Maximize Your Agency’s Value – With SCOPE Better’s Tracey Shirtcliff

On the latest episode of Burning Questions, SCOPE Better’s Tracey Shirtcliff discusses “The Pricing Problem” that both agencies and their clients—YOU—face: the inconsistency, complexity, scattered data, and blind spots. To solve the problem, listen and learn about the power of "Anytime Pricing."

Episode Transcript

(00:10):
(Transcribed by TurboScribe.ai. Go Unlimited to remove this message.) Welcome back to Burning Questions.
This is a podcast for 500 Degrees.
We're a marketing services firm that does digital
content.
We have offices in Toronto, Miami, Columbus, Ohio,
and we work with iconic brands, Burger King,
Firehouse Subs, Tim Hortons, and Popeyes, and we

(00:30):
work in the convenience store industry, as well
as the automotive dealer space.
And if you want to learn more about
what we do, go to weare500degrees.com or
click the link down below or the QR
code.
And today we have Tracy Shurcliff.
And I've been looking forward to this for
a long time because the company that she

(00:52):
founded and is CEO of is going to
help so many people, particularly stateside, as we
deal with scope.
Man, I tell you, here's a pro tip.
If you're a corporation that spends millions on
agency fees, or if you're an agency that
wants to receive millions in fees, I would
run, not walk and go visit with Scope

(01:13):
Better.
And what a better way to start that
off with our guest here with Tracy.
Tracy, how are you doing today?
Matt, I'm great.
I'm delighted to be here and thank you
for the invite.
Tell us a little bit about what got
you to where you are today, because it's
a fascinating journey, and it's a great vertical
that most people in at least our advertising

(01:35):
space, we think about pricing not enough, and
we moan about it on the back end
when we're not making money.
Walk us through the process of how you
are sitting here today.
Well, it's a pretty quick story, but I
started a SaaS platform that was called Traffic

(01:58):
Live, and it was all around helping agencies
and professional services businesses to better plan and
resource for the work that they do.
And what became really, really clear out of
that business is that there was a whole
front end on pricing and profitability that was
just completely left.
And I ran that previous business for 10

(02:18):
years, and then I was bought by a
large American corporation.
Lucky enough, I wasn't ready to hang up
my boots, my spurs, as they say.
And so I said, I can't leave this
problem unresolved.
90% of agency businesses produce their fee

(02:39):
proposals, scopes of work on a mix of
Excel, Google Sheets, Word documents.
It's all manual.
So for somebody who prides themselves in putting
into a solution to digitally transform businesses, I
just, I had to, I had to broach
it.
And so ScopeBetter was built and born out
of firstly taking out some data from the

(03:00):
previous business to start to build up a
model of how agencies could be pricing for
their services in a smarter way.
And I'm lucky that right now, the advent
of AI is running hard and everybody's very
excited about what generative AI is going to
do, and also petrified.
So ScopeBetter is all around tackling those hard

(03:22):
issues around pricing and how we should be
doing it better in an industry that's currently
selling time and people.
On our podcast, we had a man by
the name of Chris Holland.
He was a former managing partner and co
-president of Sapient.
And he runs a company now called AIQ.

(03:43):
And since you mentioned AI and this, this
whole fright, but also adoption, early adoption, because
in the ad agency business, we don't want
to be left behind.
We want to adopt early and figure it
out later.
But he said something interesting, which he said,
the future could be not on FTEs, full

(04:03):
-time employees, but on outcomes.
Are they asking for different ways to look
at the deployment of resources from an agency
level?
And are they using terms like outcomes versus
full-time employees?
That's a great question.
I mean, we pride ourselves on looking at
this as however a client wants to go

(04:23):
around pricing and however an agency needs to
deliver that requirement for a client, then anyway,
pricing should be something at the heart of
a business.
So there's two things, you might want to
facilitate that is your point from the agency,
but you might also just want to be
very client facing.
And it kind of runs in kind of
two veins.

