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.

I started the company in 1999 and it initially was running events for the tech sector – mainly around VC fund raising and information. I found a lack of business information in the business media about the tech sector generally which gave me the idea.

I decided to compile some data and start producing a report. Now  it’s become a tool for the sector and the only publication that quantifies and monitors the technology sector.  We research around 3 areas ICT, hi tech manufacturing and biotechnology.

How do people find out about TIN?

Not easily! Initially I did the report and it had 50 companies in 2005 and we expanded to 100 companies to get more of a representation.  There are now 200 NZ and 50 Australian firms included… .it has got itself a profile within the Tech sector.

Last year for the first time we engaged a PR company just as the document was starting to be used more by Government – the Ministry of Economic Deveolopment and Science and Innovation and other agencies who work to stimulate the economy. In NZ word of mouth happens.  And the PR and Government use has pushed the growth further

I’ve never understood PR well but since the launch on Monday we’ve been in 12 publicatios and 2 TV channels.  And now a blog!

How do you find the companies?

Initially it wasn’t sceintific – just ones I knew.  Now we have  sponsors who put forward names, and we also the scan media for reports on the tech sector and  also word of mouth.  Companies now come to us and ask why they aren’t in the report.   Which is what I dearly wanted to happen.

How to get your firm included

Typically people phone or send in contact information off the website.

The research takes the form of exhaustive contact with the companies – we start with 250 firms send them survey forms and ask to fill them in – after the cut off period we send them the information about their profile for verification and we also ask for CEO photos from leading companies.

Feedback - we try to take a step up every year – we try to keep polishing it for graphics and focus on the issues that are relevent and trying to distil what’s going on.  Perhaps our biggest achievement in NZ has been to change the understanding of the impotance of the technology export sector.

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.

Michael is the man behind the wildly successful app for online video presentation sales, Kineticast.  If you have never seen it working, watch this video presentation showing step one of a sales funnel, prospecting.

What’s special about KinetiCast?

We focus on helping B2B sales people be more effective. Our software helps people to put their message in the hand of the right people – to look at it on demand using a web link, no downloads and no attachments.

You can track your presentation; find out if they forwarded it, what they looked at and how many times they looked at it.

What gave you the idea?

I am the founder – I sometimes think that I have a defective gene because I am a 4th generation entrepreneur!  I spent time in software companies implementing ERP, then doing 6 Sigma and lean enterprise and also spent time in sales management too.

I was looking at the sales process and trying to work out how to make this more efficient.  When you look at the sales funnel – identify, contacted, qualified, propose and closed.  There are different yields of prospects at each stage – the thing that gives the biggest improvement impact is the least efficient step.

Sales people are discouraged from sending more information to prospects because the sales team loses control.  But buyers sometimes just want the information to do an analysis.

Kineticast can provide information and show who is using it and who is not – so now I can focus my sales effort on those who are looking.

You have just started using social media, what are your impressions?

In the 4th quarter 2008 we had to market KinetiCast ourselves and I started to focus on inbound marketing so we got a HubSpot CMS account and a new website; did Twitter half heartedly.  But I realised when I go to buy something, I don’t look at advertising and when I want something I go look for it.  We are a new concept – most people don’t know what an online presentation is.  Most, who do know, think it’s a marketing tool.

We are a sales person’s tool.

We started blogging – I had a false start with a ghost writer and it wasn’t good. So we pulled the plug and then I had the software folks build a blog aggregator – SalesAce  KinetiCast and it builds lists of sales experts.  I screen 30 blogs a day and I approve 3 or 4 to generate fresh content which we aren’t writing.

I started using LinkedIn – I had an account and never invited people to it, I just accepted.  I had a FB to use personally which I got from FOWA conference from a user interface design seminar – I was the only one without it!

I hired a VP of sales December 2009 – he is a fantastic blogger and we have started again.  This has helped with our traffic.  We keep hearing that Twitter is a great source of traffic.  We are up to 1100 followers now and growing at a pretty good clip.

Majority of our traffic was coming from LinkedIn, but they have changed how they do things now and we are losing it.  Customer Think, Naviga, and larger sites re-post our stuff.

What’s great about Twitter?

Well you found us there didn’t you?  It was the third person who has gotten in touch with us using that medium.  I believe it works for business to business sales.

Zemanta is a superb recommendation tool for blogs – we’ve bee using it here on Creative Agency Secrets for years after seeing it on David Cushman’s blog.  Its easy to use, helps us create professional content in minutes and best of all enables our content to feed back to other blog sites.

