Corey Eastman, Biz Dev Director

Creative – what does it mean to you?

The Agency of the Future to me is all about balancing the client agency relationship.  In the past it’s favored the client and the agency has been reactive.  Blair Enns I’ve met a few times and I’m very influenced by his philosophy.  I look back to what he talks about – agencies being specialized and focused using conversations rather than presentations and being selective about who you work with.

I found the Teehan+Lax philosophy on the company page of their site.

John Lax and Jeff Teehan are two super smart guys.  When we started out, we chose not to rely on the legacy of working models passed down from old agency world as the basis for our new company. Instead, we challenged the conventional formula and created a new approach and process. Even as we’ve grown in size and scale, we still are committed to:

1. partners on every piece of business, from the first pitch through to the final deliverables;
2. small, agile teams to make the most effective use of your budget;
3. direct access to the people actually doing the work, so no more “broken telephone” or account managers promising things that can’t be delivered.

How did you get into new business development?

My background is competitive athletics – I played professional hockey which almost made competitive sales a natural transition for me.  I’m very driven and I have a strong passion for success.

What training would you recommend for anyone wanting a career in biz dev?

I think it’s all about communication and sharing stories and ideas.  Reading, writing, speaking, listening and body language / personality.  I did toastmasters and they are very good at honing speaking skills; get formal sales training and invest in a company that will invest in you – I did the IBM program; take ownership and read blogs; read books (Spin Selling is my favourite).

What has changed in new business techniques in the past few years?

Marketing and sales are converging – the reason I think is the internet.  It’s put the consumer in control.  The buy/sell process – which has become more digital.  We are moving from conducting business offline towards being mainly online.  John Lax always says “we have to create more value than you capture” quote from Tim O’Reilly. 

The long term goals are important.  The people we are selling to are online if we can put out thought leadership and give value to them.  We put out Photoshop documents that allow designers and developers to create their own work.  This spreads out our reputation, goodwill and value.  And puts us top of mind and so when UX projects they come to us. The tools available online make it effective and efficient.  CRM tools were just large enterprise and now you can use Salesforce cheaply.  We did use Highrise but we gave up on it in favor of Salesforce – the integrations and plugins are powerful.

 You read our #FutureAgency blog post series – what do you think the agency of the future will be like?

I read this about balancing the client agency relationship.  It favours the client – they come up with the requirements and strategy and the agency responds to that appeasing what the client wanted.  Falling back on commoditised tactical work.  By becoming specialized or unique this is the key to shaping the agency of the future.  You will gain the expertise and move from compliance role to being a practitioner.

You do this by being specialized, speaking and being selective. Speaking – moving away from elaborate pitches to just having conversations – use words rather than paper.  We are moving towards a policy of not responding to RFPs.  We don’t want to just write proposals – it’s not a good way to start an engagement.   If someone gets in touch we like to get to a diagnosis process as soon as possible.  We do a define:design:build process.  There are a lot of tools we use for diagnosis – internal stakeholder meetings, we use Forrester.

Being selective – we constrained growth by being selective in the amount of work we take on.  We are passionate about our business it shows in the quality of our work.

What changes has your agency made recently to adapt to the new business environment?

I don’t think we have really changed – we hold true to our values.  To make epic shit and the qualities that come along with that.  Stuff that gets used, talked about and makes things better: qualities are passion, evolution.  If I have to put in an RFP I have failed as a business owner we have failed in these values.  An apples to apples comparison means I’ve failed to differentiate our business.

What advice would you give to other agencies contemplating their future and the #FutureAgency model?

Culture – make one that supports and encourages continuous learning.  If you focus on what you value it reflects in your culture.

What are your favourite Biz dev blogs?

• Fuel Lines by Michael Gass
• Win without Pitching
• Sales School
• The Sales Hunter
• The Sales Blog by Anthony Iannarrio
• Tom Searcy – Hunting for Big Sales
• A sales guy.com – Keenan

Talk to us about Building the relationship – some call it the ‘hunt’ or ‘the seduction’.

