I started my professional career out in sales and account management. I was terrible at it. So the company that I worked for sent me to a ton of training. I had it all — from Dale Carnegie to Zig Ziglar. Some wore off on me. So it kind of drives me nuts when agencies pitching me don’t have the basic skills to close and keep my business. This just happened again this week so I felt compelled to provide the following 5 things agencies need to do to get and keep my business. I have always been on the client side so this perspective might be skewed:
1) Discover My Business Needs
Don’t come into my office and spew on for an hour about your capabilities. I don’t care. A better use of both of our time is to come into my office and discover, through questioning and listening, what need I have that your agency may be able to fill.
2) Your agency is not an expert in everything
I half jokingly state that if I ask any of the agencies I deal with if they could build me a bridge I would get a proposal from each and every one of them. Tell me what your core competency is and prove that you have the experts on staff to deliver what you claim to be good at. Your not good at all things — so please tell me when you actually can’t do a project.
3) Leave the fancy “Process” slides behind
I don’t care what your process is. Every agency seems to have some neat acronym to explain their “process”. Like “NARB”, “VERB”, SPIN”, and “BURB”. They always seem to be 4 letters. Having a “process” is not a selling point. All agencies have them and they are all the same. So don’t waste my time telling me how special yours is.
4) Don’t just say “Strategy” a lot
Actually provide strategies that will help me achieve my objectives. I meet with a lot of agencies that tell me how great they are at “Strategic” thinking. But when the proposals come in they are just a bunch of tactics that don’t build up to actual long term business value.
5) Deliver
It’s fun to be “Creative” and come up with cool designs. But the hard bits need to be done too. I need solid SOWs, I need Project Management Plans, I need Wire Frames and Logic Maps, I need someone that will think through all the hard stuff so that the final product rocks. Do what it takes to deliver.
This was a bit therapeutic.