(04:44):
You know, we started life where we had
the FTE, and we moved into, you know,
and retainers and various other bits and pieces,
then we moved into time and materials.
And then we've subsequently gone further and further
into, you know, deliverable or output pricing, people
talk about value.
And that could be actually how driving it
via results.

(05:05):
And that's, I mean, these different what I
call pricing modalities on a continuum are either
easy to do or become very difficult depending
on what, you know, what the capacity is
of the business to deal with that with
your clients.
But I think the most important thing for
me is that however clients want to collaborate
with you, you need to be understanding what

(05:26):
you're going to be doing on pricing.
That makes sense.
And with as you negotiate, you know, I'm
not saying that you're the key negotiator, but
your products will help everybody be a better
negotiator.
How deep do you go into the actual,
you know, tech stack of an ad agency

(05:46):
or a marketing services firm or a labor
firm in terms of their EOP system to
be able to withdraw information versus having, you
know, John Adams come in and say, I
usually spend about four hours to develop a
logo.
Great.
I love this question, Matt.
So how deeply do we get into somebody's

(06:07):
tech stack?
Well, we go as deep as we can
and I'll tell you why.
So the process that we do at the
moment, which we replace with scope better is
a manual process.
They'll have a staff plan typically that's put
together in Excel, and then they'll have a
statement of work, which could be in word,
or you could be using a Google set
of documents or suite as well.

(06:27):
And then from that, what you have to
do is you have to, you're doing this
process manually.
So then you need to manually move that
data in your business into these other elements.
So we with scope better, firstly, digitally transform
that process.
You've got it in a platform.
That means you've got a single source of
truth.
You can have a look at everything in
one place.
You can do all of the kind of
key things you'd expect from it, from a

(06:48):
slick platform that supports any way pricing.
Then secondly, and one of our kind of
key pillars is making sure we can speed
up that connection of data.
You know, the last thing you want in
your business is spread data, spreadsheet spread data.
So fundamentally, if we can help you push
that data in to your CRM or your

(07:09):
ERP, your PSA, whatever the tools, you could
officially call scope better a CPQ.
So we are a configure price quote tool,
but 20 years ago, we didn't know what,
what Salesforce was.
It's a CRM now we know it.
And we might use HubSpot or Salesforce, but
absolutely we would a hundred percent advocate that
you digitally connect the two because it means

(07:31):
that the data transfer through the business, which
is your power and your knowledge is moving
from one to the other.
You don't risk any re-entry or keying
or leaving stuff behind time that it takes
the resource that it takes.
We're talking about clever linking of APIs, middleware,
and that's absolutely where we're at as a
business.
Yeah.
We, we have a number of shops in

(07:52):
our old co and I was CEO of
the whole co for, for eight years and
I founded a 500 degrees.
And it was interesting as we did the
big roll up all the different ERP systems,
everybody was on.
So what is the, the most base level
ERP or knowledge set that you have worked
with, with an ad agency before, or have

(08:12):
you convinced them to move beyond just Excel
and QuickBooks?
I think we've done everything from linking to
very, very robust enterprise level SAP, all the
way from various different systems.
The interesting thing is normally for us, we
find that we're limited by their own kind

(08:33):
of technology.
So we connect, I mean, the last place
we want to connect is a flat file,
but we can do that as a, as
a minimum.
And that's even an improvement on some sort
of manual process, but ultimately for us, we
would like to get to, you know, a
connection of middleware to middleware where it's seamless.
We simply map the data from one to

(08:54):
the other, and you can easily transition from
CRM to scope better to ERP or, or
workflow tool.
It's not just so much you guys who
are implementation stack, because the relationship between client
and, and firm stretches beyond that first initial,

(09:17):
here's what we want to do, scope it,
whether it's a purchasing environment or somebody who's
brilliant at the top of CFO, who's watching
the hours, he's comparing it to what he
spent last year.
Everybody wants value over last year.
We get that.
But there's always the difference between what they
said up front to actually what they're engaging

