“Your responsibilities”.

Imagine an agency telling a prospective client – not one we’re working with already – that they had to actively participate in delivering to make the marketing programme effective?

I love it.

Now I’m recommending we put this into all new client proposals. It’s authentic and transparent and gives the brand clear boundaries and guidelines that will help us give them exactly what they hired us to do.

What do you do in order to improve your client briefing and agreements?

And so we hoped to find a strong follow up to that story and were delighted that Lance Wiggs wrote up a talk John Brackenridge did to the BBD CEO Summit.  We were hoping to find out exactly what John hired….

There is a bit of ‘history’ in the industry as Mckinsey was hired to advise on the structure of the growers versus the marketers in 1999 and recommended splitting the marketing and promotion function off into a ‘commercial entity’.

And we thought now was a good time to show off our original 2010 pitch.  What’s interesting is that little has changed.    We’d still recommend most of the same activity.

Download it here NZ Merino Proposal

Or review the slides.

Brian Carroll wrote a super blog post about this subject and came out with solid suggestions about how to get executive support for your proposal or project.

Working with larger organisations means that budgetary control is not always within the grasp of the person wo you’re speaking with.

Brian made these suggestions:

1. Identify executive priorities [align your pitch to their priorities]
2. Analyse your sales organisation [how much time do they spend prospecting vs closing]
3. Show what others have done [sell using case studies]
4. Huddle with your sales team [check you're on the same page on what works/doesn't work]
5. Develop a pilot

All great advice – read the full article here for the detail and the links Brian suggests.

But how to up-sell your proposal to the Marketing Director?

Last month we had three situations where Creative Agency Secrets was approached by a member of staff who didn’t have sufficient authority to buy our services – but they wanted to work with us.

Take a read of these three mini-case studies on how to upsell your proposal to your contact’s boss.

1. We wrote to the CEO stating the issue and a solution – he forwarded it to the young man who’d originally approached us with a note to investigate our ‘offer’…. Nice way to let the CEO think he had the idea first.
2. We took a detailed brief from the junior and agreed not to write a proposal, but to email him a critique of the company website and sales process – he then took that to the CEO for discussion with a view to getting a con call for us with the CEO.
3. We analysed the issue; suggested a small pilot.   This fitted the budget for which the executive already had sign-off but was below our normal charge out rate.  We worked to adapt the campaign to work on a parallel platform and to an audience we controlled [our blog newsletter list] thus giving the exec a case study pilot with measurable results which he could use to prove the case to his bosses.  This also enabled us to demonstrate our skill and set up the campaign to deliver the ROI needed.

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• price
• location (time zone to align with our client)
• did they answer the RFP questions

Easy.

How did I choose you?

So the sifting begins… and the first thing that went out the window was anyone who couldn’t or didn’t answer the RFP questions.

For a simple job, not offering all the information requested in the RFP meant immediate exclusion.  Reason: it’s not a multi-thousand dollar contract – why do you need to speak to me?

Price was the second criteria for exclusion – our client had  a budget and we needed to stick to it.  Reason: We decided to keep a margin above the quoted price so that if needed, there was slack in the quote to put right errors or get a second or third draft design within an acceptable price.

Location was the third reason – timezones and availability during our working day matter to us.  Reason: If we can never speak to you because of the timezone, it’s a no-go for working successfully together.

Lastly, the message in the covering letter counts.  In fact, it is probably more important than you think.  When two or more providers are very similar on all other assessments, this is the ONLY thing that serves to differentiate your offering.

Show me your personality

What can a covering letter show or demonstrate that engages…. take these extracts.  Which turns you on?

I’m sure it’s a bit surprising to get a simple letter, instead of a portfolio — but as I’m currently employed, I had set aside freelancing. Your project, however, has inspired me to reconsider.

and this one

After reading your posting for the need of someone with great English speaking and writing skills to 1) design a template from scratch using the client’s logo style and branding and 2) add new content to the existing HTML template on a monthly basis, I feel confident that I am the person for the job.

and another

Our Concern is currently located in Tamil Nadu in India; we are interested in applying for this project. We have deep Knowledge (More than 7 years of IT experience)in web design.

finally

I’ve created numerous email-templates in the past, my 2 favorite clients were 412media.com and bakertravel.com. I thoroughly understand the limitations email-delivery impose on design.

