Blair Enns
October 2012 Blair Enns -- Win Without Pitching [youtube]http://youtu.be/BADQeuceRiA Download the PPT View the slides on Slideshare (Password is AMR)
Anaheim
ROC file (click to download)
How Much Money do Marketing Agencies Make?
How much money do marketing agencies make? Learning how to move your advertising agency to value based pricing means you’ll need to talk a little differently to both your internal staff and your clients. It’s going to take some effort and time to make the shift. Earlier I talked about why value pricing should matter to agencies and how you can help clients understand the value of it. Agencies that have made the leap offer these words of advice: It’s easier to move prospects and new clients to value pricing, so start there. Once you help clients understand how it works to their advantage, they’ll be ready to try it. Be prepared – you will undervalue yourself in the beginning. You’ll get better at it. Not only is it better externally, but your staff will get a boost from being paid what their work is worth, rather than an hourly rate. It begins to change the way clients view the agency. It takes us out of the procurement realm and makes us more of a consultant/partner. This takes time. It took us over two years to completely make the shift. But it was worth the effort. Use your value based pricing position as a way to sell against other agencies. Create a page on your website or in your RFP deck that explains why hourly pricing is to the client's disadvantage. (see my blog post from earlier this week for some of the reasons). Explain that you decided to move your advertising agency to value pricing because of these disadvantages. With new clients -- simply change the way you price projects or programs. Rather than breaking down the project by job functions or number of [...]
Value Pricing Strategy for Advertising Agencies – It’s Time
Value pricing strategy for advertising agencies? Yes -- the time has come. At several of our AMR network meetings, we've had Ron Baker, author of Implementing Value Pricing come speak. Agency owners are fired up after being exposed to Ron's ideas and leave, ready to either start or continue their transition to value pricing. The billable hour was introduced by a law firm back in 1919. So were locomotives, dial telephones and prohibition. Trains and phones have certainly evolved thanks to changes in both society and technology, and prohibition was such a bad idea, it went away entirely. And yet the billable hour remains. One could argue that in many agencies, it's evolved and now we talk about a blended rate or a modified compensation model. But by and large, most agencies still bill their clients by the hour. And it's time for it to go the way of prohibition. Away. The argument has raged on for years. Agency leaders and clients both know that every agency hour is not spent in the same way or worth the same amount of money. In hour one, an account executive comes up with the strategy that will propel the client into market domination and in hour two, the same account executive writes a memo, reflecting back the action steps identified on a recent phone call. Same professional. Same client. But hardly the same work or the same value. Our industry is slowly coming around to the idea that an hour is not like any other hour and we need to start selling our value, not our time. Here are some of the more recent events that suggest we're heading in the right direction: Coca-Cola has innovated a [...]
2012-13 Webinar Archives
As a webinar series subscriber -- you have access to the archives from past webinar events. Please don't share this URL with anyone outside your own company. To view the video and download the slides/PPT of the slides, just click on the presenter's name. Blair Enns (October 2012) Jay Baer (November 2012) Nancy Marshall (January 2013) Stephen Woessner (February 2013) Glenn Towle (March 2013) Art Boulay (April 2013) Hank Blank (May 2013)
Do your AEs bristle at the word sales?
Be honest agency owner, you know that your account executive team is great. But sometimes they struggle when it comes to actual sales. Enter our account executive sales training workshop. 67% of an agency's new business revenue comes from existing clients (on average). The people who are (or sadly -- are not) going to bring in those additional dollars are your account executive team. They interact with their clients every day. They propose new work, they know when the client has hit a barrier (and maybe needs some marketing help to leap over it) and they drive that client's activity. Sounds like sales to me. But if your AEs think and behave more like relationship managers, you're not alone. When surveyed, agency owners had these frustrations about the people on their account team: Sometimes they behave like they work for the client, not the agency They don't know how to listen for problems we can help solve They don't understand the business of owning or running a business They don't think new business or sales within our existing clients They let the client lead too much Sound familiar? That's why we developed our Account Service Advanced Training workshop. We spend two days teaching GOOD account service people how to really help grow their agency's AGI, reputation, new business (both from existing clients and brand new) and their network. We talk numbers. We talk strategy. And we talk sales. When the participants leave the executive sales training workshop, sales is no longer a dirty or scary word. They come back fired up and excited to stretch their wings. But don't take our word for it. Here's what some past participants have had to say: “My AE [...]
