Creative Agency Secrets

Just had a good chat with Andrew about hiring new biz people. 

The gist was that most businesses get to a size when the MD can no longer do all the biz dev work alone.  What do you do next?

Options include:

1. train up a graduate
2. hire an experienced person with 3/4 years in the industry

My views were nicely aligned with his.  I said Oxbridge-type grads are good hires because they are bright, keen and want to rule the world quickly.  If you train them up for marketing jobs - but
for sales get a seasoned professional from another industry.  I don't think you have a cat's chance of training a grad to being a good salesperson quickly.

 There is another option that I neglected to add:

1. Train your whole client facing team in biz dev so they all go out looking for opportunities [plug - I can help with this] 

I recommended prosperconsulting.com Simon Ibson if you want to hire a sales person - key to his offer is that he doesn't charge % fees based on salary, its a flat fee PLUS he'll advise on how to use the person properly to support your business aims.

If you want to hire grads from top universities - go direct to their careers office. Usually they'll advertise your position free of charge.  That was how I found Frank Krikhaar for Pembridge.  Wonderful guy. 

 He grilled me quite solidly about my own biz dev methods… not sure whether I was teaching him to suck eggs or if there was a gem or two among the verbal downpour!

Doing ongoing research into less well-known places where agencies can go for help finding leads for new business pitches

Creative Brief - £300 bare minimum and £2,500 for the 2 Case Study package up to £4,500 for 10 case studies …. and when I searched on copywriters in London and South East there were none listed!  [but over 30 for the UK listed and so some work needed on sub-categorisation, IMO]

Skillfair - free to clients to advertise briefs and £200 for everyone else …. I have used this twice to post projects and got great responses and placed one job with an agency that applied.  A good service with excellent customer service back-up.

Agency Finder -a 'new' service.  Well it's Reardon Smith Whittaker getting the license to be the European arm of an already-successful US business.  Pay £295 per year and then up this to £3,000 p.a. if you accept the offer to go to a pitch… whether you win or lose.  One of my clients is testing it right now.  Will let you know if they turn up anything useful.

I have been invited by Designer Breakfasts to lead a "brunch workshop" on 17th April

They are running a series of events to help design businesses improve their skills in getting new clients.

the first event was Sir George Cox talking about the future for design businesses; then Frances Hinton on  how to ask the right questions of potential clients.

I will be moving towards practical strategies for finding and winning new customers and clients. As the blurb says…

 This month’s event takes that approach to a practical level – developing a new business methodology that will make winning SME clients part of everyday studio life for you and your team.
Creative business development expert, Rebecca Caroe will get you thinking analytically about yourself, the type of clients you work well with and how to differentiate your business in a crowded market.
You’ll design your ideal customer profile, learn how to create and convert new opportunities using deep listening techniques and ‘golden questions’ and get insights on:

• Auditing your new business strategy
• Developing disciplined steps to make new business work for you
• Preparing a marketing plan
• Committing to forward actions that involve your whole team
• Asking meaningful post pitch analysis questions

Book by email events@designerbreakfasts.net

Cost £95 including VAT.

A former client, Onzo , has successfully raised venture money and orders worth £9m. more here

sadly nothing on their own website….

Onzo is a data systems development
business, with specific intellectual property relating to the
development of display devices thatsupport smart metering systems.

Scottish
and Southern has also placed initial orders worth over GBP 7 million
with Onzo for the company's energy display products and specialist data
services and secured exclusive rights to Onzo's products and services
covering the UK and Ireland.

Reading the holiday edition Economist, they add in a load of great "wider reading" articles including this one on Beauty and Success entitled "To those that have, shall be given".  Sub titled, ‘The ugly are one of the few groups against whom it is still legal to discriminate.  Unfortunately for them, there are good reasons why beauty and success go hand in hand.’

They surveyed salaries for men and women in a range of countries and found that beauty has a premium and ugliness is penalised around the salary norm. 

China:
men -25% and +3%
women - 31% and + 10%

Britain:
men - 18% and +1%
Women - 11% and +1%

USA / Canada:

men - 9% and +5%
women -6% and +4%

Quite telling!  But what made me laugh was that Dr Daniel Hamermesh of the university of Texas studied Dutch advertising firms and showed that those with the most beautiful executives had the largest size-adjusted revenues - a difference that exceeded the salary differentials of the firms in question. 

