Retention: How to Prioritize Clients

Adam Whittaker | January 24, 2013 - 8:39 am

Running a marketing firm of any size is a juggling act. Not only are you working on several different client/agency initiatives at any given time, but you’ve got projects from several different clients as well.

This post was originally published by Sanders Consulting and can be seen in its original location HERE. We love it so much we asked for and were granted permission to re-post it.

Often competing client conflicts will drive staff and leadership crazy. Starting a new project vs. finishing another, what comes first? The clients all the while breathing down your neck claiming “I need it yesterday!” All this and more adds to the already chaotic work environment and makes organizational planning a difficult task.

Prioritizing your clients may help you and your team to keep focused on the most important work at hand; keeping the clients you truly need happy and growing the ones that you can.

Suns

Definition: Sun clients are essential to the agency. Without these clients, the agency might cease to exist. Sun clients provide warmth, nourishment and energy to the agency. Sun clients allow the agency to do good work and take chances. Organic growth oportunities exist, staff relationships are good, and projects more often end up on time and on budget. Sun clients are to be retained and protected.

Planets

Definition: Planet clients should be very profitable to the agency. These clients should operate with very little support from agency senior management and should sustain life pretty much on their own. Planet clients should be protected but may not be essential to the agency’s existence. Planets by definition have little opportunity for real growth and cannot ever be Suns in the opinion of agency management. Planet clients should be worked with minimal agency investment in resources and must have limited impact on senior management time.

Black Holes

Definition: Black Hole clients suck up a lot of agency energy and give little in return. These types of clients often overuse creative services and account management time without fair compensation. Management often thinks they help cover operational cost, keeping the lights on so to speak. They miss the impact on staff morale. Black Hole clients should be dropped by the agency at the first opportunity. Black Hole clients often represent lost causes. Their impact on the agency should be minimized.

Shooting Stars

Definition: Shooting Stars are unknowns to the agency. Their path is not clear. Shooting Star clients could be Suns, Planets or Black Holes. It is the responsibility of the agency to ensure a Shooting Star client is transformed into either a Planet or a Sun. If this client cannot be transformed into a Sun or Planet, then that client is a Black Hole the agency should plan to eventually drop. Shooting Stars are most often new clients moving through the agency. Their long-term trajectory has not been established. Shooting Stars need more management time and require more agency resources if they are going to become Suns and Planets. Shooting Stars take up a lot of agency effort and must be watched closely.

Prioritizing Leads To Organic Growth

What clients want from agencies are ideas to make their businesses grow. What agencies want from clients are opportunities to do great work and be fairly paid for their contribution to clients’ businesses.

It is impossible for either of these to happen without “chemistry” among both parties. In order to obtain chemistry, an environment must be created that will breed success. It is the responsibility of agencies to create this environment.

Great chemistry helps make things happen and will create a more positive reaction to your ideas. A well trained account service person should always be prepared with relevant topics, points of view and issues that flatter the client and demonstrate interest and imagination. In advance prepare some BBIs, VABs, or VASs. Get ready to introduce these to stimulate the conversation. Organic growth works best when relevant to their consumers, their industry or their operations, not just selling in more of your services.

The purpose of our High Gear Training is to help agencies create this environment to keep clients and do great work.

Posted in News, Resources | Leave a comment

How to Choose a New Business Agency

Adam Whittaker | September 18, 2012 - 12:58 pm

We’ve been around longer than most new business agencies or indeed prospective clients, so I think it is fair to say that when it comes to the problem of how to select a new business agency we’ve seen the good, the bad and the plain ugly!

So here we go – here’s our view on how best to go about it.

1 – Google “new business agency” – discount anyone not on the front page, you want someone who’s good at marketing themselves and if they can’t even figure out SEO then there’s no help for them. It’s not like there are thousands of us out there!

2 – Make a list of the hygiene factors you NEED. Is location important, do you want someone who works with other agencies like you or do you consider that a conflict.

3 – Choose an initial list of five, call them and speak to the MD, tell him or her about what you are looking for and take ten minutes or so to get a feel for them and what they are like.