(09:38):
on.
And do you guys stay in the hunt,
so to speak, in terms of post-pricing
delivery, or is it just sort of like
we help you guys pull information out so
you can price better and price smarter.
And I'm just talking about the, the ability
to match hours or outcomes on a scope
basis, on a monthly basis for tracking against

(10:00):
deliverables.
We think that's fundamentally important.
So if you're a business that does time,
and if your scopes are right, then you
shouldn't actually need to in a perfect world.
But if you're a business that tracks time,
we can bring time back in against those
deliverables.
So you can baseline.
So what you can say is, this is
what we're expecting to do.
This is what was, what was delivered.

(10:21):
And then you can go back to the
actual, where the original pricing point was made
and update that.
Typically you're seeing with Excel spreadsheets, it doesn't
change.
So you get it wrong.
You don't learn.
So what we're trying to do is make
sure businesses learn, or even better, you start
to productize your offerings.
Then you're very clear around the ways that
you're communicating.

(10:41):
You know, we talk about branding.
We talk about speaking about a voice for
our clients.
What we need to be doing is showing
the value that we're, that we're delivering from
the things.
I, I talk about it simply being, it's
like a chef in the kitchen.
You know, you don't go into the, how
many eggs, how many grams of flour.
You talk about the, I'm mixing these two

(11:01):
fabulous ingredients, these part of the team.
This is our element of what we put
together and how we, how we mix that
in order to make our fabulous meal.
So, exactly.
So as the agency, you don't talk about
one person or one role or the hours
that they do.
You talk about the magic that you bring

(11:22):
together and what it is, is the output,
you know, the deliverable, the, you know, that
is the, that is your, your magic source.
And you need to be communicating your value
in that, not, not the individual roles and,
and, and people.
I think it's important that agencies have a

(11:42):
point of view, but on how they price
different to your point products.
So with technology products, let's say if I'm
revising a, a website, typically the, the, the
tech pricing model is on milestones.
So we've, we've hit the wireframe good check
boom payment.

(12:03):
We've hit the first beta, did that check
boom payment.
We've hit soft launch long and hard launch
check boom payment.
On the other hand, we have develop an
ad, develop a media plan, all have different
approaches to pricing versus one style only.

(12:26):
Is your system flexible enough to be able
to plug that in?
Oh, all right.
So we're pricing out a milestone project for
tech, or we're pricing out a media plan
and a buy and an execution.
And then we rectify at the backend to
make sure that we get all of our
TRPs.
How does that work on your side?
A hundred percent.
So we pride ourselves in what we call
any way pricing.

(12:47):
And actually I've been challenged on this a
few times, and that sends, if it needs
to our product and development team back into
the wheelhouse.
But we, what we do is if you
have a, a way of pricing, the system's
very open in the way it can architect
itself, but it's designed to be very functional,
easy to use.
And the whole point of what we're trying

(13:08):
to do is make things more consistent, smarter
in the way that we can deal with
them and that you can allow anybody in
the team to price.
So, you know, we've had a bottleneck for
many, many years, which is actually stifling the
growth of, of, of agencies is that, you
know, typically you've had one or two people

(13:28):
in the business that can, that can, that
can price, and then there's no feedback loop.
So that's the other thing that we're, that
we're talking about bringing into the, into the
mix and also, you know, the longevity of
what we're hoping to achieve as well.
You know, when, when a fee element goes
out and, or a person leaves the business,
the knowledge of that walks out the door,

(13:50):
or it's not held in a central place
to kind of, to, to investigate and kind
of improve that going forward.
Well, it's when that one person walks out
the door, you know, you're, you're, you're toast
and then everybody's back to making it up
again.
Yeah.
The, let's talk about dynamic pricing.
So I'll, I'll start outside of our category

(14:13):
of ad agencies and into the fast food
world.
So McDonald's and, and Wendy's recently had egg
on their face, haha, pardon the pun, when
they launched.
So they have a dynamic ordering system, digital
marketing screen.
So when you drive through to order your,
your, your product, the pricing can adjust based

(14:36):
on demand, almost like surge pricing from Uber.
And so everybody was up in arms, like,
ah, you guys are, you know, I can
barely afford, you know, a $20 bag of,
of, of fries and, and Big Macs.
And now based on demand, I have to
pay more.

