Our talented team know how to excite, inspire and engage. With backgrounds in events, entertainment and travel, we’re full of ideas for amazing prizes and unforgettable incentives!
At Fulcrum, we all come to work every day because we have a shared love of travel and delivering once-in-a-lifetime experiences.
Our team meetings are buzzing with fresh ideas, brand new experiences and glowing feedback from our travellers. We know what makes a great incentive, we have an encyclopaedic knowledge of the best experiences around the world, and we have an ever-expanding ‘little black book’ of the most exclusive suppliers in the business.
In addition to our creative ideas and experience, we know that our clients value our expertise and dedication to solving problems rather than creating them. Prizes and incentives are our world, but we understand that our clients have other priorities, so we make sure we’re delivering our ideas on-time, on-budget and on-brand. We thrive on tight deadlines, logistical challenges and creating perfectly tailored solutions, without the headaches!
About us
Perfect solutions every time As a leading marketing Agency, we’re immensely proud to work with brands and agencies across a huge range of sectors and industries, giving us an unrivalled breadth of experience.
we have created and fulfilled prizes for promotions and activations across the world.
Our aim: help our clients achieve their goals through our experience and expertise, taking the stress and hassle out of prize fulfilment.
We work for both direct brands and agencies, often in collaboration or with other specialist agencies and partners. Many of our clients have existing assets – from festival tickets to sports hospitality – which we help them to build into the best possible prize packages. Others want to create unique, eye-catching marketing and btl content around their prize winners. We can deal with winners from any country and in any language; we can provide a full btl management service; we can even source camera crews for content capture.
Whatever your brief, we’ve got it covered.
SALES INCENTIVES
Driving sales and performance through tailored, flexible incentive programmes
With pressure always on to drive sales and performance, sales incentives are an essential part of rewarding achievement within many companies. From internal staff reward programmes to dealer and channel incentives, there’s no better way to create a happy, engaged and motivated workforce.
Our main goal is to understand your people and what makes them tick. From hundreds in a call centre team to a small on ground sales team, a clear overview of your audience is the most important part of the process. By taking a best approach, offering maximum choice and flexibility, we create incentives which are targeted, effective and tailored to your team.
Whether it’s sales rewards, dealer incentives or channel incentives, drop us a line; we’d love to help you drive sales with our fresh and creative approach to prizes and incentives. From once-in-a-lifetime holidays to mini-breaks, high-street vouchers and designer goods, you can rest assured that with Fulcrum you’re in safe hands.
24 hour turnaround for urgent briefs Topline ideas within 2 hours if needed Competitive fixed quotes with no hidden costs Expert Winner Management and Fulfilment
Identify the different levels at which strategic planning may occur within firms.
Understand how strategic planning that occurs at multiple levels in an organization helps a company achieve its overall corporate objectives.
As previously mentioned, strategic planning is a long-term process that helps an organization allocate its resources to take advantage of different opportunities. In addition to marketing plans, strategic planning may occur at different levels within an organization. For example, in large organizations top executives will develop strategic plans for the corporation as a whole. These are corporate-level plans. In addition, many large firms have different divisions, or businesses, called strategic business units. A strategic business unit (SBU) is a business or product line within an organization that has its own competitors, customers, and profit center for accounting purposes. A firm’s SBUs may also have their own mission statement (purpose) and will generally develop strategic plans for themselves. These are called business-level plans. The different departments, or functions (accounting, finance, marketing, and so forth) within a company or SBU, might also develop strategic plans. For example, a company may develop a marketing plan or a financial plan, which are functional-level plans.
Figure 2.13 “Strategic Planning Levels in an Organization” shows an example of different strategic planning levels that can exist within an organization’s structure. The number of levels can vary, depending on the size and structure of an organization. Not every organization will have every level or have every type of plan. An overview of the marketing (or functional) plan is presented briefly at the end of this chapter but will be discussed in detail in Chapter 16 “The Marketing Plan” so you can see how the information discussed throughout the text may be used in developing a marketing plan.
Figure 2.13 Strategic Planning Levels in an Organization
Figure 2.14
Many consumers recognize the Goodyear blimp. Goodyear’s strategic business units are North American Tire; Latin American Tire; Asia Pacific Tire; and Europe, Middle East, and Africa Tire. Goodyear’s SBUs are set up to satisfy customers’ needs in different worldwide markets1.
The strategies and actions implemented at the functional (department) level must be consistent with and help an organization achieve its objectives at both the business and corporate levels and vice versa. The SBUs at the business level must also be consistent with and help an organization achieve its corporate-level objectives. For example, if a company wants to increase its profits at the corporate level and owns multiple business units, each unit might develop strategic plans to increase its own profits and thereby the firm’s profits as a whole. At the functional level, a firm’s marketing department might develop strategic plans to increase sales and the market share of the firm’s most profitable products, which will increase profits at the business level and help the corporation’s profitability. Both business level and functional plans should help the firm increase its profits, so that the company’s corporate-level strategic objectives can be met.
For example, take PepsiCo, which has committed itself to achieving business and financial success while leaving a positive imprint on society. PepsiCo identifies its three divisions (business units) as (1) PepsiCo Americas Beverages, which is responsible for products such as Pepsi soft drinks, Aquafina waters, Tropicana juices, and Gatorade products; (2) PepsiCo Americas Foods, which is responsible for Frito-Lay and Quaker Oats products; and (3) PepsiCo International, which consists of PepsiCo’s businesses in Asia, Africa, Europe, and Australia2. To support PepsiCo’s overall corporate strategy, all three business units must develop strategic plans to profitably produce offerings while demonstrating that they are committed to society and the environment.
Figure 2.15
These Aquafina bottles uses less plastic and have a smaller label, reducing waste and helping the environment.
At the functional (marketing) level, to increase PepsiCo’s profits, employees responsible for different products or product categories such as beverages or foods might focus on developing healthier products and making their packaging more environmentally friendly so the company captures more market share. For example, the new Aquafina bottle uses less plastic and has a smaller label, which helps the environment by reducing the amount of waste.
Organizations can utilize multiple methods and strategies at different levels in the corporation to accomplish their various goals just as you may use different strategies to accomplish your goals. However, the basic components of the strategic planning process are the same at each of the different levels. Next, we’ll take a closer look at the components of the strategic planning process.
Key Takeaway
Strategic planning can occur at different levels (corporate, business, and functional) in an organization. The number of levels may vary. However, if a company has multiple planning levels, the plans must be consistent, and all must help achieve the overall goals of the corporation.
Review Questions
What different levels of planning can organizations utilize?
Give an example and explain how a corporation that wants to help protect the environment can do so at its corporate, business, and functional levels.
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Our talented team know how to excite, inspire and engage. With backgrounds in events, entertainment and travel, we’re full of ideas for amazing prizes and unforgettable incentives!
At Fulcrum, we all come to work every day because we have a shared love of travel and delivering once-in-a-lifetime experiences.
