The AI-Driven Rise of Performance-Based Partnerships with Micki Meyer

[00:00:00] Micki: In the last probably year and a half, it was coming up more and more of clients coming in the RFPs saying, we wanna see what you're gonna put on the table and, and what risk you're willing to gain on that. And I think the agencies are willing to take. A certain risk on it, depending on how much business is coming to life.
[00:00:19] Mike: My name's Mike Lander, and you are listening to Higgle, the B2B Sales Club podcast, where we bring you actionable insights about sales, RFPs, negotiations, and difficult procurement discussions from sales leaders. Ground leaders and procurement leaders, please subscribe to get updates when new episodes are released.
Micki, thanks ever so much for joining me on Higgle, the B2B Sales Club podcast. It's great. Great to have you.
[00:00:48] Micki: Thanks for having me. Appreciate being.
[00:00:51] Mike: And whereabouts are you today?
[00:00:52] Micki: I am outside of Boston, Massachusetts.
[00:00:54] Mike: Very good. So as always, listeners, I'll introduce or get Micki to introduce herself broadly.
Who are you? What do you do, stroke did you do, and what's your favorite song and why?
[00:01:07] Micki: Yeah, fabulous. Micki Meyer. I have spent the last 20 ish years leading account teams across various holding group companies as well as private equity agencies, so Interpublic publicist group, as well as private equity.
So kind of have a, a spattering of 600 people to thousands and thousands of people, of of people that I've been working with from an agency perspective, working across how do we help bring brand strategy, cx, and figuring out kind of. What does AI native delivery look like when we think about our, our client partnerships and connection points and, and how is that shifting amongst time?
So I've worked across a lot of industries within these roles. So pharma, hospital systems, general health and wellness, CPG finance, and even private aviation. So there's probably not a question or a market you could ask me about, and I wouldn't have some sort of. Dabbling in it at some point in time.
During those years outside of my client work, I'm helping apply kind of the same rigor to nonprofit organizations that I'm working with and volunteering with, and I'm also a foster parent.
[00:02:10] Mike: Wow.
[00:02:11] Micki: Yeah. So that's
[00:02:13] Mike: in the nutshell. But I was adopted and I was fostered for the first six months I think, of my life.
So yeah. So what you do in fostering is amazing because it gives people like me, yeah. A chance in life.
[00:02:23] Micki: It's pretty rewarding work overall. So,
[00:02:25] Mike: yeah. Challenging.
[00:02:26] Micki: Yes. Challenging and rewarding at the same time. Yeah. As for my favorite song,
[00:02:31] Mike: yes.
[00:02:31] Micki: This has been my favorite song since 1994.
[00:02:34] Mike: Wow.
[00:02:35] Micki: It is an oldie and it has, it has stayed consistent.
So my favorite song is Tiny Dancer by Elton.
Ah,
[00:02:43] Micki: it became on my radar during the My Girl soundtrack era of things, and really at the time I was also a dancer, and so it started kind of more like. Innocently in terms of, of liking it, but over the years, it has stayed as, it's just the, the instrumentality of it, the storytelling of it, that connection.
It is one of few songs that I always stop and listen to. I think sometimes music can be a soundtrack to our entire life and in the background just going. We don't notice. And, and it still is a song that whether it's the original or, you know, Florence, the machine does a great cover of it as well. You know, it, it just makes me stop and listen and it's, it's really nice to have those moments that make you stop.
[00:03:27] Mike: Brilliant. The reason I ask the question is because it's always about an emotion and it's always about. The relationships we've had in our lives. Stories of our lives, anchor points that we have. Yeah, music's on all the time in our house. And our family is across all sorts of general genres of music.
Fascinated by uh, in fact our son now plays music. So yes, I'm definitely with you about, it's the story of your life. Now, for the listeners, there's a reason, particular reason why Micki came on the show. I wrote this agency reset report. That got an awful lot of engagement across the agency world, including advisors, agency leaders, et cetera, from very, very large to very, very small.
