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What Are The Real Assets In Your Marketing Firm?

April 9, 2013 By NewBusinessHawk

Outward vs. Inward Leadership

The Grass is Greener Syndrome

If you want something to change, you must first change how your firm operates internally.

Constantly changing client demands, new marketing technologies and shifting options are all circling overhead, claiming the attention of agency leaders. These red herrings have shifted the focus outward, away from the IMPORTANT day-to-day operation of the agency. As agency leaders focus on the external forces, the tendency is to start creating a mental wish list. Most leaders are always looking over the fence, thinking “gee… the grass sure is greener over there! If only we had award-winning talent. If only we had more money in the budget for xyz. If only we could establish a presence in a more competitive market.” This type of thinking leads to a very reactive way of doing business.

These are the murmurings we hear at agencies of all shapes and sizes. The feeling is that the “environment of opportunity” is a feast fit only for other agencies – the bigger ones, the richer ones, the ones with cool space – whatever excuse one can dream up. No one would argue that some agencies have distinct built-in competitive advantages – better city, recognizable name, big account, etc. But how do you explain occasions where the “best-of-the-best” gets decimated in a drought and the weed-filled lawn suddenly turns a lush green? Clearly, there is more to the equation than meets the eye.

Back To Basics

For every big plan, there is a simple reality to consider: the day-to-day details surrounding the operations of your agency that can make or break your performance in today’s environment of opportunity. And make no mistake, tough economic times create new opportunities. Most agency leaders are focused on maintaining their current position – without first looking at the greater opportunity. What it boils down to is your agency’s ability to manage, develop, and leverage its assets in meeting new challenges and achieving your goals. An agency, even one with deep pockets, that pays no attention to its assets will eventually have nothing to show for themselves but empty pockets.
Agency ASSETs are the Accounts, Specialties, Skills, Experience and Time that define the very who and what of your agency.
Read on and see if you can make the grass greener on your side of the fence…

[Read more...]

Filed Under: Operations Tagged With: , , , , , , , , , , ,

Using Good-To-Great to Brand Your Agency

May 1, 2012 By NewBusinessHawk

“We’re a locally-owned, full-service, fully-integrated, media-neutral, discipline -agnostic advertising agency, and our creative is world-class.”

For those of you who have worked with us in the past you know we like to hammer the idea that you need a strong agency brand to compete in today’s market.

A Clear Agency Brand Provides Focus for New Business

It answers how to describe your firm and tells you what services to offer. If you know what you stand for you can match up your prospects and target them. Perhaps more importantly a strong brand can help answer which prospects to pass on.
Many marketing firms are afraid to stand for anything. Mostly out of fear of losing a potential prospect. However if you are clear in what you stand for it shows your view of what’s important. This lets a prospect know quickly whether or not you are in step with their view of the way things work – you stand out to THAT prospect. The one you are really looking for. Other agencies, who try to stand for anything and everything, really project “gray” don’t match up well with a firm clearly branded.
The runaway bestseller Good To Great/Why Some Companies Make the Leap… and Others Don’t provides insight into how to brand your firm.

The Characteristics That Cause the Jump From Good to Great

1. Level 5 Leadership

  • Think Lincoln, not Patton
  • Quiet, reflective, curious, compassionate, tough management style (Headline Logo)

2. Right People on the Bus

  • People are not your agency’s most important asset. The right people are the most important asset in the agency
  • Job #1: get the right people

3. Confront the Brutal Facts About Your Business/Industry

  • Advertising is now viewed as a commodity
  • Too many agencies still around, even after the biggest shakeout in history
  • Most agencies now treated as vendors
  • Clients see few differences in agencies
  • Client confidence in advertising is declining
  • Clients view marketing as tactical and that means advertising is viewed as very tactical
  • Marketing communications often delegated down to lower-level staffers
  • Strategic high ground is now owned by consultants who have the ear of the corporate CEO
  • Consulting is a bigger business than all marketing communications
  • Consulting is growing much faster than marketing communications
  • These trends wouldn’t change or improve for our industry in foreseeable future

4. Adopt a Culture of Discipline

  • Manage to standards
  • Drive out complexity with better management
  • Understand that discipline brings efficiency
  • Know that agency structure has biggest impact on agency efficiency
  • Focus on productivity and seek a 25% improvement in productivity which doubles margins

5. Use Carefully Selected Technology to Accelerate Performance

6. Adopt the Fly Wheel as Your Model for Growth

  • Series of small steps gets the fly wheel turning
  • Use each win to increase performance
  • Increased performance speeds up wins

Stand Out!