Our team meetings are buzzing with fresh ideas, brand new experiences and glowing feedback from our travellers. We know what makes a great incentive, we have an encyclopaedic knowledge of the best experiences around the world, and we have an ever-expanding ‘little black book’ of the most exclusive suppliers in the business.
In addition to our creative ideas and experience, we know that our clients value our expertise and dedication to solving problems rather than creating them. Prizes and incentives are our world, but we understand that our clients have other priorities, so we make sure we’re delivering our ideas on-time, on-budget and on-brand. We thrive on tight deadlines, logistical challenges and creating perfectly tailored solutions, without the headaches!
About us
Perfect solutions every time As a leading marketing Agency, we’re immensely proud to work with brands and agencies across a huge range of sectors and industries, giving us an unrivalled breadth of experience.
we have created and fulfilled prizes for promotions and activations across the world.
Our aim: help our clients achieve their goals through our experience and expertise, taking the stress and hassle out of prize fulfilment.
We work for both direct brands and agencies, often in collaboration or with other specialist agencies and partners. Many of our clients have existing assets – from festival tickets to sports hospitality – which we help them to build into the best possible prize packages. Others want to create unique, eye-catching marketing and btl content around their prize winners. We can deal with winners from any country and in any language; we can provide a full btl management service; we can even source camera crews for content capture.
Whatever your brief, we’ve got it covered.
SALES INCENTIVES
Driving sales and performance through tailored, flexible incentive programmes
With pressure always on to drive sales and performance, sales incentives are an essential part of rewarding achievement within many companies. From internal staff reward programmes to dealer and channel incentives, there’s no better way to create a happy, engaged and motivated workforce.
Our main goal is to understand your people and what makes them tick. From hundreds in a call centre team to a small on ground sales team, a clear overview of your audience is the most important part of the process. By taking a best approach, offering maximum choice and flexibility, we create incentives which are targeted, effective and tailored to your team.
Whether it’s sales rewards, dealer incentives or channel incentives, drop us a line; we’d love to help you drive sales with our fresh and creative approach to prizes and incentives. From once-in-a-lifetime holidays to mini-breaks, high-street vouchers and designer goods, you can rest assured that with Fulcrum you’re in safe hands.
24 hour turnaround for urgent briefs Topline ideas within 2 hours if needed Competitive fixed quotes with no hidden costs Expert Winner Management and Fulfilment
Brand Design for the Professional Services Firm: The Ultimate Guide for Marketers and Executives
If you are about to rebrand your firm, an exciting opportunity lies ahead to change the way prospective clients think about your organization. And the process that takes you from here to there is called brand design.
But many people don’t fully understand what brand design is, how it works and what it can achieve. In this guide, we provide the fundamentals you need to dive into a rebranding program with your eyes wide open to its marvelous possibilities.
We developed this guide to help any professional services marketing director, firm principal or stakeholder understand the value of brand design and how you can use it to attract better prospects, improve engagement and start building loyalty at the earliest stages of the buyer journey.
What Is Brand Design?
Let’s begin with a simple definition. Brand design is the deliberate process of changing the way a firm is perceived in the marketplace. This process has both strategicoutcomes, such as positioning and messaging, and visualoutcomes, such as a firm’s new logo, color palette and marketing collateral.
While many people associate the term “brand design” solely with a brand’s visual components — its “brand identity” — that definition is incomplete. There is much more to designing a brand than manipulating color, type and imagery. Without a strong strategic foundation, a firm’s brand identity will lack purpose and emotional power. To pull off a fully realized, coherent brand design requires a broad range of skills, from research and strategy to writing and graphic design.
How Brand Design Differs from Brand and Branding
The language used in branding can be confusing. How is brand design different from branding or, for that matter, a brand? In fact, these three concepts are closely related.
If you boil away all the hype, a brand is nothing more than a perception. It’s the way clients and the outside world perceive a firm. It is how people think about and experience it. When people talk to others about your firm — the way they feel and what they say about you — that’s your brand. You can express this perception as an equation with two variables:
Reputation x Visibility
Put simply, a strong brand is both well regarded and widely known.
Branding, on the other hand, is a deliberate program to produce a desirable brand. When a firm undergoes rebranding, it assembles a team — usually a combination of internal and external resources — to change the way their business is perceived in the marketplace. An effective branding program will address both reputation and visibility.
Finally, brand design is the process of building that brand, using brand strategy and positioning as guiding principles. The strategy can then be communicated through messaging and visuals. When people talk about the branding process, they are talking about brand design.
Why Brand Design Matters
A lot of firm executives believe that the value their firms deliver is a direct function of their expertise. Here’s how they think: if providing outstanding professional service is all about the people, is investing in an expensive brand identity even worth it? What good does a fancy new logo, a sweeet set of business cards or a $70,000 website do you, anyway? We’re in the expertise business, not selling a fantasy or pushing a product.
Sadly, these leaders are mistaken. Expertise has no inherent value at all. Until, that is, people are persuaded it has value.
Brand design is a powerful tool marketers use to persuade people that a firm delivers exceptional value — even if the firm charges higher fees than their competitors. It delivers the rationale for selecting your firm over your competitors, and it supports that idea with clear messaging and an appealing visual framework that inspires confidence and trust.
The Strategic Foundations of Brand Design
Effective brand design addresses both a buyer’s conscious (rational) and unconscious (irrational) mind. But this doesn’t happen by accident. It requires an underlying strategy, one that distinguishes the firm from similar competitors and is designed to convince a certain segment of buyers that the firm is a perfect match for them. Four components go into a successful brand strategy:
Research – Studies have shown that the gap between how firms think they are perceived and how they actually are perceived is shockingly wide. The only way you can find out what clients really think about you — what they love and what drives them bonkers — is to engage an independent research professional or firm to interview your clients and prospects. You see, it’s devilishly difficult to get honest answers from clients when you ask them the tough questions yourself. Most of your clients don’t want to hurt your feelings or risk damaging the relationship. However, when interviewed by an impartial third party promising them anonymity, clients feel freer to open up and volunteer useful, sometimes sensitive information. These honest findings are almost always eye-opening, and they provide the crucial ingredients for a powerful differentiation strategy.
Differentiation – Buyers often struggle to tell professional service providers apart. It’s not unusual for multiple competing service providers to offer more or less the same set of services and use similar language to describe what they do. Differentiation is the first step toward solving that problem. Once you have conducted brand research, you’ll have many of the raw materials to begin drawing up a list of differentiators — those characteristics of your firm that clients and potential buyers value about your firm. You may be able to supplement these findings with other defining characteristics that you know to be true about your firm, such as an industry or service specialty.
Figure 1. A narrow focus can be an effective way to differentiate your firm.
Strategy & Positioning – Using your differentiators as a starting place, you can develop a strategy to position your firm against key competitors and encourage a segment of the market to favor you over the others. Your strategy needs to achieve two things: 1) separate you from similar firms, and 2) establish a reason buyers will choose you. Using your differentiators, strategy and other key features of your firm, you can craft a compact and compelling positioning statement that lays out your unique place in the marketplace. Think of your positioning statement as the storyline that hooks your audience and pulls them in — a narrative you can return to again and again as you develop marketing messages.