There was a complete spectrum, and I was fortunate enough that Micki found me on LinkedIn, found the report, read the report. I then said, would you come on the show because you bring a perspective. I don't normally get on the show. A lot of my guests are kind of smaller. Medium or larger size independent agencies, you've come from quite a different world.
All the agencies are fascinated in what's going on in that broader landscape because what happens with that broader landscape at the network level? It will trickle down into the independent agencies over time. It always does. So let's start off with the, kinda like the broad headline question, which is the topic for this is from agency to growth partner.
And as we go through the kinda topics and have a discussion that listeners, you'll understand why, let's start with how does the traditional agency client model work? Let's just remind ourselves. And what are the common challenges and growth constraints with the existing model? And by growth constraints, I mean on the client side, clients engage agencies because they have problems they can't solve themselves.
That can be determined as a constraint. It's a constraint to their growth. So how does it work? What are the common challenges and what are the growth constraints with the existing model? Before we go onto ai,
[00:05:25] Micki: yes. As I said in my intro, keep in mind that this is coming from someone whose smallest agency I've worked at with 600 people as a base.
So definitely from a a large perspective. And I think a lot of times when we think about talent architecture in the agency, you know, I've been in conversations where we talk about. I shape specialists. So these are people that have a very deep knowledge in one area or subject matter expertise, or T-shaped generalists that can kind of talk through a lot of things with some kind of other areas of efforts and within an agency.
These two things really hold true and you're trying to figure out how do you bring the right group of people together to service the client's problem From these ihap T-shaped, I've now heard MHA as well of of similar to T-shaped, but having a couple of deep dives. Yes,
[00:06:09] Mike: yes. Yeah. Makes sense. Yeah.
[00:06:10] Micki: So you know, when I think about kind of this group that we're putting together, we think about kind of what's the client coming to us from?
Pitch an ask either organic. Kind of this, this opportunity of new business. And when we think about what we're putting together and how we're delivering it from a commercial model, there tends to be three primary models that we're working with. And, and a fourth that is, is not so much a model itself, but is is kind of a, a bonus structure that is, that is coming up within the space.
So. The first one that people are probably really familiar with is kind of old Mad Men era of like the retainer. And if you've bought this team out, the clients, I think what's happening here is you see far and moving away from retainers because clients feel like they're paying for access, not outcomes, and they're really kind of, it's disappearing as an effort because they're just not feeling the value in that retained team model.
[00:07:03] Mike: But in summary, on that model, that really is, as you say. I'm basically buying access to a bunch of experts that can help solve my problems, and I'll pay you a monthly fee to do that. 50 K, a hundred K, whatever it is a month. I will pay you a retainer for access to that expertise with an expectation that I get outcomes.
But the contract isn't outcomes based? It's not outcomes,
[00:07:26] Micki: correct? Correct. The next one's time and materials. So this one is you are. Filling your hourly time for the things that you're doing. You say, this is, this is how much time we think we're gonna need to do this. This is who's going to be it. This is, this is your estimated price based on however many rounds.
I think the reality here is in the future, there's always going to be someone cheaper, whether it's offshore, whether it's AI systems and tools and agents. Freelancers, you know, this is, this is really a, a structural pressure of, there's not a way, a lot of places to go to win at time and materials from an agency perspective.
And then the third one is really asset based or fixed free pricing. So this is, you know, here is the thing we are delivering for this much money.
[00:08:09] Mike: So for example, Micki, what would that be? So in the third model, which is the output based model. Deliverables based, outputs based fixed price to do something, deliver something.
What might those things be that we deliver?
[00:08:22] Micki: That might be you are getting a sales visual aid that is 10 pages in length. It will have three reviews, one legal review, and that thing is going to cost you. We've negotiated it into. Perhaps it's a one flat fee, or perhaps if it's a larger contract, we've negotiated tiers of this.
Yes, depending on number of pages, numbers of reviews, and so it might be 5,000, 10,000, 20,000. You know exactly dollars for this thing. That is not an actual price tag to any visit aid. I just was scoring out round numbers, and
[00:08:56] Mike: a program might include 20 deliverables. And each one may be priced as a menu or it could be bundled together and we're going to do the whole lot for a fixed price of X.
