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There is nothing new under the sun, as the saying goes.
In the angst-laden world of a slowly recovering advertising and marketing agency industry, the insertion of procurement departments in the agency selection process is among the things that are not new at all. But this old whipping post is generating a fresh round of teeth-gnashing.
What’s all the fuss? If an RFI/RFP process feels burdensome, stacked, unclear or downright unfair you can simply opt out. It could just be that the process put in place, whether procurement is involved or not, does not fit your model for acquiring new clients and projects. Just like you won’t win every client pitch, you also don’t need to be involved in every one.
Prospective clients whose processes become especially onerous run the risk of reaping what they sow when they attract sub-par agencies because the best and brightest just won’t play by their rules. Or clever agencies will find a way around procurement.
For those who choose to opt in, there are plenty of resources and lots of advice for navigating the process. Here are few recommended resource:
- The RFP Database not only is a clearinghouse for issued RFPs, it also contains links to related information and advice
- The Confluent Forms blog is one of those linked resources
- The Fuel Lines blog by Michael Gass often tackles the issue of RFP best practices and strategies
- Because the consternation seems greater in small and medium-sized agencies, Advertising Age‘s Small Agency Diary blog is worth visiting – even a valuable online subscription
- And of course, Agency Babylon strives to be of service whenever it can
This one is for advertising and marketing agency leaders.
Think you don’t have time to craft and follow through on a business development strategy for 2010? Not even a simple plan? A process, maybe, or at least some guiding principles? Well, if you don’t do at least the latter – and lesser – of the options, then you’re likely to have plenty of time on your hands before too long.
Whether 2010 is a year of recovery with plenty of fresh opportunities to pursue or another lean season full of uncertainty, it’s essential that agency leaders take some tangible action to bolster their business acquisition. You need to get your houses in order to capture and retain sustainable business, define your position in the marketplace and begin to influence your internal culture to embrace the thrill (and necessity) of innovation.
For agencies too overwhelmed by or resistant to a well-managed approach to business development, here are five (musically themed) basics that can keep you modestly on track:
- Who are you (who who who who). Define who you are as an agency in a way that is authentic and relevant to your clients and prospects. Recall your most successful engagements for guidance. What problems you solved, using what skills and tools, for what kinds of clients, and in what kinds of circumstances. Make sure the examples you use are recent – very recent – because the glories of even two years ago might not cut it today. (Exception: If what you did three or five years ago was a real game-changer and you can prove it.) When you have this discussion, by the way, don’t just have it among senior leadership. Include everyone, from account people and creatives to project management. Who you are is a collection of not just the experiences you’ve had but also of the people who created them.
- Money changes everything. Get a grip on revenue and expense expectations. First, determine a realistic revenue goal and be sure to include both honest revenue growth from current clients and achievable new revenue from fresh clients and new service offerings. “Realistic” is the key word and that is driven by your history of revenue growth, market conditions, the strength of your bench and other variables that do not include wishful thinking. Don’t stop there, though. Because once you’ve determined revenue objectives you must allocate a budget and resources to achieving them. “Whatever it takes” isn’t a real budget and no one ever sticks to that pledge. Draft a real budget and monitor is over time.
- Respect yourself. Nothing is more confounding than a creative services agency that can’t figure out how to market itself. Keep it simple, but get it done – and then keep it well-maintained. Focus on communication channels, inbound and outbound, that your clients and prospects are most likely to use to find an agency like yours. Don’t jump on the social media bandwagon without a purpose and a commitment to nurture it. If you aren’t doing the basics now, don’t sign up for something advanced until you make table stakes.
- Come together. Everyone has a stake in your agency’s success and should both understand and really feel that. If you have someone on board who’s not in it for everyone, get them on track or get them off the train. Setting and pursuing shared goals that gets the entire team involved is an incredible opportunity to forge a strong agency culture around common goals and shared rewards. Think of the sense of ownership your employees could feel if the next client win had their fingerprints on it. And think of how well served that new client will be because of it.