(14:57):
So let's fast forward to the ad agency
world, which is a little different, which is
clients aren't necessarily robots.
They wait to the last minute to review
the advertisement with the CEO.
CEO is going to change at the last
minute we have to release.
We're working a shift overnight.
I just wanted to start out with the

(15:19):
topic of dynamic pricing and what inside your
engine can help people work through that to
provide value and have the client recognize, yeah,
you, you guys have to run a second
shift tonight.
Cause we'll do that hair on fire, run
through walls.
We'll get this stuff done.
That's what we always do, but a little
modicum of pricing adjustment is necessary.

(15:40):
Absolutely.
And any business would, would expect, you know,
if you've got to do something additional that
you'd be remunerated for that.
So, so in scope better, we've got a
couple of ways of managing that.
So we've got something called t-shirt sizing,
which fundamentally is 101 for dynamic pricing.
So you could have something that is a
small, medium and large.

(16:02):
So for instance, if you're doing a, you
know, a, you said what the word wireframes
earlier.
So you could have a simple wireframe.
You could have a kind of a more
complex with a, with a number of various
variant options, then right up to something that's
extra large, which is, you know, an entire
team across a global website for, you know,

(16:24):
a number of kind of various different brands.
So that's what we call kind of t
-shirt sizing and that can, can fit under
what we would call different kind of tasks
or deliverables.
So you might have kind of a small
brief cause you're talking to a small team.
You might have a large content development because
that's not happening at the client.
It's being produced by the agency.

(16:45):
So we can kind of use that t
-shirt sizing to be very dynamic in the
way that we can put them together around
a set of business rules, which we typically
see, you know, small is one round of
amends, medium is three, extra large is 10
with, you know, 25 different people that needs
to be approved by.
So this gives us what I call kind
of guide rails to start to dynamically put

(17:06):
together something quickly that you don't have to
take your key resource in, in kind of
going through those questions.
We've got the building blocks.
Then we've got the other, other ways to
kind of work around, which is kind of
a matrix that sits on top of it.
You might have multipliers, which could be an
additional turn on your rate card or your
fees based on rush, based on locations, based

(17:28):
on, you know, complexity of, of client brief
or all sorts of things.
And we see those as various different elements
and the two work in a smart way
together.
Well, I think the t-shirt pricing sounds
great.
And it's innovative in terms of being able
to present to a client that, all right,

(17:49):
so you've showed us the scope.
This is how we are now going to
take that scope, interpret it into how we
do it.
This is a large, this is an XL.
I think the other important thing, and you
said the rubber hits the road and we
are all around, you know, the pricing problem
is how do we price for profit in
a smarter way?
And what happens in our industry is that
the client, so we put together a scope

(18:11):
of work, then the client comes back and
says, you know what, we don't have that
much budget.
And what invariably happens at the agency is
they go, oh, we'll just deliver it anyway
because we came up with the idea and
we want to win the client.
But what you should be doing on t
-shirt sizing is still giving them the element,
but pull back some of the key things
and value, wrote back some of the, some

(18:32):
of the entity and then show the client
the difference.
And quite often, you know, the chance of
the client finding more budget is, is hopefully
more of a, of a possibility than the
agency giving away their, their value.
Well, it's a, it's a quick bid too,
because we have many times, you know, if
we'd look at the layer cake of, of

(18:52):
how we want to grow our agencies and,
and grow business, it'll be, you know, it's
a leaky bucket business, but, you know, retention
is key and it's growth on that business,
which is going to be organic.
Then it's going to be new business and
it's either a pitch or it's going to
be a land and expand.
And so pricing some of those additional asks,

(19:13):
either a land and expand small project in
a big company where we want to go
and improve our value or client says, Hey,
I've got this extra side hustle that I
need somebody to focus on.
How would you price this out?
The ability to go, we've already trained you
on 1Z to triple X.
We think this is going to be just
a medium sized.

