Happy Triple Threat Thursday!
Here’s one Signal to notice, one Spark to try, and one Shift to consider.
This week’s theme: Most revenue problems aren’t dramatic. They’re subtle. And they sit in the places people assume are “fine.”
📡 Signal — What’s Changing
The agency world is starting to compress, and it is not because creativity declined. It is because clients are getting more honest about what they will no longer tolerate.
The Omnicom and IPG merger is a clear indicator. Large agencies were built for scale. Layers. Specialization. Volume. That model made sense when clients needed armies to get anything done. It makes less sense now.
Today’s buyers want clarity. They want alignment with revenue. They want work that sits inside their system, not work that forces them to build a side system just to manage the agency. When that gap grows too wide, clients rethink the relationship.
This is the real shift. Not the merger itself. The declining tolerance for disconnected execution.
Why it matters:
If the largest agencies in the world cannot survive without tighter integration, no mid-sized company can either. The market is telling you something. Work that floats above your operating system will not carry its weight.
What to do this week:
Look at your external partners. Name the outcomes they own.
Then check whether those outcomes actually sit inside your revenue architecture.
If they do not, you are carrying drag you cannot see yet.
The model is not collapsing. The tolerance for fragmentation is.
⚡ Spark — What to Try This Week
Use the “Should This Be AI” tool
AI is everywhere right now. People reach for it the way they used to reach for another meeting or another dashboard. The intention is good. The impact is mixed. Some work gets better with AI. A lot of work gets muddier.
You and your team need a simple way to tell the difference.
Not a long debate. Not a six-month roadmap.
A quick filter that helps you decide where AI belongs and where it does not.
That is what this tool does.
You type in the task or idea.
It gives you a clear answer. Yes, No or Not Yet.
And it explains the reasoning in normal human language.
Why it is useful:
Most AI mistakes happen because people skip the judgment step. They go straight from idea to implementation. This tool brings back the part that matters. Would AI actually reduce effort here or would it create another layer to manage.
Try it here:
Should This Be AI?
How to run it this week:
Take the last few AI ideas floating around your team.
Run each one through the tool.
Only move forward with the ones that make the system lighter.
Let the rest stay human until they earn their place.
Good operators use AI with intention. Not impulse.
🔄 Shift — How to Rethink It
Default belief: Hire stronger specialists.
Better lens: Strengthen the architecture they work inside.
When performance slips, most companies look at the people first. They assume the team needs sharper talent or more experience. Sometimes that helps. Most of the time it does not. The real issue usually sits underneath the work, not inside the individuals doing it.
I was working with a IT services company that kept losing momentum halfway through their sales cycle. Smart team. Solid demand. Nothing dramatic on the surface. But deals kept slowing once prospects moved past the first few conversations. It looked like a skills gap until we walked through the steps in detail.
The truth was simple. They had no shared definition of what a qualified opportunity looked like. No consistent way to describe the first thirty days of an engagement. No clear handoff between the person who sold the work and the person who owned delivery. Everyone was improvising their own version of the path.
We did not add headcount. We did not rebuild the pitch.
We wrote the sequence. We aligned the language. We made the entry point predictable.
The system got clearer and the deals started moving again.
Why it matters:
Companies lose speed in the gaps between functions. Not because people are underperforming. Because the architecture forces them to bridge uncertainty that should not be there. When transitions are unclear, progress slows no matter how strong the talent is.
How to apply it this week:
Pick one point in your revenue system that always feels heavier than it should.
Talk to the two people involved in that handoff. Ask them how they define it.
Write the real steps. Keep it simple. Make it visible.
You do not fix system drag by hiring. You fix it by strengthening the architecture your people depend on.
💡 Operator Insight
I spent time with a leadership team this month who thought they had a performance problem in sales. The numbers dipped. Deals slowed. Everyone assumed the team needed sharper training.
That was not the issue.
When we reviewed a few opportunities, the real pattern came into focus. Each rep was using a different definition of what a serious buyer looked like. One person qualified on budget. Another on timeline. Another on interest level. The team was not misaligned on effort. They were misaligned on the foundation.
Once they agreed on one definition and one set of criteria, the pipeline settled. Momentum picked back up because everyone was finally working from the same starting point.
Most performance issues are not about volume or skill. They are about inconsistent structure.
📚 What I’m Reading
🔗Omnicom and IPG Merger
The largest agencies are consolidating because scale without integration is becoming too expensive to sustain.
Insight: When the architecture cannot carry the cost structure, the model reshapes itself.
🔗MoAI Launch
Agentic tools continue to accelerate, but they only create leverage when the underlying system is strong enough to absorb them.
Insight: Technology multiplies clarity and exposes weakness. It never replaces structure.
🔗Future of B2B Marketing
Buyers are rewarding relevance, simplicity and trust more than volume or production.
Insight: Personalization works when the story is clear and the path is easy to follow.
📈 The Takeaway
Revenue moves when the structure supports it. Everything else is effort without leverage.
Thanks for reading Triple Threat. See you next Thursday with another Signal, Spark, and Shift.
— Alexandria Ohlinger
p.s. If this helped you think sharper or move faster, share it with someone who builds the way you do. And if you want more practical insight between issues, connect with me on LinkedIn.