- I only have eyes for you. When you get into a face-to-face meeting with your prospects, remember that it is all about them. Make your conversation and presentation about them, linking their needs back to your awesomeness. Rather than the reverse, which is more common. Be proud of who you are and what you’ve accomplished, but try a little humble, too. It makes you more easy to relate to and signals to the prospect that you realize you are in the service – not self-service – business.
“It goes without saying.”
I’ve eaten those words before. Now I’m about to do it again as I find instance after instance of otherwise bright people who don’t take the time to learn who they’re talking to and with whom they’re about to do business.
The fact is, just about all of your prospective customers and clients, partners and competitors, colleagues and other contacts have digital profiles these days. They are practically hiding in plain sight – but hiding only to the extent that you don’t use free and ubiquitous online tools to seek them out and learn more about them.
What mysterious tools are these? Ever hear of Bing! or Google? How about LinkedIn or Naymz or Plaxo? Twitter? Facebook anyone? While these are just the tip of the iceberg, they constitute a sound starting point for researching people with whom you do, will or want to have business relationships.
- Business prospecting. In addition to researching the company itself (you do that, don’t you?), you can use LinkedIn to see the profiles of people with decision-making authority to whom you’ll likely be pitching. Don’t forget to seek them out on Twitter, as well. Knowing who they are, where they’ve been, what and how they think, and what style they seem to project will help you better prepare. You might even have one or more connections in common that can warm up your entrée to them.
- Account management. Have a new client contact? You’re going to want to get off on the right foot. So you should know something about the new client team member, like how long they’ve been with the company, what their role(s) have been over time, or if new to the company where they came from. You want to know their areas and level of expertise so you can interact with them appropriately, e.g., patient and extra helpful if they’re a newbie and with a touch of extra deference (or caution) if they are senior. LinkedIn, Twitter and online searches are all in order here, ideally before the new relationship launches. One of your jobs is to build rapport, and knowing how to connect with your clients is key.
- Account team member. So you’re a designer or writer or programmer, definitely on the account team but not the lead interface. Are you excused? No, because there are people on the client team with whom you’re likely to collaborate. It would help a designer to know the background of the design lead on the client side, and writers or strategists or other roles just the same. Because you understand your client counterparts better, there’s a fair chance of working more smoothly with them.
- Agency colleague. So the new gal or guy is coming on board. And of course your boss or HR have sent out a detailed backgrounder on this interloper. Right. At least they tell you the person is about to join the team (although I worked at one place where, weirdly, they failed to do even that sometimes). When you find out who’s joining your cozy corner, get on the interwebs and learn more about them. You can use that information to fashion a warm welcome or maybe gird yourself for a would-be nemesis – all depending on the culture of your shop and your own attitude, but that’s up to you.
Postscript: If everything was obvious to everyone, no one would need the services of smart agencies and consultants or even much staff. Agency Babylon is always willing to “state the obvious” in its mission to help all of us shine just a little brighter.
It’s an ongoing debate in the world of pitch presentations: When your company is hot on the trail of a new business opportunity and you’ve been invited to present to the prospect, do you take your team in for first or last presentation slot? (Why doesn’t anyone ever suggest presenting in a middle spot?)
Although I know people who take hard positions on one versus the other, with predominant affection for pitching last, there is no simple answer. Any savvy business development pro or agency leader should know that your approach needs to be based on the variables in play. Among them are:
- How many competitors are you facing? Is it just a few or a field of eight or more. If it’s the latter, then are sure you really want to be in this process at all? Will you be remembered if you’re presenter one through seven – or even number eight – with this many rivals? Before picking a slot, decide whether you want to pitch the business in the first place.