Messaging – Your positioning isn’t worth much if you can’t articulate it to your prospects. That’s why messaging is an essential step in building a persuasive brand. Many teams that go through a firm rebranding discover that, for the first time ever, they are able to explain, simply and clearly, how their firm is different. It’s a magical moment! This messaging comes in many guises, from your elevator pitch to the headlines on your website. Some firms also develop a tagline specifically to support their positioning.
Figure 2. Personality infuses the messaging on this law firm’s website.
The Visual Elements of Brand Design
“Design is the silent ambassador of your brand”
—Paul Rand
When most people hear the word “branding,” they think of a company’s logo, signage, collateral, advertising, maybe even its great-looking website. That’s no accident. We are visual beings, and every day we use our eyes to make sense of the things around us — including the businesses we interact with and buy from.
Psychologists have found that we process visual information more quickly and efficiently than other types, and colors, shapes and pictures can irrationally affect the way we feel about the things we see. That means the appearance of a firm’s marketing materials can influence what we think about a firm, even before we interact with it. When people encounter a clean, scrupulously organized brand identity, they tend to project some of their impressions of the design onto the firm itself — for instance, attention to detail or sophistication.
That’s why some firms invest substantial time and money in their brand identity. The result — a tidy system of well-designed components — can evoke positive feelings and emotions. Visual impressions matter, and having a high-credibility brand identity can make it easier to turn prospects into clients. Conversely, a low-credibility brand can do a great deal of harm.
Brand identity covers a wide spectrum of materials. Which ones a firm chooses to develop depends on how it attracts and nurtures prospective clients. Below, I describe a few of the more common visual brand design elements and materials:
Logo – It’s said that many businesses confuse their logo for their brand. Whether or not that’s true, the logo is one of the most visible components of a brand, so its outsized reputation has some merit. Your logo is a visual proxy for your firm. As a result, it provides an opportunity to make a statement about your firm, differentiate you visually from competitors and set a compass point for the rest of your brand.
Figure 3. Nablis’ logo applied to business cards.
Website – Apart from your logo, your website is probably the most visible expression of your brand identity. It is a rich visual medium that can include motion graphics, engaging user interactivity and multimedia elements — so it offers a terrific opportunity to impress your audience. It is also a complex platform that must look great on devices large and small. If it is not designed and built with skill, a lot can go wrong.
Let’s be honest. Websites are expensive, and great websites can be very expensive. But because virtually every prospect will check out your website, it is one of the most important brand design investments you can make. According to our research, about a third of professional services buyers reject a firm on the basis of its website alone. So be sure to put your marketing budget where your buyers are.
Figure 4. Grimm + Parker Architects’ website is visually dynamic.
Marketing Collateral – This is a general term for any outward-facing printed or digital materials that you might supply to a prospective client or job candidate. In these materials — whether a firm brochure, sales sheets or research report — you can explore the full range of your visual brand. From colors and photography to typography and layout, collateral is where designers can strut their stuff and push the creativity of your brand identity.
Figure 5. EDG2’s firm brochure casts the firm as sophisticated and energetic.
Stationery – In today’s electronic business environment where PDFs, Word docs and email have replaced couriers, snail mail and overnight delivery services, there is less and less need for traditional printed letterhead and envelopes. In fact, some firms have abandoned the paper versions entirely. And while business cards are still common, they are no longer essential equipment at some businesses. Whether or not you have embraced the all-digital workplace, you still need to make a good impression at every touch point with a prospect. Every time you send a letter electronically or on paper, and whenever you hand a prospect your business card, you are delivering visual signals about your credibility and professionalism. High-credibility firms are associated with crisp, elegant design, and making the right impression is especially important on these early-stage, front-line materials.
Figure 6. Darnall Sykes Wealth Partners’ stationery suite is rich and confident — exactly what a wealth management firm should be.
Other Elements – Of course, a firm’s visual design can be applied to anything people outside or inside the firm might encounter. Here are a few examples:
Tradeshow displays
Advertising
Social media pages
Proposals
Pitch decks
Deliverables
Environmental signage
Vehicles
Uniforms
It’s important that all of your marketing components communicate the qualities and personality of your brand with consistency.
Figure 7. S&ME vehicle and uniform branding.
Brand Identity Guidelines – How do you corral your designers and far-flung team of professionals to maintain a visually organized and strategically sound visual identity? Brand identity guidelines are an important part of the answer. (Another, often more challenging part is enforcing the guidelines.) Ask your branding firm to document your identity’s key elements and their usage. Basic guidelines might cover a few key items: your logo, color palette and typography, for instance. A more comprehensive document might include guidance on layout, photography, signage, video, animations and even your writing tone and voice.
Figure 8. RS&H’s brand style guidelines.
What Separates Great Visual Brand Design from the Ordinary?
Great design. It’s tough to define, but you know it when you see.
Or do you?
Why is it, then, that so many firms take similar approaches to their brand identities? Let me illustrate my point. Here are the homepages of nine Chicago accounting firms:
Notice any problems here?
For one thing, all of these homepages are dominated by the color blue, which happens to be the most common color across the professional services. Firms seem to gravitate to “navy” and “royal” blues, in particular. When so many competitors share the same narrow preference for colors, buyers are conditioned from the beginning to believe that their choices are all alike.
Another endemic problem is clichéd imagery. These home pages feature the same predictable, tired images, following a familiar, well-worn road. Calculators, pens, charts, computers — these images not only represent a failure of imagination, they compound the buyer’s dilemma. In your industry, the clichés might be chess pieces, boardrooms, mountain climbers, handshakes, eagles, gavels, globes, puzzle pieces, stethoscopes — the list of stale imagery is as exhaustive as it is exhausting. Do any of these look-alike firms bring anything special to the table? The answer, regrettably, is probably not. And if they do, they sure don’t act like it.
Brand design is an opportunity to break out of the follower mentality and take your brand design in a fresh direction. If most of your competitors have followed a particular visual direction, then take that as your cue — head somewhere else. Almost anywhere else is better than the miasmic mud holes where the herds wallow.
Of course, not all of your competitors use the color blue. Nor do they all embrace the same types of imagery and layouts. That’s why — before you begin redesigning your identity — you need to find out what your competitors are doing visually. Conduct a formal survey of their visual brands. Can you spot any trends? Then work with your branding partner to explore the open territory where you can differentiate you firm and give your brand room to grow.
Figure 10. Don’t be afraid to take your brand in a fresh, new visual direction.
Great visual brand design is as much about finding your own way as it is about typefaces and colors and grids. When you work with a branding firm or graphic designer, it’s important that you appreciate this concept — encourage your design partner to explore the blue ocean and take some risks. It’s far too easy to settle for a brand design approach that is comfortable and safe. And by “safe,” I mean terriblefor your business.
