Do you often find yourself giving strategy away for free, burying it inside larger scopes, or treating it as a one-off exercise rather than the foundational work it truly is?

In this episode of The Agency Blueprint, I’m joined by Anastasia Laskey to discuss one of the biggest challenges agency owners face: selling the value of strategy. Anastasia is the founder and president of Ground Control Research. She has helped agencies transform how they deliver pitch and price strategy by bringing insights, structure, and clarity to what can often feel like a fuzzy, abstract-oriented process. 

Listen in to learn how to price, pitch, and communicate strategy more effectively to command premium fees while also differentiating from competitors. You will also learn how to slow down and diagnose the client’s real problems, quantifying the business impact, and tying strategy to revenue, growth, or risk mitigation. 

Key Questions:

• [01:19] How can you reframe the strategy conversation so clients see it as a business essential, not a “nice-to-have”?
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• [03:34] Are you spending enough time diagnosing your client’s problem before pitching solutions?
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• [17:26] Do you have scalable options for strategy to match different types of clients, or are you reinventing the wheel every time?
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• [21:37] Where does AI fit into your agency’s strategy process—are you using it to replace critical thinking or to enhance workflows?
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• [24:51] Do your clients “not get strategy,” or are you failing to illuminate its value in their language?

What You’ll Discover: 

• [01:44] Why framing strategy around problem-solving resonates more with clients than simply positioning it as a first step in a process.
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• [03:44] Why skipping problem diagnosis undermines agency confidence and creates client objections later in the process.
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• [06:47] How asking smart discovery questions reveals blind spots, which immediately shows clients the importance of strategy.
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• [09:17] How to act from abundance, not scarcity, and be willing to walk away from clients who won’t align on the value of strategy.
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• [11:48] The three phases of strategy: gathering insights, turning them into a strategic POV, and delivering tangible outputs that guide implementation.
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• [14:36] The importance of tailoring strategy to client context; what works for a multimillion-dollar campaign won’t fit a small launch.
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• [17:47] How to decouple the core process from the size of execution, offering tiered options to standardize and scale strategy delivery.
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• [22:19] Why AI should be a workflow accelerator, not a replacement for human insight, curiosity, and precision.
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• [25:01] Debunking the myth that “clients don’t get strategy”—the real issue is agencies failing to illuminate their value in the client’s language.

Connect with Anastasia