A strong brand stands out, and in this complex hypermarket we operate in that’s vital for survival.

Using Good To Great to Brand Your Marketing Firm

  • Determine what are your Good To Great circles
  • Find your Sweet Spot.
  • Shape that into a Hedgehog Concept that’ll work in your market
  • Dream big and express your Hedgehog Concept in a BHAG
  • Find your best growth opportunities and stick to those only
  • Build your brand so you maximize those opportunities
  • Set up your new business program to support the brand
  • Integrate your brand into everything you do and live the brand
  • Get set to move from good to great
  • Take the credit. You did it.
We’ve helped many marketing firms with their brand by understanding our industry, the market, and having experience with thousands of similar firms. Mostly we know what works, and what doesn’t. Often times a one-day session with us provides you with the creative fodder to remove any logjams in deciding which way to go. Free of the “unknown” most marketing firms are then successful in launching a new brand.
If you are thinking about your agency brand, give us a call – it could save you from making a costly mistake.
Filed Under: Leadership Tagged With: , , , , , , , , ,

I’ll Win That New Business Pitch! Missing the Forest

February 16, 2012 By NewBusinessHawk

We’ve found that most presidents of firms in the marketing communications industry don’t really understand new business. And they don’t like it. They solve this problem by spending their time working in the firm as some type of technical expert. And they delegate the new business function to others who may not understand it either.

Sometimes we are so engrossed in the new business problem we can't see the easy solution!

Missing the Forest for the Trees?

For the most part, all marketing firms love the chase, the thrill of being in the hunt, late nights and cold pizza, and then having the opportunity to stand up in front of a prospect and deliver the winning pitch. If I had a nickel for every agency president who told me “just get me in front of em, I’ll do the rest” I would have at least $5!

But that’s missing the forest for all the trees. The key to getting “in front of em” and winning is building a relationship with them. Long term nurturing of prospects is NOT something most agency leaders think about. As a result most agencies end up pitching to prospects that are already deep into the review, with little time to build a relationship, much less better understand all the nuances of the brand. And they are now involved in a heavily contested review where up to 20 other marketing firms are all scrambling to make the cut.

What most agency presidents fail to understand is that prospects end up holding reviews because nobody was in there early in the process showing the prospect another way. By the time the prospect is ready to buy, there is no relationship-based agency friend from which he would like to buy.

I mean lets face it - the formal review process needs to change. If more marketing firms took the lead in developing their relationship building skills we would not be subjected to the pain and suffering of giving away ideas for free. All on the whim of a prospect you may have a 1 in 20 chance of winning. In addition, formal reviews can be too expensive for clients. It takes time, management commitment, and in the US, heavy fees for search consultants.

While one of the goals of relationship building is to improve your chances of winning formal reviews, there are additional benefits to nurturing prospects you are interesting in working with. The longer you work to build a relationship, the greater chance you have of closing the business with a fast close. You just need the skills and training needed to recognize where the prospects are in the review, and an understanding of how to move quickly and aggressively to preempt the process. Use that insight you’ve gained from understanding the prospect and building the relationship over time to win quickly, saving the prospect from the long drawn out formal review process.

Agencies are Full of Winners

The type bred for the hunt, the closers, the hawks. But who on your staff holds the responsibility for being the relationship builder? Who has training on how to cultivate and build relationships with a large number of prospects over time? The farmer of leads? This sacred role is the secret to many new business wins over time. Some of the largest account swings in history have been the result of an agency well versed in relationship building and understanding how to close.

Most agencies ignore prospects that are not ready to buy now. Those that ignore relationship building as a critical element of new business have to attempt to swoop in and convince the prospect on the beauty of their idea, the desire they have to work with their brand, how much they looove them! All in the weeks and months leading up to the pitch. This is a losing proposition if some other agency has put the time and effort into relationship building.

Every year Sanders Consulting Group travels to some of the best agencies in the world, and every year we help them address challenges with growing their agency. While each agency is unique its amazing to us how many fail to invest in long-term relationhip building. A small investment here can help solve many new business problems. If you have any questions please contact us at info@sandersconsulting.com or 800.899.1538.

