Remember, many of these businesses visit our site because they are looking for information about new business and about creative marketing agencies. They may be in the market for a new agency – try getting in touch.
If you’d like to purchase just one or two of these brand names listed above, get in touch. $3 each. No need to subscribe!
Agencies
- The Media Group, design agency working cross-platform, Nottingham, UK
- Signify, web and mobile app development, New Zealand
- Ogilvy, above the line advertising, New Zealand
- Multimedia Productions, local commercial production agency, Tampa Bay, FL, USA
- Marketmakers, telemarketing and telesales services, UK
- Focus Creative, graphic design creative agency, Paddington, NSW, Australia
- TMC, the marketing company, Paderborn, Germany
- Lewis PR, Technology public relations, London UK
Brands
- PVC Tech, specialist supplier of engineered polymer films, CA, USA [not actively looking but sorely in need of a new website]
- Taconic Farms, suppliers of life sciences solutions (aka mice) to the health research industry, USA
- Sallfort, a private bank located in Basel and Zurich, Switzerland
- Car Trim, quality components for the automotive industry, Germany
- Cambridge Incubator, business acceleration services, Boston, MA, USA
- New Zealand Trade Development Board, Government department, Wellington, NZ
- Internet Archive, the ever-fantastic Way Back Machine spidered our site, Washington DC, USA
- Abacus Bio, business consulting to the agribusiness sector, New Zealand [so in need of a new website]
- Sonic Automotive, new and used car dealerships, USA
Brands Seeking Agencies
- Centrinex, call center management services searching for handling objections when cold calling, USA
- Town shopping centre searching for ‘website holding page designs’ Wales
- Electronic instrumentation firm seeks ‘mobile app planning sheet’, NH, USA
- Public services organization wants help writing a creative brief, Canada
- Nationwide Recruitment agency looking for “agency pitch questions”, UK
Online clothing brand looking into average number of agency pitches, USA
RFPs
- Medical Korea have issued a RFP for a partner marketing agency. Korea
- The Hawaii Tourism Authority has issued an RFP for the marketing contract for Europe’s major market area. USA.
- Sacramento Regional Transit RFP for On-Call/Task Based Advertising and Marketing Services. CA, USA
- The United Way of Collier County is seeking proposals to advance its Marketing and Communication efforts. USA
- The Vermont Lottery Commission is seeking proposals for Advertising and Marketing services. VT, USA
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:
- partners on every piece of business, from the first pitch through to the final deliverables;
- small, agile teams to make the most effective use of your budget;
- 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
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I cringe most when creative agencies themselves do bad creative on themselves.
How could this text be improved? [apart from the spelling mistake].
Which comes first – getting customers or raising capital?
You prove the model before you get investors in. If you can show repeat revenues from customers. a trial is good but it’s not enough. You have to have a customer who uses your solution in anger – this gives third party validation of the value proposition. Without this, who will give you money?
Most good investors won’t invest unless a company has customers.
Who is the sales person?
You have no choice – it has to be you. You want to hire someone who has a good job and is already selling to your customers – he won’t leave a good job until your offer is proven.
Who buys your stuff?
Who in your target audience – which individual. Who makes the decision? It’s often the women – in Japan that’s institutionalised. So what’s your message to the target and to his wife? Is it different?
The farmer makes an application decision and the farmer’s wife makes a financial decision – an un-complex jury.
A complex jury is a healthcare sale – it needs a clinician to decide but you also need clinical buy-in, a leader/ceo to support and ensure you know there’s budget. The budget guy is often “Dr NO”. What does it take to make him say yes? Show him the ROI… the value proposition. How are we going to make/save more money using your stuff? In a financial crisis it has to be ‘must-have’ because nice to have isn’t good enough.
Would it be easiser to sell your stuff if you didn’t get paid until they got the benefit?
Would that shorten your sales cycle? This concept is mission-critical for entrepreneurs. Reducing the resources it takes to make a sale and accelerating the pace at which people decide to buy from you.
SUMMARY: know well the value you deliver to your customers: Only then you’ll know what the price is!
Generally speaking early entrepreneurs don’t spend enough time making it easy to do business with us. This is one way – you make money: you give me half of it.
They ‘hockey stick’ is a myth too many people hang their business on. In Ken’s Aspen Technology company they fought hard for 17 years – it never was easy. We just worked harder than our competition – our technology wasn’t better than theirs.
When can you hire a sales guy?
When you can afford to (necessity) when you don’t have time yourself. Most sales people you hire should be better than you. When can you hire them? When they can make money for me.