Social media/content marketing workshop just for agencies – grab a seat quick!
The odds of winning new clients is significantly higher if they're the ones who call us. Learn how to "do" social media so it drive leads to your door. It's time for your social media efforts to result in real, qualified new business leads. Don't do social because you think you have to. Do it because it's generating new revenue! Your agency needs this workshop if: You want better inbound leads You want SEO results that are relevant and will drive sales You want to leverage your social efforts into speaking engagements that position your agency as the expert You want to be able to use your results to sell social to clients You don't want your clients to call you out on the fact that you sell social but you don't really do social Learn from an agency owner who has taken his agency from being a nice boutique shop in the midwest to being quoted in the New York Times and having The Wall Street Journal call their blog "one that every entrepreneur should read." Best of all -- learn how they leveraged their social media efforts into a 150% increase in AGI. This workshop isn't about theory. You'll leave with a robust plan that outlines exactly what you're going to do, how you're going to get it done, and how you're going to measure the results! If it doesn't work, we'll refund your workshop fees, no questions asked. The Chicago Social Media for your Agency Workshop Register yourself or your team today! Chicago, IL DATE: September 24 & 25, 2012 TIME: Monday 8:30 am - 4:30 pm Tuesday 8:30 am - 3:00 pm LOCATION: Chicago Marriott Downtown Download the brochure! EARLY BIRD PRICING ENDS SEPT 9TH
How do you train your account executives?
If you were being truthful about account executive training in your agency -- you just said, baptism by fire. We hired them and on their first day...took them to a client meeting and it was off to the races. The good ones thrive and survive and the ones who can't cut it, fade away. But we're lousy at training new people. That's an ugly truth about our business. And it's not done out of disregard or cruelty. It's just the reality for small and medium sized advertising (marketing, PR, digital, interactive) agencies. There's no training program in place and we're hiring them because we need their boots on the ground. Now. In our two-day Account Executive Training Bootcamps (check our AE Bootcamp schedule here) we ask the participants to create a list of the top things a client expects of them and the top things the agency owner expects of them. Guess what -- they get it wrong. No big surprise considering we throw them into client work and usually, if they're new to the business, they begin managing project details, taking orders and creating a good relationship with the client. So they think that's at the core of their job responsibilities. Those things are certainly part of the job -- but would they be on your list of the top five things you want from your account executive? I get that you don't have a developed in-house training program and can't take the time to create one, let alone implement it. But, if you're not going to do that -- at the very least, take some of these steps. Send your new/young AE to account executive training: Whether it's our AE Bootcamp (we've been conducting this course for [...]
How to Manage Payroll
An annual salary increase should be tied to profitability not the calendar. We don't recommend automatic annual salary increases. When learning how to manage payroll, we do wholeheartedly recommend is a salary plan that is fair and rewarding to all employees that inspires them to go above and beyond for the agency and its clients. You don't reward someone with an annual salary increase just for being on staff or holding down their position for another year. You reward them for their contributions and their added value. Unfortunately, many employees feel entitled to a salary increase every year, and are very vocal when they don't get one. Somehow, salary has become an entitlement program. "The longer I stay, the more I should be paid." Sorry, I don't buy it. My concept of a good salary/compensation plan for advertising agencies includes four basic elements: Profitability of the agency The responsibilities of the person's job and their contributions to the profitability Did they get better at their craft (are they adding new value) How long have they been a part of the team It boils down to rewarding the results you want. Rewarding the Results Profitability has to come first. You can't increase salaries if you aren't making a profit. The first responsibility of every employee should be to help the agency make a profit. I believe it is the agency's responsibility to keep employees even with the cost of living, and that employees should receive a piece of the profits the agency earns. The agency made the profit because of the combined efforts of the staff. Responsibilities vary with the position and with the person. It's obvious that a senior art director will make more than [...]
What’s your new business model?
Every advertising agency says they have a new business program. Most, I've discovered... have the "oh crap, billings are slow, we need to work the phones, networking events and call some dormant clients" model of prospecting. Over the next month, we're going to delve into advertising and marketing agency new business efforts in a much deeper way. But on this Friday afternoon, I just want to share with you this infographic created by the folks at The List. Do you recognize your agency in one of these seven new business models? If so -- is it the model you think is most effective for your agency or is it just the model you've fallen into our of habit, lack of planning/time etc. Bottom line -- take a look at your pipeline right now. Is it filled with the right prospects? Enough of them? (click here to download PDF of infographic)
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