respond to him until business hours. It drives me crazy that I have that alert on my phone. But it that’s something that I’m dealing with because you have you have to and even with people you and I adore him, but even with people you adore, you still have to set those boundaries, but it’s not okay for you to it is okay for you to text me at nine o’clock at night. It’s not okay for you to expect an answer.
Katie Robbert
I think that’s a really, that’s another really smart tip too is you know, just basically setting those expectations of I can’t be there for you. 24 seven, here’s what I can be here for you. Feel free to send me all the information you have, but you will not get a response.
Gini Dietrich
And I will respond at eight o’clock the next morning.
Katie Robbert
Before hours,
Unknown Speaker
I say I could respond at 4am. But I wouldn’t do that.
Katie Robbert
How do you like getting text messages when you’re writing? I do.
Unknown Speaker
I do. I adore him.
Katie Robbert
So I get text messages from my extended family at like midnight, because they’re on the west coast and they’re still Oh, yeah, I’ll start responding at five o’clock the morning when I’m awake, and it’s only two o’clock in the morning. I’m like, How do you like it?
Gini Dietrich
You can’t really do that to clients though.
Katie Robbert
No, you can’t. That is not a pro tip.
Unknown Speaker
You should
Christopher Penn
do you see it as an opportunity for Some agencies you’re in as, as we go through all this transition to get rid of clients that you don’t want.
Gini Dietrich
For sure. Yeah. And I would even say, if you are a business owner or a business leader, employees that maybe should go, this is a good reason and employment is robust right now. So this is a this is a good reason to do some of that to do some pruning, I would call it but yeah, for sure. I would you this is a this is a good reason to get rid of the people in your life that should not be there.
Katie Robbert
So Chris,
Gini Dietrich
no.
Katie Robbert
So how do you feel? You know, so obviously, small businesses, we’re both of us, our agencies or small businesses. How do you feel in general, small businesses will fare Through this do you think that the ones who are, as you’re saying more agile and adaptable will survive, and the ones who are static and stuck in place are going to suffer more?
Gini Dietrich
You know, I hate this answer, but it really depends. And it depends on what your businesses too. I mean, how many restaurants do we think are going to survive this other than Ruth’s Chris and Shake Shack and potbelly that all got millions of dollars, but not that I’m bitter or anything? Um, I think it depends. You know, I have one friend who’s an agency owner, who had a 12 day bleeding period like I had, and I lost 60% in full days, and I think she lost close to 90. And she was like, You know what, maybe I just go dark for a little bit and then come back out of this out of it. I could use the sabbatical and I could use the time off and I haven’t had that kind of time in 30 years, and maybe I just use it as the time so I think in our business specifically, we don’t lose our skill set. So It may not be that we have an agency and employees coming out of this, but we still can be consultants or solopreneurs, or, you know, contractors or whatever it happens to be. So we don’t lose the skill set. We still have value from that perspective. So I don’t know that necessarily the businesses will die quote, unquote, but like, you know, like a restaurant or a floral shop or something would but for sure, it will look different.
Christopher Penn
counterpoint on that we know that employment, unemployment is going to be roughly about 18% by the end of the month. There are a lot of people who are in one of the things that and you wrote an excellent blog post about this over at spin sucks calm recently. One of the challenges that this massive group of people is going to have is getting reemployed. How should people think about balancing the you know, the need to look for work with the whole Hey, you probably should be using this time for professional self development so that you can be more employable like the I on the one hand is like Yet, yes, you don’t have some people just don’t have the bandwidth and the energy but on the other hand, you have the necessity of you and 18 million you and 26 million other people don’t have a job right now. Right? What are you gonna do to set yourself apart?
Gini Dietrich
Yeah, um, I mean, to your point, some people just don’t have the mental capacity and may not be able to. But I do think that, you know, I mean, I’m a communicator by trade. And I see a lot of people in the PR industry who don’t have jobs and don’t have a skill set outside of media relations, and journalists are furloughed right now. So media relations is not, not only isn’t isn’t not needed right now, but you can’t do it because there’s nobody to talk to, from a journalism perspective, unless you’re talking about COVID or the White House. So providing the bandwidth for yourself to be able to to evolve in Laurens learn how to do content marketing, or learn how to use To do Google ads or Facebook, you know, Instagram, Twitter, LinkedIn ads, whatever happens to be like, adding those different skill sets in that will allow you to evolve your career because nobody’s hiring right now. No one. And so sure, you should keep applying for jobs and things. There are some things that are open, I have one client who’s hiring like crazy. So there are some some in some industries, but if it’s not an industry where you have expertise, then if you have the mental capacity, definitely use the time to help help yourself, evolve your career. I’m not talking about learning a new language, or, you know, creating some $40,000 product that you’re going to launch as soon as this is all over. I’m talking about learning skills that will allow you to be more employable.
Christopher Penn
All right. Well, speaking of skills and all things employable. Ginni, where can we find more about you and spend socks online
Gini Dietrich
that you just said it’s been sex calm,
Christopher Penn
All right. Thank you for being here and having me. We will talk to you soon. If you have follow up questions about this and you want to ask them, hop on over to the Trust Insights website, go to TrustInsights.ai dot AI, you can join our slack community and you can join the spin Sachs slack community as well. It’s a company with thousands of communicators if you are interested in being a part of that. Thanks for listening and we’ll talk to you next time. One helps solving your company’s data analytics and digital marketing problems. This is Trust insights.ai today and let us know how we can help you
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Trust Insights (trustinsights.ai) is one of the world's leading management consulting firms in artificial intelligence/AI, especially in the use of generative AI and AI in marketing. Trust Insights provides custom AI consultation, training, education, implementation, and deployment of classical regression AI, classification AI, and generative AI, especially large language models such as ChatGPT's GPT-4-omni, Google Gemini, and Anthropic Claude. Trust Insights provides analytics consulting, data science consulting, and AI consulting.
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