You won’t be able to hire until you have figured out the business model, qualified the value proposition, got the beach-head customer (the biggest farm/ a known hospital) and then you can go and hire a hot shot salesman. “I’m a kid and I need adult supervision.” The stats are compelling – you freaking won’t make it without an adult on the team!
The concept of the “jury”
Understand there isn’t one point of decision especially for B2B sales – understand who they are, functional roles, drivers and limits to their power. Think about what it takes to land an Olympic Games for your City – a winning city bit manager said that he knew the shoe size of one Venezuelan delegate’s daughter! Because he needed his vote.
The sale is everything about the primary driver in commerce = gaining more market share. If you can help someone get more customers they’ll like you. If you can’t you are “road kill”.
Do you increase revenue or decrease costs?
Questions:
Thoughts on the prospects of saturated markets
Negative things: I don’t want to talke about my company until he signs asn NDA because they’ll run away with the secret. Crap. It’s all about execution. Secondly VCs are in the business of helping other companies grow and they won’t screw their reputations by stealing your idea – they’d also just hire someone to build your idea if they wanted it as it isn’t their skill set.
Positive things: If you are worried about talking to a competitior, you shouldn’t be talking to them about how your product is designed anyway. Talk about your passion for solving a custoemr’s problem. Speak about the problem and your startup situation will be obvious Demonstrating you have mastery of the problem is the best way. Selling internally on behalf of the champion is important (I give them a cheat-sheet to follow to get the deal to go through).
Networking follow up advice
HP makes software in perforated tear sheets slightly larger than a business card that you can use at a party – business card on one side and the problem you solve written on the other side. At the end of the party [put the cards of the people they care about in the left pocket and on the way out they throw away the cards in the right jacket pocket]. When should you send your thank you note to someone you met in the evening. Send it before he goes to bed… he’ll be checking his mail before he goes to bed. Don’t get lost in the clutter. How do you write 30 thank you notes after a party? Stay sober – if it’s business you can’t drink it is work, your shareholders pay for you to get your butt there, it’s about meeting people who may buy your stuff; write the letters beforehand 80% will be the same… letterhead, standard explanation about your product – you just top and tail add 20%. Focus. Go to the party to meet one person.
Tips about selling intangibles
If you don’t have a value proposition – forget it. Change your business model. They usually won’t be ready to buy until they get stung once.
How many people use carbonite?
It’s a cloud back-up for everything on your pc and is constantly updated. David Friend – founder is a friend. Get Ben Kepes to look into it – diversity.net.nz Ken’s an investor in carbonite.
We are getting enquiries from people interested in taking stakes
if you are planning on growing, even if you have 65% growth margins you’re going to need outside capital. the longer you wait the less dilution you’ll get. But the longer you wait the higher quality investors you’ll get. If you are over a barrel you take what you can in order to survive but that often screws up the company later. Wait until you have a really good value added investor. Assume you’re successful building your business in NZ you will need more money to go to Asia or USA to capitalise on the growth potential – think about having money that will work for you more than just working capital, open doors, group people, get access to other money. So the angel investors that you get should be entrepreneurs who have done it before and have a rolodex address book that is powerful and is wiling to use it for you. And has access to more institutional capital when you’re ready for your next round of funding.
]]>Staying current with procurement purchasing and how to assess a supplier of web design can be short-circuited by reading Lance Wiggs’ excellent quick assessment of the local market.
If you’re not from his locale, still read it.
- The points he makes about Pricing for services in the Buyers Guide section is instructive. Many agencies are still charging by the hour and it’s clear that over-charging still exists.
- Intermediation or sub-contracting is part of the process and this affects both buyers and sellers. Transparency and honesty are the best approach here.
- The attributes of a “good client” are excellent. Being clear about your role as the buyer is important.
- The Agency Sellers Guide has some great points. Too many agencies rely on word of mouth promotion.
- The attributes of a “good seller” are important. Know thyself.
And finally, the comments. I was the first (*) but there will be many more.
Here’s my penny’s worth of commentary
Lance, great, incisive analysis as ever. Thanks for taking the time to do this work on behalf of the whole industry. I’m a newcomer to Auckland and my agency doesn’t do web design but I will comment on the two parts of your piece that are not wrong, but may mis-represent the way part of the industry is changing.
I am writing a series of blog posts called “The Creative Agency of the Future” #FutureAgency in which I’m collating examples from the business operations practices of agencies who are challenging the status quo and looking for improved ways of delivering excellent marketing services to their clients.http://creativeagencysecrets.com/category/creative-business/future-agency/
Here are two ways that leading agencies are different from the ones you researched:1 – charging. Some agencies are moving away from time/hour charging basis and onto a fee wholly based on results, or partly based on outcomes.