I was a Creative Director at JWT Australia and we were pitching all the time during my 5 years there.  I enjoyed the challenge of the pitch but they were all run so badly.  This inspired me to set up Trinity P3.

Creative Business Principles

1. I believe in the golden rule – the man with the gold makes the rules.  If i want to influence the process I go with the gold.
2. The agencies pay enough in this process – biz dev is a high cost of business.  Marketers should only pay for them if they have abnormal requirements of the agency e.g. fully worked up TV commercials, or want to see 100 concepts.  And if they want to own IP.

I’ve seen clients make a token payment of $5k to the agency which is an insult as agency costs on a big pitch  can be $100k plus.  Think of behavioral economics – the client gets often more demanding after a payment like this rather than less so the money doesn’t help the resultant business relationship.

What are the changes you’ve observed in the business

I founded Trinity P3 in January 2000 and the biggest change in marketing is complexity – increased opportunities through technology, mobile channels, access to data, internet and of course consumer power through social media.  Marketers are struggling with complexity as there are multiple stakeholders internally and multiple suppliers externally.

On the pitching side you get these complex pitches – in media they could be looking at a media planning/buying agency, a data analytics agency and a strategy agency.  There can be multiple combinations of suppliers in the one process.  The brand is looking for the best combination at the end of the day.

How do you differentiate different agencies?

I talk about content creation and channel.

I’ve run pitches with 12 agencies but within that are 3 groups : traditional creative plus digital, digital specialists and creative specialists.  Ultimately a brand wants someone to handle all their content needs.

Collaboration – we’ve moved away from beauty parades to doing strategy workshops – the client wanted to choose media, creative and digital.  We ran the 3 in parallel simultaneously.  So all three categories participated in a full day strategy workshop with the client.  3 agencies in each of 3 workshops.

What were the benefits of workshops?

We selected the 12 agencies by reviewing their credentials first – what were capabilities of each agency business.  Next we looked at chemistry – understand the client/agency meeting and how that went.  The client then selected 3 from each skill group.

We put them together in grouping – which we worked out by asking them who they’d worked with [we didn't tell them who else was in the pitch] there were already alignments.  A few had already done work together.  And we considered the culture of each agency and thought who would fit well together and with the client.

We bought a creative from one group, digital from another.  Testing collaboration doesn’t mean you buy the package – the workshops were about working with the client and also with each other.  e.g. in one grouping the Creative agency completely dominated the digital agency.  They clearly didn’t understand what collaboration meant and the digital agency didn’t have the confidence or wherewithal to maintain their presence in that process – they folded under pressure.

How does agency collaboration work in practice?

Marketers find hit hard to articulate and manage the collaborative process: The client should set the rules.  It’s not within many brand managers’ skill set.  They don’t necessarily have the people skill set to do it – they often don’t think they have permission to manage their agencies.

We have marketers contacting us to say they have problems – they don’t like the confrontation of honest feedback with their agency.  It often means telling the agency things that are subjective or emotional and many people feel out of their depth because it’s not rational and can’t be justified.

How do you select the winning team?

We use score cards – we used to use both emotional and rational ones.  I dropped the emotional ones because I found they were mirrored by the rational one.

[emotional questions like: you've had a bad week but most of the issues with the agency were resolved. On Friday night select which one you'd like to have a drink with.

You've been given a career opportunity with a competitor: List the agency CEOs who you'd feel confident asking for career advice.]

The rational ones are driven by their emotions – so there was not point asking the emotional questions….When  you use scorecards – do you weight answers.  We don’t use them to make the selection – we use it to help brands structure their thinking.

We look at what attributes scored well. The danger with weightings is you are dealing with averages and weightings just upscore one average.  You can fudge the numbers.

So we discuss with the brand, “here’s the scores and let’s look at those who scored highly for the things you value”.

What is your biggest biz dev learning?