[00:09:08] Micki: Correct. I think what's interesting here is there is a tension that happens in negotiating these asset fees,
[00:09:15] Mike: ah,
[00:09:15] Micki: where agencies and client, you know, the clients especially, uh, procurement, if they have a goal that they're trying to reach of, of savings, I've got a savings
[00:09:23] Mike: target.
[00:09:24] Micki: Exactly. They will try to like squeeze this asset as as tight as possible.
And, and it becomes a, like, who's the agency that's gonna do it for the cheapest? And it becomes a conversation that turns away from being a partner to being a vendor. And even in those, those spaces where you're having those conversations and you are a partner, the time and the effort you are spent on negotiating those assets.
Sometimes a bit laughable because those assets never actually get produced as negotiated because it then turns into the marketer saying, great, let's talk about what I need to do. I need to do this thing. And so now you're, you're starting with that asset price, but that asset price is getting an immediate change order before you even start to do any work to meet.
The marketer actually needs to be
[00:10:12] Mike: exactly
[00:10:13] Micki: doing,
[00:10:14] Mike: and you can't keep going back to procurement saying, I want to renegotiate, because the scopes all changed. If you kept doing that, you'd never get anywhere. Exactly. So you are, I think what I'm interpreting there is you are bearing some risk when you price those deliverables.
[00:10:28] Micki: Yes.
[00:10:28] Mike: And the expectation that the scope will change to an extent. Now our job is to manage that scope variation.
[00:10:36] Micki: Yeah. And I think there was. Back in 2023, early 2024, there was this thought with AI that like, oh, that helps buffer these assets. So we could take a little bit less and say, this is gonna be $2,000 instead of $8,000, because we're gonna do some things on the backend to like help control our margin.
But very quickly, clients are smart to this as well. They know AI is helping you do things faster and better. So like they also wanna see that come down. And so, so there is a, a balance there.
[00:11:05] Mike: So here's exactly the problem, and this is not theory listeners. This is what's happening on a daily basis with all the agencies that I speak to now.
It used to be like 5% two years ago. I think it's virtually everyone now. It's natural for a buyer, it could be a marketing manager, it could be a CMO, it could be a brand director. It could be a procurement person. Everyone's gonna say, oh, last year, Micki, when you did this for me. It was $10,000 for this deliverable.
Same deliverable this year. Different campaigns, same deliverable shape. I'm kind of expecting it to be about six K, 5K maybe, because I know that AI will be being used, so I have made an assumption about how you will do that work. I'm effectively starting to work out. I reckon I can do it cheaper. So you should price it cheaper.
Yeah, and that's the problem. The old model doesn't work in the new world. AI has changed the way that we think about value.
[00:12:05] Micki: Exactly. And I think the interesting thing on those conversations is, you know, we've had some clients come to us saying, I'm cutting all of your prices by 40% because AI is doing it.
Exactly. They're just like, and then there's no room for negotiation there. But then there's also no approved structure or governance also in the way, because there's also making that up. I know kind of. McKinsey had a study that talked about only 6% of companies are actually seeing value from ai. That's
[00:12:32] Mike: right.
[00:12:32] Micki: At this point in time, because of just, there's a lot of trial, not a lot of actual implementation of it, and so it is. It is this really interesting space of they want the trials, but they don't want the risk as well, especially in heavy regulated industries. That risk avoidance is, is very keen and we're not sure how it's gonna shape out.
[00:12:53] Mike: No one is exactly, but it's also, it's recasting certain marketing activity as an increasing commodity.
[00:13:01] Micki: Exactly,
[00:13:02] Mike: because it's basically about, if I go back to my strategy days, the kind of, it's a lowest cost producer. New technologies enter the marketplace that's reduced the cost of production. Buyers spot that they make assumptions, and therefore it's a bit of a race to the bottom.
If you're an agency and you just carry on in the same vein, well eventually you will die by its very nature. Because eventually there'll always be a lower, a lower cost producer somewhere in the marketplace, irrespective of the quality of that output. And that's one of the problems. So what's the fourth model?