So check out your prose and take our advice:

• Make yours stand out
• Show off the “special ness” of your firm
• Add ‘personality’ by being personable, friendly and telling me something unique

Go knock their socks off.

Image by imjustcreative via Flickr

Sometimes it’s nice to be on the receiving end of some in-bound agency marketing.  There’s a nice branding agency we have been following based in Birmingham, UK.  They sent us a little slide deck.

It had some background slides about the company and some case studies of client work.  All very nicely presented.

BUT

There was no apparent purpose to the communication.  The deck arrived with a nice covering letter but no call to action, no reason for the email except to say they had some ‘exciting news’.

So we launched in to a critique and sent them this email

That’s a very interesting slide show you’ve presented. Thanks for sharing it.

However, you really do sell yourself short in an email shot like this – what would a prospective client like myself think after reading it…… “Nice slideshow. What was the ‘exciting news’ anyway? What now? Back to my work.”

Using some direct response copywriting in the covering letter/email can you provoke me to deliver a response? For example – get an answer to questions like ‘what did Rebecca think?’ and ‘could they do this for my brand?’ Both questions that will help to narrow down your list of ‘suspects’ and take them one step closer to becoming prospects and then clients.

What about building on the campaign like this?

• Having a special website landing page just for people who got the email?
• Use the landing page to measure click throughs and get a poll / survey / comments / discussion going?
• Sharing the slides on slideshare / docstock so others can embed them and let them go viral
• Putting them up on your website for others to ‘like’ on Facebook / Twitter
• Asking for a meeting in the email text so you can show your credentials in more detail
• Asking questions about my brand so I can see if I ‘suffer’ from the same problems you solved for your clients

Anything but just sharing your slide deck…

So that’s just my two pennyworth suggestions for you – free of charge.
You can take them and put them into practice yourself.

This is an unsolicited approach offering you some free advice on how to improve your marketing. I just happen to be on your mailing list and so hope I’m trusted.

And they replied

Thanks so much for your thoughts.

This soft launch does indeed have a plan underpinning it, with more activities to come.

That said your passionate response is appreciated. We will keep you in mind for future activities!

What would you do in response to an unsolicited email?

The RFP must die.

Or at least the way the process has evolved in today’s marketing world should. On the surface, it seems innocuous. A company or organization issues an request for proposal (sometimes masked as a ‘request for quote’) to several agencies, consultants for firms. They sometimes include ridiculous assignments jammed into even more ridiculous time frames and even sometimes have the audacity for the responder to commence work on creative concepts and ideas that solve the prospective client’s communications problem.

Then the company collects the RFPs, steals the ideas and doesn’t even change the account from the agency they were working with.

If you work in advertising and this hasn’t happened to you, how’s day three on the job?

RFPs from government agencies have spiraled out of control to a level that’s beyond even discussing. I recently received an RFP from a government agency that was 58 pages in length and somewhere along page 29 mentioned they wanted ideas to activate around (and I quote), “so-called social media.”

While I resisted the urge to reply to the contact person with a loud and swift, “Go to hell,” I didn’t respond.

The Problem With RFPs

Agencies want new business. Clients know this and have learned over the years that agencies will jump through crazy hoops to get it. Clients want fresh ideas. Agencies know this and will sometimes undercut their own value by sharing some of those in an RFP or pitch for new business. Clients have learned over the years that there are more agencies in need of new business than there are great ideas, so they use the imbalance to their advantage.

The majority of RFPs, in fact all but one that I’ve ever seen, require creative concepts in order for the agency to be in consideration. The one that I saw that didn’t, I wrote for a client.

This is nothing short of extortion. Especially when the RFP stipulates (which it normally does, or the agency is dumb enough to) the ideas are transferred and owned by the client regardless of the agency’s win or loss of the business.

So clients take advantage of agencies. Agencies know if they don’t adhere to the idea giveaway, their competition gladly will, so they have little choice but to participate.

The brand is to blame for asking for work without pay. The agency is to blame for giving away work without demanding compensation.

But neither side is likely to take the high road on the ethical side of things, so we have ourselves a Catch 22.

The Only Hope

All that an agency can hope for is market share or diversification of revenue that is so overwhelming they don’t need the new business bad enough.