- What stage of the pitch are you in? Is it an early RFI phase with many contenders or the finalist RFP stage with just two or three left standing? Each circumstance requires a different level of thought, preparation and opportunity. If you’re a finalist in the RFP stage and concerned about which slot to take, I have to wonder how you got this far. Maybe your solutions aren’t strong enough to present at all. If you’re good enough to get to be a finalist, who cares when you present, just be good.
- Who are you bringing to represent your company? When are all the right people from your team available? The right mix of participants trumps preferred timing every time.
- How well do you know the prospective client? Are they a current client or maybe you know them well in other ways? Or are you merely strangers passing at this point? If you know them and have a favorable relationship, emphasize your capacity and capability and relationship and quit worrying about the schedule.
- How ready are you to present? Is this business right up your alley or do you need to learn a lot to be properly prepped for the dialogue you’re about to enter? It’s amazing how much breathing room even a day or two gives you, although I always advise being done early (ha!) so you have extra time to fine tune your message and practice your pitch.
In the end, it doesn’t really matter which presentation slot you get – even the middle – if you come to the table with a game-changer. What’s a game-changer exactly? Well, that will be up to the situation and your team’s courage and imagination. Universally it means rethinking the opportunity, challenge or parameters in a way that none of your competition consider. It means being a step or two ahead of the prospect’s thinking and showing them a way to get to their goal that is new and fresh to them.
I was game-changed by a competitor some years ago and it hurt. But I learned.
The pitch was to a financial services institution with a tactical client team. Not that these folks weren’t smart. They were just so caught up in the volume of work on their plates and the intense minutiae of it that they had little energy left over for innovation. The project specifications were made clear and were at the core of what my (now-former) agency did. It was a print-heavy implementation and we had innovated in this area before. So we were ready with some new ways to approach this. Those ideas got us to being picked as one of two final agencies for the business.
But the competition had an advantage. It’s not that they had done a lot more business in this specific space. We actually assumed that could be a downside for them if it meant that they had a templated approach. Their advantage was to rethink the solution that aligned with the leading edge of their service offering, even though the prospect hadn’t asked for it. In short, they showed the prospect that print was no longer where it was happening for their particular needs, and then revealed a next-generation, online solution.
We were scratching our heads when the prospect came to us in the final pitch meeting with a more heavily weighted line of questioning about interactive abilities. We thought we had the advantage of the last slot and could close the deal. All indications leading up to that meeting pointed to a win. Unfortunately, the agency had only a modest interactive capability at the time and just couldn’t compete. Especially since we really didn’t know yet what we were competing with.
It was only afterward that we learned why the other agency won the day. I remember standing in the middle of a department store in New York City over the holidays and getting the call. The prospect explained what had happened and I felt burned. No do-over? Nope. But she made the right decision for her company, and I made the decision to always push harder for innovation in pitching new business.
In the volumes that have been written about outrageous, idiotic and simply clueless behavior in job interviews, the fault invariably is assigned to job candidates. Well, I’ve been on and heard about enough job interviews to know that hiring companies can take the cake when it comes to inappropriate form and function:
- Like the time I was a finalist for a high-level agency position and was interviewing with the very top leaders of the organization. There I was all spiffed up in my interview duds when one of the most senior interviewers entered the room in gray sweats and no compelling rationale for it.
- Another interview incorporated a simulation in which I was asked to role-play as if I was in a prospect pitch meeting. But the interviewers who set up the scenario completely lost their places in it. They just plain forgot what parts of the conversation were real and which were simulated. I introduced the idea of a “talking stick” using a dry erase marker. When the marker was standing on end we were to be in role-playing mode; on its side and we were in the real world. It was in vain and chaos ensued.
Those are colorful examples of interviews gone awry. Yet most interviews are dull, as gray as the sweat pants and hoodie worn by my memorable interviewer. The saving grace of that interview was a particularly thoughtful team member – appropriately attired – who posed one of the most interesting questions I’ve ever heard in an interview.