[00:13:37] Micki: The fourth item is what I'm gonna call performance-based model or kind of value-based connection. So this is really kinda this growing theory that you have skin in the game as the agency. Yes, you have skin in the business and you're going to like. Go up 10%, go down 10% based on reaching a target and a goal.
One of the struggles that I've seen over and over again in performance-based models is the true ability to align on what is the metric of success
[00:14:07] Mike: Exactly.
[00:14:08] Micki: Because if you are an agency, there are very few groups that are having one agency do everything from concept to media to execution. Like yeah. The end-to-end shop is, is where you could easily say, yes, let's do this in per, you know, and, and track, like, did sales go up?
Yes or no?
[00:14:24] Mike: Because I can control all the leavers, I can pull the leavers, and if I'm on a pure performance based fee. Which, take an example. We're a client, we need sales to increase by 10 million. That's the incremental sales. You are an agency, so I'm happy to pay you half a million to a million to drive that 10 million.
And then how you do that is entirely up to you within brand guidelines.
[00:14:48] Micki: Exactly.
[00:14:48] Mike: That's the extreme model of a performance model. Yes, exactly. So that assumes I've got control over all believers.
[00:14:55] Micki: Exactly. But what the reality is, many agencies only have a small slice of the pie that influences that.
[00:15:01] Mike: Exactly.
[00:15:02] Micki: And when you only have a small slice of the pie, you start to question like, can I control that? If something down the line is completely off, strategy is completely off the mark. Like what is, what is that influence in space? And so sometimes what you start to see is these. PBMs become more around, you know, were there no mistakes going through, you know, and those aren't, to me, like that's like having a spelling error is not performance of your business Yeah.
In something. And, and so like there, there becomes different kind of levers and I think that's something that's really. Media is a little bit easier of a place to do this and be able to kind of have that influence on a, a space of like, did we hit our targets? Did the media see who, like the right audience?
Things like that. So I think that's one of those models that like, clients want it. I think agencies want it too. Like they wanna show their value and the agencies that can show the value they bring to business is, is what's gonna move forward. I don't think we've unlocked the way to do PBM. In an efficient matter when you only have one small slice of the pie.
[00:16:06] Mike: And by PBM, well, I, so performance based models, performance based marketing, yes. Whatever you want to call it. It's a leading question. I think there's, you know, the fifth model, which is, well, it's a blend of, because you don't have control over the outcomes fully, therefore maybe I pay you partly fixed, partly performance
[00:16:27] Micki: and there's a bonus structure or
[00:16:29] Mike: bonus structure.
[00:16:29] Micki: Mm-hmm.
[00:16:30] Mike: Exactly. Right. And how often did you see that kind of fifth model emerge?
[00:16:34] Micki: I think it came in the last probably year and a half. It was coming up more and more of clients coming in the RFPs saying, we wanna see what you're gonna put on the table and, and what risk you're willing to gain on that.
And I think the agencies are willing to take. A certain risk on it, depending on how much business is coming to life. So, you know, you, you saw kind of in the news so many different pitches going on for large organizations, either looking to decrease their number of agencies or increase more kind of capability.
And so, you know, we would say like, if we get X, Y, and Z, this is what we're willing to play with. But if we only have this piece, this is what we're willing to play with. Really structured in, in what you're willing to give up.
[00:17:17] Mike: And I think if I flip the coin, Micki, onto the client side, we talk about risk.
If the client's gonna put $10 million of investment into the market to get a return of 50 million, say in sales, they're taking a big risk. Yeah. Now, you could argue, well, not all of it's at risk because there's precedence about how the market works and they've done it before, but they're still putting value at risk.
So it's completely reasonable to say to a partner, I've put value at risk. How much are you prepared to put at risk? I'm not asking you to put all of it at risk, but how much under what conditions? That's a perfectly reasonable model. It doesn't matter what part of the value chain you are in as a marketing services provider.
The same principle applies, does it?
[00:18:06] Micki: It does. Yeah.
[00:18:07] Mike: Not, it's not a trick question. I think it does, doesn't it?