Now, to explain in this blog post what makes one logo or website design good and another ho-hum is an almost impossible task. Good taste is acquired over time through repeated exposure to exceptional design. An experienced visual brand design partner can navigate the opportunities available to you and help you create an identity that evokes credibility, sophistication and vitality. Here some things to look for in a brand design partner:
They know your industry.
They’ve worked with brands that you admire.
They use research and data to inform their creative decisions.
They win design awards. (While you shouldn’t take awards too seriously, they can be a signal that a firm produces distinguished, original work.)
They have the confidence to lead you through the rebranding process and explain their recommendations when you have questions.
And to take that last point one step further, it’s up to you to give your branding partner the permission to take your firm into uncharted territory.
Conclusion
Brand design at its best should challenge you at every turn. A strategy that truly differentiates your firm demands sacrifice — often pruning away client segments or service offerings you’ve grown comfortable with over the years. And a well-conceived brand identity should go out of its way to thumb its nose at the status quo. That’s not to say every great brand design has to be brash or bold. But it should have a personality all its own and a purpose that is clear, easy to grasp and distinctive.
In the end, brand design should not be driven by you, at all — it’s the buyer who matters most. Brand design is about making it easy for the buyer to make the right choice in the marketplace. It’s about positioning your firm to be the clear pick and making sure that appropriate prospective clients not only can find your firm but are predisposed to trust it.
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No matter who you are and what you sell, the success of your business relies on your ability to engage with two critically important groups – the people who buy from you and the people who work for you. At Fulcrum, we create truly personalised incentive programmes that have the power to energize your business. Each Fulcrum initiative is designed around the specific interests and aspirations of your customers and your people. We engage and inspire the people that matter – the people who power your business.
Our Values Client- centricity and the provision of quality service are key values. Providing a developmental and supportive marketing environment for our staff and recognising the importance of our suppliers are integral to our business ethic. Openness, honesty, transparency and a commitment to our community underpin everything we do.
Our Team The heart and soul of what has made us so successful is our staff. It is their passion, commitment to quality and positive, can-do attitude that delivers outstanding performance to our clients and reinforces our reputation for service excellence. From selection & recruitment through to training & development, we continually invest in our staff to ensure we have the right people, with the right skills to make sure that the job gets done right, first time.
Quality Fulcrum has always aimed to be quality leaders in our industry. An impressive array of accreditations, for Quality, Environment, Security and Staff development are simply the kite-marks that demonstrate our core values in this respect.
Fulcrum Agencies Over the years we have worked with agencies of all sizes and styles. We understand the hectic world of marketing and advertising and we have developed services specifically designed to adapt to short lead-times, changing needs, last minute requests and the occasional ‘sprint finish’.
Retail With a long-history of providing services to retailers, whether major chains or small specialist outlets, it was a very easy step for us to adapt that to the on-line world. These days we can handle high-volume fulfilment for direct-to consumer on-line web-orders as we can easily provide retail replenishment and store refurbishment.
Small Business Create Highly Engaged Organization
I’ve always had a keen interest in helping small, diverse and disadvantaged businesses. I’ve found that when given the opportunity to compete in a fair and transparent environment, these companies are very successful at winning new business when going “head-to-head” with larger organizations. And it makes sense that they would. Their very makeup allows them to be much more entrepreneurial and responsive to customer needs.
A few years back, I worked with a small business (around 200 people) and helped them put in place many strategies and methods that transformed the business. Now I want to share these tools with other small business owners. In my new book, Engaged: Creating a Great Organization through Extraordinary Employee and User Engagement, I outline how within six months the company culture and employee engagement dramatically improved and many great new ideas were put in place. These efforts not only provided greater customer satisfaction but also significantly reduced cost. The whole company reverberated with renewed enthusiasm.
Here are some of the actions that small businesses can take to create an engaged organization where people are able to make a difference.
Become a servant leader: If you are a manager in a small business you can help your subordinates be more effective by viewing yourself as at the bottom of the pyramid rather than at the top. Instead of trying to control your employees, you should view your role as empowering and supporting their success. Instead of viewing yourself as having “power over,” view yourself as giving people “power to do.” Your employees will be grateful and will go the extra mile.
Avoid the pitfalls of internally-focused metrics and quotas: Departments in many large companies create internally focused metrics and quotas that they evaluate employees on. Too often, these pull the employees away from doing what they know is right for the customers. They can also lead to silos and losing sight of the big picture because employees become so focused on only meeting the requirements of their own department. Small businesses can avoid this by understanding that humans are intrinsically motivated to make a difference, to serve the customer. If metrics must be used they should be applied with caution and be focused on external factors such as on customer delight or customer intent to recommend your company to others.
Work backwards from where you want to be: Instead of trying to make improvements on what you have in place today, get a group together and take a few hours. Pretend that your services, systems, products, facilities, organization, etc. was destroyed last night and you are free to design what you ideally like to replace it with today. This can serve as your north star and can open up new ideas. Perhaps more importantly, when the group comes up with ideas together, this tends to create much stronger buy in, resulting in successful implementation of the desired improvements.
Focus on creating a great culture: Many small businesses accidentally develop a dysfunctional culture simply because they don’t know to focus on creating the culture they want. One powerful approach to creating a desirable culture – used by Zappos.com when it was a fledgling small business – is to define the principles you want your company to be guided by. For example: we help each other be successful; we regularly appreciate people’s contributions; we are forever improving; we support a healthy community; we embrace learning; we seek out customer problems that we might solve. This reduces unhealthy conflict and organizational paralysis.
Don’t try to be the hero: In his autobiography, Benjamin Franklin observed how little he achieved when he presented an idea as his own. Instead, he found he was much more successful when he presented an idea as coming from a group. So, instead of competing with your colleagues for the glory, come up with and then implement ideas together, and you are more likely to see cooperation rather than resistance.
Make it easy for customers to submit “wishes”: Starbucks began in 1971 as a single coffee shop. As of November 2016 it was in 23,768 locations worldwide. To take advantage of customer ideas, in 2008 they implemented an online customer idea submission website named My Starbucks Idea. This “crowdsourcing” site enables customers to submit their own ideas and see and evaluate those of others, allowing Starbucks to assess support for an idea. As a small businesses, you could implement something similar in order to continually enhance your service to your customers.
Stay connected with your customers’ problems: In small businesses a higher percentage of employees have direct contact with a customer. As your company grows, avoid the pitfall of more employees losing connections with your customers. You can emphasize and put in place practices wherein employees observe and interact with customers in person to learn more about problems and unmet needs the company might address.
housing society Marketing Staff , Store marketing Companies , home to home marketing Outsourcing firm , engagement marketing Outsourcing firm , onground marketing Outsourcing firm , IT Parks Marketing Outsourcing firm , college Marketing Outsourcing firm , B to C marketing Outsourcing firm , f to f marketing Outsourcing firm
No matter who you are and what you sell, the success of your business relies on your ability to engage with two critically important groups – the people who buy from you and the people who work for you. At Fulcrum, we create truly personalised incentive programmes that have the power to energize your business. Each Fulcrum initiative is designed around the specific interests and aspirations of your customers and your people. We engage and inspire the people that matter – the people who power your business.
