“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?
]]>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:
- Identify executive priorities [align your pitch to their priorities]
- Analyse your sales organisation [how much time do they spend prospecting vs closing]
- Show what others have done [sell using case studies]
- Huddle with your sales team [check you're on the same page on what works/doesn't work]
- 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.
- 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.
- 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.
- 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.
Related articles
- Aha! Marketing Leaders Reveal Their Most Powerful Marketing Insights from 2011 (customerthink.com)
In the book you use the phrase “Hybrid agency” – is this commonly used?
It’s not yet common. There’s another PR book coming out describing us as hybrid professionals which I have read a preview. But I do believe that the agency of the future will be more blended or mixed than today’s specialists.
How do you keep PR 20/20′s sales funnel full?
Athletes make great salespeople – I look at everything in that way [a sports metaphor]. Many people have an interest in sport and the motivation, passion, drive commitment works in business and sport. Hence athletes make great salespeople.
What is the most under-learnt part of biz dev?
I think it is to listen instead of talk – too many people think they have to have all the answers. The best [new business people] keep asking questions until they can recommend a fit.
Our process is based on keeping digging until we understand the situation. We find the answers are unique to every business. Learn to be patient and ask questions.
How do you handle working with other agencies?
If a customer comes to us and wants to work with us and we know there’s another agency on their roster we are very transparent. We are willing to work and it must be collaborative and we have to be on the same page. Not fighting on strategy and direction. We perfer to control the strategy if we can.
But sometimes it’s we just don’t get into bad situations like when an existing client brings in a new agency – we would walk away if it doesn’t make sense for us.
Does the client have to sit everyone down round a table and initiate the discussion?
It depends – if it’s the CEO of a small business then it probably is more the agencies initiating the sharing discussion. They may not be so marketing savvy as a larger brand – one agency may need to take the lead to start talking.
But in a larger enterprise – a sophisticated CMO will have a plan why they have multiple agencies and will lead.
Do you ever subcontract?
Yes – more now than in the past. It was part of the throught behind the Blueprint book – I believe agencies will have to do it more in future. It makes sense now – we are very cautious. We bring on people who have core competencies e.g. graphic design and web that we don’t have.
What advice do you have for people who are doing biz dev for agencies?
The best biz dev people are also the consultants – if it’s a straight sales person is for them to gain a deep understanding of how client relationships work and how services are evolving. When we’re on a phone doing a discovery process the people draw on their campaign experience to know what’s best.
I see it being difficult to not have agency or client experience and be able to sell our agency services properly.
My advice would be to a biz dev person
“Learn the client services side very well.”
If you are a client services person – don’t assume you can natrally be a sales person – there are tricks of the trade and so take the hybrid mentality to see both sides.
What will the agency of the future be like?
Not what we see today….I think the big agencies will still be around – some will have figured out how to evolve but most won’t have.
New names will be driving the innovation and direction of the industry – the big professional organisations are very relevant now e.g PRCA, and ad agency organisations rely on traditional firms for revenue $$ and membership revenue. so their views are slanted towards what these agencies are thinking….I think it’s going to be smaller to mid sized firms will drive the future of the industry. Rather than the massive conglomerates who will struggle to manoeuver to where they need to be.
In the meantime, why not buy the book [affiliate link] it’s in hardback or Kindle editions.
Related articles
- The Marketing Agency Blueprint (twistimage.com)
- PR Agencies That Survive Will Be Inbound Marketing Agencies (hubspot.com)
Related articles
You worked in a traditional agency – how did they view biz dev?
They didn’t really have it – they were reliant on the traditional networks of the founders. The growth was dependent on that and referrals. Some limited efforts to do DM pieces and promotions.
Is that normal?
Yes I think in a lot of cases – agencies are built that way. We did research in 2010 into PR agencies only a small % were blogging. They were trying to provide social media services but weren’t doing it wll for themselves.
Agencies tend to come last and that’s why they haven’t done good biz dev work. Take care of your own needs after everything else. I find that messaging and websites are often outdated and they rely on reputation and networks and RFPs for new business.
In the book you liken your business plan to a football field – Why?
I tend to see everything in a sports metaphor. Whether we are bringing in entry level talent (the draft) versus free agency. When I was trying to figure out how to explain to clients how the [online] market was evolving and how these strategies were integrated and they rely on each other, I tried a Venn diagram and in my mind I started thinking about watching
Drive Charts – showing progression down the field 10-20 yard line. This was an analogy – we have to do each of the phases systematically to eventually get to the end zone or the goal. I also wanted to represent different things at once – audiences (stadium) the brand (a place). See Paul’s diagram here.
Inbound Marketing Gameplan
How do you manage the agency website internally?
One of the senior consultants is also the agency’s marketing manager and is also the blog editor. In most cases her role is to keep the editorial calendar up to date and the team of the writers – we try to do 1-2 per week. We also have a premium content strategy – the book started as a 2010 e book; we did “The marketers guide to web design”. We also have plans to do premium content which isn’t paid for but is just high quality. Gated content = lead form to access.
How does she report and on what?