Photo by ~Nightfrost21
Filed Under: New Business Tagged With: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

8 Unforgivable Leadership Mistakes Steve Jobs Made

February 1, 2012 By NewBusinessHawk

There have been many great books, articles, and blogs praising the leadership of Steve Jobs and the results are hard to argue with. Steve was one of the most powerful visionary leaders of our day. Both highly intellectual and possessing the mind of an engineer, combined with the vision of an artist, he transformed an entire market. So shouldn’t we all strive to be like Steve? The problem is there are only a handful of people who can visualize a future, play with it in their mind, and then go create it. A leader that smart can break all of the leadership rules. And sadly, most of us just aren’t that smart.

There is much to be learned from taking a contrary view of Steve Jobs and studying his actions as the leader of a company in an industry still undergoing epic transformation. Just as the entire marketing industry is going through now…

It’s Steve Jobs’ world and we’re just living in it!

From about the late 1700s to the mid-1800s, no one at that time understood that the extent of change that would later be deemed the Industrial Revolution. New ways of managing and organizing business completely transformed the world. Production of goods that for centuries were in small family-run business gave way to large centralized factories, and the concept of mass production not only opened the door to new opportunities and unprecedented growth, but also reshaped the way we live, work, and play.

The digital revolution is just as transformative, and again no one saw just how much this change would influence our lives. Steve Jobs was lucky enough, good enough, and smart enough to thrive in and be part of that change. And along the way, Steve created a series of great “gotta-have” products. In effect, Steve created new ideas and products from nothing.

So as we are still living within this digital revolution, we have to re-evaluate where we are now and try to figure out where we are headed. There have been many books, articles, blog post, and discussions on the changes sweeping our industry. Many so-called experts are pushing various models, structures, skills, and ideas that advertising agencies should adopt. Some seem like good ideas; others seem very much like pie-in-the-sky thinking. What is true is that change is sweeping through the marketing industry. A new foundation is being created, but it’s still too early to tell just what this new foundation is or how it will end up looking. To quote the oft used adage “the only constant from now on will be change!”

Many leaders, when faced with this epic change, look for inspiration, a guidepost, something that will offer a clue about how to lead in times of upheaval. Truly transformational leaders who change the world for the better remain rare in business. Which is why Steve Jobs is so fascinating.

Don’t Be Like Steve: 8 Unforgivable Mistakes Agency Leaders Should Avoid:

  1. Don’t be a jerk. Steve Jobs was a known bully and would often fly off the handle at those under him. He would publicly question the intelligence of anyone he found fault with. Steve would snap and bark at those under him, park in handicap spaces, flaunt the rules and more… You don’t have to be arrogant to impress people with your abilities. Leave the arrogance at home because it’s not going to work for you. A real leader works to develop and maintain basic management and leadership skills– and isn’t a jerk.
  2. Living with bad decisions. A young Steve Jobs brought in John Sculley to run Apple. Unfortunately he got someone that didn’t understand Apple’s culture or brand. Eventually Sculley consolidated enough power and moved to have Jobs replaced. As a result the Apple brand suffered. A decade later Jobs said, “What can I say? I hired the wrong guy. He destroyed everything I spent 10 years working for, starting with me.” You can’t survive with poor employee decisions and/or actions. Trust your gut and move quickly to address your bad decision. As one agency leader told me when I asked for the reason for his success, “slow to hire, quick to fire!”
  3. Not communicating expectations or goals. When a visionary leader sets a goal, they expect everyone to move in that direction. With Steve Jobs he often didn’t understand why people didn’t “get it” because it seemed so obvious to him. Rather than clarifying goals, Steve would publicly humiliate them or just fire them outright. As a result, the creator of the outstanding retail stores, Rob Johnson, left. Alison Johnson, Apple’s vice president of global marketing and communications, left. Spend time with your staff and make sure they understand your goals and expectations.
  4. Fail to train and invest in staff. Steve Jobs never had any formal training: not in management, not in engineering, not in design. Almost everyone he worked with was amazed at his capacity to make decisions solely based on his instinct. This is great for a gifted visionary. Not so good for the rest of us. Invest in and develop your next tier of leaders.
  5. Failure to advocate, support, and nurture initiative. There are many accounts of Steve jobs firing staff on the spot for taking initiative. His staff had to be very careful of what they could do; everyone understood some actions were not forgivable. If you’re the CEO of one of the largest, fastest growing brands and an icon of top talent around the world, then by all means punish anyone you like. Use fear as a motivator. Good luck attracting and keeping top talent. Better to create an environment where initiative is rewarded and mistakes are viewed as opportunities to learn.
  6. Don’t build walls. Apple’s cult of secrecy, a brainchild of Steve, is well known. Programmers were not allowed to see the product; designers were broken into small groups to work on different elements; and people were publicly fired for letting any information out. Nobody could share ideas. It was rumored that fewer than 12 people saw the final iPhone prior to Steve demonstrating it at Macworld in 2007. Apple needs to keep secrets, no question, but for most successful agencies inclusion is the name of the game. Be sure to involve your staff in any activity where they could make a contribution.
  7. Failure to provide and receive feedback from staff. There were many stories about Steve Job’s bad behavior to his staff, how often he would make absurd or derogatory comments to them. But the most common criticism was that he interrupted and didn’t listen. As the incontrovertible public leader of Apple, Steve embodied the vision and was responsible for its success. He did so by relying on two things: understanding trends and using his own gut. There aren’t many people in the world that can build a world class organization on those two things. Stop, and listen to what your staff is telling you. Work to include them in your decision making process.
  8. Allow conflict and competition to get out of control. According to former NeXT business partner Pat Crecine, Steve Jobs was “absolutely single minded, almost manic, in his pursuit of quality and excellence.” As a result, he would create conflict… and into that high octane combustion he would pour more gasoline with his abrasive personality. The flip side is just as dangerous for agencies: trying to eliminate conflict altogether. Work to find that happy balance.

