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.
Getting fabulous creative work from your marketing agency depends on the brand team giving the best possible brief to set up the work. Writing down what you want from your campaign and collaborating with the agency to agree the full terms of reference for the work you are commissioning is of the utmost importance.
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
Ever get the feeling that social media folk have abandoned normal life and now live in a parallel plane that bears no resemblance to reality?
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”
]]>A guest post by Jason Falls
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?
Paul Foley runs Noodle Coaching. He gave this talk to the London Communicators and Engagement Group last month. We were so impressed we asked him to write some expert articles for us. The first one publishes on Monday.
Enjoy.
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Image via Wikipedia
Sean O'Halloran over on the Hoop blog has written a great post on how Design industry insiders can get involved in telling the Government (UK only so far, sorry!) how they thinkg Design and creative should be purchased.
UK Government wants your views on how design & innovation can be bought and put to better use in the public realm. If you provide these services to public sector clients you will have a view on how the procurement process could be improved.
I see opportunities for new busines models such as
- Open competitions
- Crowdsourced solutions – multiple designers collaborating
- Opportunities to suggest WHERE design is needed that Govt hasn't spotted (reverse procurement?)
- Templated responses for speedy turn-rounds
- Escrow services for quick payment – benefits small business cashflow
- Feedback on who was selected and why – openness and fairness.
Put your answers onto the comments on Sean's blog (although I'd love to have some here too!)
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There are loads of great events that you don't have the time to attend. Here's a list of ways to find out what went on without going yourself.
- Find out what hashtag is being used and follow it.
- Set up a browser window to get all the tagged tweets in one place using Twitterfall
- Set up a twitter group of attendees and follow them. Tweetdeck allows you to form groups – I make a temporary one then delete it after the event.
- Search blog posts for content that hasn't been on Twitter. This is worth doing each evening / morning. Try Google's blogsearc h or the more well-known Technorati
- Mike Damphousse has written a great summary called "My favourite top 20 tweets" from the Sales 2.0 conference. Neat idea but worth favouriting each Tweet as it happens for ease of aggregation later.
There are some cunning things that can be done on web sites relating to information that is positioned 'above' or 'below' the page fold.
I got this page up when trying to unsubscribe from email notices
Subscription Management
We respect your rights and take unsolicited email very seriously. Your request will be completed within seven business days.
Please click the submit button if you do not wish to receive emails on this current audio conference promotion.
All well and good – but the button when clicked led to a page that said "Thank you. You will no longer receive future e-mail promotions for this conference."
Which I consider to be darn cheeky.
Paging down past a list of a dozen links to other promotional events, I found the button to unsubscribe from all their communications. Now this may be the difference between US and European companies, but in my view, this is inappropriate 'hard sell' that just doesn't work in today's connected world. PB Conferences was the firm.
If you find a company that behaves exceptionally well or poorly – you can rate them using Plebble. I've installed their toolbar on my web browser so that it automatically tells me if a site I'm visiting has been rated and the colours change to show positive and negative responses by customers. [aside - they call themselves 'a true e-mocracy', and I think that's true!]
]]>A case study showing how to find new prospects for your service using social media.
Here's a nice example of Twitter working for me.
I wrote a blog post about creative agencies not using marketing tools for their own marketing
I put it up on Twitter
It was picked up by people who read my Twitter stream www.twitter.com/rebeccacaroe
They valued it enough to "amplify" its message by "re-tweeting" it to their followers. I.e. they repeated my message and republished the link to the blog.
Result: their followers read my stuff, if they like it they'll follow me increasing my audience.
Moral: write interesting stuff and an audience who is interested in your area of specialism will eventually get to know about you. I expect more people will follow me as a restul.
The image is a screenshot from TweetDeck showing the people who repeated my message [RT is shorthand for re-tweet]. Tweetdeck is the tool I use to read my Twitter feeds – it helps me filter into groups, replies to my tweets, sort those that reference my twitter ID and shortens URLs. Handy.
Thanks to all of you!
Aside…. one of the RTs came from [twHIVE] Where it says
"twHIVEs are twitter accounts created to collect posts with a special content. This one is for webmaniacs."
Interesting… must investigate further. Seems its Frank Tentler playing around….
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