Everything an agency presents in an RFP is measured...everything! Here are 3 pitch-meeting examples that may surprise you!

Everything an agency presents in an RFP is measured...everything! Here are 3 pitch-meeting examples that may surprise you!

Agency search and review services are the mainstays of our activities at RFP Assistants. Since 2004, we have worked with many industry leading companies in need of a new advertising agency or to re-evaluate their current agency relationship as part of internal, corporate due diligence.

As you can imagine, this type of consultancy has valuable insight to agencies wanting to understand how the review process works from the client-side and how to use that knowledge to garner an advantage. The truth is the simplicity of the differentiation that occurs between agencies making one a clear winner would shock a lot of agencies. The phrase “it’s not rocket-science” is apropos in RFP conclusions and I hope that sharing a few simple “nuggets” will help you on your next new business endeavor.

Technology

Whether an RFP is focused on branding, creative, content, digital…or whatever, you are also being judged on your technology and your ability to use it to present in a manner in keeping with a progressive agency seeking a partnership with a prospective client. By “technology” I mean everything that is electronic in the presentation room. Here are a couple examples.

· Are you prepared to PPT in style? Ahh PowerPoint! The bane of the boardroom! The necessary evil of presentations everywhere…and also your first blunder opportunity on so many levels!

o Did you bring your own projector? Nothing shows ineptitude more than needing a client to call for their IT department to help you set up right when you walk into a room. Not convenient and wasteful of their time.

o Can you run the PPT smoothly? What if your PC dies? Do you have a backup PC ready? A flash-drive? Have a 2^nd PPT set to go always! Hopefully, you’ll never need it but you’ll be thankful if you do!

o Did you check your connectivity before beginning? If not, your embedded internet link might not work.

o Did you check your PPT for dead internal links? Are you showing a report that is so tiny on the screen that no one can read it? If you have to say, “I know you can’t ready this. It’s in the leave-behind.” It has no value at the moment!

All of these things can make your agency look foolish and unprepared. It’s being noted!

· Cell phones. Yup! Everyone in the room has one just like you. And guess what? They are all set to vibrate, shimmy or chirp with each in-coming call, meeting reminder, email received and the ever constant social media channel updates. If you can, turn them off! Do it in front of the client to show them THEY are the center of your attention. This meeting will be less than 2 hours generally – you can tap out for that amount of time, right? Yes, it’s THAT important.

Oh, and make sure your whole team shuts down too! I’ve been in meetings where the agency CEO shut down but the account executive didn’t. I knew what was to come. Sure enough, the AE’s phone acted like a Mexican jumping bean on a double-shot espresso for the full presentation!! He was constantly checking whenever it bleeped, buzzed or blooped. It made the agency appear to lack in both appropriateness and respect for the client, their time and their business. Not a good look, trust me!

Team

Team assignment is probably one of the most [if not THE most] important criteria for agency selection. Assuming that your agency can carry out the client’s advertising objectives, it is the people executing those objectives that hold tremendous import to your prospective client. What constantly surprises me is that agencies will bring in their entire sales and new business development team and even their CEO but not one team member! Where are the people who’ll actually work the account? This almost always leaves the client scratching their heads in confusion. If your competitors bring members of their proposed account team in and you do not – they are ahead of you without one word being spoken or one slide being shown!

Now let’s say you do bring in a team member…or two…or ten! Be careful. More is rarely more. You’re being judged on how your agency presents and to have non-participatory bodies in the room just to say you’ve brought in the whole account team will work against you. It looks sloppy, wasteful and confusing. Assuming you’re at the client’s office - why would you incur the cost to fly/drive them all in and have some contribute nothing? What value did they present the client? None!

Only bring in your account team superstars! You know the ones. They are innately good at presenting, or can be trained to be good. They know their area of responsibility on the account team and will make the rest of the team shine without them needing to be there. And this person does not have to be the main day-to-day agency/client contact necessarily. Once you get to pitch, you already know the main pain-points this client has – is it lack of metrics? Then bring in your superstar analytics team member[s]. Is the client in need of improved agency attention and communication? Bring in that fabulous account director.

In a nutshell, assemble your presentation team and make sure you can answer yes to questions like these:

· Does everyone on this team have relevance to this client?

· Does everyone on this team have a role in our presentation?

· Does everyone on our team have the knowledge of the client, the criteria they are seeking as outlined in the RFP and the ability to field any and all anticipated questions involved in account management, program creation, and ROI metrics?

There are certainly more you can ask, but this is a good start.

Legal

The area of legal is a measurement criterion most clients and agencies do not even think about – but it can be a strong indicator of “things to come.” What I mean by this is when legal gets involved in the agency review process, it is almost always at the end of the RFP. Everything has been verbally negotiated and now a contract and SOW is on the table for agency legal and client legal to hash out. Here are a couple tips to shed some light on this rarely considered gage:

· Never bad-mouth your legal team to your prospective client. First of all, putting lawyer jokes aside, they are people, and they care about their work just like you do. Saying bad things about any member of your team, including your in-house counsel, makes you look like detached entities already fighting amongst yourselves. Again, it’s not a good look. And if your legal is not in-house but instead a firm your agency hired to represent their legal interests, you will look ridiculous insulting them to a prospect. Your agency hired them after all! Stick with Thumper’s quote to guide you - “If you can’t say something nice, don’t say anything at all.”

· Legal IS part of your team. Agencies rarely take it upon themselves to treat, train and prepare their legal department as an extension of their New Biz Dev team. Well, they are! They are actually the final stitch in the sales process quilt! Hopefully contract negotiations are a frequent part of your agency’s everyday activities. You do want to grow, right? Working with your legal team to create a seamless, stress-free contracting process demonstrates to your soon-to-be client that you ARE the buttoned up and prepared agency they are hiring! It will instill more confidence than you can imagine right out of the gate of this new relationship.

I hope these tips whet your appetite and encourage you to take a look at some of your internal new business practices. If you notice, there is a general theme in this post. It establishes the need for agencies to make new business development a known process. From selecting the right team, to preparing technology to showcase your adeptness, to playing nice with all team members necessary to making this new relationship work!

It is all about dedicating time to gather your past RFP files so you can rehash why you did or didn’t win the business. Ask your clients why they hired you! Learn! These types of actions will strengthen the weaknesses you have identified and enable you to set in motion new procedures in addressing future RFPs. And then, practice, practice, practice!! Great agency RFP pitches are like great dancers…they look effortless and they do what they do with enthusiasm, preparedness and zeal! There is so much more I could add but hopefully reading this caused you to have an “A-ha! Moment or two!”

About RFP Assistants

Since 2004, RFP Assistants has been dedicated to assisting national-level advertisers to coordinate and conduct various types of advertising agency search and review projects. Our portfolio of services includes agency candidate reporting, RFP support services, and comparative reporting to the “full Monty” of orchestrating the entire review processes. Our motto is “We handle the minutia involved in agency searches so that you don’t have to!”

It is important to note that while we do consult on agency review and RFP services, we are not the decision-maker on which agencies are ultimately selected to participate in our RFPs, nor do we determine the winning agency at the conclusion of the review. Our job is to provide reporting and expert opinions so that our clients can select agencies they are interested in interviewing. We facilitate the profusion of paperwork and intricate-communications involved with an RFP so our clients can focus on their daily tasks and ultimately hire the best agency to suit their needs. We welcome all manner of RFP projects and encourage advertisers and agencies to contact us to determine if there would be a benefit in our working together. www.rfpassistants.com or email our Principal, Noelle Mullin – mullin@rfpassistants.com