Agency chiefs with an eye toward the future are sending out their best New Business Hunters to bring home as much meat as they can for their hungry tribe. One of the first places hunters look for dinner is in your back yard where they wait to steal game when you aren’t watching. Since I have been hunting and developing new accounts for Ad/ MarkCom firms for more than 15 years, I would like to share some of the reasons clients give me for why they switched agencies. Hopefully account managers will find this to be useful in their quest to keep and grow business from within.
WHY YOUR CLIENTS MOVED THEIR ACCOUNT FROM YOUR AGENCY TO MINE:
- “My account was smaller than others at the agency so they took their time getting back to me when I called. It was obvious that managing my account was not a priority for them. I also had junior-level people servicing my business. I had to do a lot of educating.”
- “They kept pushing me to use capabilities and services that were most profitable for them instead of developing a solution that would meet my marketing goals and needs”
- "They were not proactive, had no ideas and were behind the curve when it came to innovation.”
- “The person(s) who pitched me disappeared after we signed and ended up working with people who did not seem to care as much about my account.”
- “They did not have the ability to do X.” NOTE: Sometimes the former agency actually did have the ability to do X but had not done a good job of communicating all of their agency’s capabilities with their client, or had not made an effort to update the client on new capabilities.
- “They did not get the results we wanted.” NOTE: This is not necessarily the agency’s fault. However, reviewing results often with the client and making sure the client is aware of all the reasons why something may not be working, and/or offering to try a new approach could help alleviate this threat.
- “I took the place of the person who used to manage the agency relationship and I did not want to work with the same agency my predecessor used.” NOTE: In this case, the new VP of Marketing or Advertising wants to put their stamp on marketing/advertising strategy going forward, and that includes choosing a new agency. As someone hunting for new accounts, I have found that when roles change at a company, this is one of the best times for me to pursue that company aggressively by making contact immediately with the new decision-maker. The only thing the incumbent agency can do to try to keep the account in this case is to make sure that the new decision-maker knows about any good results you achieved, giving them a good reason and/or empirical evidence for why they should stay with your agency.
- “They did not know what was going on at my company. We had lots of announcements about X in the media, but when I asked my ad agency’s account team if they had any ideas on how we should adjust our marketing communication strategy to reflect this recent development, they did not have a clue. We were spending a lot of money with this agency and I thought they should at least have some cursory knowledge of what was happening within our company before I told them about it. It was all over the news so I don’t understand how they could have missed it.”
By Laureen Peck
Hi, Laureen. This is Freddie from linked in. Congrats on your new blog. That pretty much sums it up in my book as well. Here's a couple more for your list, from the creative end:
ReplyDeleteThe agency didn't understand our brand and kept coming up with creative that did not fit our look, tone and feel, and campaigns that felt disjointed from one to the next.
The agency did not take our research into account. They never bothered to really understand our target, and kept coming up with
creative that was clever but way off base.
Thanks Freddie!
ReplyDeleteHere ia a sampling of some other postings from LinkedIn Group members regarding this post:
Tom Walsh, Creative Director at Noble Communications Co:
"...Your list of 8 points should be posted on the wall of every agency account team. Open communication and developing a strong agency/client partnership needs to be a daily effort. Unfortunately, the current economic environment and agency staffing cuts will put even more pressure on those fragile client relationships...."
Elizabeth Walker, President at Marketing Masters:
"I teach a course in Negotiation Skills as part of the Masters Certificate in Marketing Communications Leadership at the Schulich School of Business, York University - I will absolutely be using this post and comments as part of that course. part of negotiating is knowing both sides of the equation, This is a great discussion and especially relevant."
Glynns Thomas , Small Business Advertising Ideas and Advice:
"..As someone who has been in client management at advertising agencies and on the other end as a client working with agencies I can say this is a pretty good description of what goes on. I can't tell you the frustration of feeling like a small fish in someone's big pond who wanted our big name on their rooster but our department had relatively small dollars. Or the lack of new ideas after being a client for a while. But I feel the frustration for an agency when a new V.P. comes in and wants to "shake" things up by bringing in a new agency just to show they were doing something (and it can take a while to find out this was their hidden agenda). In my experience that works only if you had a really bad agency to start with because you suffer in lost time by bringing a new agency up to speed and ramping up new programs with them--by that time the new V.P. has gone on to another department!"