What gave you the idea for Zemanta?

My co-founder and I were working on a project for national TV as journalists, we noticed that professional media journalists have a huge machinery of assistance and research, proofreaders and picture editors to ensure the article they write at the end is perfect.

An individual blogger has none of this.  He is on his own.

At the time, blogging was becoming an important media channel online.  By using smart technologies we could create a similar experience for a blogger as a professional jounalist.

We did a proof of concept and we raised angel funding.  Version 1 got seed funding and launched.

From day one every blogger who tried it totally liked it.  We got rave reviews calling Zemanta the “blogging god”.

In 3 years we have almost no complaints or people saying it is useless.

What does Zemanta do?

Zemanta is your friend that helps you tell a story on the internet in the most interesting way.  By listening closely to your ideas  you type in the blog post draft, Zemanta finds pictures and explanations to illustrate what you want to say. By looking at other ideas that are similar to yours Zemanta lets you know where they are and how they connect.   You then click and drag them into the post draft as images, related content, links and so on.

What are the main features of Zemanta?

People are excited about how much time it saves and discovering content that they didn’t know about before. Every blogger who uses it has the right to share his blog content into our network to become recommended quotes for other bloggers creating cross-promotion that wasn’t possible before.

How many bloggers use Zemanta?

Tens of thousands.

How is it useful for business bloggers?

It is even more important that business blog posts look professional and are set out and featured as a professional article would be with references, illustrations and pictures. Creating a “rich” post is even more important.

At the same time business blogs have more interest in being promoted on other blogs as references and bringing in more traffic.

What is your business model to make money?

Two ways – we offer our core technology as an API,to clients like Flight Share and Lonely Planet, who want to categorise their content.

Promoted recommendations is the second method of monetization; some businesses who are not our users would still like to contribute content to us so we charge them based on the number of times we recommend their stuff.

Their stuff is of core value so it goes into the same recommendation engine but when it displays, the word ‘promoted’ is next to the link.  Yahoo Finance is our largest client for this service.

Take the Zemanta demo yourself – post any text into the box and watch the images, tags and related content recommendations display for you.  Suggestion – use one of your recent blog posts as the text!

It was by accident – part of my job is letter writing in a creative way for all our clients. The medium doesn’t matter, the creative idea behind it is the bit that’s important.

My idea was to write a book about writing letters, coming up with ideas and the process to do it.

I finished the book and sent it off to some publishers. Pearson Professional was interested to meet me. But an hour after the meeting, it was clear to them that the book was too niche and they didn’t want to publish it. However, they did want the “Brilliant Pitch” title as part of the “Brilliant…” series.

So what happened to the first book?

The analogy is with fly fishing – specimen hunting with the right fly for the right depth, speed of retrieval. All of these things work. Choice of fly, presentation, tackle. The first book hit the filing cabinet and hasn’t seen the light of day yet!

Do you use the book for your own business promotion?

I had a few speaking engagements with D&AD and the City Womens Network when I mentioned it. Sometimes, during a pitch, I brought the book out and showed it to prospective clients. But you have to be a bit careful because one of the agency owners to whom we were presenting our credentials (who we won) said “well you’ve got some fucking confidence giving me a book like that at the start of your pitch.”

What is the core of your message in the book?

The premise of the book is the “IEDA” process but that is not how people buy in a pitch environment.

What you need to do is change the model and the letters to IDEA

• interest,
• desire,
• evaluation,
• action.

The personal process creates the desire ahead of the decision process. You have to have created the desire before you walk through the idea.

The event pitch is an opportunity to close a decision that is already in the minds of the audience before you arrived. Because if you don’t do that then you can be sure someone else has done it ahead of you and then you have a really tough job on pitch day to turn round a lot of human and personal factors and that’s the hardest job.

Has pitching changed much in the past 5 years?

I think on the face of it yes, because everything has changed in the past 5 years.  But the core principles of effective pitching have not changed at all.

Some things we have lost sight of during this period, e.g. the pure human side of the process.

What else has changed in the past 5 years?

In the world of creative agencies, the paraphernalia of digital has changed – doing pitches on iPads – so the tools of the trade have changed, using moving pictures more than PowerPoint slides which were mainly words. The quality of visual presentation is a lot better there’s a lot of visual content too. The key to success remains the personal side. The fact that “People buy people” is as true as it ever was.

In my experience, the prevalence of things like email make it harder to engage with people. Without email 20 years ago in order to communicate with a pitch prospect during the process you would talk on the phone and meet them face to face. It’s harder now to build personal chemistry.

