Skills needed:

• Internet Research
• Writing clearly and concisely
• Interviewing on the phone and face to face
• Touch typing essential
• Simple project management and reporting

An interest in the internet is essential and a marketing, communications or business studies degree is optional. No prior knowledge of websites, blogs or online marketing is needed – full training provided. Applicants who have participated in high performance sport  are of particular interest.

Send us your CV and one page describing an event you ran (party, event, gig etc) what you did to market and promote it, the tools and techniques you used, what worked and what didn’t work and the outcomes.

If you’d like to purchase just one or two of these brand names listed above, get in touch. $3 each. No need to subscribe!

Agencies

• Ogilvy PR, public relations services, London USA
• YTKO, an international marketing corporation, Cambridge UK
• Blitz agency, Strategically led digital agency, Brazil
• Lodestar, events experience installations agency, London, UK
• Isovera – Internet Consulting for Non-Profits, USA
• Wow Creative, formerly Einstein Da Vinci and Co, design and print, Australia
• Keathley Advertising, differentiate products by changing consumer attitudes, Akron, OH, USA
• Agur, Market Research agency, Sweden
• D’Exposito and Partners, advertising agency that does more with less, NY, USA
• Red Interactive, email and digital marketing services, Hammersmith, UK

Brands

• Glass Tek,  Fibreglass suppliers for muscle cars, USA
• Danagher Corporation, technology leader that designs & manufactures, Washington DC, USA
• GeoFusion - specialist in 3D visualisation and virtual reality, Santa Cruz, CA, USA
• St Paul’s Cathedral, Leading church in the City of London, UK
• Comic Relief, charity fund raising organisation, Bristol, UK
• Computer Sciences Corporation, strategic data consultancy, USA
• Yellow Pages Group, listings organisation, USA/Canada
• Bright Network, graduates finding jobs through connections, London UK
• The Private Office, financial advisory services, New York, NY, USA
• Universal American, health insurance services, USA
• Wide Data, IT services and solutions, Atlanta, GA, USA

Brands Seeking Agencies

• Professional league club researching ‘marketing in football’ UK
• Regional Police authority looking for website holding pages, UK
• National farming organisation researching “agency brand spend” New Zealand
• Casino Brand searching for when to use IP mapping, USA
• Private Members club looking for “selecting a creative agency”, London UK
• Golf Club chain searching for creative agency management, Australia
• Global merchant bank researching ‘how do creative agencies charge?’, USA
• Fixed line telecom provider seeking “working with a creative agency”, Asia
• Printed Circuit Board manufacturer seeks creative agency, USA
• Womens Fashion group looking for “clothing agency Germany” Ireland

They realised that the landscape of personal data availability online has changed hugely in a very short time and despite hysterical outcries about Facebook privacy settings, it is an important area that both brands and consumers should be knowledgable about.

Their concept of “personal data stores” is a really interesting concept that is being built out – imagine you, the consumer, setting the ‘terms and conditions’ for a brand to access your personal information?

It’s called Vendor Relationship Management read more here and here.

But see their great Personal Data infographic published in full with a brief snapshot below showing the 2012 situation…it describes the landscape for legislation, technology, entrepreneurs, corporates and consumers and looks forward in scenarios for each to 2017.

Ctrl-Shift the Personal Data Landscape future

“Your responsibilities”.

Imagine an agency telling a prospective client – not one we’re working with already – that they had to actively participate in delivering to make the marketing programme effective?

I love it.

Now I’m recommending we put this into all new client proposals. It’s authentic and transparent and gives the brand clear boundaries and guidelines that will help us give them exactly what they hired us to do.

What do you do in order to improve your client briefing and agreements?

If you’d like to purchase just one or two of these brand names listed above, get in touch. $3 each. No need to subscribe!

Agencies

• The Media Group, design agency working cross-platform, Nottingham, UK
• Signify, web and mobile app development,  New Zealand
• Ogilvy, above the line advertising, New Zealand
• Multimedia Productions, local commercial production agency, Tampa Bay, FL, USA
• Marketmakers, telemarketing and telesales services, UK
• Focus Creative, graphic design creative agency, Paddington, NSW, Australia
• TMC, the marketing company, Paderborn, Germany
• Lewis PR, Technology public relations, London UK

Brands

• PVC Tech, specialist supplier of engineered polymer films, CA, USA [not actively looking but sorely in need of a new website]
• Taconic Farms, suppliers of life sciences solutions (aka mice) to the health research industry, USA
• Sallfort, a private bank located in Basel and Zurich, Switzerland
• Car Trim, quality components for the automotive industry, Germany
• Cambridge Incubator, business acceleration services, Boston, MA, USA
• New Zealand Trade Development Board, Government department, Wellington, NZ
• Internet Archive, the ever-fantastic Way Back Machine spidered our site, Washington DC, USA
• Abacus Bio, business consulting to the agribusiness sector, New Zealand [so in need of a new website]
• Sonic Automotive, new and used car dealerships, USA