In early 2009, while still working with Doe-Anderson, a great full-service advertising agency in Louisville, I had the task of putting together a digital marketing dream team of partners for a major brand. I hand-picked several of the top boutique firms specializing in social media, email marketing, search engine optimization, mobile marketing and design and called them each to talk about participating in my little RFP process. I clarified that I would not ask for their creative work, that I only wanted to hear how they would approach solving the communications problem at hand and how they would fit in with a large, multiple-agency team to work on behalf of the client. From that information, I would ask them each several questions and then choose the firm in each category I felt was the best fit for our needs.

When I called one of the companies I was told, “I’m sorry, we don’t respond to RFPs.”

Half of me screamed, “WHAT? DO YOU KNOW WHICH BRAND YOU’RE PASSING ON?” And the other half screamed, “GOT ANY OPENINGS?!”

It turns out that particular firm had developed several products around its niche and had the advantageous position to only work with companies they wanted to work with. They told me they don’t respond to RFPs because if the client in question wants the best in the business, they don’t need to compare and contrast, they just hire them. They only wanted to work with people who wanted to work with them. Period.

On one hand, it reeks of arrogance. Here’s hoping they never fall off that pedestal and need clients. On the other hand, it’s where I would want my agency or consultancy to be and I admire the hell of them for taking that stand.

If only everyone did.

The Solution

Like any long-standing, traditional process that has morphed into a problem (i.e. – health care, government bureaucracy, doctor’s visits) there’s no one solution to the RFP problem. It will take a combination of a lot of things to fix:

• Companies and brands need to recognize that creative concepts are an agency’s bread and butter and shouldn’t be asked for without compensation
• Agencies need to place a better value on their work and either ask for compensation, ownership or refuse to provide creative concepts
• Agencies that undercut competitors by violating that stance should be penalized somehow

Will any of that happen? Probably not. Ad agency and PR firm creative concepts aren’t exactly earth-shattering utilities that need some sort of regulation.

But sooner or later agencies are going to realize the cost-benefit of the dog-and-pony show isn’t in their favor and stop responding. If you think the current state of marketing is bad now, just wait until the crappy firms get all the business.

In that scenario, everyone loses.

Mitch Ditkoff has some more rational ideas for improving the RFP process over at The Heart of Innovation I hope you brand-side folks will consider as well.

This article was written by Jason Falls and can be viewed in full here

About Jason Falls

Jason Falls is the founder and editor of Social Media Explorer and its companion learning community Exploring Social Media. He is a leading thinker, educator, speaker and consultant in the world of social media marketing, public relations, digital marketing and communications. Please connect with him on Twitter (@JasonFalls).

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• 6 Powerful Questions Every RFP Needs (hyperdiskmtkg.wordpress.com)
• The Art of Pitching – Preparing for a Business Pitch (creativeagencysecrets.com)

• She thinks that an internal "business development culture" is important
• She advocates building closer relationships with existing clients so they don't re-pitch their account
• Senior teams in agencies do not generally have a new business background 
• Business development bonuses are mainly given to the biz dev team not the whole agency
• Agencies regularly pitch for new business without having a clear process for delivering success

My view is that the opportunity exists to train all client facing teams in the basics of business development.  Few people have ever been taught the principles of business developent.  They are not complex, but stringing them all together is the key to delivering competent and consistent new business successes.

[Pitch: I run training for senior teams and client-facing staff]

What a bundle of aspiration-clashed-with-reality is contained in that one phrase. But making a clear and attractive offer is even more important now that you have less time and more to achieve.

As before, I'm using my own recent work as an example for this post.  When I approach a new organisation, I have a pretty standard introductory email that includes information how I found out about the agency, stuff about me, what I do, my blog, and it didn't really say anything about anything other than to assume that the reader would have a look at hte blog and maybe sign up to read it or possibly forward the link to a colleague in biz dev. 

Far too vague and imprecise.

And so here are two new variants I've introduced.

1.  Change the subject line

This used to be "Rebecca Caroe" - and it worked OK because I have an unusual name and it wasn't clear from the subject what the email was about, I got quote a good open rate. 

But it now needs improvement. This is what I now write.

Subject: Interview Request [varied to Interview Request for Named Person when sent to info@ type email addresses].

That makes an improved impact (and about 250% hike in response rates).  Because most agencies want free PR and many seem not to mind it being in a blog ratther than a printed paper. 

Initial responses are good – replies say "I'll check your website and get back to you" and "Call me Friday".

2.  Call to action. 

This used to read "And if you want a chat about your agency – give me a call."

Vague and fluffy.  No clear reason to call.

Now revised to "And if you want a chat about your agency in an interview –
suggest a time for me to call."