He asked, “Do you think you’re smarter than your prospects and clients?”
Years after first hearing that question I don’t have a yes/no answer because, I’ve found, it’s relative and depends on your definition of smart.
Rather than having a definitive answer, I believe that the question can be a guide post to exemplary behavior in prospect and client relationships. So, I offer these thoughts as you ponder the question yourself:
- Your company has well-developed expertise and information that the client does not possess. Your smarts in that circumstance are due to experience you’ve cultivated over time. It’s valuable to be sure, yet it doesn’t make you smarter, just more expert and perhaps with greater capacity than your client.
- A smart client knows when they need added capability and capacity. They might not have divined exactly what and how much, but they were smart enough to invite you to enlighten them.
- No matter what your abilities, there are any number of things your client might know better. Their own industry, for example, or proprietary processes and technology. They have native smarts in these areas and want to combine them with your smarts in other areas.
- Don’t overlook your client’s keen eye and ear for culture and politics within his or her own organization, smarts than can benefit you in unexpected ways.
“Do you think you’re smarter than your prospects and clients” is a question I’ve pondered again and again over the years. In the exasperation that can accompany the pursuit and servicing of clients I’ve found that it serves as a check and balance for my own ego and expectations. And by doing that I’ve learned to acknowledge and embrace the expertise and authority the client brings to table.
You might find it ironic that it makes them more trusting of my own contribution, which allows us to be smarter together.
Through-the-window spy photo of bar area in Black Design offices in Minneapolis.
Although it’s a fragile economic recovery in these late days of 2009, there are numerous indicators that the business cycle could be on something of an upswing – maybe an up-saunter.
For example, marketing and advertising spending is in a guarded comeback – or so say the brands that pay the bills. Super Bowl advertising is completely sold out, even at pulse-quickening premiums, and agencies are hiring again.
I don’t know about you, but I’m eager for good news however nuanced the optimism.
So, are you ready to hit the ground running? Not willing, mind you, but truly p-r-e-p-a-r-e-d. Then ready, set…wait.
If you cut too deeply in the downturn, particularly if you suspended new business efforts as many small and mid-sized agencies did, then your willingness to forge ahead might be hobbled by your actual ability. There is no judgment implied here. Lots of businesses did what they deemed prudent to get through an extended period of depressed billings. It’s been painful, but remember that picking yourself up and brushing the dirt off is a little harder than it sounds.
Tina Wilcox, founder of Black Design in Minneapolis, is making it look easy with her eye-popping new offices taking shape at 12th Street and Harmon Place. As a marketer exclusively serving retail clients she was in what would have seemed to be a double bind. Her two key industry, marketing and retail, were brutalized in the past year. But Wilcox has a reputation for being gutsy. The large new digs are stylishly furnished and flaunt impeccable finishes. (Yes, I have chair envy.) The joint even has a sinuous bar (pictured above), a curving banquet and an enormous aquarium left over from previous restaurant tenants that she’ll no doubt turn into a statement. There is a shark in her company’s logo if that offers a hint.
While not every agency has the wherewithal to do what Wilcox is doing, there are ways each agency can make a smart return to form. I’ve banged the drum here before: strategy, purpose, focus, selectivity, unity and a dollop of patience.
How is your agency preparing to hit the ground running? Feel free to share your thoughts.
It’s long been my professional mantra that business development efforts worth pursuing and supporting are those that are conducted both strategically and systematically. A mantra is supposed to be short, but just this once I have to defy convention and lengthen mine by adding: If you want consistent results, business development must be given proper resources all the time – not just sometimes.
The challenge can be summarized like this: In the day-to-day operation of many agencies, what is almost always trumps what if.
What is, of course, is the work at hand. Projects already committed to and client relationships already in the fold that require the best thinking and most creative explorations. Not only have you made promises to these clients that you must keep, the hard and fast of it is that these clients pay the bills. Integrity plus reality equals obligation.