[00:18:09] Micki: Certainly. When I think about kind of this agency to growth, partner connection. You wanna create partnership that cares about your business and about your business moving forward. Regardless of where in the marketing funnel you're working with this individual or agency, it should be about how are we working together to solve my business problems and to reach my business targets?
[00:18:31] Mike: Exactly
[00:18:31] Micki: and the best of those partnerships. You have no idea where the agency starts and the client begins. Like those, those true kind of magical moments where you're so entwined in, how are you solving the business need is where the magic is, and it's where that value truly comes to life.
[00:18:50] Mike: Definitely.
Absolutely. And I think just to round off this section before the next question, in many ways it's why the time materials model is broken. It always has been broken. It was broken from, I think when it was first started is that with ai, it's ludicrous. To try and measure. Well, how many hours will this take you?
Well, I don't know because we'll be using all, we'll be using a blended approach, so the time and materials model, although agencies out there will be screaming into their cars or wherever they're listening. Well, no, I'm still doing that, and it still works. Eventually that model will fall away. Because it will no longer make any commercial sense.
[00:19:28] Micki: Correct.
[00:19:28] Mike: So next question. So what does AI technology enable us to do that we couldn't do before? So you, I think you did quite a lot of work on this, or you certainly looked at it across the agencies you've worked in recently. We're not naming any names, we're just looking across the piece.
[00:19:42] Micki: Yes. You know, one of the things around AI enablement, and we talked about this a little bit before, is, you know, in the conversation, a lot of times AI enablement goes to, Ooh, do something cheaper, faster.
[00:19:51] Mike: Yes.
[00:19:52] Micki: But I, I think the reality is the speed and the unlocking effort of AI is really about more, it allows more concepting, more data access, more validation, and this is the frame that as you think about kind of how you're pushing forward from an agency perspective. What is AI unlocking that isn't just about doing the work that has been done?
Exactly. It's about what is it truly unlocking from a potential value perspective.
[00:20:22] Mike: Were things that couldn't have been done before, but now maybe we can do,
[00:20:27] Micki: or struggles that, like you constantly ran into that, that it unlocks in a way that is great. So I think about one, you know, we have a lot of clients that are larger clients that will.
Rotate staff.
[00:20:41] Mike: Yeah.
[00:20:41] Micki: So they do kind of these staffing rotations. So all of a sudden you have a marketer who has never taken a marketing class, does not know Yeah. Marketing. And, and, and you, you as an agency partner, you're helping them, like educate them on that frac, but they have a very hard time in looking at creative, especially early creative development where it might be like, here's the concept header in statement.
And providing meaningful feedback that helps move that forward. And you might get into multiple iterations of getting to that creative campaign and then being like, this isn't what I thought that statement meant. And, and so AI is allowing for being able to bring high fidelity concepts to life in these early iterations.
And, and these marketers who may not have been formally trained or have kind of that creative development background are able to provide a more. Informed reaction to make stronger work faster and to get to that space kind of more effortlessly and with less change orders in, in how you're creating that concept.
[00:21:39] Mike: Exactly. And two things I'd add. One is it can turn what is historically tacit knowledge carried with the worker as they move around the organization into explicit knowledge because it's captured within. A generative AI system as you're interacting with it because it, it has persistent memory and so when you get a new person enrolled, they don't have to start from scratch.
They don't have to phone the person that just left the system understands. Yes. And that makes it much more efficient and effective to move forward.
[00:22:14] Micki: I think that begs the question of the investment in creating that system as well.
[00:22:20] Mike: Right. '
[00:22:21] Micki: cause there are things of like there, there is a time and investment in training that system, especially when you think about the walled garden experiences that need to happen from a safety perspective and the insurance of that.
Is that an investment that the agency is taking as part of the value chain that they're offering? Or is that something clients are paying for? Or is it something the clients wanna be making the investment internally to build? So like these are all conversations that are happening right now that. Are being developed in different ways.
That'll be interesting to see what takes off as the future item.
