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

Micki Meyer: In the last year and a half, it was coming up more and more of clients coming in the RFP saying we want to see what you're going to put on the table 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 light.

Mike Lander: My name's Mike Lander and you're 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, brand leaders and, uh, procurement leaders. Please subscribe to get updates when new episodes are released. Mickey, thanks ever so much for joining me.m on higgle the B2B Sales Club podcast. It's great, great to have you.

Micki Meyer: Thanks for having me. Appreciate being here.

Mike Lander: And whereabouts are you today?

Micki Meyer: I am outside of Boston, Massachusetts.

Mike Lander: Very good. So as always listeners, I'll introduce or get Mickey to introduce herself broadly. Who are you? What do you do, did you do? And what's your favorite song and why?

Micki Meyer: Yeah, Fabulous. Mickey M. Meyer I have spent the last 20 ish years leading account teams across various holding group companies as well as private equity agencies. So inter public publicist group as well as private equity. So kind of have a spattering of 600 people to thousands and thousands of people 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 client partnerships and connection points and how is that shifting amongst time. So I've worked across a lot of industries within these roles. So pharma, uh, 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 am 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.

Mike Lander: Wow.

Micki Meyer: Yeah.

Mike Lander: So that's the audience knows. 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 a chance in life.

Micki Meyer: It's pretty rewarding work overall.

Mike Lander: So challenging.

Micki Meyer: Yes. Challenging and rewarding at the same time. As for my favorite song, yes, this has been my favorite song since 1994.

Mike Lander: Wow.

Micki Meyer: It is an oldie. And it has stayed consistent. So my favorite song is Tiny Dancer by Elton John. 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 liking it. But over the years it has stayed as. It's just uh, 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, uh, soundtrack to our entire life and in the background just going. And we don't notice and it still is a song that, whether it's the original or, you know, Florence and the Machine does a great cover of it as well. You know, it just makes me stop and listen. And it's really nice to have those moments that make you stop.

Mike Lander: Brilliant. The reason I asked the question is because it's always about an emotion and it's always about either 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 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 Mickey M. Came on the show. I wrote this agency research 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 Mickey 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 kind of like the broad headline question, which is the topic for this is From Agency to Growth Partner. And as we go through the kind of topics and have a discussion that, uh, listeners, you'll understand why. Let's start with how does the traditional agency client model work? Let's just remind ourselves, and, um, 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 um, what are the growth constraints with the existing model? Before we go on to AI.

Micki Meyer: Yes. As I said in my intro, keep in mind that this is coming from someone whose smallest agency I've worked at was 600 people as a base. So definitely from a large perspective. And I think a lot of times when we think about talent architecture in the agency, I've uh, 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 I shaped, T shaped. I've now heard M M shaped as well of um, similar to T shaped but having a couple of deep dives all the way down.

Mike Lander: Yes, yes, that makes sense. Yeah.

Micki Meyer: 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 a pitch or an ask, either organic or kind of 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 a fourth that is not so much a model itself, but it's kind of um, a bonus structure 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 kind of you've bought this team out the clients. I think what's happening here is you see far 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 bottle.

Mike Lander: 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, 50k, 100k, whatever it is, a month, I will pay you a retainer uh, for access to that expertise with an expectation that I get outcomes. But the contract is an outcomes Based, it's not outcomes based.

Micki Meyer: Correct. The next one's time and materials. So this one is you are billing your hourly time for the things that you're doing. You say this is how much time we think we're going to need to do this. This is who's going to be it. 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. This is, this is really 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.

Mike Lander: So for example Micky, 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?

Micki Meyer: That might be. You're 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 1 flat fee or perhaps if it's a larger contract, we've negotiated tiers of this depending on number of pages, numbers of reviews. And so it might be 5,000, 10,000, 20,000, you know, dollars for this thing. That is not an actual price tag to any vis aid. I just was throwing out round numbers

Mike Lander: and 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.