This is important particularly for agencies. Because often the work entered at the pitch doesn’t actually run. The reason is the clients aren’t as focused on the creative work as the agencies are. Agencies tend to think that the pitch is about doing great work and if it is presented well they win. For clients, they are looking to buy a team of people they can work with next year, the year after and so for them the piece of creative work that you happen to have produced at that moment in time isn’t the most important thing. For clients the question “Do I think I can work with them long term and are they the kind of people who can figure out the right answer going forward?” is more important. This is the process, the workings out and the talent around the table. People, personality and chemistry are still a big deal.

Tell us more about your business

Ingenuity ABM stands for agency brand marketing. When we started we did one thing – we helped agencies find clients. We still do that but we also help sports rights holders find potential sponsors and partners, we run new business events and we also now help clients to find agencies in the digital and direct space.

These are all related and I think we are in the business of “joining up the dots” and trying to do that in a more intelligent and creative way in order to be more effective.

One thing that has changed dramatically over last 10 years is clients’ tolerance threshold for new business approaches – they are all too busy.  Agencies have never been the biggest part of a marketing director’s job but there are too many agencies.  Post recession there are lots of small start ups of people who have fallen out of bigger agencies.

They are trying to win huge amounts of new business – in a random, shotgun, undifferentiated way. Our approach is more audience-centric. Starting from the needs of particular target audiences and we work back from there which is how we construct intelligent processes based on either a known need of a prospect or a pretty good hypothesis to attract their attention.

In order to make a successful approach, you have to do that and be relevant, timely and preferably brief.

And so as the book says pitching is a process and winning new business is a process and Ingenuity ABM are at the front end of that.  We open up conversations and build relationships and when the time is right for both parties we can put them together and they can engage in a meaningful discussion which will result in a client finding a new agency and the reverse.

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We met Scott first through SXSW a couple of years ago and recently he was named number 73 on the Fast Company list of most creative people.  he set up Behance, they “design products and ideas that empower the creative work to make ideas happen”.  Now that’s quite a claim!  Their creative network was the first reason we spoke, because they want to recruit UK designers to the site.

What first gave you the idea for Behance?

There are two things that really inspired me:

(1) The stuff that makes our lives interesting – the art, the design, and all of the original content – is all created by the creative professional community.  But, unfortunately, creatives in particular face unique obstacles when it comes to actually making their ideas happen.

(2) There is SO MUCH discussion in the creative world about inspiration and creativity, but very little discussion about organization and execution. I found this VERY frustrating. It seemed that creative professionals would become more effective – and thus benefit society even more – with assistance on execution, efficient self-promotion, and organization.

We created Behance with a very specific mission: To organize the creative world. We are not trying to increase creativity. On the contrary, we are trying to help creative leaders harness their own creativity and actually make ideas happen.

How many designers are registered with you now?

The Behance Network receives over 5 million visitors per month. Most of these are creative enthusiasts and recruiters, a much smaller and elite subset is active creative professionals.

What do you find your users most value about the Behance site and its services?

Our goal with the Behance Network was to maximize exposure and help organize the creative world’s work.  When we interview some of the world’s leading recruiters and agencies, they complain about typical “portfolio sites” and how difficult it is to organize and navigate creative talent.  We developed Behance.net to be a neutral, powerful platform that organizes creative work based on location, field, and – to some degree – quality.

Behance.net is NOT designed to be a “social network.” We don’t use the word “friends” in Behance.  Instead, the platform is designed to push careers forward.  When you add a new project to your portfolio, it is automatically displayed in any other network you are a part of (such as AIGA or MTV) as well as other galleries, circles, and collections across the web.  You maintain complete control and ownership of your work, you select privacy and copyright settings, and you are always associated with your content.

We have already received incredible success stories from members who report “career-changing opportunities” that resulted from the Behance.net platform. And, we have some incredible new features and partnerships in the pipeline that will bring Behance.net to a new level.

Have you had any surprisingly famous people join?

Many, but we focus less on “fame” and more on productivity…

What’s the idea that has come out of the 99% that you think has the most utility?

One very simple point: As creative people and teams, we need to spend less energy on coming up with ideas and more energy on execution.

Where next – what’s in the pipeline?

I would tell you but then I’d have to…      All I can say is that we are very focused on adding value to the careers of creative professionals.  We believe that the platform will thrive as long as we remain the leading source of new opportunities for the most talented creative people and teams on the planet.

If you want to join the Behance Network the sign up page is here. Please mention where you heard about it.