Brands Seeking Agencies

• Centrinex, call center management services searching for handling objections when cold calling, USA
• Town shopping centre searching for ‘website holding page designs’ Wales
• Electronic instrumentation firm seeks ‘mobile app planning sheet’, NH, USA
• Public services organization wants help writing a creative brief, Canada
• Nationwide Recruitment agency looking for “agency pitch questions”, UK

  Online clothing brand looking into average number of agency pitches, USA

RFPs

• Medical Korea have issued a RFP for a partner marketing agency. Korea
• The Hawaii Tourism Authority has issued an RFP for the marketing contract for Europe’s major market area. USA.
• Sacramento Regional Transit RFP for On-Call/Task Based Advertising and Marketing Services. CA, USA
• The United Way of Collier County is seeking proposals to advance its Marketing and Communication efforts. USA
• The Vermont Lottery Commission is seeking proposals for Advertising and Marketing services. VT, USA

Corey Eastman, Biz Dev Director

Creative – what does it mean to you?

The Agency of the Future to me is all about balancing the client agency relationship.  In the past it’s favored the client and the agency has been reactive.  Blair Enns I’ve met a few times and I’m very influenced by his philosophy.  I look back to what he talks about – agencies being specialized and focused using conversations rather than presentations and being selective about who you work with.

I found the Teehan+Lax philosophy on the company page of their site.

John Lax and Jeff Teehan are two super smart guys.  When we started out, we chose not to rely on the legacy of working models passed down from old agency world as the basis for our new company. Instead, we challenged the conventional formula and created a new approach and process. Even as we’ve grown in size and scale, we still are committed to:

1. partners on every piece of business, from the first pitch through to the final deliverables;
2. small, agile teams to make the most effective use of your budget;
3. direct access to the people actually doing the work, so no more “broken telephone” or account managers promising things that can’t be delivered.

How did you get into new business development?

My background is competitive athletics – I played professional hockey which almost made competitive sales a natural transition for me.  I’m very driven and I have a strong passion for success.

What training would you recommend for anyone wanting a career in biz dev?

I think it’s all about communication and sharing stories and ideas.  Reading, writing, speaking, listening and body language / personality.  I did toastmasters and they are very good at honing speaking skills; get formal sales training and invest in a company that will invest in you – I did the IBM program; take ownership and read blogs; read books (Spin Selling is my favourite).

What has changed in new business techniques in the past few years?

Marketing and sales are converging – the reason I think is the internet.  It’s put the consumer in control.  The buy/sell process – which has become more digital.  We are moving from conducting business offline towards being mainly online.  John Lax always says “we have to create more value than you capture” quote from Tim O’Reilly. 

The long term goals are important.  The people we are selling to are online if we can put out thought leadership and give value to them.  We put out Photoshop documents that allow designers and developers to create their own work.  This spreads out our reputation, goodwill and value.  And puts us top of mind and so when UX projects they come to us. The tools available online make it effective and efficient.  CRM tools were just large enterprise and now you can use Salesforce cheaply.  We did use Highrise but we gave up on it in favor of Salesforce – the integrations and plugins are powerful.

 You read our #FutureAgency blog post series – what do you think the agency of the future will be like?

I read this about balancing the client agency relationship.  It favours the client – they come up with the requirements and strategy and the agency responds to that appeasing what the client wanted.  Falling back on commoditised tactical work.  By becoming specialized or unique this is the key to shaping the agency of the future.  You will gain the expertise and move from compliance role to being a practitioner.

You do this by being specialized, speaking and being selective. Speaking – moving away from elaborate pitches to just having conversations – use words rather than paper.  We are moving towards a policy of not responding to RFPs.  We don’t want to just write proposals – it’s not a good way to start an engagement.   If someone gets in touch we like to get to a diagnosis process as soon as possible.  We do a define:design:build process.  There are a lot of tools we use for diagnosis – internal stakeholder meetings, we use Forrester.

Being selective – we constrained growth by being selective in the amount of work we take on.  We are passionate about our business it shows in the quality of our work.

What changes has your agency made recently to adapt to the new business environment?

I don’t think we have really changed – we hold true to our values.  To make epic shit and the qualities that come along with that.  Stuff that gets used, talked about and makes things better: qualities are passion, evolution.  If I have to put in an RFP I have failed as a business owner we have failed in these values.  An apples to apples comparison means I’ve failed to differentiate our business.

