7 New Business Mistakes Agencies Make

Earlier this week, I wrote about mistakes clients make during the new business process. Today, I want to take a look at mistakes agencies make -- these are mistakes we try to avoid, but we've made them, too.

1. Not answering direct questions. There are some questions that are difficult to answer, including the quantity of articles an agency might expect an announcement to generate or a question about budget levels. But too many agencies hem and haw when a client seeks a clear answer. Hemmimg and hawing makes it seem like you don't know or won't answer.
2. Being too vague when it comes to program specifics. There's a debate about how detailed agencies should get in their proposals. If you don't provide enough detail, you may not provide the prospective client with enough information to ascertain whether or not you would be suitable to serve as their agency. Part of the debate is this: which is more important -- the ideas or the execution of those ideas? As the head of an agency, I think both the creative and the execution are important, and work hard to excel at both.  At the proposal level we want to provide enough detail to prove our thoughtfulness and experience without handing a document to a prospective client that enables the organization to implement the program without us. (We've heard of cases were clients take the ideas generated through the RFP process and implemented those concepts themselves, without hiring a new agency.)  Getting that balance right is a challenge.
3. Not developing reasonable metrics to measure and evaluate the client's marketing investment. In fact, too often agencies don't see a campaign as "an investment," so they think in terms of generating coverage (via traditional PR) or generating followers (via social media) but fail to focus on the need to generate leads. I realize setting expectations and metrics for social media can be a challenge -- especially because metrics for one company may not be appropriate for the next company. But because clients see PR and social media as part of their marketing investment, we need to do a better job of quantifying our proposals and campaigns so as to help determine the ROI for that investment.
4. Pursuing clients that are not good fits, based on your experience. In a down economy, agencies are more motivated to pursue any new business. But there are clients -- while worthy organizations -- may not be a good fit for you. It's not worth pursuing that kind of new business, if only because those assignments may not be a good fit for the agency, its culture and its other clients.On the other hand, I'm not saying agencies must limit their new business only to the sort of clients and industries with which they've worked previously. It's hard to expand if you don't push the boundaries. But agencies and clients should be cautious.
5. Not delivering what the client wants or focusing the proposal only to the needs of the day-to-day contact and not the marketing chief. We did that once -- provided a good program that addressed what the potential day-to-day client told us she wanted but ignored what her boss wanted.  She had told us she was the key decision maker, but that turned out not the the case. Meanwhile, too many agencies seek to solve the prospective client's marketing challenge from the agencies' perspective and not take into consideration the client, the client's culture, resources and needs.  The client is looking for a partner, an agency it can work with. By not addressing the client's needs upfront, the agency shows that it doesn't really care. (It's a big tip-off if the client's name is misspelled or if another client's name is listed in the body that the proposal didn't get a lot of thought or interest from the prospective agency.)
6. Not showing any interest or enthusiasm for the client, its business and sector.  I'm always surprised when clients tell us that their current agency no longer seems interested in the business, and yet we hear that about other agencies. If agency personnel don't seem excited, it will be difficult for them to generate excitement among reporters, bloggers, etc. 
7. Playing bait-and-switch by bringing only senior people to the pitch meeting and then asigning only junior staff to the account.  This has been going on a long time. Some clients we now work with have specifically told us they liked that our account teams all have substantial experience, and that the people who pitch the account actually work on the account. For us, that makes sense for how we run the agency and our mindset about our corporate culture. 

We don't mind if other agencies make this last mistake, actually. Or any of the other mistakes we've highlighted above. We continue to look for ways to improve what we do. And since we wrote about the mistakes prospective clients make -- based on a Forbes.com blog post -- we thought it only fair to point out mistakes agencies make.

Let us know if there's an agency new business mistake you've seen that I have not captured above.

Mistakes Clients Make When Choosing an Agency: RFP process

In Part I, I responded to a blog post by Avi Dan on Forbes.com: "The 7 Biggest Mistakes Clients Make When Choosing An Agency." In Part II, I want to explore the Request for Proposal (RFP) process.