The biggest learning I made in 12 years of pitching was so many times clients would say your creative wasn’t up to scratch…. so everyone blamed me as I was the Creative Director.  I found that creativity is an easy way of saying actually we didn’t like the chemistry or the MD was sleazy.

Ben Wightman

How did you end up working in an agency?

I come from a sales background selling TVs on the high street 14 years ago. I was prompted to make a move to the online side of retail off the back of increasing numbers of customers speaking at great length about the products but ending the conversation by saying they were going to go online and check the prices.This was frustrating for any salesman.

I learnt about SEO, paid search and managing websites, affiliate marketing and then after a few years I decided to specialize in paid search.

What has changed for the high street retailer in the context of PPC?

Mobile is going to be a revolution for the high street retailer. There always seemed to be a division between the online and offline worlds. Many felt the internet was a threat to the high street then but more recently the growth of mobile and smartphones for mobile web access has changed.

In my opinion – this is the glue that will bring together the online and offline worlds.

Mobile is the medium that connects web users with the physical world. Mobile has a great synergy with above the line magazine or TV advertising.

What are your main findings in the Mobile Internet Report?

We have a home improvements client running TV campaign and we noted during the evening hours (8-10pm) when these run up to 39% of web traffic is from smartphones and there are significant increases in mobile traffic during these hours.

Before, the normal rates were 13-14% for that advertiser.

One study by Tesco found that 50% of all smartphone users used it for web browsing while watching TV.  So we quickly worked to tie this in with a mobile optimized paid search campaign to pick up the interest driven from the TV adverts.

How do you serve mobile ads?

We created a Google Adwords campaign tailored specifically to serve adverts to mobile users – in the ad settings set to serve out to mobile and smartphone devices and desktop.

Add to that writing advert text that speaks to mobile users. Anyone working in mobile search has to appreciate the subtleties of behaviours between mobile versus tablet and desktop users.

What is a customer trying to do while using these devices? e.g. mobile web use peaks during commuting hours and after the evening meal (watching TV or social time) but desktops peak earlier during the day during working hours and in the evening.

But the trends for mobile are very different. Using a smartphone for searches in a lunch hour means the likelihood is they are looking for quick easy information – not wanting massive detailed content. So mobile ad texts and landing pages should be configured to service that requirement,.

Do you do PPC for your own work at Latitude?

Yes – we do have a small one.  Is it effective? As far as I’m aware yes – it only has a small keyword inventory.

[We are interested in #FutureAgency - do agencies practice what they preach to clients].

How do you do new business development for Latitude?

I act as a voice of authority in paid search for new business.

Our agency set up is quite differently from others. We have a dedicated client services team who do the day to day contact with clients and our production team focuses on making the magic happen by building and managing the search campaigns. We work in different pods but close together.  Attending a pitch we’ll typically have a client services leader accompanied by a representative from each of the relevant production teams.

Are many Brands moving into paid search for the first time?

No most of our brands have a long established history with paid search – most come with an existing account and we optimize that. Many are moving from in house to outsourced experts. occasionally they move from another agency.

How can readers get the report and get on your mailing list?

When they are published we send the new report to clients first and  on our Latitude Group site.

Get the Latitude Mobile Report for 2012 

We caught up with Nick Grant the CEO of Killer Infographics – a busy man running a fantastically fast-growing startup.

How did the business start off?

Mid 2010 my business partner, Amy, and I were using inforgraphics as part of our content strategy as part of our startup zippycart.com it was a unique niche at the time as not many people were doing infographics then.

I was tasked with doing the marketing of the infographics – I was frustrated that when I submitted them to sites they weren’t responsive or asking for money or not post correctly and give us credit and link back to us.

Through that frustration we  thought we should create a gallery and use it for our own and showcase others and use as a critique about what they could improve upon. What happened was those critiques led to people asking of us to design the infographics!

What was interesting was that we thought this was a small side project while bootstrapping our other venture.

So how much did the business grow?