What did Steve Jobs Do Right?

There are many, many books on what Steve did right. The proof is in the results we see today. I just want to highlight a few…

Steve Jobs used the power of vision to drive Apple forward. Today, agency leaders struggle with managing change in the market. Agency staff perceives the ongoing conflict between their leader’s actions, the ever changing goals of the agency, and client demands. Often times the messages from the leadership about what the agency is doing to deal with change is confusing, conflicting or just lacking all together. There are many reasons for this, but most stem from a lack of understanding about what is changing or from a lack of the development of a long-term vision. After all, if we’re not sure what the future holds, then what sort of firm should we be creating? Without any clear articulation of future expectations and goals the staff is left wondering if there is any benefit to be gained from the changes occurring all around them. The key question on everyone’s lips is “what’s in it for me?” Here is where we can take a page right out of Steve Jobs leadership handbook. His vision for Apple was simple: “Our primary goal here is to make the world’s best PCs — not to be the biggest or the richest.” Every Apple employee was expected to share that vision. John Sculley wrote after taking over in 1985 about the vision “Apple was supposed to become a wonderful consumer products company… This was a lunatic plan. High tech could not be designed and sold as a consumer product.” Seems he was wrong and Steve’s vision won in the end.

Steve Jobs was fully committed. It’s often been said that “change is exciting when done by us and threatening when done to us” and this is truer today than ever. Steve understood this and was willing to sacrifice everything in pursuit of his vision. Look back at all the Apple initiatives canceled at the very last moment for not reaching his standards. Whole programs developed at great cost he cut. We know now that he canceled an Apple PDA and a set of web services at the very last minute costing him millions. As agency leaders it’s your role to own the brand. After all, ownership leads to commitment. Your actions can make any change less threatening. Remember, you always must demonstrate your commitment to change with actions. And if you’re a leader, then you need to be the first to change — jump off the cliff!

Steve Jobs surrounded himself with top talent. He worked hard to recruit people usually regarded as the best in their fields. And the very best wanted to work for Apple so finding them became easy. For an agency you have work hard to find new talent and/or develop what you have in-house. The world of marketing will continue to change, affecting all levels of not just the industry, but the agency and everyone who works there. This is a people business, and our staff is our most important asset. As a leader of the agency you must be aware of the changes and its impact on people. Each individual in the agency must change their behaviors to better handle the agency changes. And agency leadership must support the changes with open communication and ongoing education programs. Find or develop the very best talent you can.

Final Thoughts

There is no doubt that Steve Jobs was a force of nature– unique in our time. Recognized as one of the true visionaries in history, there is much we can learn from his actions. Some good, some bad. The key is to be comfortable in your talents and don’t try to “be” Steve Jobs.