4 – Whittle the list down to three and invite them in to take a thorough brief from you so that they can submit a proposal. Don’t ask them to bring the team they’d have working on your business in at this stage. If they already know then they’re choosing the team based upon who is available and not who would best fit the brief.

5 – Once you’ve seen the proposals, you’ll probably have already discounted one, have one favourite and one close second, so the nest step is to visit those latter two at their offices to meet the prospective team. Ask to meet them without the MD, see what happens. This will indicate the amount of trust the MD has in his or her team! Don’t grill them, just get a feel for them – would you be happy having them represent your brand.

6 – Take out a credit check on them – you want a partner that is financially stable.

7 – Ask to see their entire client list and then choose three clients at random and ask them if you can speak with those clients.

8 – Make your decision.

 

Posted in Blogroll, Just thoughts, Resources | Tagged , , | 2 Comments

Think Like a Marketing Director

Adam Whittaker | August 29, 2012 - 12:06 pm

So, you’ve got a new business meeting lined up with a marketing director, manager or whoever is the decision maker for your service. You’ve done your preparation, but remember, so has your prospect. Typically they’re pretty busy people and believe it or not they don’t spend all day thinking about agencies, dealing with agencies is typically about 10% of what they do or would LIKE to do!

So they usually leave it as late as possible so they’ve got a good idea about you before the meeting takes place. Ten minutes before they’re due to meet, they go back to the email you sent confirming the meeting and if they’re like me they right click on the email address and then visit the website from the domain contained therein.

Rule one. Make sure that points to your website. Common sense really, but you’d be surprised. One of our PR clients recently came back from a meeting and said to me “they though we were an ad agency! where did they get that idea from!”. Well, we had several emails to and fro with the prospect discussing possible PR projects so this was a mystery to us all. But wait! There was the answer. The PR agency email addresses were from the same domain as their sister agency, their much larger advertising agency they shared a building with – IT had obviously decided to make life easier for themselves. Oops.

Rule two. Make sure your website gives the right impression. For the sake of argument, let’s assume you’re going in to try to get them to use you for their social marketing. What would you expect? Well, I’d expect a really good socially enabled website, I’d expect them to be an agency that is talked about and respected. So, how many followers do you have on Twitter and what’s your Klout score? I’d expect them to be using Facebook really well and for them to have a lot of interaction on it – how many Likes do you have? I’d also expect them to have a lot of people subscribed to their email list – so if you have one of those gadgets that tells people to “Join us like ten other people us” then maybe remove it and buy some followers? I’d also expect them to be using Pinterest in a creative and entertaining manner.

Don’t expect anyone to trust you to do for them what you don’t do for yourself.

Posted in New Business Stories, Resources | Tagged , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Puzzle or Mystery? Agency New Business, a Paradigm Shift

Adam Whittaker | August 7, 2012 - 9:31 am

Whilst on holiday I read Malcolm Gladwell’s new book, “What the Dog Saw”, a collection of his writing from The Spectator. One of the many insightful essays was on the vagaries of the stock market and hedge funds and how too much information can be a bad thing. His hypothesis was that in the pre internet age, trying to anticipate market movements was a puzzle. One had to search for the right piece of information and once found it was added to what you had already found until the picture was complete. Very neat and tidy.

With the advent and exponential growth of the internet, however, we are surrounded by all the information we need. Search Google for instance, for “will facebook shares rise in value” and you will find (as of 9.30am GMT, 7th August 2012) 93,900,000 hits. So this is no longer a puzzle. It is a mystery; we are surrounded by so much information our role is not to search, but to be intuitive and know what is useful and what is not.

The same is, of course, true for agency new business. Taking a single source of information and hoping it will provide the answer to the puzzle (is the client happy with their agency or not?) is, at best naive. Surround yourself with as much information as you can about the company and think, deeply and intuitively.

Posted in Just thoughts, Resources | Tagged , , , , | Leave a comment

Who’s the MAN! for agency new business.