We did 8-10 in month 1 Q4 2010 and we hit 100 per month in Jan 2012.  So that is pretty significant.

Of course, nothing happens overnight.  This growth took a year but every couple of months we’d hone our process and fix quirks so we could scale up a bit.

We are now at stable capacity… we are doing far more than any one company out there in the infographic space.

How would you advise a biz dev person whether infographics would help them

A focused infographic that is based on your niche and is hosted on your blog may be useful. Thinking about new business in the traditional way – just adding in an infographic ….. you may not get instant measurable results.

But some ideas for biz dev people

1. The ‘guest infographic‘ guest blogging is very popular and widely used by sites….it gets face time with a product who may not know about the product or service.  Do the same – approach a site that has your prospects on it – talk to them and work with them to partner and ‘can we sponsor an inforgraphic for your site’.  Linking back to your site.  We did it for geek wire.com a popular Seattle local geek event site…. the image was called “Seattle geek versus Silicon valley geek”….
2. Use the infographic in unusual places – Geek Wire used it on the back of the agenda for the summit they had (conference) and everyone saw it with our branding right there.  That really gave good response, networking and i’m getting emails and meetings just from that one.
3. Trade shows where I can see an info graphic as a great take away. e.g. a company that’s new and doing trade shows to showcase their unique value proposition – you only have small interactions for people at your booth.  So having a nice printed infographic showcasing the overview of your products that they can take away and read later… and not have a 20 page pdf that is over-complex and won’t get read or get lost.
4. We have thought of doing it as a business card – statistics about the industry for example.
5. We have also done them for companies needing to get angel or VC funding – this is catching on in west coast – give as a take away… at a pitch it’s hard to keep someone engaged and listening all the time.  Present  your stuff and give a cool pretty sexy infographic that showcases everything about the business; the passion of the founders, where the product is at and the type of funding that they need to take it to the next level.  An Infographic is very similar to a VC pitch – what the problem is; how you’re going to attack it, what your secret sauce is….why your product is the next best thing.We had a client that is a news blog competing with Reuters – they try to find these “20 something” media planners and ensure their website is on their radar… and that their audience is differentiated so they can be part of these ad buys… they are not the best known player in the space.  They are going to use as a print mailer and use to cold call … “I’m following up on the info graphic I sent you….”  Which I think is a really good biz dev application for an infographic.

How to brief in an infographic

Work out the concept or topic – Think about it like a college essay.  State the problem or overview – what the reader will learn by getting into this, then lead into the main bits of information and close with the take-away

ideally you want them to learn one thing that they will share, learn or resonate enough to want to share it.

Make sure there’s a hook in the title and also in the content [niche based on survey/ results / cutting edge - new and fresh - something that hasn't had an infographic created about it before.]

What’s your process?

Up front we need to know

1. The aesthetic reference.  What the site looks like and what type of content the site would be receptive to.  e.g. Australia and UK have a different aesthetic that they like which is different from US/Cananda.
2. Understanding if there is any print application or is it web based only,
3. Learning if there’s any limitations any restrictions and size – depends on where it’s going to live e.g. the guest post site may be narrow or they may want Landscape not portrait.
4. For high profile sites – do you need to consider their brand guidelines or color palette or fonts.  Deliver a piece they will like and want to use.  If you miss the mark they may not use it.
5. The design process – chime in at the wireframe stage – ensure that everyone is on the same page.  Do the wireframe first (common).  Data and direction and research locked down and the aesthetic direction.  Do it timely and get back to brief fast

So what are you waiting for?  Go find yourself a topic and get an infographic about your client’s business.

Take a look at my Pinterest board “Creative Agency Infographics” for some ideas.

1. Remove all distractions

If your video conferencing interview is taking place at your home then make sure you deal with any possible interruptions before the interview. If Fido has a tendency to barge into the room every now and again I am sure he wouldn’t mind playing in the garage for a while until the interview is over. Similarly if you have kids who tend to be quite loud, it will make you and your interviewer lose concentration as well as making you look much less professional. Get hold of a baby sitter or have them spend the day at your parents or friends. Whatever you do, just try to be home alone when the interview takes place.