Micki Meyer: Correct. I think what's interesting here is there is a tension that happens in negotiating these asset fees, uh, where agencies and client, you know, the clients especially, uh, procurement, if they have a goal that they're trying to reach of savings, I've

Mike Lander: got a savings target.

Micki Meyer: Exactly. They will try to like squeeze this asset as tight as possible and it becomes a, like, who's the agency that's going to 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 spaces where you're having those conversations and you are a partner, the time and the effort you are spent on uh, negotiating those assets is 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 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 what the, the marketer actually needs to be doing.

Mike Lander: And you can't keep going back to procurement saying, I want to renegotiate because the scope's all changed. If you kept doing that, you'd never get anywhere. Exactly. I think what I'm interpreting there is you're bearing some risk when you price those deliverables in the expectation that the scope will change to an extent. Now our job is to manage that scope variation.

Micki Meyer: 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 going to be $2,000 instead of $8,000, because we're going to do some things on the back end to 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 they also want to see that come down. And so there is a balance there.

Mike Lander: So here's exactly the problem. And, um, 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, um, marketing manager, it could be a cmo, it could be a brand director, it could be a procurement person. Everyone's going to say, oh, last year, Mickey, when you did this for me, it was $10,000 for this deliverable. Same deliverable this year. Different campaign, same deliverable shape. I'm kind of expecting it to be about 6k, 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. 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.

Micki Meyer: 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.

Mike Lander: Exactly.

Micki Meyer: And then there's no room for negotiation there. But then there's also no approved structure or governance Also in the way, because uh, there's also making that up. I know. Kind of. You know, McKinsey had a study that talked about only 6% of companies are actually seeing value from AI 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 very keen and we're not sure how it's going to shape out.

Mike Lander: No one is exactly. But it's also, it's recasting certain marketing activity as an increasing commodity.

Micki Meyer: Exactly.

Mike Lander: 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 cost producer somewhere in the marketplace, irrespective of the quality of that output. And um, that's one of the problems. So what's the fourth model?

Micki Meyer: The fourth item is what I'm going to call a performance based model or kind of value based connection. So this is really kind of this growing theory that you have skin in the game as the agency, 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.

Mike Lander: Exactly.

Micki Meyer: 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 the end to end shop is, is where you could easily say yes, let's do this and track like did sales go up? Yes or no.

Mike Lander: Because I can control all the levers, I can pull the levers. And um, if I want 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're 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.

Micki Meyer: Exactly.

Mike Lander: That's the extreme model of a performance model. That assumes I'VE got control over all the levers.

Micki Meyer: Exactly. But what the reality is, many agencies only have a small slice of the pie that influences that.

Mike Lander: Exactly.

Micki Meyer: 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.

Mike Lander: Yeah.

Micki Meyer: In something. And so like, there becomes different kind of levers. And I think that's something that's really, you know, media is a little bit easier of a place to do this and be able to kind of have that influence on a, uh, 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 want to show their value. And the agencies that can show the value they bring to business is what's going to move forward. I don't think we've unlocked the way to do PBM in an efficient manner when you only have one small slice of the pie.

Mike Lander: And by pbm. Well, uh, so performance based models, performance based marketing, 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

Micki Meyer: partly fixed, partly performance, and there's a bonus structure or.

Mike Lander: Bonus structure. Exactly right. And, um, how often did you see that kind of fifth model emerge?

Micki Meyer: I think it came in the last year and a half. It was coming up more and more of clients coming in the RFP saying we want to see what you're going to put on the table 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 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. And so being really, really Structured in. In what you're willing to give up.

Mike Lander: And I think if I flip the coin, Mickey, onto the client side, we talk about risk. If the client's going to put $10 million of investment into the market to get a return of 50 million, say in sales, they're taking a big risk.

Micki Meyer: Yeah.