Our Values Client- centricity and the provision of quality service are key values. Providing a developmental and supportive marketing environment for our staff and recognising the importance of our suppliers are integral to our business ethic. Openness, honesty, transparency and a commitment to our community underpin everything we do.
Our Team The heart and soul of what has made us so successful is our staff. It is their passion, commitment to quality and positive, can-do attitude that delivers outstanding performance to our clients and reinforces our reputation for service excellence. From selection & recruitment through to training & development, we continually invest in our staff to ensure we have the right people, with the right skills to make sure that the job gets done right, first time.
Quality Fulcrum has always aimed to be quality leaders in our industry. An impressive array of accreditations, for Quality, Environment, Security and Staff development are simply the kite-marks that demonstrate our core values in this respect.
Fulcrum Agencies Over the years we have worked with agencies of all sizes and styles. We understand the hectic world of marketing and advertising and we have developed services specifically designed to adapt to short lead-times, changing needs, last minute requests and the occasional ‘sprint finish’.
Retail With a long-history of providing services to retailers, whether major chains or small specialist outlets, it was a very easy step for us to adapt that to the on-line world. These days we can handle high-volume fulfilment for direct-to consumer on-line web-orders as we can easily provide retail replenishment and store refurbishment.
The Importance of Vision for Your Business
What if for a few minutes you were living your mountaintop experience? You envisioned a time when everything was going great. A time you left all your limiting thoughts behind; about not having enough money, time or not enough experience. Imagine yourself at the end of the journey celebrating your success.Coming from that Vision, you act, think, become that person on the mountaintop. It can be as simple as closing your eyes and dreaming – using your IMAGINATION.
Walt Disney was a dreamer and built an empire by using his imagination. He turned his dream into a kingdom. He referred to the teams of people he worked with as “Imagine-eers” believing deeply in the power of Imagining. He used the pictures in his mind to bring his dream into form.As he started out building his small business he had his share of setbacks but he was so driven by his vision that nothing deterred him; not even bankruptcy or betrayal when his producer hired away most of his animators and took over the production of the his best animated cartoon in his own studio.
Walt Disney’s story of success is one that many entrepreneurs can relate to and often strive to replicate and as Disney said, “Always remember that this whole thing was started with a dream and a mouse.”Disney was Vision Driven. Are you Driven by Your Vision or ruled by Limiting Circumstance? Living in your Vision is an expansive and creative way of being.
However, most small business owners fail because they focus on their limiting circumstance.
3 things that make small business owners fail:
1. Business owners forget their ‘Why’. Why they began the business in the first place.
They lose touch with their purpose
They forget what matters
Lose sight of their passion to make a difference (their mission)
2. They start focusing on the problem rather than the opportunity ….they can’t see what they can do because they are so focused on what is not working and by doing this the problems expand.
They focus on the lack:
not enough revenue
not enough time
not enough support
not enough clients
3. Not having an “image in mind” for what they would love the business to look like…. the key words here are “in mind”… your vision. Everything is created twice. First in your mind and then created into reality.
Using the tool of ‘Living from your Vision’ makes anything possible. What would you love? By making this shift you change the word “struggle” to “opportunity for growth”!
Asking yourself questions such as:
What would it look like if it all turned out? (What if…)
What does the successful business that you have ‘in mind’ look like?
“What can I do in 15 minutes?”
or even
“What can I do in the next 5 minutes?”
“I live in the world of my vision, and you can too.”
Fulcrum Marketing Services in Pune are the catalyst to bringing your advertising vision to life. While many ideas start in a boardroom, you need experienced marketers on the ground who are able to conceptualize, plan and execute a well thought-out marketing campaign in the field.
we supply the experience, connections, relationships, and knowledge needed to maximize the potential return on investment for each of our clients as well as help identify and pursue select market opportunities as they come available, home to home marketing Outsourcing firm | Retail Marketing Companies in pune. Our local insight allows us to create exceptional investment potential for our partners and clients and enhanced living experience for our residents.
CREATING COMMUNITIES WHERE PEOPLE ARE EAGER TO LIVE AND RELUCTANT TO LEAVE
We define and position apartment homes for success. We are passionate about the residential experience and the qualitative and quantitative points that drive us to make strategic decisions that inform what a home should be — specific to its marketplace.
Results are realized through both the speed of lease-ups and financial performance of the on-going stabilized investment.
MARKET RESEARCH We crunch the numbers, ask the questions, assess current trends and forecast future trends with detailed, up-to-date research to understand our markets; Ensuring our clients have the right data points to make the best decisions going forward.
MARKET POSITIONING What’s the experience living here? What’s the story and name of this place? Our experience and insight allows us to identify and position each project’s distinctive offerings as its market niche. We provide an understanding that goes deeper than looking at trends. We create sought-after, thoughtfully executed apartment communities that are compatible with their surrounding neighborhoods.
MARKETING STRATEGY Overall success relies on a thoughtful marketing strategy. In a constantly changing environment, we develop and implement each marketing initiative specific to your audience and budget. Reaching consumers in a way that educates and informs; ultimately creating product desirability and excellent rates of return.
How to Create a Profitable Sales Funnel
Your book, The Leaky Funnel, is based on what you call — Funnel Logic. Can you briefly describe it?
Funnel Logic is a sales and marketing management and planning system used to increase prospect progression through the sales funnel, and improve sales and marketing effectiveness. It is a “belief system” built upon four key principles relating to how sales and marketing are conducted in the best-run businesses. Firstly, the combined sales and marketing function should build its activities around the buyer’s journey; not the sales cycle. Secondly, how many prospects will progress through each of these stages of this journey over time? Thirdly, what tactics will be used to cause this progression? And finally, the actual progression should be measured, so that tactics that work can be bolstered, and those which do not can be shelved.
What is the ‘buyer’s journey.’ What do you mean by that?
Business buyers go through a process as they buy. They start off untroubled and unaware — even complacent — and then at some point, they become troubled. Once they’ve acknowledged their problem, they decide what they need to solve that problem. They then make their preferences, receive proposals and, ultimately, select a vendor, sign a contract and engage. We call this the buyer’s journey.
What are the stages of the buyer’s journey?
It is important to remember that businesses don’t just wake up in the morning and decide to purchase something. They take a journey:
It starts with being Positioned in Category which means the buyer knows you are one of the businesses who sells a particular product or service.
Then Interest Established: The buyer has done something (called, clicked etc.) to show they are interested.
Gap Acknowledged: The buyer will acknowledge that a problem exists.
Need Agreed: The buyer agrees what they need, even if they are not sure who to choose.
Offer Understood: The buyer knows what we are proposing to do to meet that need.
Preference Formed: The buyer prefers our solution.
Decision Made: The buyer moves to contract.
By structuring your sales and marketing around the buyer’s journey, your focus is on helping them move through each stage.