(19:34):
And if, if you can adhere yourself to
the hours that we prescribe and we're in
and out, and there's not a lot of
mucking about in terms of revisions, we think
we can offer it at this price.
I think that's, it's a, it's a cool
way to go and big agencies and small
agencies are doing this with you.
Right?

(19:54):
Exactly.
Yeah, absolutely.
It is a journey.
I've got to be honest because we get
some people who are starting from a, from
a different place and everybody comes from, from
it, from a different perspective.
Um, we get to see a lot of
Excel spreadsheets.
Do you work on the client side as
well?
So I, I just want to know a
little bit more about your business because I

(20:15):
would think the purchasing group, the CFOs and
anybody that really doesn't understand advertising, but they
want to get value out of the ad
group because it's always about switching.
Are you working on the corporate side?
We, we don't, we have what we call
a client module.
It's not used as much as I would
like to see it used, which allows the,
the, the brands or the clients to input
their briefs and then collaborate back in real

(20:37):
time on the requests for the scope.
I think sometimes it's enough of a challenge.
We talk transparency between client and agency.
I the advent of AI, I'm not sure
that, that it's going to make it any
easier, but no, we have a, we have
an interface.
If you want to collaborate with the client
across your scope in real time, you can.

(20:59):
It's not, as I said, Matt, it's not
used as much as I'd like to see
it used.
And back on the t-shirt pricing on
the idea of AI, you know, agencies are
just guilty of being able to brag about
stuff.
Yeah, we use AI, swagger, swagger.
And then the client is like, that's cool.
So you're going to charge less.

(21:21):
And so maybe in that t-shirt pricing
is AI driven strategy, background, quick 24 hour
return, what have you.
Something like that.
That's exactly right.
What advice do you have for marketing services
firms or ad agency that, that want to
get started with you?
Typically we start by asking how you are

(21:44):
working today.
And we can even do something called a
reverse demo.
We often have people who go, oh yeah,
we have a pricing system or a pricing
process.
And as I said, 90% of the
time we're looking at some sort of overmodeled
Excel or Google sheet.

(22:04):
And so we just understand kind of what
they're using at the moment, the different pricing
modalities.
So are you using FTEs, retainers, time and
materials, fixed fee items?
You know, do you have, you know, what
is it, what is your framework?
And then is that different per client?
What is the, what is the stylized documentation
that you provide out to the client?

(22:25):
We can replicate all of that.
So at the push of a button, you
can either make it very simple to start
or very complex.
And we always advocate to start simple, just
starting with what you're doing at the moment.
We can import that in and click and
go.
And so you've got data input, which basically
is in your discovery process, you know, how

(22:45):
we price.
And a lot of agencies do not have
a process.
They just basically have, Hey, this is a
retainer.
I'm going to go into the data and
the detail inside the retainer and see what
kind of parallels I'll have on this new
opportunity.
So the, the interface for an agency where
a CFO, whoever's in charge of pricing is
the ability to have a, an interface of

(23:06):
your, so to speak, in terms of part
of your software to be able to pull
in like for like terms, pricing hours, modules.
Is that, is that what this looks like?
Exactly.
A hundred percent.
So we're basically giving you the building blocks.
It can be drag and drop as simple
as that.
And you can produce an output.
Various different people can build things.

(23:27):
They can put it through an approval flow.
So, you know, your FD can see where
something's at.
I mean, you talk about putting something together
for FTEs, but then it's like, that's hours
and roles and people again.
So what are they actually doing?
You can then describe what they're doing, drop
that on, burn the hours away from, from
the overall FTEs for the year.

(23:48):
And then at the end of the year,
you actually see what value is, what is
the team produced, the actual outputs, and you
have a better conversation with the client than,
well, you just burnt, you know, 6,000
hours across the team.
No, we've, we've built this, this, and this,
and these are what they've delivered for you.
It just makes it easier, more succinct.