Adam Whittaker | February 24, 2012 - 10:49 am

Back to basics – SALES. It’s what we do – call it what you want, but that’s it. Many years ago I was making a speech at an Omnicom conference (DAS to be precise) and I was talking about sales and an MD of an agency at the end said that it was all well and good, but that he wasn’t in ‘sales’ he was in ‘advertising’. My response was that his CEO would probably said that he was in the business of selling the services of an advertising agency, not ‘in’ advertising per se.

Anyway, sorry, that was just an aside. Right, back to SALES. Remember the acronym, M.A.N. It stands for Means, Authority and Need and is how you should qualify a prospect from a suspect.

Means – do they have a marketing budget. Easy to ascertain.

Authority – is THIS person either the main decision maker or a major influencer. Again, pretty easy to determine with the right question.

Need – ah, now this one can be a little trickier. Let me explain further how RSW works – this is, after all, my blog, so hey, cut me a little slack for a plug!

We make email and telephone contact with targets with a view to identifying the prospects from the suspects, qualify these prospects and arrange a meeting for you to go and see them when their position in the need spectrum is aligned to your pre-determined position at which you have told us to do so.

What do I mean by ‘need spectrum’? Well, at the one end, you have someone who uses agencies, isn’t contractually tied to put all work through them, has ongoing projects that crop up every few months but hasn’t anything specific they want to discuss with you, but are interested in meeting so that they can then consider you for the next project they have. That’s a ‘need’, but a pretty tenuous one; however, if that person is senior enough, close enough geographically and the company is a priority for you, meeting them could be a good idea.

At the other end of the spectrum is someone who we speak to who says … “Wow, am I glad YOU called – you sound perfect! My agency has let me down, I have £150k to spend and need this doing within the next two months – can you please come and see me on Friday so that we can talk about how you can help me”.

So, what we  do is agree, for each company, where the cut off point on the need spectrum is and segment them accordingly so that every meeting, no matter what, is one that you are delighted with.

Posted in Resources | Tagged , , | Leave a comment

Quality, Quantity, Price – Fee Model for Agency New Business

Adam Whittaker | October 13, 2011 - 9:08 am

There are many different models for pricing new business agency services – the most popular of which is a fixed monthly retainer. Now this CAN be the best way, depending upon what both sides need from the relationship. But consider this triangle – we call it the QQP Triangle.

Quality – the quality of meetings arranged is of paramount importance of course; but what exactly does quality mean? it means different things to different people at different times. Sometimes, or for some agencies at all times, quality criteria threshold can mean there MUST be a brief available; for other agencies (or at other times or even for certain prospects) there does not need to be a brief, as long as the prospect has a genuine interest in meeting. So, quality can be movable.

Quantity – the quantity of meetings arranged can be changed quite easily, by either altering the Quality criteria or the Price (i.e. buy more time). Sometimes this makes sense; you lose a client and suddenly need a boost – we’ve all been THERE for sure!

Price – the Price therefore, we believe, can be altered by both the amount of time bought but also by both the Quality and the Quantity of opportunities delivered. It’s quite straightforward and can sometimes be the most efficient way of delivering Quality, Quantity AND Price in a format to both parties satisfaction.

Posted in Resources | Tagged , | Leave a comment

Four Cornerstones of Sales for Agency New Business

Adam Whittaker | September 7, 2011 - 10:08 am

In agency new business, like any sales operation, we need to effectively measure the performance of our teams. To do this effectively, it is always worth remembering the four cornerstones upon which effective sales are built. They are, of course:

1) ABILITY - The person undertaking the activity must have the raw ability to perform the task. Some people are inherently timid when it comes to picking up the telephone and cold calling a senior decision maker. They fee inferior or maybe a little ashamed. These people do not have the wherewithal you need and should not be employed in the first place.

2) KNOWLEDGE - Once you have a team with the right ability, you need to imbibe them with the product knowledge and knowledge of how to actually ‘make a sale’; teach them DIPADA or AIDA or SPIN if you like, but more importantly, provide them with the knowledge that will enable them to discuss marketing problems with the people you want to work with.