So, the problem you solve for buyers is key. How do you choose which problems to focus on?
The challenge is to identify a buyer problem that you are strong at solving, and one that you can solve better than your competitors. This ‘feeling out’ process is all about finding a problem that is worth focusing on and that you solve well. If you are good at solving buyer problems that are not rewarding, you will major in the minors. On the other hand, if you are focusing on the right problem but from a position of weakness, you will not be able to rival your competition.
Once you’ve picked a single problem, should that influence your sales and marketing strategy?
Simply, yes. In identifying your buyer’s problem, you are able to clearly define three key aspects of your sales and marketing function. Firstly, what your business is selling is now a clear solution to a problem. Secondly, who you are selling to, becomes who has the problem. And thirdly, how you will reach your buyers, translates to, what is the channel that uncovers the problem? This basically turns our thinking inside out:
Once you’ve formulated your strategy, how do you develop an action plan?
Once you have turned your strategy inside-out, it is time to translate this strategy into action. In order to do this effectively you must select tactics to help these potential buyers recognize that they have this problem. However, your strategy does not translate into action…yet; because our tactics are often arbitrary. I say this because businesses will often select tactics on the strength of; they worked last year, or it seems to work for our competitors, or we’ve always done it this way. I present an alternative. Remembering the buyer’s journey, you must select tactics that will progress buyers through that journey; through each stage.
What about volume? How do you work out the number of buyers you actually need to progress?
Trying to calculate the number of buyers you actually need is a valid pursuit, however it can be a trap. When doing this, you must keep two things in mind: buyers need time to progress (take their journey) and your tactics need to be repeated several times to have an effect (“one-hit-wonders” rarely do the job). Marketing teams are always geared for success, but it is often how they capitalise on failure that makes them rich. If you start with a simple numerical model mapping your prospective buyers progressing along their journey — importantly remembering to allow for leakage at each stage — you quickly realise two scary realities:
A vast majority of initial leads will leak at some stage along the journey, so doesn’t it make sense to have a proper recycling program?; and Shouldn’t we have some idea of the effect of recycling before we plan a demand generation campaign?
Given this, in order to work out exactly how many buyers you will need, you need to recycle all the “leaked” buyers back into your funnel and re-run the model. Decide how much of the total revenue Marketing is to contribute and then adjust your top-of-funnel number until the “customer” (converted buyers) number will contribute the desired revenue outcome.
And once you know how many buyers you need to progress, how do you actually get them moving?
Ultimately, what you are trying to achieve is to nurture your buyers along their journey. In order to do this, you need tactics that move your buyers through your funnel from stage to stage. In a practical sense, you must initially identify buyers who meet your target profile, position your brand on their list and get their attention, convince these businesses to accept they have the problem you solve best, gain acceptance and backing of your own solution and then move to contract.
What are some examples of progression tactics that are suitable for small businesses?
There are many tactics that will work just as well for big business as they will for small operators. As your goal for progression is to keep doing the small rhythmic tasks that keep the prospect aware of how you can solve their problem; something as simple as a monthly email or blog article will have the same effect no matter what size the business. It is likely that your financial position or operational capability will dictate what is actually possible. Investigate options for each stage of your buyer’s journey; here are some common tactics:
Get known by making sure all the key bloggers mention you and the problem you solve.
Trouble buyers by asking tough questions on your website and in meetings.
Agree the need by providing a template showing typical buyer needs.
Confirm your buyer’s situation, problem and need by email after meeting.
Build this whole journey (situation, problem, need and solution) into your proposal in case there are others involved in the buying process.
For all buyers who leak (at any stage) recycle and nurture using regular email and thought leadership.
How do you see social media? What new tactics work for B2B?
The marketing benefits of social media are just now beginning to become apparent. While there has been endless conjecture surrounding the ways in which social media is going to revolutionise the way we market products and services, the initial hype is beginning to turn into some sort of reality. As this is a small business forum, let’s consider some relevant B2B uses for various forms of social media. Blogging, micro-blogging (Twitter) and video blogging (YouTube) are great ways to position and even trouble business buyers on a shoestring.
What about buyers who fail to progress?
It is often the small percentage of successful lead conversions that get all our attention — while the other, much higher, percentage that leaked gets forgotten. Adopting tactics that recycle those who have already leaked, in order to assist nurturing tactics that stem the leakage, can turn neglected prospects into future customers. Recycling tactics handle those buyers who fail to progress — the leakage; these tactics ready a buyer for re-entry into the funnel. While these leads are in the funnel, specific nurturing tactics keep the buyer from leaking. Having captured the buyer’s details, relevant and rhythmic eDM, Tele-nurturing and RSS updates will keep your name and your solution at the front of the buyer’s mind.
What would you say is key to successfully executing tactics?
To help your buyers move along their journey, down the funnel, you have to execute the correct tactics at the correct time; however, as we have already agreed there is always going to be leakage. When executing tactics, the key to success is rhythm — if you can manage tactics in a way that will take advantage of ’leakage’ whilst nurturing leads still in your funnel, success will come. If you can reach a point where you have a sound grasp of your buyer’s journey, Sales and Marketing are on the same page tactically and your tactics for progression are working — it is now time to focus on obtaining good momentum that allows for recycled leads to be rhythmically nurtured, even if a little at a time. In B2B marketing, I like to use the term ‘corkscrew’ to refer to a tactic (or series of tactics) that you can execute over and again, knowing that while the buyer will only drop into your funnel occasionally, every time you twist the corkscrew, you are moving them along — a little.
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Fulcrum Marketing Services in Pune are the catalyst to bringing your advertising vision to life. While many ideas start in a boardroom, you need experienced marketers on the ground who are able to conceptualize, plan and execute a well thought-out marketing campaign in the field.
we supply the experience, connections, relationships, and knowledge needed to maximize the potential return on investment for each of our clients as well as help identify and pursue select market opportunities as they come available, home2home marketing ideas | rural marketing Strategy in pune. Our local insight allows us to create exceptional investment potential for our partners and clients and enhanced living experience for our residents.
CREATING COMMUNITIES WHERE PEOPLE ARE EAGER TO LIVE AND RELUCTANT TO LEAVE
We define and position apartment homes for success. We are passionate about the residential experience and the qualitative and quantitative points that drive us to make strategic decisions that inform what a home should be — specific to its marketplace.
Results are realized through both the speed of lease-ups and financial performance of the on-going stabilized investment.
MARKET RESEARCH We crunch the numbers, ask the questions, assess current trends and forecast future trends with detailed, up-to-date research to understand our markets; Ensuring our clients have the right data points to make the best decisions going forward.
MARKET POSITIONING What’s the experience living here? What’s the story and name of this place? Our experience and insight allows us to identify and position each project’s distinctive offerings as its market niche. We provide an understanding that goes deeper than looking at trends. We create sought-after, thoughtfully executed apartment communities that are compatible with their surrounding neighborhoods.