Mike Lander: Now you could argue, well, not all of it's at risk because there's precedents 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're in. As a marketing services provider, the same principle applies. Does it?

Micki Meyer: It does.

Mike Lander: It's not a trick question. I think it does, doesn't it?

Micki Meyer: Certainly. When I think about kind of this agency to growth partner connection, you want to 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.

Mike Lander: Exactly.

Micki Meyer: And the best of those partnerships, you have no idea where the agency starts and the client begins.

Mike Lander: Yeah.

Micki Meyer: 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.

Mike Lander: Definitely. Absolutely. And, uh, 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, uh, 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.

Micki Meyer: Correct.

Mike Lander: So, next question. So what does AI technology enable us to do that we couldn't do before? So 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, just looking across the piece.

Micki Meyer: Yes. One of the things around AI enablement, and we talked about this a little bit before, is in the conversation a lot of times AI enablement goes to, ooh, do something cheaper, faster.

Mike Lander: Yes.

Micki Meyer: But 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, it is about what is it truly unlocking from a potential value perspective, things

Mike Lander: that couldn't have been done before, but now maybe we can do or struggles

Micki Meyer: 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.

Mike Lander: Yeah.

Micki Meyer: 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 marketing, and you as an agency partner, you're helping them, like, educate them on that fact. 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 or 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 so AI is allowing for being able to bring high fidelity concepts to life in these early iterations. 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 how you're creating that concept.

Mike Lander: Exactly. And two things I'd add. One is it can turn what is historically tacit knowledge carried with the worker, uh, 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 has persistent memory. And so when you get a new person in role, they don't have to start from scratch, they don't have to phone the person that just left. The system understands and that makes it much more efficient and effective to move forward.

Micki Meyer: I think that begs the question of the investment in creating that system as well.

Mike Lander: Right.

Micki Meyer: Because there are things of like, 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 ah, offering or is that something clients are paying for or is it something the clients want to be making the investment internally to build? These are all conversations that are happening right now that are being developed in different ways that it'll be interesting to see what takes off as the future item.

Mike Lander: Um, exactly right. And um, there are many, many, many instances of how AI is being deployed inside clients, inside brands. I think often agencies aren't aware of, but 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 inside 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 uh, some point there'll be this kind of bow wave of activity of AI systems inside clients that could wipe out whole swathes of agency work because 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?

Micki Meyer: Certainly. I think kind of one of the biggest values the agency can provide is staying ahead of our clients in what's happening. And it is moving so fast. The reality is it is compounding changing every single day, every single hour. 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 front of house, 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 be both client facing and truly on top of it in a way that you can then also stay with how quickly technology is happening. So like as an agency you need to be thinking about like back of house, front of house and how, uh, are those, those things are connected and invested through an AI perspective.

Mike Lander: I, uh, 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, because 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, uh, 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.

Micki Meyer: That's burnout. That is burnout right there. If you're trying to do both of those things.

Mike Lander: It is. Exactly. Because things are moving too fast.

Micki Meyer: Exactly.

Mike Lander: 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 uh, what will agencies look like in the future and how will they be compensated?

Micki Meyer: There's a lot to unpack on that one.

Mike Lander: There is. This will 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 um, listen to the end of it. Mickey, carry on.

Micki Meyer: All right, fabulous. I want to 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 treating them with. 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 are like, why are there so many people on this call? Like, it's probably number one thing you hear from clients all the time, who are all these people? Why are they here?

Mike Lander: Why are they here?

Micki Meyer: 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 want to 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, uh, capabilities, technology kind of staying ahead of the curve. So that way you can start to kind of guide the clients along. And I see kind of your business leads from an agency perspective. When we think about larger clients having a portfolio of these pods of people, as well as perhaps there's pods of just agents that are being subscribed into that are helping connect to the groups themselves. So 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 client perspective, when you're thinking about evaluating your future partners and current partners, I think about safety as a number one priority. Especially if you are in a regulated industry, you want to ensure that that partner is understanding the limitations that AI can be used within your space. 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 what is allowed or not allowed within the use of AI. 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 training to the median. It is a sea of sameness if you're just using AI, um, consecutively. So you want to think about what is this partner bringing to the table that AI can't produce on its own, 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.