3) ATTITUDE - Now you have the right people (or person) and they have the right product knowledge and have been trained in how to make the sale, the next step is to make sure they have the right attitude; this is where most teams fall over because keeping a buzz going is an agency new business team can be difficult, especially if the team is a team of one poor soul left alone in a room with a telephone and a computer and expected to deliver the results!

4) ACTIVITIES - Now this is the really interesting one. What do we mean by this? why, those things many sales people HATE to be measured by. Tasks completed. How many dials are being made per day? How many Decision Maker Contacts (DMC’s or Effectives) are made and how many sales (or meetings) are arranged. These should be measured and compared on a daily, weekly and monthly basis and tweaked.

So, let’s take a scenario. You have a great person, they’ve been trained properly. They start well enough but it then starts to trail off. Their head’s down, the call rates down and guess what? meetings booked or sales made are down too. Where are the problems here? Well 1 and 2 are fine, so its 3 and 4 where the problem lies. Which do you tackle first? Attitude or Activities? I would say Activities. If you know that for each 100 dials you will make 10 DMC’s and arrange 1 meeting and your new business person is making 20 dials per day (because they’re SO busy “researching”), they will make 1 meeting per week. What if you want 2 or 3 meetings per week? Hey, as they say in the States “you do the math!”. That’s right, get them to make 50 dials per day. Or increase their Access rate of course (if their knowledge could be improved).

Once you have tackled the ACTIVITIES you usually find that they start to improve their own ATTITUDE because they’re back on a roll.

But be careful how you tackle this issue. You cannot simply demand more output. You need to carefully manage the situation or ATTITUDE will worsen and you’ll lose your highly trained talent and have to start all over again.

Which is why, of course, many agencies decide the whole role should be outsourced, NOT THE WHOLE OF BUSINESS DEVELOPMENT of course, just the UPSTREAM ELEMENT. Sales people are like wolves. They hunt better in packs.

Posted in Just thoughts, Resources | Tagged , , , | Leave a comment

Strategies for Agency New Business

Adam Whittaker | June 9, 2011 - 10:29 am

Who is the best person to approach first within a prospect company? CEO? MD? Marketing Director? Comms Director? Marketing Manager?

Now, you may THINK you know the answer to this one. Most agency heads are of the opinion that it is best to go in at the top; the Top Down strategy. Get in to see the Marketing Director and she will take you on, if she likes you, and all the brand managers will happily fall into line and start using you, right? Not necessarily. Sure, if you’re talking about the main £10m a year advertising account this will most likely happen. But if you’re, say, an BTL tactical agency then this is probably NOT the correct strategy.

If you are, like the vast majority of the 10,000 marcoms agencies in the UK, one that works on projects, then your better strategy may be Land and Expand. Here’s why. If you go in to meet the marketing director and she then tells all her brand managers to start giving you work, they will, at best, resent you and at worst go out of their way to ensure you fail. One of the roles of a brand manager may be to find, employ and manage a roster of agencies. If this responsibility is taken from them they feel undermined and undervalued.

A better strategy may be to start lower down the pecking order. Start working for one brand manager on a £20k project; then get another; then get noticed by other brand managers and work the room. Before long the marketing director will notice you and hey presto, they will start giving you work too and the brand manager who ‘discovered’ you gets the kudos and everyone is happy. The Top Down strategy appeals to the ego and maybe the short-term profit motive, but Land and Expand is a better long-term growth strategy for most agencies.

Posted in Resources | Tagged , , | Leave a comment

Agencies Should Demand Better Briefs From Their Clients

Adam Whittaker | May 31, 2011 - 10:16 am

Because If You Wait Around for Them They Might Never Come

By: Matt McDermott
Published: May 27, 2011 by AdAge, Link below.

The best advice I ever got about advertising wasn’t about advertising. During a company paintball outing, the referee offered this: “Don’t hide behind a rock and wait for someone to stumble into your sights. While you’re doing that, they’ll sneak up behind and shoot you in the ass. Go find them. Shoot them first.”

It reminded me of Casey Jones’ take on marketers who fail to provide their agencies with competent briefs, which generated a wealth of discussion earlier this week on Ad Age.