The RFP process is intended to be a level playing field for all participating agencies, which would be fine and fair. But in practice, RFPs seem like a more complicated process, for clients, who have to develop them, and for agencies, who have to respond to them. 

I actually don't know anyone who likes the RFP process.

The problem is that too many of them seem poorly designed.

A few years ago, we got one from an engineering-driven company, and it was clear that the committee that developed the RFP was comprised of engineers, not marketers.  The tactics and strategies that are important for successful marketing were included -- but at the end, under a Miscellaneous heading. Sometimes RFPs have questions that don't even address the issue.

Here are some elements that are the hallmark of a well-conceived RFP:

• A clear explanation of why the organization is conducting an RFP now, including the challenges the company faces. We've seen RFPs that provide minimal background, which makes it difficult to address key challenges. For example, one RFP was clear on the key challenge -- the organization was launching a new first-of-its-kind product; unfortunately, a quick search found that their product wasn't the first, and that that affects the strategy, messaging and positioning. 
• A clear explanation of what the organization is seeking in an agency, particularly the skill sets and experience.  There are lots of blurred lines out there among agencies: there are traditional PR agencies; hybrids (likes ours, cover PR and social media); and social media agencies as well as ad agencies focused on digital. Part of the process before the RFP should be to pre-qualify the sort of agency, its expertise and background that can help an organization achieve its goals. That pre-screening can help agencies determine whether they should participate. 
• Specific objectives for the program. 
• A realistic time line for the process. We've seen RFPs that requested a great deal of work to be completed in two weeks, with the promise the prospective client would respond in two weeks. That happened recently, but that's the exception. I remember one RFP process in which the client said they would make a decision within a week...which stretched out to more than a month. And I knew going into it, based on what the prospective client said, that they were never going to meet their deadline.
• A clear overview of the scope of work. One challenge is that the scope of work for a social media campaign can vary widely depending on the company, its resources and culture. This is especially a challenge when it comes to talking about social media, which can cover a lot of ground and tactics, and can require lots of multimedia content that can entail out-of-pocket expenses. 
• A clear overview of the budget. I understand the challenge in talking about budgets -- as a company you don't want to set the bar too high (say, $20,000 per month) if a hungry agency is willing to underbid (say, $10,000 per month).  But without a range, or some guidance, it's difficult for an agency to know what's realistic or not. Because one prospective client said, "we really want to see your best ideas," "we're entering an important make-or-break growth phase for the company" and "budget isn't really an issue," we provided some great creative ideas...that also happened to be thousands of dollars more than they could stomach. Knowing that budget was more of an issue, we would have provided more ideas that fit that parameter.
• A clear sense of how the proposals will be evaluated, including the structure you're looking for. A recent RFP we heard about generated proposals written in PowerPoint, Word and Excel. If there's that much confusion in how the document should be presented, there may be other problems with the procees. By the way, preparing a template for the proposals will also make it easier for the evaluating committee to review all the proposals and select a winner.

There are some other good ideas regarding RFPs on LinkedIn Groups available here; I liked the response from Paul Gilbert, a regional Director at Forrester Research.

If you disagree, please let me know. If you agree and have a great story to share, please let me know.

Meanwhile, to be fair, check out my blog post, "7 New Business Mistakes Agencies Make."

Mistakes Clients Make When Choosing an Agency

Avi Dan, founder of founder of Avidan Strategies,  recently wrote an interesting article on Forbes.com, "The 7 Biggest Mistakes Clients Make When Choosing An Agency."

Of the seven, I agree with four of them:

• Forgetting that the most important reason for choosing an agency is its ability.
• Not aligning client and agency interests and priorities is another mistake.
• Leaving the compensation discussion to the end of the process can cause contentious misunderstandings.
• Giving equal weight to all opinions at the company ignores the fact that different managers have different levels of experience, and sometimes, different expectations.

Dan suggests that conducing a search without using a search consultant is a mistake, but I disagree.  We're seeing fewer companies engage a search consultant, and yet we continue to nurture long-term relationships with our clients -- even through the roughest economic period in memory.

That said, I think a search consultant could be useful when companies decide to select an agency based on a Request For Proposal (RFP) process.

In part II, I'll write about aspects of RFPs.