Research shows the best leaders are good communicators. They have learned to give clear instructions, stay responsive to questions and suggestions, and keep the appropriate parties well informed. Research also confirms a positive correlation between communication (understanding) and:

  • improved productivity
  • better problem solving
  • a reduction in grievances
  • ideas for improvement in methodology
  • improved working relationships
  • greater personal satisfaction

Agency leaders must set the example of how to survive and succeed in this new age of change. Be it external in the services you develop and offer, or internal with changes to your organization, work or decision making processes.

UPDATE 02/03/13

Check out the following sites for more insight into Steve Jobs:

  • Patrick Meyer, a business 3.0 expert and “The CEO Futurist” keynote speaker, points out how you can “shift your game” to new level if you leverage his Steve Jobs based “5 Disrupt Drivers for 2013.” Check them out here: What Steve Jobs Did Best!–Insights to Shift Your Game in 2013
  • Peter Sims, a management writer and entrepreneur points out some of what he calls mistakes in an HBR article. What he calls mistakes I call tactics, and not part of his leadership style. See if you agree here: Five of Steve Jobs’s Biggest Mistakes
  • David Marquet, leadership guru, former U.S. submarine driver, and someone who knows leadership (having turned his crew from being “worst to first”) makes an outstanding point. If the test for accomplishment is measured in quarterly results, and the test for leadership measured over quarter-century results, was Steve Jobs a great leader? Interesting point, and be sure to read it here: Apple: the difference between #Leadership and Accomplishment?

Sanders Consulting Group works with marketing firms of varying sizes in one-day planning sessions, four week assessments, weekly monitoring, and long term on-site implementation programs. We have worked with over 2,500 advertising agencies, public relations firms, and sales promotion companies all over the world for over 25 years.

 

Filed Under: Leadership Tagged With: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Ad Agency? The Times, They Are A-Changin’

November 16, 2011 By NewBusinessHawk

World of marketing is changing

Action and reaction, ebb and flow, trial and error, change - this is the world we live in.

Change. It happens every day, every moment, everywhere. Marketing firms, at the intersection of consumers and brands, must learn to embrace change.

Your Client Is Changing: Change How You Manage The Client

Clients today are looking for business-building ideas, speed, and firms that understand how to stay within budget.

Now is the time to think more strategically to determine exactly what your clients want – and deliver it better than anyone else! It’s time to rethink your account service team, move faster than ever, while boosting profits and lowering costs.

But first, you need to change.

The Consumer Is Changing: Change How You Sell To The Consumer

The consumer today is exposed to more messages than ever before from all types of media. Great creative can make a brand standout and generate that all important conversation. Now is the time to rethink the business and generate new ideas targeted to this new consumer – to make your agency more successful. Win awards. Attract new clients. Boost staff morale.

Time for more creativity from all members of your team… and to have a creative process that is faster, better, and more profitable… clients will be more satisfied and loyal.

But first, you need to change.

Marketing Is Changing: Change How You Market

Social media, conversations, listening to the consumer and more are changing the way agencies do business. Clients are demanding more. Consumers are becoming smarter. Now is the time to change how you view marketing – to improve your agency’s social skills and get an unfair advantage over your competition.

It’s a time when technology can bring you inside information, to make your creative more focused and insightful…. speed up your operations, to make you more efficient and cost-effective, to make your agency more profitable and even grow your business.

But first, you need to change…

You Need To Change: Change Your Agency… To Do It Better!

This is a fantastic time to be in advertising, full of incredible opportunity for growth and success – if you’re open to change. To change successfully, you must question everything you do. And discover new ways to do it better! It means asking tough questions, like:

  • What do we do better than anyone else?
  • What is our vision for the future?
  • How can we serve clients better?
  • How will we handle the impact of this digital world?

When you answer these questions, you’ve found your vision. But putting that vision into action can be challenging.

You Need to Change

To turn your vision into action, you’ll need to change the way you work and develop effective solutions to the barriers that stand in your way. You need to build on the unique capabilities of your agency – to take advantage of today’s market and become the agency of the future!

How long has it been since you took a long hard look at your firm? Your brand? Your new business efforts? Maybe you have been operating under the same brand for years without giving it much consideration. Or using the same processes and structure without reviewing all the changes in technology.

The bottom-line is the world is changing, and we all need to change with it.