He’s right to point the finger at clients for shirking their responsibilities. But he’s only half right. As easy as it is for marketers to blame us agencies, it’s a two way street and blaming marketers is easy too. It’s the agency world’s national pastime. However, it’s also lazy and self-destructive.

So here’s my take in response to Mr. Jones’ argument. Agencies shouldn’t wait around for a brief that may never show up. They should go find it.

Nothing gets accomplished if all we ever do is nod our heads in client meetings, then bellyache about them at the bar afterward. It exposes the real problem: we don’t have the stones to expect and demand more from the client.

At every level of the agency, we have a responsibility to speak up. Account execs need to press clients for the information the team needs to do the job. Strategy and creative need to push back when a project’s missing the insight from client we need to focus our efforts.

If we’re not challenging marketers to be better, we’re wasting their money. Often, it’s our job to save them from themselves. To pluck them from their brand’s warm, solipsistic womb, shine a light in their faces and spank their bottoms to get them to breathe.

We need to be willing to stop a project in its tracks, and ransom it for a decent brief. If you have to, hold their hands. Baby-step them them through the brief. I’ve done it. Sometimes it can be surprisingly revealing. And, yes, other times, it’s just painful. But not as painful as being on the business end of a client tirade because your team blew threw a budget pursuing answers to questions that no one had the sense (or guts) to ask.

I was in a kick-off meeting with an art director not so long ago. She stopped the AE before he even had a chance to sit down. “Do you have the brief?” she asked. He had a pen. He had bagel. And he had a look of confusion. “This meeting’s over,” she said, standing up and walking out.

Now she had balls.

Admittedly, it’s all easier said then done. Persuading colleagues to stand up with you is daunting. You’ll need to sell them on the value of demanding more: When we challenge our clients to give us better insight, we ultimately save them money. We equip our team with the intel it needs to chase down relevant ideas, instead of scampering around like harried parents trying to appease a crying baby. And we give our ideas something to lean on in the pitch when the client scratches his head and asks why the hell we did what we did.

So let’s stop flinging low-hanging fruit by blaming clients. Instead, stand up and be better by challenging them to be better. If your clients wanted a pushover, they would’ve hired your competition.

LINK TO ORIGINAL ARTICLE

Posted in Resources | Tagged , , | Leave a comment

Okay, you’ve met them; what next?

Adam Whittaker | May 27, 2011 - 10:17 am

Below you can see a check list of things many agencies find useful to do following an initial meeting to continue a dialogue without stalking if there isn’t an immediate opportunity.

a)     An email should be sent thanking them and confirming the next actions that have been agreed with timescales.

b)     Contact should be made on LinkedIn and if they connect then maybe suggest a Group for them to join– NOT an agency group, something to do with their industry, of which you are also a member.

c)     If their brand uses Twitter you should start following it (personally and as a business) so that you can comment on their updates.

d)     If their brand uses Twitter, it is quite likely that they too, use the service (in the States 84% of marketers use Twitter and this trend is spreading to the UK). If you find them, DO NOT follow them – that would be stalking. Instead, put their Twitter profile into Highrise (if you use it, or find some other way of monitoring them without following them)s o that you can monitor their Tweets before making contact to enable you to tailor your contacts to their interests. They Tweet a lot about football? You mention football.

e)     Talking of Highrise – Get it it is a very useful tool.

f)       You should (personally) become a fan of the brand on Facebook, so that, again, you can start to comment.

g)     You should set up a Google search term about their brand so that, should they be mentioned in the press or on blogs, you can send them a quick note saying “hi, did you see this?” and maybe give your thoughts on the issue.

h)     You should send them new case studies with a note explaining what about the case study you think is of specific relevance to their brand and why.

i)       It is ESSENTIAL that all contact post meeting in initiated by someone who attended the meeting, otherwise, what message does it send to the prospect? You are too busy to maintain a relationship with them; and is that the kind of person they want to work with?

j)       Make sure that you integrate your new business and social marketing strategy.

 

Posted in Resources | Tagged , , , | Leave a comment