A Cost You Can Cut: Agency New Business

Back on February 2nd, Tim Williams,  Marketing author, consultant to agencies and other professional firms, student of “next practices” posted his article suggesting (most believed) that an agency could easily cut the cost of new business. There was a lively exchange of thoughts but there also seemed to be two trains of thought. Hense my post today (February 14th)

I read two topics here – the outreach and focus issue (I agree) and the actual out-of-pocket expenses. So is the agency investment in new business a larger percent of gross sales than that of most companies? I don’t have the statistics; does anyone? Who says it’s expensive? Are we talking about full-time personnel expenses? The prepatory prospecting phases or the pitches? Who says pitches have to be elaborate and costly?

I find agencies often misunderstand what they perceive as the client’s request for spec creative. If it’s specifically requested in the RFP or RFD (Request for Dialogue – our term), then maybe not. But I can’t fault any client for asking for a way both to distinguish one from another or to learn if a candidate was: listening; reading; researching … And I expect an agency to be willing to demonstrate that.

Visiting a website; looking at creative samples and even reading case studies is not sufficient. By example, some of the best agency work shown was often a collaboration between agency and client. Maybe the client volunteered the concept, the headline, much of the copy. The agency did a grand job of execution. If the searching client has no creative skills, then it may be difficult to duplicate that kind of success with that agency.

I expect an agency candidate to be willing and able to “talk” about some concepts, some campaign “themes”, some “what-if’s” to demonstrate they – GOT IT; and were willing to present some value-added to the conversation. In my mind, that’s not spec creative, and if an agency is not willing to do so, they shouldn’t be surprised if they are left at the wayside.