What advice would you give to other agencies contemplating their future and the #FutureAgency model?

Culture – make one that supports and encourages continuous learning.  If you focus on what you value it reflects in your culture.

What are your favourite Biz dev blogs?

• Fuel Lines by Michael Gass
• Win without Pitching
• Sales School
• The Sales Hunter
• The Sales Blog by Anthony Iannarrio
• Tom Searcy – Hunting for Big Sales
• A sales guy.com – Keenan

I cringe most when creative agencies themselves do bad creative on themselves.

How could this text be improved? [apart from the spelling mistake].

Which comes first – getting customers or raising capital?

You prove the model before you get investors in.  If you can show repeat revenues from customers.  a trial is good but it’s not enough.  You have to have a customer who uses your solution in anger – this gives third party validation of the value proposition.  Without this, who will give you money?

Most good investors won’t invest unless a company has customers.

Who is the sales person?

You have no choice – it has to be you.  You want to hire someone who has a good job and is already selling to your customers – he won’t leave a good job until your offer is proven.

Who buys your stuff?

Who in your target audience – which individual.  Who makes the decision?  It’s often the women – in Japan that’s institutionalised.  So what’s your message to the target and to his wife?  Is it different?

The farmer makes an application decision and the farmer’s wife makes a financial decision – an un-complex jury.

A complex jury is a healthcare sale – it needs a clinician to decide but you also need clinical buy-in, a leader/ceo to support and ensure you know there’s budget.  The budget guy is often “Dr NO”.  What does it take to make him say yes?  Show him the ROI… the value proposition.   How are we going to make/save more money using your stuff?  In a financial crisis it has to be ‘must-have’ because nice to have isn’t good enough.

Would it be easiser to sell your stuff if you didn’t get paid until they got the benefit?

Would that shorten your sales cycle?  This concept is mission-critical for entrepreneurs. Reducing the resources it takes to make a sale and accelerating the pace at which people decide to buy from you.

SUMMARY: know well the value you deliver to your customers: Only then you’ll know what the price is!

Generally speaking early entrepreneurs don’t spend enough time making it easy to do business with us.  This is one way – you make money: you give me half of it.

They ‘hockey stick’ is a myth too many people hang their business on.  In Ken’s Aspen Technology company they fought hard for 17 years – it never was easy.  We just worked harder than our competition – our technology wasn’t better than theirs.

When can you hire a sales guy?

When you can afford to (necessity) when you don’t have time yourself.  Most sales people you hire should be better than you.  When can you hire them?  When they can make money for me.

You won’t be able to hire until you have figured out the business model, qualified the value proposition, got the beach-head customer (the biggest farm/ a known hospital) and then you can go and hire a hot shot salesman.   “I’m a kid and I need adult supervision.”  The stats are compelling – you freaking won’t make it without an adult on the team!

The concept of the “jury”

Understand there isn’t one point of decision especially for B2B sales – understand who they are, functional roles, drivers and limits to their power.  Think about what it takes to land an Olympic Games for your City – a winning city bit manager said that he knew the shoe size of one Venezuelan delegate’s daughter!  Because he needed his vote.

The sale is everything about the primary driver in commerce = gaining more market share.  If you can help someone get more customers they’ll like you.  If you can’t you are “road kill”.

Do you increase revenue or decrease costs?

Questions:

Thoughts on the prospects of saturated markets

Negative things: I don’t want to talke about my company until he signs asn NDA because they’ll run away with the secret.  Crap.  It’s all about execution.  Secondly VCs are in the business of helping other companies grow and they won’t screw their reputations by stealing your idea – they’d also just hire someone to build your idea if they wanted it as it isn’t their skill set.

Positive things: If you are worried about talking to a competitior, you shouldn’t be talking to them about how your product is designed anyway.  Talk about your passion for solving a custoemr’s problem.  Speak about the problem and your startup situation will be obvious Demonstrating you have mastery of the problem is the best way.  Selling internally on behalf of the champion is important (I give them a cheat-sheet to follow to get the deal to go through).

Networking follow up advice

HP makes software in perforated tear sheets slightly larger than a business card that you can use at a party – business card on one side and the problem you solve written on the other side.  At the end of the party [put the cards of the people they care about in the left pocket and on the way out they throw away the cards in the right jacket pocket].   When should you send your thank you note to someone you met in the evening.  Send it before he goes to bed… he’ll be checking his mail before he goes to bed.  Don’t get lost in the clutter.   How do you write 30 thank you notes after a party?  Stay sober – if it’s business you can’t drink it is work, your shareholders pay for you to get your butt there, it’s about meeting people who may buy your stuff; write the letters beforehand 80% will be the same… letterhead, standard explanation about your product – you just top and tail add 20%.  Focus. Go to the party to meet one person.