[00:22:51] Mike: Exactly right. And there are many, many, many instances of how AI is being deployed inside clients, inside brands. I think often agencies aren't aware of that they're experimenting with Now, as you said at the beginning, large enterprises, 6% success rate is pretty awful.
Why? Well, because there are much stronger guardrails inside large. Corporates. There's a big change management problem in size, large global corporates, so it takes longer to roll out these technologies. The problem is if the agency's not aware of what's going on or what's possible and they can't see it from the outside, at some point there'll be this kind of bow wave of activity of AI systems inside clients that could wipe out whole swats of.
Agency work 'cause it's been done in a more effective way, more consistently. But the agency didn't see it coming. Which brings me on to the, well, surely the agency has to be an advisor. You have to be the growth partner. You have to be telling the clients what is the art of the possible, what is worth trying?
What have we found that works? How much of that work is being pushed into the production engine that no longer needs? Huge numbers of people producing assets, time and time and time again. All that stuff. They need advice, they need to know what's going on. That's the role of the agency, isn't it?
[00:24:16] Micki: Certainly.
I think kind of one of the, the biggest values the agency can provide is staying ahead of our clients in, in what's happening and, and is moving so fast. Like the, the reality is like. It compounding changing every single day, every single hour, you know? And so no one's going to be on top of it all. But when I think about kind of how agencies need to be structuring themselves for the future, you certainly have the.
The front of house who's, who's your client facing person? But you need to have and be investing in kind of that back of house systems of how are you staying on top of it? How are you ensuring that your systems are aware that those front of house teams are really enabled with the information that you're gathering?
Because you can't, you can't be both client facing and truly. On top of it in a way that you can then also stay with how, how quickly technology is happening. Exactly. So like as an agency, you need to be thinking about like back of house, front of house, and how are those, those things are connected and invested through an AI perspective.
[00:25:16] Mike: I created a simple model. I don't think it's unique to me. I think it's just something I've named as being a three layer model, which is, there's a cockpit, there's a cabin, and there's an engine. And you have to be clear what people you've got in which roles, 'cause they're very different. And the people in the cockpit, very high judgment, very experienced, true growth advisors to senior people inside clients.
That's a very specific role. You can't be doing that. As one of my clients said the other day, as a player manager, you can't have all of that insight, access, knowledge, work with clients at that level and also be activating campaigns inside the platform because you know how the meta platform works.
That's ludicrous.
[00:26:02] Micki: That's burnout. That is burnout right there. If you're trying to do both of those things,
[00:26:06] Mike: it's Exactly. 'cause things are moving too fast.
[00:26:09] Micki: Exactly.
[00:26:10] Mike: So let's move on to the third bit then, which is. So what are the implications for clients and what kind of partners do they need in the future?
And what will agencies look like in the future and how will they be compensated?
[00:26:24] Micki: There's a lot to unpack on that one.
[00:26:26] Mike: There is, this'll be a slightly longer episode listeners, so if you're about to end your journey, press pause or sit in the car or at the bus stop and listen to the end of it. Micki, carry on.
[00:26:37] Micki: All right. Fabulous. I wanna start first with like, what are clients already asking for and what are things that we're hearing regularly? They want fewer people plus ai. They want to know that they're, that they are seeing part of the cost savings that AI is, is treating them with. This, this pressure is very much real.
Like we talked about beforehand, the model of kind of agencies having 30 plus teams that are all like small fractional percentages of these SMEs to cover the work is the thing that is starting to break in these, this request, because it's not a headcount exercise. They don't want to see all these people clients constantly or like why are there so many people on this call?
Number one thing you hear from clients all the time, exactly, who are all these people? Why are they here? Where are all
[00:27:21] Mike: these people? Why are they here?
[00:27:23] Micki: So when I think about kind of what does that operating model look like of the future, what I hear and kind of take in from clients is smaller, more multifaceted teams or pods, however you wanna call it, and how do you bring those smaller groups together with your AI systems to do that client facing work and to be that effort.
And then that back office that we talked about kind of helping kind of dedicate. Kind of pushing AI capabilities, technology kind of staying ahead of the curve. Yeah. So that way you can start to kind of guide the clients along. And you know, I see kind of your business leads from an agency perspective.
