Why would a consultancy focus solely on agency relationships?
Because we know an agency’s relationships are the most powerful and yet most underutilized levers for growth, morale and margin
Our four-pillar approach
Working with every major agency network as well as many independents, we have over 550,000 pieces of client feedback. This is undeniably a real source of power and gives us a unique perspective on the industry, what drives success, and what tends to trip agencies up along the way.
We work with our agencies to then ensure that that the right questions are being asked and then answered. Our consultants use our proprietary tools and frameworks to help agencies properly diagnose the problem and also to identify the opportunities waiting to be seized.
Only then do we get to relationship strategies. We help our agencies create strategic relationship plans for growth that identify the likely barriers and triggers for success, whether that be winning around a tricky individual, or helping an agency to forge long term relationships.
You’ll be amazed how easy it is to confuse the writing of the plan with having done it. So we help you to make sure the plans are specific and robust and they turn into action, that the conditions for success are in place, that there’s clear accountability and responsibility.
Relationship problems, relationship products.
Agencies are built, run, and grown on multidimensional relationships: relationships between the agency and its clients, between the account teams and their clients, and between the agency’s employees and the agency itself. At CRC, we work with over 1230 agency offices in 92 countries, so we’ve seen the outcomes of any of these relationships failing. That’s why we’ve designed our products to equip agencies with the intelligence to actively manage them, rather than leave them to chance.
We begin with the problem.
Problem: is your agency losing clients unnecessarily or missing growth opportunities with others?
The Referral Rating
The Referral Rating: a continuous measure over time of how clients feel about the agency.
The Referral Rating, or TRR, is designed to measure the emotional temperature of your client relationships. We’ve found that this single measure - how a client feels about the agency - is predictive of future client behavior, and so we’ve codified how we capture this data and analyze it. But the data is just the springboard. We’ve seen lost margins from poor relationships and gained margins from strong ones. Our consultants meet with the agencies to review the findings, have the hard conversations, and make the findings actionable. With TRR you will always know where you stand with your client relationships.
Problem: is your agency experiencing unusual team-turnover and mismatched talent on some clients?
Barometer
Barometer: a continuous measure of how the agency teams feel about their clients.
Relationships are inherently two-way. With Barometer we can shed light on how the agency teams feel about working on their respective clients. Our consultants then overlay these findings with the TRR findings (how clients feel about them) to help paint a more complete picture of the entire relationship. Our process exposes chemistry mismatches between agency team members and clients, often inspiring team re-allocation and optimization.
Problem: is your agency’s issue acute and requiring immediate attention?
Interventions
Interventions: a planned event designed to intervene in an agency/client relationship in order to diagnose and rapidly improve it.
Inevitably some accounts will run into relationship issues that are acute in nature, requiring immediate attention. Our bespoke interventions start with Relationship Exploration to identify both presenting and underlying issues through in-depth interviews with both key clients and the agency team. We then move to Relationship Mapping to identify issues and opportunities. And then Discussion of findings from the mapping of the relationship will be shared with key stakeholders via a workshop format.
Relationships determine agency value
The value of your agency is largely determined by the accounts it holds. But what’s often overlooked is how strong the relationships are with your clients. If you’re looking to sell, we help quantify your relationships with the hope of demonstrating convincingly the health of your agency. Existing CRC clients already have this data, but with new clients we can quickly go into the field and provide relationship results. Conversely, if looking to acquire an agency, we help you evaluate your target acquisition’s relationships.
“My most valued professional service - in terms of intel, insight, service and support.”
- Manager Global Media Agency from our self survey
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