Mike Lander: So craft, craft is still essential.

Micki Meyer: 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 be brought in and you need to understand, understand that clarity in your partnership.

Mike Lander: Exactly right. All of this also means, as you talk this through, well, your commercial model has to change. By the nature of what you're saying. The commercial model with the client has to evolve.

Micki Meyer: Yes, I think that commercial model, like, when I think about efforts, 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 it's the floor of the relationship is kind of what I look at it. And then the second tier is truly that strategy premium. So that's that business strategy, goal alignment, kind of figuring out direct 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 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, more junior team members on this. That is not where this is going. Like, 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. You're not bringing someone in that's going to 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.

Mike Lander: Exactly right, Definitely. And therefore, that's got implications also for the pyramid collapse, as you talked about. Teams of 30 people working on an account. That will change. I don't know how far that will go. I don't know 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.

Micki Meyer: Yeah, I have some theories on what that will look like.

Mike Lander: Um, share your theories, Mickey. Definitely, definitely share your theory.

Micki Meyer: I think there's an importance of, like, how are we thinking about protecting the craft that we were talking about? And so 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 is 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 coming in and having these rotational programs to get exposure of, uh, 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 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 think about async learning a lot more. So we are recording so many of our client conversations to help with meeting notes right now. That's great, but a lot of times that just stops there. These people that we bring in at a junior level, they've signed the NDAs, they're part of the client work, they're protected. So how do you start to turn in these recordings that we've been doing from a senior to senior level into actually training modules with AI's help to help train our junior talent to see that. So like back in the day, pre pandemic, you used to have that conference room in the call, like the teleconference call with like the junior staff in the back listening. Yeah. Uh, but we've lost that. 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.

Mike Lander: Definitely. That's an excellent, excellent idea. What haven't we covered? Mickey, that was on your mind just before you came to the recording and you were thinking about topics to talk through. Is there anything that we've missed?

Micki Meyer: 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 we're going to need to have hungry, curious, first minded folks like, like you have to be thinking about like constantly, like what excites me that I want to 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 going to be like we need talent that is hungry. Our interview structure.

Mike Lander: Curious. Hungry and curious.

Micki Meyer: Exactly. And our, uh, Interview structure needs to start to shift to show me how you think, show me how you reason, show me how you work with AI. And I think the reality is, and this goes also for organizations and clients looking at organizations, they're going to want to see it, not just how you pitch it. And so kind of bringing that to life is going to be essential of uh, kind of like show and tell, like really do it, not just storytelling. And I think one of my favorite things that I think AI is enabling within kind uh, of a recruitment, staffing perspective is less ego. You have to be less precious about kind of your role, your title, what are you doing, 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.

Mike Lander: Brilliant, Mickey. It's been amazing. I knew it would be. Give me just like kind of a couple of things. If someone's sat there end of the show going, okay, what the kind of couple of takeaways say they're an agency, CEO, uh, it's 100 person agency. What are the couple of things that you'd recommend they go away and think a bit more deeply about?

Micki Meyer: I'll 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 interests 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. 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 versus just a task mindset of like this is the task that they do like there is going to be so much more complexity and opportunity to offer more based on what AI can take off the plate of task doing.

Mike Lander: Perfect. On that note, Mickey, it's been amazing. Thank you ever so much for joining me. Where can people find out more about you?

Micki Meyer: Thank you. LinkedIn is probably the easiest way to get a hold of me and find me.

Mike Lander: I think so, um, thank you ever so much indeed. It's been a pleasure having you on the show.

Micki Meyer: Thanks so much.

Mike Lander: 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.