Business development, on the other hand, represents what if. Throughout much of the process of pursuing new clients, agencies often feel little sense of commitment, almost no obligation, and sometimes a certain lack of integrity experienced as a kind of passive-aggressive pattern of disregard for new opportunities and frustration when said opportunities amount to nothing.
Just about any small and mid-sized agency struggles with the “what is” versus “what if” situation. There are only so many resources to spread around. If you find yourself in that situation more often than not, here are some suggestions for being true to the present and laying groundwork for the future:
- Be realistic about the volume of new business efforts you can pursue. Not everything is worth your time. Be exacting in your criteria about what is worth pursuing. Heck, for too many having any criteria at all is a big step forward. The more focus you have and the more that focus is based on a compelling strategy, the better your payoff will be when you devote resources.
- Be flexible. If you can’t support a full-time business development program, hire someone with flexible skills who can fulfill other functions when the hopper is too full. Agency marketing and public relations is one area of additional activity, as is maintaining the agency’s presence in social media venues. It goes hand-in-hand with new business. Another option is to consider outsourcing business development to a skilled consultant who works only on select assignments.
- Be seen. When it comes to scouting opportunities, being out in the marketplace is better than being behind a desk. Cold calling doesn’t cut it in agency business development. Trust me, it just doesn’t. Rather, send your new business pro to conferences and events when she/he will meet prospects, potential partners and, yes, even competitors. Your prospects are out there, not under the desk. The bonus of this is that your new business agent will be exposed to new ideas, including what the competition is doing.
- Be committed. When the need arises to pursue a prospect or pitch to them, make formal assignments of team members to help with research, strategy, creative concepting and pitch development. Perhaps one creative in particular can have this recurring assignment to ensure continuity. Make sure that those assigned treat this work on par with client work. Appoint a project manager to keep folks on task and on balance.
- Be clear. Don’t make the mistake of confusing responsibility with accountability for business development. Yes, everyone in the agency – leadership at the very least – has a responsibility to business development. But only one person should be accountable for it, whether it’s a team member assigned to the function or one of the senior leaders. And be sure to give the person with accountability enough authority to get the job done.
- Be generous. Finally, celebrate successes with everyone. When there’s a win, or even when you’ve moved ahead another round in a competitive pitch, make sure everyone feels the excitement and that thanks are liberally dispensed. That sense of collective accomplishment goes a long way toward getting your whole team to make the extra effort each time it’s required.
An agency friend contacted me earlier this year (note that it is 2009) seeking advice on the performance of a recently hired new business lead. This particular new team member had been selected after an extensive search process, was given a revenue target that far out-matched anything the agency had achieved before, and had the distinct challenge of beginning the job just as the economy took its swan dive.
About six months into the position, there was significant concern that the new business person simply wasn’t cutting it. There had indeed been action, and that action yielded new client business in the very low six figures against a target that was in the low seven figures. But that action didn’t seem like traction so I was asked, “Is this acceptable performance?”
My short answer was “It depends.” In my longer answer, I tried to encourage self-reflection and analysis that would take into consideration whether the performance concerns were the sole responsibility of the new business person or whether there were some structural obstacles and misunderstandings about the way business development functions that complicated matters.
Here are highlights of that longer answer:
- Sign of the times: Have you taken the current economy into consideration? It’s tough, which could mean that you pitch broadly to generate revenue from whatever you can get (within reason) or narrowly because you only want the right business. Is anyone in agency leadership giving a clear signal on that, or have you empowered your new business talent to make that determination?
- Process makes perfect: Admittedly there is no perfection in business development, only the pursuit of it. Otherwise it wouldn’t be any fun. Likewise, an absence of process within the agency takes all of the fun and much of the likelihood of success out of the picture. Plenty of business development pros fancy themselves as swashbucklers of sorts, the heroic lone wolf who does the big deal on grit and determination alone. Piffle, I say. Even the best business development talent needs to get and participate in strategic and tactical direction. Moreover, there should be appropriate resources to pursue her/his efforts, like a consistent team of thinkers and creatives to bring that critical presentation to life. Business development needs to be part of the agency’s overall work flow process, with accommodations for the unique nature of the work. And above all, that work needs to be given a fair level of priority vis a vis other work going through the system.