Walter Marcinowski, Owner, Walmar International and Marketing and Advertising Specialist:
"I think you did a great job in covering the topic. In my 30 years of experience in the field I have found that the marketplace has changed significantly and that you need to be able to stay ahead of the client in all matters.
The average VP of marketing today has a tenure of 18 months in their position. If they were a great success someone else hires them away. If they have not produced in 18 months they are replaced. It is imperative that you as a new biz person skew your relationship to the marketing directors as opposed to the companies. They are the ones who will bring you new business as they move on to their new positions. It is up to the account directors to hold the company as a client by doing a good job.
The most important thing is to get to know your client on a personal level. Find out about their interests, their families and their lifestyles. See them off the job as well as just in the office, even if its for a cup of tea at the trendy new raw food restaurant. When things go awry it is easier for them to pick up the phone to speak to a friend as opposed to a business associate. They find it easier to fire a business associate. I have had customers for as long as 17 years until they were sold off to conglomerates, because I was a friend who helped them when they needed it.
When something screwed up I would take responsibility when something was a great success I would give them all the credit. It made them look better to their company and it kept me in business.
Also understand something else: They are usually on some sort of career path. Try to discover what that is and help guide them on it. The lowly but intelligent account exec of today can be the CEO in a few years. Do everything to help them on their path. Your job is to make them look good.
Finally it is critical to stay in touch. Too many times once the business is won the sales person disappears. You need to realize that the first sale you made is yourself. They bought you and their trust in you not your firm. It is up to your firm to make the second sale in its performance. Keep yourself in the picture as much as possible. Make a monthly call to see how things are going etc.
Most of all make friends! When things get rough they will help you in return."
Ruben Gonzalez, Sales and Marketing Account Executive at Dot Fulfillment Services:
"Laureen thank you so much for putting into words what I preach on a regular basis to our CSR and Account Manger teams. At Dot Fulfillment Services 60% of our work comes through agencies. They don't always know what they want or what they need - they just have deadline and a budget. Our task is to manage them - order takers fit the profile you have listed in your post. I will print this out and share it with our team. Well done."
Rob Taylor, President and Digital Marketing Devotee, TD Media, Inc. "Great list. I think demonstrable results trump all. It is critical to define success ahead of time and then regularly produce reports that show the effectiveness of your work measured against that goal. Also a good idea to revisit the goal setting process on a regular basis so that shifts in the client's priorities do not remain unaddressed. Of course you probably still need to be concious of pricing and how you treat the client but defining success and proving that you are achieving that is the first step in building defensible client relationships."
I actually printed your article and made it a mandatory read for all my staff because I felt that it was that relevant, so thank you so much for contributing that and the inconsiderate liars section is my favorite; I feel like I deal with that EVERY SINGLE DAY from every agency; but then again budgets are just rough right now for everybody and its difficult to say what the reason is for RFP's to go nowhere.
ReplyDelete~Alexei Alankin
Marketing Director, City Eventions
http://www.cityeventions.com
http://www.linkedin.com/in/alexeialankin
There's another reason agencies billings are being pecked to death. Independent operators that work outside the agency model. It's happening now more than ever - smaller and even one man operations that are more nimble, have less egos, due process, office politics and the rest of the nonsense that slows down every process of every deal and decision. Every day I see another indy operator slicing a piece of some agencies revenue off for themselves. It's sometimes easy for these peeps because they can move fast and under the radar and since their overhead is cheap they can execute by outsourcing - keep the price down and still see a reasonable margin for their efforts. Of course that also further creates the "too many freaking agencies" cluster-fuck we are already in.
ReplyDeleteAlexei - I'm glad that you found this article useful. That was the point of writing it.
ReplyDeleteRegarding your comment about the "inconsiderate liars" section, I think you are talking about another post "How Many Hoops Should Your Ad Agency Jump Through to Win a Pitch".
Unfortunately, persons who tell you that your agency is a serious contender, but are only trying to prove to their boss that they had a thorough review process and actually planned to hire someone else the whole time, do exist. Unfortunately, most of us don't have mind-reading capabilities, however I am told by one of my readers that there are ways to find out who these liars are before you pitch them.