2 – business development. This is my specialism. It makes me cry that marketing agencies can’t market themselves successfully. Many whine about “procurement” or “RFPs” or “pitching and coming second” but the underlying fact is that a planned approach to HOW you win new business tends to deliver MORE new business. If you don’t do it yourself, outsource. It’s the lifeblood of your agency and as you say yourself, relying on word of mouth may not be sufficient for your business survival.
Remember, many of these businesses visit our site because they are looking for information about new business and about creative marketing agencies. They may be in the market for a new agency – try getting in touch.
If you’d like to purchase just one or two of these brand names listed above, get in touch. $3 each. No need to subscribe!
Agencies
- Select First, public relations and online services, Tunbridge Wells, UK
- Wibroe Duckert and Partners, creative advertising agency, Denmark
- Ogilvy Group, advertising and integrated services, Frankfurt, Germany
- AAC Saatchi and Saatchi, above the line advertising agency, Bermuda
- Eden Co, editorial and design services to publishers and media, London UK
- OSL Marketing, we put brands in consumers hands, Montreal, Canada
- White Horse Company, holding company for website design and other companies, Wiltshire, UK
Brands
- The Jim Henson Company, yup, those clever fellows who invented the Muppets, USA
- Property First, UK estate agency in East Anglia, UK
- Calypso Co, a caribbean bar in St Kitts – someone working from ‘home’!
- IGC Commerce, procurement advisers and specialists, USA
- PG Engineering Solutions, professional services, Puerto Rico
- Co-operative Light and Power, utility, Minnesota, USA
Brands Seeking Agencies
- Financial services wants advice ‘managing relationships with creative agencies’, UK
- Aerospace firm wants help ‘pitching to agent questions’ USA
- Global automotive parts supplier looking for “creative agency database” UK
- Healthcare provider needs “questions to ask a new agency”, UK
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Understanding lead generation
First, let’s define what a lead is. This is a person who visits your website and submits their personal information in exchange for free information from you, such as newsletters, eBooks, product consultation, webinars etc. Leads are by no means your prospective customers; they’re people who show some interest in your products and services. Whether they eventually make an order depends on you.
When too much information is asked
Whether it’s B2B, B2C or B2P marketing, it’s a person involved in the relationship making the final decision. Human nature is what you should rely on when creating a list of questions. Asking for too many details, especially sensitive information like age, can deter many of them from filling in your subscription form. No one wants their privacy to be invaded.
When too little information is provided
On the other hand, knowing only an email address and the name is not enough for your sales team to get their priorities right. As a result, they may focus their efforts on leads that won’t buy from you anyway and pay little attention to those who are actively interested in your brand. The best thing here is to ask your sales team how much information they need to know and then build your subscription form with that in mind.
The latest updates on lead generation tactics will be available at the B2B Marketing Summit.
Get more information on the B2B Marketing Summit Event
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WildfireApp poor quality support
The details of my issue were not resolved by the first ticket I submitted. Then, in order to provoke a response (rather than raise a new ticket) I had to use their ‘customer satisfaction questionnaire’ to add in my supplemental question.
I’m not going to spell out what it takes to offer good customer support but this fails on several levels.
The WildfireApp website fails to give real people’s names, the email contacts for support are all the same (whatever office you use) and I don’t want sales.
Can I speak to a real person?
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Tell us about how you think agencies should get paid?
We have some views on agencies and compensation….I know a number of people in the Pitch TV show Tracy Wong and Liz Paradise from Mackinney – the commentary on pitching in general and giving away ideas and what makes each agency unique is the people they have and the ideas they generate. When you give them away cheaply at the start of the relationship what you’re left with is the cheaper commodotized part of the relationship – and that’s just execution.
Most agencies charge on a time cost basis which lawyers and accountants use the agency revenue model is devolved. We compete for the least valuable part of the industry.
I have been with (32 people) Firebrand 5 years I head the Creative Department we are 15 years old. Evolved wholehandedly – started as promotions – retail activation and off-pack and then moved into a traditional type agency TV, Print, Outdoor and more recently it’s got harder to compete and margin is harder to come by. When I got here we came in with some different ideas that we were small enough and nimble enough to change the way we operate. It doesn’t make sense to do it the way others are doing it especially if it’s ‘less than ideal’. Plenty of agencies continue to do it.
So how do you start changing the way an agency operates?
We took a hard look a the agencies we admired. I always worked for high end agencies like Fallon. Teasing out the best pieces – seemed to start to make sense. We looked at our compensation agreements and figured out what was broken.