You know, when we think about larger clients. Having a portfolio of these pods of, of people as well as perhaps there's pods of just agents that are being subscribed into That's right. That are helping connect to the groups themselves. So,
[00:28:09] Mike: correct.
[00:28:10] Micki: I think agents become either a member of one pod or perhaps there is an agent collective pod as well.
So I think from a a client perspective, when you're thinking about evaluating your future partners and current partners, I think about. Safety is a number one priority, especially if you are in a regulated industry. You wanna ensure that that partner is understanding the limitations that AI can be used within.
[00:28:35] Mike: Correct.
[00:28:35] Micki: Your space and, and that is also, you know, if you are a global organization, you need to think about how do those agencies understand the market implications for regulatory around the world, because. There is not a one size solution of, of what is allowed or not allowed within the use of ai, and, and it can vary dramatically.
I think another thing is you need to think about what is the specialty of this partner that I'm bringing in? Because AI is, is, is training to the median, like it is a sea of sameness if you're just using AI consecutive consecutively, so. What is this partner bringing to the table that AI can't produce on its own?
Like what is that special sauce that they're making? Distinct thinking and a clear point of view for my business and my goals because it is. So hard to earn attention, whether it's B2B or B2C, it does not matter. You know, how do you gain eyes? You gain eyes by being different, by being distinct and by being unique, and you need to ensure that your partner is able to do that.
[00:29:34] Mike: So craft craft is still essential.
[00:29:36] Micki: Yes. Craft is absolutely essential. Like I think around kind of this whole idea of connected craft, like it is, you know, connected is both technology systems and structure, but craft is really that special sauce that needs to come together and and be brought in. And you need to understand, understand that clarity in your partnership.
[00:29:54] Mike: Exactly right. All of this also means as you talk this through, well your commercial model has to change. Yeah. By the nature of what you are saying, the commercial model with the client has to evolve.
[00:30:08] Micki: I think that commercial model, like when I think about efforts, I, I kind of hinted at it before. I think there's, there's probably some sort of subscription model that gives you the access to the agency's custom tools, AI infrastructure, production systems.
This becomes like a baseline of product outputs. This is system work. This is not being billed hourly anymore. You are subscribed. This is what you're getting, and. Of the relationship is kind of what I, I look at it. And then the second tier is truly that strategy premium. So that's that business strategy goal alignment.
Figuring out contributions to your sales targets, where is that happening? This is going to skyrocket the cost of senior thinking time. You know, I think as we, we look at kind of negotiations and time and materials, a lot of times you'll have clients be like, oh, that's too high from an hourly rate, or We want less senior team or junior team members on this.
That is not where this is going. Nope. Like if you're, if you're truly talking about a growth partner, you want someone who has seen so many things and can bring that experience to your business and help you amplify your actions because you're not bringing someone in to an earlier point that you made Michael, like you're not bringing someone in that's gonna do what you can do.
You need someone to add to the value, and that compensation model needs to be there of understanding that senior strategy premium that goes with it.
[00:31:30] Mike: Exactly. Right. Definitely and therefore, you know, that's got implications also for the pyramid to collapse. As you talked about, teams of 30 people working on an account.
That will change. I dunno how far that will go. I dunno if agencies will grow, keep the same headcount, or if they'll grow a bit less, reduce their headcount. I can't tell you. What I do know is the kind of under 25 employment. Within agencies is going down rapidly, and that's a problem for society and humanity.
[00:32:04] Micki: Yeah, I have some theories on, on what that will look like. Um,
[00:32:08] Mike: share your theories, Micki, definitely, definitely share your theory.
[00:32:12] Micki: I think there's an importance of like, how are we thinking about protecting the craft that we were talking about? Yeah. And so it, it talks about kind of adjusting the pipeline.
I don't think it's going to be of the scale of what it is, but I think there's kind of three things that when we look at kind of how AI absorbing junior talent task that we need to be investing in. One is, I think agencies need to. Perhaps pick up learnings from our clients around rotational programs.