There's a bit of psychology in this.  Because I am short of time and I want respondents who WANT to speak to me, I ask them to do some of the running.  They have to suggest a time to me that suits them.  This is important in the balance of interest between me and the prospect.  We begin to meet on a neutral territory.  i want something from them and they also want something from me.  

This balance of interest is subtle and often overlooked.  A push salesman will get meetings because the prospect just wants to get them off the phone.  But the value is lower than my phone or face to face interview.

STATUS UPDATE: In my pipeline now I have 

13 at Prospecting Stage (Including 3 new ones)

3 leads at Qualification Stage [two postponed to Jan 09]

2 lead at Needs Analysis Stage 

2 leads at Proposal Stage (both new)

1 signed contract (facilitating an awayday)

1 Lost to a competitor (poor research on my part, didn't realise I wasn't the only game in town).

1 new client started work this week with Naked Eye Research

[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!

I have just finished working with a client on how they can improve some aspects of their proposal writing: Here is a list of general points relating to proposal documents that you may find useful.

1. Avoid jargon and catch phrases. E.g. “something this business must turn around”…. literally this means nothing because a business can’t turn round. And “From the ground up”. And “We have been through the current website”. Have you? Or do you mean “We have reviewed the current website”? Check what you are writing isn’t ludicrous when taken literally. (A classic from a chartered surveyor client “The client cannot move premises because they are locked into their current office.” What he meant was that they had a lease commitment that they could not break which acted like a lock-in! But it made me laugh.

2. Americanisms are unnecessary in the UK. [I particularly hate their ability to turn nouns into verbs e.g. to schedule a date – urgh!]. Microsoft defaults to American English. Change your set-up. And beware Powerpoint’s spell checker. In early versions it was not possible to turn on a UK English dictionary. Rationalize, reorganize, utilize are all words that are frequently used. BUT, if the client is American, it may be appropriate to customize the document to their language expectations. Labor and Harbor are other common words.

3.  Phrases such as “We would…” and “We can….” sound conditional.  It is rather better if you want to appear like a larger business to say “My Company will”, “My Company recommends….”. Treat the company as a SINGULAR not a plural entity. Imagine there is a man called My Company as you proof read text and that you are describing what he does. Similarly the client is also singular. “Shell wants a campaign” not “Shell want a campaign”.

4. A word on apostrophes. These are for possessive nouns (Rebecca’s book) and not for plurals (user’s, PDF’s). Beware using when talking about decades: 30s and 40s these do not have apostrophes. An easy check is to write the number out as a word – thirties has no apostrophe and so the numeral won’t either.

5. Short sentences have greater impact.

6. Capital letters for proper nouns. E.g. the Government (but better still, specify which country’s Government)

7. Try to avoid words like ‘etc’ and ‘and so on’. Either complete the list of things you are using as an exemplar or finish off the sentence properly. E.g. “We will visit the marketing department, sales team, admin support desk, Chairman’s office etc” and replace it with “ we will visit the marketing department, sales team, admin support desk and all the other departments who will use the website.” Or just write out the full list of departments you will visit.

8. Positive sounding language. This is a personal sales tip that I’ve used time and again. Write the proposal as if the client has already agreed to work with you. Replace “we would do…..” to “we will….” and it all sounds so much more confident.

9. ‘Name drop’ your clients’ names into the text to prove your experience.

10. Create a “Reasons for working with My Company” section. Set out clearly what you can offer that will give the prospective client reassurance and confidence in order to buy from you.

11. And a thought on a possible additional section entitled “How we judge success” or “How you will know that the job has been successful”. I find that most clients who buy in expert services are doing so because they are less expert than you in your area of specialism. This means that they may be less able to judge the importance of your listed suggestions. Therefore making it easy for them to understand a new concept and what it does and how they can justify buying it in an un-patronising way is a particular knack that the best proposals do well.

12. Making a strong point and emphasising possible pitfalls is also important because it demonstrates your expertise. Take the sentence “It is also important to maintain standards such as usability and accessibility which can be corrupted as a website grows”. Do you think the pitfall of those standards slipping is better presented in this re-working? “It is also important to maintain standards such as usability and accessibility because these risk becoming corrupted as a website grows.”

And, to end, I suggest you take two proposals your company wrote a year ago and re-read them carefully.  How well did you do?

(Did you spot my spelling in point 2 about Americanisms?)