When you look at the time costs system and you look at what clients want – they don’t come looking for more billable hours but that’s exactly the way agencies want to set up their agreements. They are incented to take longer and to ‘do things’ rather than ‘accomplish things’. Clients come looking for results and the value we bring through ideas that ultimately will drive their business forward.
So you have two un-aligned objectives.
How did you go about testing the clients ability to accept change?
We started to sit down with clients at the beginning of the relationship to establish the goals. and to move to being value based – charge our clients for the value we bring which ultimately are the results. Internally this has ramifications – we know that when we work best it’s when we collaborate. We pull in (even on conncepting sessions) PR, media, planners so the team is broad based. If you did it on a time cost you couldn’t charge for all those people. We got to ideas better. So we charge for the results.
Here’s an example: Product sales like cars – they want 500 new sales for the next year. They know they have a 10:1 ratio of leads to closes. We say OK we’ll get you 50k leads…. that ‘s the agreed goal. We may ask for back up or rationale on the numbers.
So we say if we hit the number – what’s it worth to you to achieve that? Understand the cost per conversion / acquisition. The number is usually the budget they had planned!.
If we hit that the agency gets paid X. If we fall short the agency gets paid X minus (there may be some bands). If we exceed the number by % we get 2X. So there’s upside for us and for them.
What we found is that as long as the client is winning they are happy to pay for it. We write that into a normal contract.
What is your motivation to change how you charge?
We want to be in the business of creating value. Messages are just a means to an end. If you focus on the doing then you lose sight of the ultimate goal. No two compensation agreements are alike. We have a committee – the value council – who look at each client and agree the terms. Some are equity positions, some are flat fee based.
Do you have to lead to make these changes?
Yes we absolutely have to lead that conversation. In fact most clients are resistant to it even though it’s to their benefit. “What’s the catch?” The catch is if you win, we win….! If we do something that has amazing success we should share in it. Agencies have been dinged for so long – they get paid no matter what. When the average CMO tenure is 2 years or less the agency just ends up losing out all round.
We pass our expenses through at cost, as before. We do have some arrangements for media commissions. By and large if we have to bring in external resource we don’t mark it up.
What’s the future?
There has to be a split in the industry sometime. There are things we’ve allowed to happen e.g. the revenue model – we spoke to a guy who consults on value based compensation. In the ’50s average margin for an agency was 40%. At the end of 2011 the average margin was 8%. And that’s the commoditization – clearly that’s a race to the bottom and that has to change.
For us the idea of pitching business of getting involved with big search consultants that is not a good place for us to be. We are going to have one foot in our bucket from the beginning because of our size. We go directly to clients and say ‘hey look we would have spent X$ pitching you and how about we take that money and put it to productive use for you? You get to test drive us as a group of people. We have a lot more success with that.
There is a certain amount of integrity – clients don’t take advantage and walk away. Instead of being in a position to take what we have to give and then go – they usually decline the opportunity if they don’t intend working with us..
I hope this discourages brands who won’t fit our personality from working with us. We are fully aware that we are not for everyone – it’s a test for them as much as for us. Mostly you don’t know if the client is someone you’d like to work with until you’ve spent time in the car with them.
#FutureAgency
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Celine Rich and Julian Darley of Post Carbon Institute (Photo credit: terriem)
Golden questions are a way to uncover more information from a discussion than your prospect is aware. See our other blog posts on the topic in the categories list on right sidebar.
Fund raising to make a movie is difficult for people new to the industry. Here’s a question Julian is using when he works coaching other script writers and directors
Have you ever tried to raise money from your friends and connections?
Were you successful?
The answers you get, tell you the degree of commitment the person has to the project…and whether they are ballsy enough to see it through to the bitter end.
Julian gave us another example of a script writer who came to him for advice and the conversation was looking like it was wasted time….He had approached Julian despite not wanting him to direct his film. Julian turned the conversation - and it was only when money came up that the real conversation emerged and the real needs of the scriptwriter came to the fore. After this point they had a constructive discussion about doing business together.
Low budget movies
Take a look at the movie below – it was made by Julian and his team.
Please write a comment and tell us how much you think it cost to produce…. We’ll reveal the true answer next week.
The subject is topical and so if you know anyone in the restaurant business please share it with them. This is a real issue in a recession and deserves to get more notice.
If you ‘like’ it, you’ll be helping Julian and his team as they prepare to go to the Cannes Film Festival in mid-May.
Thanks for your support for our clients. We appreciate it and so do they.