- The nature of new business part 1, quantity: Quantity and quality are often posed as mutually exclusive options. The truth of business development often is that both are desirable in proportionate measure. And that measure depends on the kind of business development activity that best drives your agency’s business model. Considering quantity first, how many new business activities conducted by this person in the past six months were (1) conversations (2) presentations and (3) actual business pitches/proposals? For a person new to a mid-level business development role, the number of activities in the first two categories should be reasonably high, while the third depends on how focused they are and what’s going on in the marketplace (i.e., you can’t get into a pitch if no clients are seeking agencies). If the activity level is respectable and assuming your person is articulate, then you next have to look at quality.
- The nature of new business part 2, quality: Whatever the volume, how on-target have business development activities been? Were they largely random or do they align strongly with the objectives of the agency? Has anybody yet said what those objectives are, aside from the revenue target? If you’re going to the right meetings and doing a good job of articulating your value proposition, then your average for new business — now and in the future — should be a bit higher. If you’re pitching into new categories — capabilities or industries — it might take time to get some traction. So long as the efforts are solid and tracking against priority objectives, this success rate could be appropriate.
- The future’s so bright, or not: Although the revenue number to date is low, are there signs that performance in the next six months will take off? A lot of business development is heavy on the “development” axis, especially when no one has done that in the past. That includes positioning the agency for future pitches, getting into relationships for when businesses need an agency and fine-tuning the agency’s value proposition. If that groundwork is being laid and it is being done well, then by all means give your colleague credit for that. The danger, however, is that some business development folks are more comfortable doing that type of work at the expense of pushing, pitching and producing. Earlier in my career when I was all about marketing and hadn’t organized a cohesive approach to revenue development, an experienced adviser declared to me that “you can’t market your way to sales success.” I didn’t understand his point at the time, but once I did it has been a lesson I have valued and referred to time and again.
My final bit of advice is this: It would be money and time well spent by an agency to hire a consultant to help them wrap their heads around business development. Strategy, process, measurement and knowing what kind of talent you’re seeking to hire often don’t come naturally to small and even mid-sized agencies. Too much is at stake to make a bad hiring decision or to hire a high-quality person and then totally misunderstand how to take advantage of their contribution to the agency.
The economy is rebounding in many ways, so say the media and government economists. Wall Street is sure rolling in it again, so it can’t be long before all that upside starts to trickle down to the rest of us.
And what industry needs it more than advertising and marketing? OK, automotive, travel, retail and many other sectors can lay claim to neediness. But my professional interests and bias make this all about the advertising-marketing sector, with agencies and in-house staff notably hard hit in the downturn. Delayed product launches, suspended campaigns and deferred marketing programs have all taken their tolls.
But this industry is about onward and upward, so it’s time to start firing the new business guns again. But wait. Before you take too many pot shots it’s also a time to consider a business development do-over, because there is no better opportunity to rethink how you pursue new clients than when the slate has been wiped more or less clean.
What constitutes a new business do-over varies as much as individual agencies and their past practices. Yet there are some fundamentals that can apply to everyone. So take this business development do-over pledge with me and promise — hand over heart or wherever it matters most — to adhere to the following better-if-not-best practices.
Each pledge point begins with We will:
- Treat new business as a core, strategic facet of our agency. Too often, new business efforts are the tail that wags the dog. And if not that, then the dog that goes hungry because the resource cupboard is bare. In the former case, new business efforts practiced without a strategy can yield a client portfolio that steers your agency in a direction it shouldn’t go. For example, winning projects because they’re easier to close when your agency is structured for long-term client relationships. In the latter case, many agencies expect great things from under-resourced and possibly under-qualified business development staff — and then feel frustrated when performance isn’t there. (Remind me to tell you a story about that later.)
