EP 4: Agency Research Pioneer Susan Baier Uncovers Why Agencies Know the Playbook But Are Not Running the Plays

[upbeat music] Over the past decade, we've had more than 1,200 conversations with CEOs, best-selling authors, and agency leaders, and here's what we're seeing.

Agencies that have built an authority position no longer struggle to be seen.

Instead, they struggled to activate latent demand.

Agency leaders have said to us, "It's exactly where we're sitting right now, authority without demand." So welcome to the In Demand Agency podcast presented by Predictive ROI.

It's sparked by research from the Harvard Business Review, Edelman, Gallup, AgencyCore, all showing that trust has moved upstream.

In today's marketplace, authority earns attention, yes, but demand is what turns attention into action.

Each episode deconstructs the science of demand from behavioral psychology, decision-making research, and the cross-industry strategies behind why and how B2B buyers make their decisions.

We interview the world's leading behavioral scientists, agency network leaders, and strategists from industries far beyond ours, experts who are reshaping how demand works.

I'm your host, Steven Woessner, and in each episode, we'll translate their insights directly into the agency world.

And these conversations are now being heard by a community of over 30,000 agency owners and their teams.

With me today is Susan Bayer, founder and CEO of Audience Audit and co-founder of AgencyCore, one of the largest ongoing studies of agency leaders in our industry.

And as you heard in the introduction a few minutes ago, the ideas and research from the Harvard Business Review, Edelman, Gallup, and AgencyCore helped spark the genesis of what has become the In Demand Agency podcast.

So it only seemed fitting that Susan would join me to share her insights and expertise.

Susan has surveyed over 1,200 agency leaders across three years of AgencyCore research, and here are some of the highlights.

Over 50% of agency leaders can identify the exact strategies they need to put into practice to achieve pipeline growth, revenue growth, and reputation growth.

But fewer than 17% of agency leaders are fully implementing the strategies.

So from a layperson's perspective, my perspective, it sounds like agencies know the playbook but are not running the plays, and that gap between the recognition of knowing what to do and the action of doing the things is a portion of what Susan and I are going to deconstruct today.