2. Look at the camera

Just about every interview guru will tell you to make regular eye contact with your interview and a video conferencing interview is no different. This can catch out many interviewees since it is a common habit to look at the computer monitor instead of the actual camera. The camera is transmitting the picture and therefore if you don’t look at the camera it will look like you are looking away from the interviewer thus giving the impression that you are not interested in the interview. If you find this particularly difficult to do then try putting a picture behind your camera which will make it feel like you are talking to an actual person when you are looking at the camera.

3. Proper grooming

When doing a video conferencing interview it is easy to forget that you are being interviewed for a potential job offer. You may be at home but that does not mean that you can take part in the interview in your favourite carrot fit jeans with a T-shirt that has some a funny comment on it. Make sure you dress like you would if you were participating in a face to face interview as it will make you look more professional as well as making you feel more confident.

4. Set the scene

When carrying out a face to face interview, you go to the interviewer which means that the interviewer will make his decision based on you and you alone but on a video conferencing interview, the interviewer will be able to see you and your room therefore your room should also give a professional feel. I am not saying that you should completely redecorate but make sure all dirt has been cleaned and the room looks well organised. In addition to this, temporarily remove any posters which may embarrass you during the interview although sensible pictures and paintings can help create a more sophisticated atmosphere. This will help to give a positive first impression and will start the interview on a good note.

5. Practice makes perfect

Rehearsing your answers to popular interview questions as well as general interview techniques is essential for a successful interview but a video conferencing interview brings with it its own challenges and therefore more factors need to be added to the mix when rehearsing. You will need to get into the habit of talking out aloud when nobody else is in the room so set up your own video conference system prior to the interview and ask your friend to interview you. After the interview ask your friend to give you some feedback.

And so I've decided to run an occasional feature on marketing agencies and how they have won their client instructions.  If you have something you'd like to Shout! about on this blog.  Please get in touch.

Why we won BT.com – an interview with Simone Sulsh, Client Services Director, Crayon

We worked with BT.com previously on a project basis and they worked out what their needs were across the whole bt.com business. The remit changed and became a new pitch.

Two pitches were arranged, one for marketing communications and one for back-end techhy work. We pitched for the marcomms work.

We won it because of our flexibility – BT.com had been used to working with much bigger agencies – we were doing just as good a job if not better than them. 

We have pitched against their other agencies on other occasions and always won.  We believe that Crayon offered all they could get from a bigger agencies but better and quicker.  For example during the project work earlier in the year, we did a strategic piece on broadband.  It took us 6 weeks and would have taken others 3 months to deliver.

The key to winning this pitch were our relationships, our flexibility.  And we blew their socks off at the pitch! 

We gave a rigorous response – the whole agency got behind the pitch.  It took about 6 weeks from start to finish.  We weren't doing anyting else, in fact we turned down other pitches to concentrate on this.  The pitch was led by Richard French, our MD. 

Advice to another agency facing a similar pitch against larger firms – belive you can get it.  Show this by your passion and energy.

For examples of Crayon's work go to BT.com – everything there is stuff we have worked on.   

I am going to be up there with Alex McKie and the guys from Plot…. Wicked! 

11.00:    Research in the real world – Alex McKie

11:30:      Meet the people formerly known as… users – Gill Wildman and Nick Durrant, Plot

He twittered it here 

Really looking forward to this. 

Tim has set up a pub sessio for any Uk blogger / social media types who fancy hooking up with him.  Wednesday 2nd April in the Chandos pub on St Martin's Lane, London WC2

Sign up here .

If you are a girl geek – keep checking the site as we may have organised an exclusive breakfast with Tim…… my brilliant idea [thanks Sarah for the support!]

He's going to do a mash-up map showing where his interviewees came from to SXSW in Austin. 