Photo by ~gffrycole
Filed Under: Operations Tagged With: , , , , , , , ,

The Future of Advertising Agencies: Learnings From Forrester

October 5, 2011 By NewBusinessHawk
Over at Edward Boches blog Creativity Unbound is some interesting research on the future of advertising from Forrester – from a while back that I just found and read. I encourage everyone to read the whole thing. Pay close attention to his addtional thoughts… Go read, now!
I’ll wait.
The key findings topline is:
  • It is a new world defined by technology and consumer control
  • Consumers hate most advertising
  • Adaptive marketing is the new model
  • Media needs to combine paid, owned and earned
  • Successful agencies will move well beyond campaigns
  • Clients will look for three things
    • Ideas: note this does not mean messages or ads
    • Interaction: engagement, connection, community, media
    • Intelligence, as in you need to collect, report, analyze and predict: if you don’t have robust analytics, you’re in big trouble

Edward goes on and cuts to the chase with this additional thought:

Chief Innovation Officer, Mullen; Marketer; Blogger

If I were to sum up even more.

  • content lives everywhere, there are no walls
  • experiences more than messages
  • consumers aren’t audience but participants
  • agility is essential
  • measure, predict, act

 

Changing Technology Study

Back on November 11, 1996 I was part of a team that published a research paper for one of the largest marketing firms out there. The purpose was to examine how trends and new capabilities in information technology would impact the world of marketing. Back then ”information technology” is what we called everything from the new “world wide web” to networks just being developing in-house.
Just to give you an idea on just how much the world has changed think about this - In 1996 the DVD was launched, in Japan, not in the US. Windows NT 4.0 was released by Microsoft and Apple was losing money. Internet Explorer 3 was just launched to fight Netscape. The New York Times just started its own website. It was a big deal that time as very few newspapers bothered to bear the expense of having a website and publishing their own materials in it.

The Findings

What were the results of our study? From the findings we found 1996 to be a year of change:
As the number of messages in the marketplace rises exponentially, the perceived value of each message has diminished over time. New technologies have not only reduced the value of each message, but also provided each consumer with greater control over the messages they receive. This newly created consumer power will continue to drive the marketing communications industry. Consumers can now dictate when, how and where they will listen to marketing messages. The net effect of this empowerment on the industry is substantial:
  1. The proliferation of mass media is giving way to alternative media outlets and vehicles, absorbing greater proportions of client marketing budgets
  2. Agencies who focus on traditional mass media are threatened with extinction because they will be able to add little value to the planning, buying and execution process
  3. Agencies need to take a much stronger leadership role in integrating with clients and their end customers
  4. Agency professionals need far greater access to information on their target audience and must know how to use it effectively
  5. Traditional compensation and commission schemes will continue to evaporate in favor of project, performance or consultative-based value creation
We summed it all up by stating “The advertising industry is at a critical juncture in relation to the effective utilization of technology. It must find new ways to harness the power of information to influence the consumer, integrate its existing client base and attract new business. The alternative is to let the industry’s core business continue to erode by adding little or no value to the advertising process.”

The more things change…

The more change there is. There was a time where ad agencies and clients were tied at the hip – structures aligned – CEO’s/ad agencies communicating almost daily. Back then the ad agency was a titan in the corporate world – could create markets, brands, and shape public perception with strong impactful marketing ideas. Of course it was much easier back then when almost everyone would tune into a show like Ed Sullivan.

In this hyper-marketed world the power of any one marketing effort is severely diminished. CEO’s have recognized this and now spend more time with business strategist, management consultants and such… The board room used to be a regular meeting place for the agency, now it’s not. This is not to say there’s not a few powerful brands that still rely on marketing, and use it in a strategic way… only that is increasingly the exception.

The rules HAVE changed, and unless marketing firms understand the basic fundamentals of the change many will be just changing deck chairs.

 

Filed Under: Leadership Tagged With: , , , , , , ,

Want More Revenue? Do More Consulting!

September 21, 2011 By Stuart Sanders

It's not too late to change...The phone calls into us always begin the same way. It’s an agency owner online who has a prospect for some agency services, and the prospect’s product or service is new, untried, money is limited, or time is short. You know the drill. The typical agency owner is planning to sell in a focus group or two to get started and wants confirmation that that’s the right thing to do.

Ugh. First off that sounds so simplistic, sort of like your doctor saying take two aspirin and call me in the morning. There’s a better approach.

Start Consulting by Starting Simple:

What’s needed is a simple consulting arrangement that maximizes value for the prospect, revenue for the agency owner and a more professional approach for the agency. The strategy is to move the prospect into a consulting arrangement, not a marketing answer.

