The Ad Agency New Business Catch-22 or "You Only Brought the Suits?"

With the release of our latest survey, First Meetings and Closing Effectiveness next week, we’re launching two new initiatives for the summer we’re excited to share with you.

First is our View From the Marketer’s Eye Webinar series. We’ll be releasing the schedule and details next week, along with how to register and what to expect. Second is a compliment to our Marketer’s Eye series, ANB posts dedicated weekly to some of the open-ended comments/insights marketers shared with us in our latest survey. Of course, our perspective will complement their comments.

We’re looking forward to providing you insights throughout the summer dedicated to improving your new business performance.

This week’s marketers quote, in answer to the question, “Overall, do you feel agencies do a good job during their first meeting or intro call?”

No-Too much time, bring in PPT. bring in too many guys. And don’t bring me all suits. I want to see the guys that do the work

The old catch-22: “you took too much time” vs. “is that it?”, “too many guys here” vs. “this is all they brought, how important are we really?” and finally, “they only brought suits” vs. “they didn’t bring any suits?” (again, how important are we really). Sure, it might feel like you can’t win in these situations but a few things you can do to help ensure you never get as far as the comments above.

Biggest takeaway here: qualify, qualify and qualify some more. This quote makes sense if the agencies in question didn’t do their homework.

Before you ever walk into a first meeting or begin the initial conference call, you’ve got to find out what the prospect expects. This isn’t always easy, so if you find you’re having trouble with this part of the process, use a simple icebreaker. Explain that you’re flexible in terms of first meeting agendas but then briefly describe how you typically handle first meetings, then follow with asking if that’s in keeping with their expectations.

Ideally you’ll be able to then have a dialogue about expectations, but if this prospect isn’t the dialogue type, then the other takeaway here: be prepared for the unexpected.

Inevitably there will come a time when you and the prospect seem to be on the same page but you walk into the meeting and the situation has changed. Could be for varying reasons, the CEO will now be in the meeting after all for example, and he wants to see specific work, which wasn’t part of the plan at this stage. So have a backup plan ready that makes sense given the situation. Bring an abbreviated portfolio or your laptop with a presentation on it, even if you never open either.

Don’t walk into that first meeting on autopilot, set expectations and expect the unexpected-you’ll thank yourself for it.