[Backstory: I first found Skillfair.com about a year ago because they advertised a job creating a micro-site for the River and Rowing Museum. And my sport is rowing, so I picked it up on an alert service for key words. I watched the site from a visitor registration for a while and found jobs that suited some of my clients listed there. My interest built and so I emailed Gill asking if she’d be available for an interview which I could publish. Here it is.]
So how did you start the website?
The Skillfair story began was I went freelance 7-8 years ago when children were young. My background is in IT and I got a contract from former employer, and then another from a mate…. I do specialist work and was on an internet directory and got a third contract from an enquiry off the directory. This led me to the thought that we needed one of those directories for everyone.
Sounds logical.

So how do you get consultants and work opportunities onto Skillfair?
It is hard work doing marketing and sales, when you are a freelancer or independent consultant. And it isn’t most people’s core specialism and so it gets put aside and you end up with the ‘feast or famine’ problem of work. So I created a marketplace for independent consultants in a range of disciplines. To give them a feed into the marketing system that keeps going in the background while they are working with clients.
Skillfair went live early 2002 which was an interesting time then. I had had no work for 6-8 months and got a job shortly after the site went live. The business ticked along for a couple of years. I discovered when you build a website if you don’t spend a lot of money on it you get what you pay for. We needed more behind the scenes in admin – and decided to systemise everything.
This was a key finding. You have to be systematic for all stuff, if you find yourself doing something manually more than 3 times…. like sending customer service emails and enquiry replies ask yourself how can I make it happen without me doing it?
Building a scalable business requires a system to do this for you. This is key to Skillfair’s success to date.
And so what’s happened since then?
We have experienced gradual and organic growth since then. We have not had massive financial investment. The UK economy is at the point where lots of people are going freelance and seeing this as a career option and a positive step. Some of the reasons are work:life balance and not wanting to commute.
And also companies and government want highly skilled people but don’t want to commit to employing them permanently because of financial and legal aspects of permanent employment. The coming together of these two movements is making a wave that didn’t exist before.
How do consultants and freelancers find Skillfair?
Consultants find us though search engines. We use Google ads and have found that placement is important. We do telemarketing as well. We call up people who we think are consultants and ask if they want to be registered for new work. We do the initial work to register them and then leave it up to them to decide to participate further by sending them weekly information.
We also buy lists for the telemarketing. And referrals from other consultants are another very key source of new registrants. Of course, that is how you passed Skillfair’s details onto your clients.
We have worked hard to make it easier to get people to refer their contacts through the website, as they trust what Skillfair is doing. We get about 100 – 200 referrals per week. And 30-40% of paying new joiners come from referrals.
So where do you find the work opportunities?
We use a public sector tender alert service for a lot of client work and we search 6-700 websites per week and OJEU to find the lower value tenders. We have a system for this (of course) to make it less time consuming. (Gill wrote some of the code herself and sourced some of it elsewhere). Skillfair also pays for some services to support this.
The private sector projects come from Google adverts in the main. Search engines are very accurate ‘help with marketing’ means that’s what clients are looking for and / or are a marketing consultant. We find that we get clients precisely when they are looking for advise and support and not at other times.
We now have a database of past clients and we send them newsletters and details of new consultants joining the system and we can send them a regular feed of consultant names for specific skills if they want that.
It is more of a challenge getting clients to say what they want… it is the interim management agencies who are interested in this and more able to say what they want. And we serve them too.

So what are your future plans for Skillfair?
We have worked hard to make a successful business and as I said before, we want it to be scalable. We’ve been working on offering Skillfair as a white label service for professional bodies and trade associations whose membership includes independent consultants. Our service will allow them to provide opportunities to these members without getting involved in admin or commission arrangements and will boost their revenue at relatively low risk. Our goal is to have at least one of these organisations operational by the end of 2008.
Thank you very much for your time, Gill.

And anyone wanting to know more should take a look at Skillfair.com (and please mention that you found it from a link at Creative Agency Secrets!