You sell in a basic short-term consulting arrangement that will allow you to do a deep dive into the product or service that needs to be marketed. You are selling in your time to talk to users, investors, bankers, and other contacts that have insight on the product or service. Figure to sell in 5 days of consulting time, and now show how the 40 hours will be spent by your team, hour by hour. It all adds up to the fee you are proposing. For the client it’s more professional, simpler to understand and easy to see where the time goes.

The key is to make the list of projects you plan to undertake sound long and exhaustive and important to know. Now use your agency team to burn the hours doing a thorough situation analysis but don’t waste any time on preparing a report or passing money on to research houses, focus group facilities, etc at this stage. You keep the full fee as revenue.

At the end of the time, present a charted out SWOT program to the prospect showing how to solve the problem, meaning how to launch the product or service, what to call it, what follow-on research you need, and all the trimmings to do a good job for the client.

Your ideas at this stage are just rough. Don’t waste any creative time on concepts or tactics at this stage.

And don’t spend more than a minute from the end of the first 40 hours of your consulting study until you present your SWOT and you don’t want to mention you will be presenting a SWOT but call it something like a Flashplan or Impact Study or whatever you name it to get it started. SWOT is the format you are following to make it understandable and easy to follow. Nothing more is needed at this stage.

To sell it in focus the prospect on the need for the first phase, not the second phase, so you can be general on what the pay off will look like because you don’t know until you get into it.

This is a much better way to get started with a new client because it lets you learn about them and you learn about the market. And the start up money available comes to you, not to a research facility down the street.

Move into Consulting. Control Your Future!

It’s called consulting and any agency with more than four people ought to be doing a half million in consulting revenue every year. This simple consulting approach will get you started toward that goal.

Many marketing firms are feeling like they’ve missed the boat. Time to change the rules and get back in the game… it’s not too late. Consulting is the lost art that agencies need to rediscover in this new world we are now living in.

 

Filed Under: Leadership Tagged With: , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Ad Agency Leadership: Planning for the Annual Retreat

September 20, 2011 By NewBusinessHawk

Planning

Time to break from routine, an opportunity to step out of day-to-day life and reflect on purpose and meaning, clarify direction, and fine tune processes.

‘Tis the season for reflection and planning about the agency and where you want to go in the new year. We typically help agency leadership approach the planning question three ways.

1. Focus On Growth:

The first way is New Business oriented since so much planning for agencies typically starts and stops with getting more new business. We run a standard new business planning session in one day that agencies love. The day is built around a basic planning track that cracks open the best growth options and gets a management team to decide together how best to solve new business. We call this the DayOne. It involves a half day of one-on-one meetings with the senior team so their concerns get heard, followed by a group session focused on new business growth. The objective is to build a strong new business plan for the new year by the end of the meeting which the team commits to execute.

2. Focus On Change:

The second approach is more of a general management meeting. New business is only one item on the agenda, there are other issues that are very important like structure, profitability, M&A, adding new talent, expanding PR, growing subsidiaries, etc. We work with the management team one-on-one to get their feedback to build an agenda, get ownership direction on where they want to take the meeting, and then structure a one or two-day meeting with sub-groups perhaps, focused on the most important management concerns. This is often an off-site meeting with a dinner the night before to set up the teams and the time schedule and then launch the program the next day. We have some exercises that agencies like and the session is very popular since agencies usually don’t focus on themselves as much as they need to, so putting this time on the most important client in the agency, the agency itself, is a welcome change. We refer to this as the Agency Retreat.

3. Focus On Operations:

The third way is moderating a one-day session that outlines changes in the industry in a way that allows you to pick and choose what applies to your unique needs and goals. You benefit from our experience of visiting and working with over 1000 agencies. After your management team develops a common understanding of what can be accomplished, we work with you to identify productivity issues and opportunities within your current operations. Specific client service issues are surfaced, product development lead-times are reviewed and agency definitions of service and quality are clarified. Finally, the consultant then works with your management team to evaluate how a range of operational solutions can address these strategic needs. A plan for action is created that allows you to build on the day’s experience. This is built around a standard planning session with an outside moderator very experienced in the agency world there for perspective, insight, help and a neutral POV.
When it comes to planning, we have been helping agencies do this successfully for over 25 years. Contact us at info@sandersconsulting.com and let’s start your planning the right way.
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