MARKETING STRATEGY Overall success relies on a thoughtful marketing strategy. In a constantly changing environment, we develop and implement each marketing initiative specific to your audience and budget. Reaching consumers in a way that educates and informs; ultimately creating product desirability and excellent rates of return.
Build Winning Advertising Agency
OK, Let’s Go…
When I owned Citrus, my Portland and Bend Oregon advertising agency, I woke up every morning (and even some nights) thinking hard about my agency’s business development program. I lived as if Nike, our largest client, was about to walk out the back door along with its revenues. I bet as an ad agency owner or manager you have rough nights too. One of the things I knew I could and should do was to manage this back-door issue was to have an active, I stress active, new business plan in place.
Here are some (I stress some) of the elements of my new business plan. They helped me grow Citrus (with new clients like Harrah’s, LegalZoom, Nike and the Montana Lottery). I hope my insights help you grow your agency.
Execution Rules.
When I set out to write this advertising agency new business post I didn’t think that it would be this long – a warning to the ADHD types. But, advertising agency new business planning is complex and is getting more complex every day due to the rapid changes in our industry and technology. That said, the devil in business development, you know what’s coming, is in the detail. Success is all about execution.
For example, running a successful inbound biz dev program that attracts market attention must be based on a sound strategy and smart agency process if you want to run a 24/7 sales program. Staying the course is critical.
The Communications Agency Business Plan. First Things First.
I have never been able to construct an effective business development program without first having an agency business plan.
The business plan should include (at least):
Your agency’s business and business development objectives
An assessment of your current strengths and weakness (I have all of my clients do an internal SWOT analysis)
A competitive agency positioning (specialization is a good thing)
An analysis of your space in the world – as in, why would a client hire you?
Clear target market objectives and target market personas
A service plan (it might mean adding new services)
Your inbound and outbound (think Account Based Marketing) plan
The very important objective of running unignorable messaging
A dedication to being consistent and efficient – as in having a process
Your business plan should also help you plan for your future in the evolving world of marketing communications. I think that client confusion with the evolving state of advertising and marketing – this includes big and small clients – makes today a great time to be an agency. Winning agencies are resolving their business challenges, crafting the right services and guidance and, importantly, are willing to modify their business model to avoid disruption to achieve success.
It is also imperative that you develop a roadmap for how to grow your current agency to become the agency of the future. The market, communication platforms and client expectations are changing rapidly. Assess your current strengths, weaknesses and how your agency expertise and personnel are going to stay ahead of change (do an annual SWOT analysis).
Change can be very profitable. What if you could restart your agency using a blank sheet of paper? Would you build a replica of your current agency or would it look dramatically different? If you think that change is in order, you better get started. Here is a powerful mantra from General Eric Shinseki.
“If you dislike change, you’re going to dislike irrelevance even more.”
The Agency New Business Program – Join The 34%
Armed with your business plan you can get ahead of your competitors by having a comprehensive new business plan. Most agencies do not have a plan. Get this industry research…
66% Of Advertising Agencies Report That They Do Not Have a Business Development Plan. This Is Lunacy!
Your plan should include most, if not all of the following:
Conduct an agency brand review to determine if your current brand and services deliver market differentiation; build a positive reputation; generate incoming client interest and attract talented employees.
Create a set of ‘buyer’ personas so you know exactly what type of client you want and how they think and act.
Have a compelling agency brand story that is driven by your history, products, services and your personality. Need help? Read Seth Godin’s “All Marketers Are Liars.”
Managing the Process.
Unless your phone is ringing off the hook, your agency’s new business program must be an agency priority.
Agency leadership has to be actively involved with establishing new business objectives, strategic planning and execution.
Stay on top of the process. Have at least bi-monthly new business planning meetings.
Business development is 24/7. Your digital marketing program and management and staff activities must be ongoing and consistent.
Hire a Business Development Director to help manage the new business program and act as the agency sales leader or hunter. This person’s key job is to get meetings with the right prospects. Use my Business Development Director’s compensation plan to orient their focus.
Stimulate and empower others in the organization to participate. Everyone is responsible for growth. Best case, they will come up with a marketable new service. At the least, they should be keeping their eyes open for leads.
Prospecting.
Prospecting is a long-term play and takes time. Be prepared, persistent and patient.
Use Account-Based Marketing. An ex-Microsoft exec, a client of mine, recently lauded Account Based marketing. He described it as something “new”. I quickly recognized it as ‘targeted sales’ and laughed. Whatever… it works. Here is a Wiki definition.
Account-Based Marketing (ABM), also known as key account marketing, is a strategic approach to business marketing based on account awareness in which an organization considers and communicates with individual prospect or customer accounts as markets of one.
Simply put –> ABM = Targeted Outreach = Direct Interest = Sales. This is a big subject worth studying. It’s all about identifying the target company and its people and then having a sound plan to reach them with the information and insights they will want to read.
Manage an active Excel prospect database and/or CRM system. If you have to, keep it simple – use a pad. But, do it.
Build an “A-Level” prospect list. Establish selection criteria and do your research. I’ve always thought that there are three types of desirable clients: Those that pay well (that means they are profitable); those who demand great work; those who are famous and enhance your reputation. Two of the above are good. Pay well is best. My agency’s client Nike had all three.
To build up-to-date lists I’ve used the services of The List Inc., Red Books and LinkedIn. You can also hire interns or go offshore for worker bee assistance.Build an email list to keep all prospects, clients, and associates aware of agency thought leadership, news and growth.
Advertise. Yup, test targeted advertising on LinkedIn (via your corporate page); ditto on Facebook and Twitter.Referrals are good. Manage your referral process. Periodically ask your friends, family, business associates, employees (many don’t think about new business) and current clients for referrals. have a referral system.Track the career path and whereabouts of past clients. LinkedIn notifications could become your best friend.
Read business publications, industry trade press, and pertinent websites. To manage agency time, assign information buckets to different staff members. Get past just reading the same trade press your competitors read.
A Word On Incoming. Pitch less.
Pitching and even working on everything that rings the doorbell can be a mistake. Qualify the lead. Pitching the right accounts will increase your batting average. Pitching the wrong accounts will sap your agency’s energy, cash and time. Read my book on pitching if you want to find out why pitching everything that raises its hand can put you out of business. Remember, you have a business plan that lays out the type of clients you want and can win.
Business Development Tools.
Years ago I heard Jonathan Bond of New York’s Kirshenbaum Bond make this comment about new business activity: “I don’t know what works so we do everything.” Here are some tools worth considering.Make sure that you have an agency website that sells. The great majority of agency websites do not. Get past brochure-ware. Here are some blog posts about how to create winning, sales-oriented agency websites.
Maintain sales pressure. Schedule your outbound marketing to keep up consistent sales pressure — you can’t tell when a prospect will have a new project or an AOR account looking for a new agency. I’ve always made it an agency priority to send out high-value emails at least every four to six weeks.Deliver high-value thought-leadership. Clients are looking for strategic agencies and solutions to their pain points and objectives. But, keep in mind that you are not the only thought-leader on the block. There are zillions of Google results for “best advertising blogs”. To beat these horrific odds you need to become a narrow-subject thought-leader to break through the clutter. Its way better to become a niche advertising or category expert than be a Me Too generalist.
