Winning the business - period! - Part 1
Winning isn’t everything - it’s the only thing!
Common Enemies – Form & Function
When Form & Function rule in new business, you lose sight of the real stuff of convincing a prospect to become a client.
For decades, agencies have successfully won business without having scripts or the right preliminary set-up or following a strict time frame or even rehearsing correctly.
That’s not to say these things are not helpful in getting the business – they are.
About as helpful as making sure you have a saddle on a horse before you ride. Doesn’t mean you have to have a saddle to ride though.
Innovative solutions to pressing issues, wrapped in strategic salesmanship will always trump form and function in the selling game.
Therefore, sit down with the team and start with these five questions.
“Who’s going to run the pitch”?
“Are they the right client for us and conversely, are we the right agency for them?”
“What will it take to win this business?”
“How do we convince them that we are the right agency versus all their other options?”
Once you have 1 – 4 answered, then answer this one – the most important - as it will require doing your homework, both independently resourced and through direct contact with the client, their vendors or people who know them.
5. “What do we need to know about their business, issues, needs, wants, marketing communications, competition landscape, branding architecture, marketing and business strategies that will help us become their marketing communications solution?”
Once you have the answer, the team then has direction and can do what the agency does best. Solve marketing problems instead of wondering how long the presentation should be, if you have the right credential slides, how many people should be in on the pitch, or how the room’s going to be set up.
Nothing like working with a crack team of solution mongers dying to get their claws into a client’s business and come up with innovative solutions. This becomes motivation enough to last the endless hours it takes to ready for a new business win.
Action: Come up with the ideas that will accomplish the client’s goals then worry about the rest of the form and function activities.
Credentials – the agency’s worst enemy in landing business.
Credentials our worst enemy? – “Heck, without them we wouldn’t be who we are today!”
True!
So, you were founded in 1986, have 50 employees with 3 offices, bill $50 million and have a really blue-chip client roster. Impressive!
However, ask this question: Is it more about what the agency is proud of or what the potential client is interested in, that sells them?
Action: If not part of the RFP process, send your credentials ahead in hard copy, CD, links to FTP sites, e-mail, placing it on YouTube, on Blogs or even on social sites like business Facebook, using their calendar to layout the agency’s history from its inception.
This way your focus is on solving the prospect’s problems and not on what makes you who you are. What’s important is who you are going to make the client.
The essence of selling – having the right hook and bait!
Selling is about knowing what ails the prospect (bait), rolling up one’s sleeves and coming up with innovative solutions (hook) that make the prospect think: “Where have these people been all my life?”
It’s about making these solutions come alive before, during and after the final presentation. Virtually, by illustration, by physical examples, by showing real life occasions of your ideas in play, by immersing the prospect into the ideas (physically and mentally).
Then, while they are enraptured by your clearly superior understanding of their business and innovative solutions, slide in impressive facts and figures (these are your credentials) that bolster a prospect’s confidence in your ability to deliver upon these promised solutions.
Think about buying a car.
No matter which dealership you go to, you’re going to get something that has 4 wheels, an engine, at least a 36-month, 36,000 mile warranty.
The last thing you need is the salesman pointing out these facts. You wouldn’t be there if they didn’t have these things to begin with.
That’s the same as, out of the gate, telling a prospect you were founded in 1986, have 50 employees with 3 offices, bill $50 million and a really blue-chip client roster. You would not have made the short list if you didn’t have these credentials. They were your pass key.
Ok, let’s say you’re still going to start with your credentials no matter what you’ve read here.
What if your competition was founded in 1946, has 3,000 employees globally, 24 offices, bill $1 Billion and has 4 of the 5 most famous brands known to man, all of which deeply impresses the CMO whose need is to hire an agency with star power.
Mostly, you lose!
Playing credential against credential becomes the red herring, the rabbit hole from which you never escape.
You end up either being too small, too large, or just not as big as or unique as the next guy, the final decision then based entirely upon the whims of the prospect.
More accurately, think of credentials as capabilities. It’s about what the credentials allow you to do and accomplish for the client’s business.
Back to visiting the dealership. Before you arrived, you’d probably done some homework on the car in which you’re interested.
At the dealership you test drive to see if it fulfills what you are looking for and if it gives you that something beyond what you were expecting, the bonus lucky strike extra that “wows” you, that propels that vehicle to your top pick.
While doing this, you are constantly comparing your options to other cars you’ve researched and test driven.
If the salesman is smart, and sees you’re an entrepreneurial self-employed speed freak on a budget they say:
“This 6-cylinder has as much acceleration as the V8, yet gets an additional 10 mpg. With you driving an average of 15,000 miles a year at $3.95 a gallon you just saved about $1,000 a year. That’s about $80 a month, which pays almost 1/3 of your monthly lease payments, which, as an independent contractor, is fully tax deductible to you in the first year.”
Action: Convert all your credentials into the value they offer to a client’s business.
You were founded in 1946 = stability & deep experience.
If the client requires either one of these two, based possibly on earlier experiences with agencies, this is what you should be discussing when you mention 1946.
Actual example: Brand was firing their incumbent because they had changed account leadership 3 X’s in the past 2 years. (this was discovered by the agency speaking with a media rep)
Agency pitching the business had an average client tenure around 15 years and current account management employment with the agency 12 years.
They very adroitly mentioned this in their pitch without ever letting on they knew about the prospect’s issue with account management churn.
They positioned it as follows: (paraphrasing)
“One of the reasons our clients stay our clients is that we have a demonstrated loyalty by our key Account people to their clients and to this agency. Our average client tenure is 15 years and 12 years for our key account management. John, who’d be your lead account director has been with us for 14 years.”
(I discovered this later when speaking with the agency’s president, a personal friend, who had 6 months earlier attended one of our Landing New Business training sessions)
More to come in Part 2…..Winning the business - period! Stay tuned.