How do we have maybe like smaller, incoming classes from undergrad? Institutions, institutions coming in and having these rotational programs to get exposure of what it is that's happening across the agencies and within the craft. I think there, you know, within larger agencies, there is pro bono work that we do on a regular basis.
How do you have like a senior sponsor, junior teams really running this pro bono work? Mm-hmm. In a way to help them address real problems, real feedback from clients, and it being a lower risk to the agency's bottom line. And then the other thing is I think we need to like think about async learning a lot more.
So we are recording so many of our client conversations to help with meeting notes. That's great. But a lot of times that goes like that just stops there. You know, these people that we bring in at a junior level, they've signed the NDAs, they're a partner of the client work. They're protected. So how do you start to turn in these recordings that we've been doing with from a senior to senior level.
Into actually training modules with AI's help, ah, to help train our junior talent to see that. So like back in the day, pre pandemic, you used to have that conference room and the call, like the teleconference call with like the junior staff in the back listening.
[00:33:50] Mike: Yeah.
[00:33:50] Micki: But we, we've lost that. We've, we've completely lost that.
And I think there's this opportunity for async learning to start to happen with the natural recordings that are happening anyway.
[00:34:00] Mike: Definitely. That's an excellent, excellent idea. What haven't we covered, Micki, that you was on your mind with just before you came to the recording, what, and you were thinking about topics to talk through.
Is there anything that we've missed?
[00:34:13] Micki: The only thing I would add is maybe how we start to think about our recruitment and what that looks like moving forward as well. So I think. What is going to have to happen is, is we're gonna need to have hungry, curious, first minded folks like, like you have to be thinking about like constantly like what excites me that I wanna learn more.
Because I think kind of just being like, Hey, I'm into this one thing is not going to be enough anymore. Like it's gonna be like we need talent that is hungry. Our interview structure
[00:34:41] Mike: needs, I'm curious, hungry and curious. Yeah,
[00:34:43] Micki: exactly. And our interview structure needs to start to shit to show me how you think.
Show me how you reason, show me how you work with ai. Yep. And I think the, the reality is, and this goes also for organizations and clients, looking at organizations, they're gonna wanna see it not just how you pitch it. And so kind of bringing that to life is going to be essential of, of kind of like show and tell, like really do it not just.
Not just storytelling. And I think one of my favorite things that I think AI is enabling within kind of a recruitment, staffing perspective is less ego. You have to be less precious about kind of your role, your title. Whatcha doing like soft skills, empathy, and connection to like the human need is, is such the priority that needs to be happening right now and how we're kind of bringing technology and people together to help.
Be that partner.
[00:35:37] Mike: Brilliant. Micki. It's been amazing. I knew it would be. Yeah. Give me just like kind of a couple of things. If someone's sat there, end of the show going, okay. What are the kind of couple of takeaways. Say they're an agency, CEO, it's a hundred person agency, what are the couple of things that you'd recommend their go away and think a bit more deeply about?
I'll
[00:35:54] Micki: give them one task specifically to do, not so much even to think about. Understand your current talent structure. Not what they're doing for you today, but what are they hungry and curious about? Because that's where you can start to see how do we think about these multifaceted people and interest and roles that we can bring together to perhaps create a whole new service line that you didn't even think about happening at this point in time?
Because I think there is, yeah, AI is going to unlock something, but if you aren't aware of what other people in your organization are curious about, it is going to be hard to shift. A mindset of like, this is the task that they do. Like there, there is gonna be so much more complexity and opportunity to offer more based on what AI can take off the plate of, of task doing.
[00:36:38] Mike: Perfect. On that note, Micki, it's been amazing. Thank you ever so much for joining me. Where can people find out more about you?
[00:36:44] Micki: LinkedIn is probably the easiest way to get ahold of me and find me.
[00:36:47] Mike: I think so. Um, thank you ever so much indeed. It's been a pleasure having you on the show.
[00:36:52] Micki: Thanks so much.
[00:36:53] Mike: Thanks for listening to Higgle, the B2B Sales Club podcast series with your host Mike Lander. Please subscribe so that you'll catch all the next episodes.