Tips about selling intangibles

If you don’t have a value proposition – forget it.  Change your business model.  They usually won’t be ready to buy until they get stung once.

How many people use carbonite?

It’s a cloud back-up for everything on your pc and is constantly updated.  David Friend – founder is a friend.  Get Ben Kepes to look into it – diversity.net.nz  Ken’s an investor in carbonite.

We are getting enquiries from people interested in taking stakes

if you are planning on growing, even if you have 65% growth margins you’re going to need outside capital.  the longer you wait the less dilution you’ll get.  But the longer you wait the higher quality investors you’ll get.  If you are over a barrel you take what you can in order to survive but that often screws up the company later.  Wait until you have a really good value added investor.  Assume you’re successful building your business in NZ you will need more money to go to Asia or USA to capitalise on the growth potential – think about having money that will work for you more than just working capital, open doors, group people, get access to other money.  So the angel investors that you get should be entrepreneurs who have done it before and have a rolodex address book that is powerful and is wiling to use it for you. And has access to more institutional capital when you’re ready for your next round of funding.

Staying current with procurement purchasing and how to assess a supplier of web design can be short-circuited by reading Lance Wiggs’ excellent quick assessment of the local market.

If you’re not from his locale, still read it.

• The points he makes about Pricing for services in the Buyers Guide section is instructive.  Many agencies are still charging by the hour and it’s clear that over-charging still exists.
• Intermediation or sub-contracting is part of the process and this affects both buyers and sellers.  Transparency and honesty are the best approach here.
• The attributes of a “good client” are excellent.  Being clear about your role as the buyer is important.
• The Agency Sellers Guide has some great points.  Too many agencies rely on word of mouth promotion.
• The attributes of a “good seller” are important.  Know thyself.

And finally, the comments.  I was the first (*) but there will be many more.

Here’s my penny’s worth of commentary

Lance, great, incisive analysis as ever. Thanks for taking the time to do this work on behalf of the whole industry. I’m a newcomer to Auckland and my agency doesn’t do web design but I will comment on the two parts of your piece that are not wrong, but may mis-represent the way part of the industry is changing.

I am writing a series of blog posts called “The Creative Agency of the Future” #FutureAgency in which I’m collating examples from the business operations practices of agencies who are challenging the status quo and looking for improved ways of delivering excellent marketing services to their clients.http://creativeagencysecrets.com/category/creative-business/future-agency/
Here are two ways that leading agencies are different from the ones you researched:

1 – charging. Some agencies are moving away from time/hour charging basis and onto a fee wholly based on results, or partly based on outcomes.
2 – business development. This is my specialism. It makes me cry that marketing agencies can’t market themselves successfully. Many whine about “procurement” or “RFPs” or “pitching and coming second” but the underlying fact is that a planned approach to HOW you win new business tends to deliver MORE new business. If you don’t do it yourself, outsource. It’s the lifeblood of your agency and as you say yourself, relying on word of mouth may not be sufficient for your business survival.

Remember, many of these businesses visit our site because they are looking for information about new business and about creative marketing agencies. They may be in the market for a new agency – try getting in touch.

If you’d like to purchase just one or two of these brand names listed above, get in touch. $3 each. No need to subscribe!

Agencies

• Select First, public relations and online services, Tunbridge Wells, UK
• Wibroe Duckert and Partners, creative advertising agency, Denmark
• Ogilvy Group, advertising and integrated services, Frankfurt, Germany
• AAC Saatchi and Saatchi, above the line advertising agency, Bermuda
• Eden Co, editorial and design services to publishers and media, London UK
• OSL Marketing, we put brands in consumers hands, Montreal, Canada
• White Horse Company, holding company for website design and other companies, Wiltshire, UK

Brands

• The Jim Henson Company, yup, those clever fellows who invented the Muppets, USA
• Property First, UK estate agency in East Anglia, UK
• Calypso Co, a caribbean bar in St Kitts – someone working from ‘home’!
• IGC Commerce, procurement advisers and specialists, USA
• PG Engineering Solutions, professional services, Puerto Rico
• Co-operative Light and Power, utility, Minnesota, USA

Brands Seeking Agencies

• Financial services wants advice ‘managing relationships with creative agencies’, UK
• Aerospace firm wants help ‘pitching to agent questions’ USA
• Global automotive parts supplier looking for “creative agency database” UK
• Healthcare provider needs “questions to ask a new agency”, UK