- Systematically and honestly appraise our assets and expertise. Knowing who you are as an agency, what you do best, as well as who you want to be next (because the need to grow and adapt never ends) are critical variables to understanding how to plot and pursue new business. Above all — and I emphasize above all — make sure you take the time to know who is on your team: their talents and expertise, where they’ve been and who they know, and what kind of work energizes them. I emphasize this because your agency’s value proposition is, after all, nothing less than an expression of the collective abilities of your team.
- Thoughtfully choose a set of specific prospects based on the assessments and doggedly pursue them. Every organization needs collective goals to drive unity and motivate teams. What better driver than the shared pursuit of exciting and plausible new clients. I espouse the view that you should dedicate at least 75 percent of your outbound business development efforts to specific target prospects. Moreover, that target list should be universal internal knowledge and universally supported. If everyone knows and signs up for these shared-vision clients it makes it a lot easier to get them to do an all-nighter for the big pitch — and to do their very best to win it and serve once the client is in the door.
- Honestly evaluate, and be willing to take a pass on, any prospective business that falls outside our core strategy. Someone once told me that not every prospect that finds its way to your door is worth pursuing. Indeed, you not only have the right but the responsibility to qualify your prospects and retain control over who you will serve. Saying no to an opportunity isn’t foolish; it’s wise when done for the right reasons.
- Not allow prospects to dictate our best interests. Even when you get in the door at a desired prospect, it might not be the right time or project or circumstances to go for the win. Because if you think that clients are sometimes inscrutable, prospective clients can be ten times more difficult to read and manage. So, if you’re invited to an RFP first round with…let’s say nine other competitors, that should give you pause. Or if there is an incumbent and the review process feels a little odd, you might be being used as a straw man to get concessions from the current agency. Beware and act in your own best interests first.
Of course, I didn’t come to understand these points from sitting in a classroom or by reading Advertising Age. The former would leave you utterly unprepared and the latter is of use only to the extent that it rounds out real-world experience. For each and every point above I could tell you some stories. And I promise to do that in the near future — while protecting the names of the innocent and guilty alike.
Like the previous post, “The wild and wacky world of RFPs,” this post has its origins in a set of tweets I released while pondering several new business pitches.
I’ve been engaged in agency and marketing business development for a number of years and I can honestly say that the experience has not made me cynical. Yet it has made me highly discerning, far more straightforward (was that possible?) and grounded in the belief that agencies — and other businesses — must be exacting in the ways they pursue new clients. Especially when the work at hand is intellectual property and creative execution.
Without further adieu, here are key questions I posted on Twitter — questions that should be high on your list as you consider pursuing a business opportunity and in the course of the chase:
- A great opening or early question either while assessing the opportunity or in the pitch (ask it twice to see what different people say): What’s changed in your business that has prompted this meeting (or process)?
- Ask this one early, before you commit to pursuing the business; the response will tell you a lot: Have you invested in research to guide strategic and creative decisions? Are you willing to?
- Show your prospects some respect — and make sure they have skin in the game: What expertise and resources do you (the client) have internally that we will complement?
- A great closing question in a pitch meeting: When you’ve chosen the right agency, what does success look like?
By no means do I represent this list of questions as exhaustive. Many other questions are more obvious and routine, and even others are dependent upon the set of circumstances surrounding the opportunity. I offered these four because they are points of prospect engagement that are often left unspoken, they need to be part of your opportunity assessment criteria, asking them can help differentiate you in a pitch, and most of all because they were top of mind for me as I considered several possible engagements.
I will continue to focus on issues and information related to creative agency business development, agency innovation and organizational culture both here an on Twitter (@AgencyBabylon).
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