Be smart. Before you make any calls, do basic research so you know about your prospect’s business, possible pain points and what sales messages might resonant. Have a smart sales script that puts the client first. Remember the rules of Account Based marketing.Want more inbound? Get your brilliant thinking out there via a strategic social media program. Blogs (uniques blogs that is), Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook (sponsored posts work hard for me) and the strategic use of Instagram and Pinterest (yes, Pinterest) will take time — but work. Don’t forget SlideShare, YouTube videos and good old-fashioned white papers, monthly emails and speaking engagements. Get your brains out there and make the client you want you by looking like you can help them get their bonus.
Do not overreach. One of the keys to social media success is selecting platforms that your agency can manage on a day-to-day basis. There are a lot of empty agency blogs and Twitter feeds that do much more harm to reputations than good.
Be efficient. Optimize and integrate everything you do. Try the Rule of Five. Amplify everything you do by five. The white paper goes in the mail (yes, mail); on your blog; on your LinkedIn page; out via Twitter and on SlideShare… You get the idea.
Run events for prospects and clients. My agency Citrus got senior executives from Facebook, Google, Google Maps, LinkedIn and Yahoo! to speak at our own Portland “Meet the Makers” events. We just had to ask nicely.
Turn cold calling into warm calling. Yes, the phone still works – if handled with care. I like to soften the prospect with a series of insight-rich thought leadership mailings (if it’s email you will see if has been opened) and then call early to reach the key prospect before their day begins or to leave a mini-pitch voicemail. Consider having a script handy.Email. Yes, email still works and volume is now being driven by increased mobile usage. But, make sure your emails have value and don’t overwhelm. KISS works here.
Another big point: having an agency video on your website is nice (actually, I think it’s critical). But, having a video that goes beyond just being there to getting watched and passed along by your target audience because it provides value is way better. If your video drives incoming interest, tells your agency’s story and builds chemistry, you will drive lead generation. It is all about how you execute.Be different… Sometimes it is good to break out of digital… A personalized letter, as in paper, or mailing just might break through the digital clutter. How about an agency zine?
Think even more different. Over the years, I’ve used online surveys, postcards, music CD’s, etched wine bottles, targeted micro-sites, digital mad libs (yes, mad libs); books like Jeffery Abrahams’ “101 Mission Statements From Top Companies” and even Krispy Kreme donuts to get meetings. Here is a case history for a food-smile-based program that announced our new Portland office. We delivered a box of hot Krispy Kreme doughnuts and a personalized digital promotional program to generate awareness and smiles.Get out of the office and go to events to hear new ideas and meet new people. Join relevant groups and organizations.Guest post to get more eyes on your thinking. See what I’ve done with my friends at HubSpot. Writing for them even got me a speaking gi at their huge fall event.
Create some buzz. PR is your friend. I highly recommend that you think of PR as an essential business development tool.
Win creative awards. Go get some EFFIE’s to support your ROI story. But, watch the award budget.
First Meetings.
Whatever solicitation marketing you did worked and you landed a meeting. Here are some first meeting basics:
Keep it simple. don’t overwhelm the clients.
Listen: Probe for problems. Consider going beyond solution sales to tell them what they should be worried about. For more on this sales technique, I suggest that you read “The End of Solution Sales” in the July – August 2012 issue of the Harvard Business Review.
Sell something special: Deliver a USP.
Deliver an unignorable insight. Ask me about how to use Google’s consumer research.
Make friends: Work the chemistry and dazzle.
The master goal: Get a second meeting to keep the dialog going.
RFPs.
Getting an RFP is like getting asked out on a date or for a test-drive. You should be flattered — but. To manage incoming, build a RFP decision matrix. You should quickly have an idea of which RFP’s to respond to and which aren’t worth the effort. RFP responses always chew up agencies. Make sure that this date is worthwhile.If it’s a go, ask for a meeting to discuss the RFP. If the client is unwilling to give you some time, you might want to pass. Read up on why you might want to NOT pitch that account.Here’s a decision matrix…do not Pitch that account!
Keep your response lean. Chances are that the client has asked for too many responses and could become brain-dead by the time they get to yours. Make sure you answer every question in the RFP before you go beyond what they are asking for.Once you have ticked all the client boxes, go beyond. Don’t forget to include agency personality and consider an “Easter Egg” surprise element.
Pitching.
Oh, the uncertainty. Does the client have a favorite? Is this a strategic search or just a scheduled management or procurement exercise? Does the incumbent have an advantage? What type of agency is the client actually looking for? Who is the key decision maker? Do you present what they are asking for or what you think they need? Helping to understand the client’s motivations is where your most experienced management comes into play.
Pitching is an art. I’ve been pitching new business since the 80’s, ran business development at Saatchi & Saatchi in New York and London and pitched often for my own agency. OK, I admit it… I want you to buy my book on pitching and presenting. You can buy it at Amazon right here.
Here are what I believe are the primary elements of a perfect pitch process. This is only a topline list.
Pick a pitch leader and the right team for planning and writing.
Watch your costs. Create a budget. We have all seen pitch costs gone wild.
Create a timetable that includes strategy development, creative development and staging and rehearsals.
Consider building a war room, it can be an online war room, to help focus your effort.
Determine the client, category and customer issues and opportunities and make sure you address them.
Use research to support your strategic insights. But, note that the other agencies might be doing the same. That said, clients are always interested in seeing brief strategic videos of their customers talking about their products and services.
Determine and manage how you communicate your strengths and manage your weaknesses. Consider doing an agency SWOT analysis through the client’s lens.
Talk more about them than you. Actually, talk much more about them.
Act like you really want the business. Surprisingly, I’ve been told by clients that not all agencies know how to look interested.
Pitches are theater. Stories are better than endless credentials. Case histories are better than showing endless amounts of work. For inspiration, watch Steve Jobs.
If you can, get the client to come to you. I’ve pitched in too many soulless client boardrooms or hotel conference rooms. It can be a buzz kill.
If you have to go to them, find a way to scout out the room and equipment ahead of the meeting.
Put your best presenters in the room. Don’t include talented but uninspiring people simply because it is their turn or that they worked on the pitch. I’ve made this mistake. It’s a bad one. Get ahead of the problem and train your team on how to present. Do this now.
Don’t forget to smile. Interpersonal chemistry wins pitches.
Conclusion.
The business of running an advertising, digital, experiential, design, PR agency is hard work. Too many agencies sound alike. Clients are skittish and are overwhelmed by choice. It is therefore essential that you create and run a business development program that makes you a stand out candidate. That means that you need to look and sound like an agency that can clearly meet a client’s needs. That means that you need to have a standout brand and sales proposition. That means you need to both target the clients you want and are able to be found by them when they are out looking for you.
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