(24:09):
It sounds like that ScopeBetter could become almost
a mark of excellence from a pricing point
of view, CFO to CFO.
I would love that.
I think for a business, it should be
your ability to better baseline your, your services
for the, for the success of profit.

(24:30):
That's what we're all here for.
Yeah, I would love that.
I would love it to be a standard
platform that agencies could feel comfortable in.
I mean, we've got a little feature that's,
you know, a heart, which tells you what
is the most sold item, and it can
give you that in order across different disciplines.
Certainly things like that.

(24:51):
You can get, you know, lists that you
can identify as the minimum you'd want to
offer to a client or things that you
should upsell, the concept of upsell in agencies.
We should have that, shouldn't we?
We should.
So, you know, one of the joys of
my job is coming across fascinating people that
run fascinating businesses.
Tracy, you're one of them.
I always ask this question of like, what's

(25:14):
on your reading list?
What's on your bedside table or your desk
or on your tablet?
What is it?
It just, I don't care.
I'm not trying to close business ideas, but
what are you reading?
And what, what?
Oh, this is like, this is like my
dirty secret, this one.
I'm reading a book at the moment from
Dave Asprey.
I'm a little bit of a biohacker when

(25:36):
I'm in my, when I'm, when I'm in
my own private space.
So I'm reading a book called Smarter Not
Harder, which is, it's probably the same philosophy
I have in business is what can we
do incremental improvements to improve where the business
gets to.
And I take the same in my personal
life.
So Smarter Not Harder is all around, you
know, the things you should be doing on

(25:57):
nutrition, your health, your sleep, you know, your
community.
So that's kind of, you know, what I've
got on my bedside table at the moment.
The book before that, I was reading a
book from Dan Sullivan called Who Not How.
So that's really around how you make sure...
Yellow cover.
I've got a stack and I hand it

(26:19):
out to all of our HR managers.
There you go.
Exactly.
So you understand the importance of having the
right people on the journey.
And I believe as well, you know, that
there's kind of people process platforms.
And I think hopefully we're on a platform
that can help you to scale right people,
right tools.
How do people get in touch with you?

(26:39):
How do we find you?
And how do we get in touch with
you?
It's really easy.
We are what we say on the tin.
Scopebetter.com is the website.
And of course, you could hit me up
as well on LinkedIn, Tracey Shirtcliffe.
I've got an unusual name, Matt, unlike you,
Mr. Wilson.
I'm very easy to find.

(27:01):
So Tracey with an E and then I
say it, shirt that you wear and cliff
that you don't want to fall off.
So it makes it nice and easy.
And there's only one, would you believe?
So it's an unusual name.
But scopebetter.com is how you find us
as a business.
That's great.
Appreciate your help on that.
And when are you stateside?

(27:21):
Are you attending any conferences or speaking?
I literally have just got back last week
from being at the ANA in Orlando.
And I also got a quick trip to
TSIA.
So yeah, that was a flying visit.
And then in three weeks, I'm presenting for
the four A's in Chicago for one of

(27:43):
their conferences on pricing and what agencies should
be doing in the battle and the challenge
that we're facing at the moment with AI.
Appreciate your time today.
I know we're on a different time zone.
We are 500degrees.com and Burning Questions, that's
it for us.
So adios.
Thanks, Matt.
Delighted to be involved.

(28:04):
On the next episode of Burning Questions, there
are signs everywhere.
Digital signage drives consumer behavior for just about
every business on the planet.
My guests, Beth Warren and Amanda Starr from
Creative Realities.
We're going to tell you how, when, and
where you can leverage digital signage to craft
experiences for your customers.

(28:25):
We want people to go from outside to
inside and then have this really amazing journey
inside.
Let's make sure that what we're buying today
is setting us up for like that really
sexy, amazing future state.
Sign up, subscribe, follow, and don't miss the
next episode of Burning Questions.