I'm Not Sure We Want to Pitch Your Business

Over time and several review cycles our rates were literally at the bottom of the market and our quality metrics were barely at par amp8230 which is fine that was the brief and I and my team were lauded for delivering an improved media agency modelThe last global pitch I led was a few years ago and it totally changed my view on how to uncover a meaningful trustbased and lasting clientmedia agency relationship I will keep people and company names out of the narrative though anyone who knows me can easily figure it outPart 1 I am not sure we will be joining the pitchWe briefed in all the major agencies you would expect to vie for a top 20 advertiseramp8217s media business We held initial calls with the senior agency heads to talk through the RFI we had just sent them and these all went as expected amp8230 except onePitch consultant Thanks for joining the call what questions do you have on the RFIAgency president very politely but matter of fact Thanks for the RFI but Iamp8217m not sure we will be pitchingMe spit takes Poland Spring Iamp8217m sorry whatAgency president You fired us a few years back and we donamp8217t feel like we will have a reasonable chance at winning your business Your timeline will require me to have a bunch of my staff cancel their summer holiday plans and I canamp8217t do that to my team unless I feel like we have a shotMe picks jaw up off floor Um OK well let us address thatTo me this was as risky as it was ballsy but it got our attention I remember reporting back to the larger team after the call that we should expect the unexpected from these guys as we go It turns out this agency did join the pitch once we laid out the clear and objective criteria that would guide the decisionmaking processPart 2 Your brief is clear we just think itamp8217s impossible to deliverAt the initial presentations in our largest market along with me are the CMO Chief Digital Officer various Marketing and Procurement VPs and my local leadership team I opened the meeting and made some comment among my remarks along the lines ofamp160 quotamp8230 we werenamp8217t quite sure weamp8217d be welcoming you this morning to kick off the presentations but glad you are herequot The agency president seized the opening to recap our earlier discussions for the larger group about whether this agency would join the pitch and their thought process behind that Again riskyballsy but the message landed well with the audienceBut amp8230 this little exchange was just the warmup The global account lead then took the floor After a little small talk the first slide goes up titled quotYour Ambitionquot essentially restating the brief in a few bullet points OK cool makes sense heads nodding Slide 2 goes up quotWithin Your Ambition is Contradictionquot and shows five points where they saw disconnection An obvious example that I am sure is in every RFP is speed in conflict with accuracy another is scale in conflict with relevance There were three others I wonamp8217t list as these were bespoke to our briefI feel the eyes in the room focusing on me for some sort of response As I was in the quotexpect the unexpectedquot mindset coming out of our initial discussion with this agency I was able to chime in once the slide was presented I may have referenced the Emperoramp8217s New Clothes in my response but the point I made was that we wanted partners who 1 would be willing to challenge our thinking and 2 knew how to do it in a deft constructive manner and finally letamp8217s see what else these guys have in store for usThe agency maintained this spirit of thought partnership throughout all phases of the review and once we awarded them the assignment has been what we came to expect and appreciate from this agency throughout the relationshipPart 3 Why should you careI tell this story all the time as it shows two things that are at the nucleus of a successful partnership relationship 1 a media agency needs to speak their truth even if they believe their client may not want to hear it and 2 clients need to respond positively when challenged along these lines This will allow delivery of the best media work of the collective team back to senior leadership that grows brandsMy observation is the media agencyclient relationship is not where it needs to be at this moment in time Too often commercial terms drive actions and not necessarily what is in the best interest of the brands we serve I say this as a broad generalization based on my own experience and industry observations and I do not lay the blame with any one partyIt is dangerously easy to keep an OK relationship chugging along rather than actively challenging norms around compensation models innovation transparency staffing scope tracking and reporting the role of data etc And this does not necessarily mean a pitch as much as it means good governance and candid twoway discussionMedia clients are taking more accountability for things like driving out wasted spend in the media supply chain and brand safety and this is as it should beMedia clients are being asked to look hard at adopting media inhousing programs to drive efficiencies and transparency this makes sense in some instances and not in others A good clientagency relationship can result in an overall model that allows for an inhousing plan that is set up to succeedMedia clients are put in a tricky spot of being an internal advocate for their media agency while at the same time challenging that agency to deliver beyond expectationsTo get to a place of mutual trust and respect takes work In my personal experience I found a new level of that dynamic when I got to know the agency that was not sure if they were even going to pitch our business I am grateful they were willing to put themselves out there in such a highstakes setting I am equally grateful my team and stakeholders were open to that level of quotreal talkquot and responded favorably to it This allowed me to deliver the best agency model and partnership to drive growth for my company at that time and the partnership remains strong almost two years after my departureSelfpublished at MediaVillage through the wwwAvrioB2Bcom platformClick the social buttons to share this story with colleagues and friendsThe opinions expressed here are the author39s views and do not necessarily represent the views of MediaVillagecomMyersBizNet

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I'm Not Sure We Want to Pitch Your Business

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Scott Grenz

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