And so the lesson for 2008 is that if you want to grow your revenues, hire beautiful folk to work for you!

These are not my questions… but they are good ones.  I have added in my own in italics.

1. What are "desirable" customer experiences, and how can you create them? And continue creating them regularly?
2. How can marketers turn customers into brand evangelists? 
3. And is WOM the only method they use to promote your brand?
4. Which social technologies help marketers better understand customer feelings, affinity, and sentiment? 
5. And how to engage through social media without appearing trite and mee-too-ish.
6. What is customer-centric marketing planning, and how should companies practice it? 
7. What is the role of marketing agencies in planning and supporting customer engagement? 
8. And how do specialist agencies collaborate around the client’s marketing campaigns in an appropriate manner?
9. How can you measure involvement, interaction, intimacy, and influence?
10. And do these 4 Is replace the 4 Ps of yesteryear?
11. How do B2B and B2C engagement tactics compare? And contrast.
12. How will marketing budgets change as a result of the focus on customer engagement?

I think the last question is spurious, customer engagement is far less of a force for change than media fragmentation…. but hey, that’s my view.

Any other things we should be planning for in 2008?

Just had replies from:

Lloyd Davies - Perfect Path

Marcel Cowan and Darren Shea - Cowan Group
Gary Jacobs - Fox Kalomaski

Hannah Locke - Burst Interactive / MyKindaPlace

Charlie Robertson - Red Spider

Andrew Roberts - Gravity

Gareth Thomas - BPL

Looking forward to it!

Following my post about the Angels Den investment club and my reservations about the business name and model.  It seems that my fears were partly valid.

I was called by Struan Johnston who has paid £99 and a is considering a further £400 to get his plan reviewed.  He posted a comment on the original blog post (see link above) and gave me a call.

Struan is concerned that this is a scam because there are no phone numbers to contact the organisation.  We spoke for a while and I have offered this blog as a forum for people concerned about the organisation to let us know about their experiences.

As luck would have it (ha ha) I met Bill Morrow at the Telegraph Business Club’s one day seminar a week earlier.  His contact details were in the literature and I reproduce them below - and they are on the original blog post so anyone needing follow-up go call / email him and Lois Cook his co-founder.

here is the text of the email I sent to Bill and Lois about my concerns and contact from Struan (he was cc and so should read it himself shortly).

Dear Lois and
Bill

I was at the Daily
Telegraph event two weeks ago where Bill was speaking / networking.  Following
that, and a posting that I made on my blog earlier (21^st August)
about the Angels Den service, I got a question written on my blog about you and
I have been unable to answer it.

Follow the link to see my
post and the question from Struan

Johnston

I think this shows up some
possible communication “holes” in your messaging and it suggests that there may
be some negative observations circulating around the blogosphere.  In Bill’s
profile from the Daily Telegraph Business Club handout it says “We are making a
lot of noise in The Press, come and see why.” 

Clearly you need to enable
more direct communication in a two-way manner with prospective angels and
businesses – somehow Mr Johnston fell through the gap.  He thought he got an
automated reply complimenting him on his business proposition and saying you’d
be back to him.  But he’s heard nothing.  For a
while.

If you want to ‘set the
record straight’ I would be happy to publish your reply on the
blog.

Best
wishes, Rebecca Caroe

These are things I enjoy and so do well.  I’ve done most of them many times and can give you references, if you need.

In no particular order….

1 - Mentoring and coaching anyone with business development responsibility or who has to collaborate with biz dev to do their job better and get results

2 - Moving the whole company to an Enterprise 2.0 operation.  This is a more open relationship with its customers and prospects though using web 2.0 techniques (for yourselves not clients) and creating the open culture internally that enables outsiders to recognise the ‘personality’ of the agency - bypassing traditional outbound communication methods

3 - Facilitating an away day for a client or your senior team

4 - Improving your new business methods and, particularly, pitching

5 - Running a training session on "New business for non-new biz people"

I work as a non-executive for a couple of my clients.  I came across this article from the Telegraph in which the differences and similarities of a non-exec and an interim manager are detailed.

detail below.

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