Same as clients – traffic, organic, lead generation, blog subscriber base, social media and how engaged – followers and likes we have. We do a monthly scorecard – pull the data out of GA and Hubspot and create a spreadsheet thta shows core numbers, assess it and 3 takeaweays – highlights, learning snad what we’ll do next month.
Tomorrow, read Part 2 of the interview with Paul.
In the meantime, why not buy the book [affiliate link] it’s in hardback or Kindle editions.
Image by antitezo via Flickr
Is it possible that a creative agency can build a pipeline of new business without having to respond to RFPs as a means of finding new leads?
Two articles in my RSS feed today struck me today as being relevant to this topic
The first is a slide deck from the excellent Courtney Pemberton and Tom Ross
Where the presenters contrast Schipul - a 37 person web development firm who do low-budget websites and lots of them; with Four Kitchens a 12 man operation whose average web development budget is $250,000. Which firm would you rather do new business development for? I know my response!
And the second is a USA Today expert opinion from Steve Strauss. He details the hideously comic-if-it-wasn’t-so-awful conference call with a web development team who fail to deliver even a basic understanding of their prospective client’s business. I am sure it happened just as he recounts
•They internally scheduled the wrong time for the call (we are on the west coast, they were on the east coast).
•Once the call started, 15 minutes late, two of the folks on their end couldn’t find the website we had asked them to review with us on the call.
•The boss was not on the call at the start and they scrambled to find him.
Finally, 10 minutes into a call that was already starting 15 minutes late, the boss jumped on the line. He didn’t really know the purpose of the call, or who I was, or what we were doing, and so asked “So just what is it you do again?”
Are you disorganised in your new business process?
Making new business happen is one of the 7 steps in our new biz dev process. Internal team management in advance of and during briefing calls is a ‘hygiene’ factor. It is necessary as the underpinning to a solid new business pipeline.
You may be finding a new marketing agency to work with or briefing in new campaigns for your existing agency.
Both require communication of the utmost clarity.
And so whether you are a brand who uses agencies; a brand who has an internal marketing department or an agency wanting to use best practice with your brand clients, here are two slide decks and a blog post which will help you to write the best possible creative brief.
Thanks to Dare who created this slide deck as a training event for their internal staff.
How to write the brief
- Brand Proposition – what is it?
- What do we want to achieve?
- What is the one key insight?
- What do we want people to do?
- How should we tell them?
- Why would they?
In the deck the authors show good, mediocre and poor ways
B2B marketing briefing rules are different
I read four parts of a blog all about using social media for ‘selling opportunities’ B2B. And I couldn’t help thinking that the author had taken a text book and put search-and-replace for any ‘old style communication’ for ‘social media’. It was pure theory about marketing lead generation for sales peppered with new words like Twitter, social media and social platform.
Bunkum.
Why is social media not the future of selling?
In the early days of CRM, the company I worked for sent out email newsletters, wrote books and undertook public speaking engagements explaining the new wave of business school theorising – customer orientation. I LOVED it. I drank in the kool aid with everyone else.
Now some 20 years later, I find it easy to spot the lack of practical detail and delivery experience which exposes those who have not yet earned their business spurs through a full business cycle.
You can tell when
- the new meme is over-hyped
- users forget the ‘old’ world too quickly before everyone has migrated to the new
- detailed “how to” anecdotes and case studies are lacking
Understand the theory
I am not saying that it’s wrong to have management and marketing theories – but it is only the starting point.
Get your theory tested.
Start to find people and organisations who are actually doing stuff with the new methodology and then write your ‘how to’ manual and blog it in four equally long parts. But give me detail about what you did; what was said; how you responded; the tools you used; why it didn’t work this time.
The point about the blogosphere is to share knowledge – not just dangle theoretical management jargon carrots and hope the ignorant and desperate bite on them.
Tomorrow we publish our own real life case study on “Turning the tables and becoming a customer not a vendor”
]]>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).
Related articles
- Negotiating the RFP Process – Advice for Communicators from Robert Udowitz (prconversations.wordpress.com)
- 6 Powerful Questions Every RFP Needs (hyperdiskmtkg.wordpress.com)
- The Art of Pitching – Preparing for a Business Pitch (creativeagencysecrets.com)
“My friend fancies you.”
Woo Hoo show me the money!
- They have visited our site before (we can see the company name in red shows it’s already in our Sales Tractor database)
- The link text indicates that it’s come from a link inside their own website
This second point delights us.
We can’t find the exact link because it’s behind the firewall or intranet hosting for BBH. What it shows is that someone there has noticed us out here and linked to the site. Curiosity has been noted.
Why would BBH do this?
Well there are many reasons – someone might have been browsing the web and found our site. Nice and definitely possible.
The truth is probably that they also check links into their site and noticed clicks coming in from Creative Agency Secrets off a blog post in which BBH were mentioned. [Brands Seeking Agencies on February 17th].
So what should you do?
Research your own incoming links. And answer these questions
- Why do you get visitors from particular sites,
- Can you improve your marketing through those sites,
- What can you do to begin a relationship with visitors from those sites?
Enjoy.
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