You’ve Got Your Prospect’s Undivided Attention. Now, What Do You Tell Them About Your Agency?
What if the new business gods decide to grant you one wish: an introductory conversation with one prospective client of your choosing.
Who is that person and what will you tell them about your agency?
This is a variation of a question I ask as part of an assessment all my new clients get when they first start working with me. The beauty of the question is that it removes all the stuff we hate about proactive outreach—the discomfort of putting ourselves out there, the deafening silence of no response, or worse yet, the unpleasant side effects of rejection.
So, every time I get back a completed assessment, I’m excited to see how my clients might have answered this question. How will they decide to cash in this golden ticket??
The answer is almost always a letdown. With one exception. Just one exception among the dozens of agency leaders who have answered over the last decade that I’ve asked it.
I’m going to share that exceptional answer with you, but first, how would you answer this question?
The beauty of this question is that it removes a big chunk of what we don’t like about proactive outreach–the discomfort of putting yourself out there, the deafening silence of no response, or worse yet, the unpleasant side effects of rejection.
So, every time I get back a completed assessment, I’m excited to see how my clients might have answered this question. How will they decide to cash in this golden ticket??
Here’s what I see a lot:
The answer is blank. Yep, no answer at all.
Or, they choose a highly aspirational client like Harley Davidson or Coca-Cola or Activision Blizzard. Nothing wrong with aspiring for big high-profile, super-cool clients, but my scenario doesn’t promise you’ll get the business, only that you’ll have a chance to pitch for it. Do you have a pitch that’s ready for a client like Coca-Cola?
Or, the answer is that the agency will tell the dream client how they can provide a fresh perspective. Or that they will get the job done, whatever it takes! Or that they’re the right choice because they can do it cheaper or faster or both. Ugh… same old agency promises. Earnest but not very distinctive and certainly not prescriptive to the needs of the client.
Why is this question so hard to answer for so many agencies?
My theory: they haven’t adequately defined who their ideal clients are. Because of that, they can’t communicate a client-focused message and must rely on the same old appeal that sounds a bit like this: “We’re awesome! Trust us, everything is going to be great!”
As I said, there was one exception to this that I would like to share with you. Why? Because the writer, whether he realized it or not, uses a few useful techniques that anyone can use to make their pitch powerful.
It’s been genericized to protect the innocent, but here it is, a pitch from a creative director of a small creative agency in the Southeast to the CMO of a powerboat company that we’ll call “WonderBoat”:
“I was at Lake No-Name with my family this weekend and I talked to a guy named Bob who just bought a brand-new FancyCraft. I asked him why he bought the FancyCraft and not a WonderBoat. He said that he likes both boats, and the features and the price of the WonderBoat were even a little better. He said:
‘There was just something that the FancyCraft offered that the WonderBoat didn’t: confidence. I didn’t see it on the WonderBoat website or hear it when I talked to their sales team. I didn’t even see it from their customers on social media. But I did with FancyCraft. They had swagger. When you see a new FancyCraft pull into the landing, everybody notices. They just tell a better story. That’s why.’
I work for an agency that tells really good stories. Strategic stories that could help WonderBoat become even greater than FancyCraft. We have done this for clients like Resort Brand in your backyard. We have done it for high-end brands like Deluxe Co. and Spiffy Inc.
We have a team that is different. A team that works hard to uncover insights about people like Bob at Lake No-Name. What they do, where they go, what makes them tick as a boater. A nimble team of creatives and media experts with in-house photographers, a motion department, the best PR and social influence teams in the country and the creative director who is a pretty good wakeboarder.”
🙌 💯 🏆
That’s how I felt when I first read this. And still do! It’s not perfect. I cringe a little at the “nimble team of creatives” in the final paragraph. And, to be transparent, I left out the last couple of sentences in which he used another of my banished phrases: he “would “love to” visit the client’s HQ to tell them more.
I’m sure he would! But what about the clients? In other words, his call to action was weak, but he can be forgiven because by this point, he’s done such a great job of presenting a problem and then positioning his agency as the solution.
So, why do I love this pitch?
He starts with a story. No superfluous wind-up, no meaningless statement about being a full-service, integrated creative powerhouse. Just a story about a conversation he had at the lake this weekend that happened to feature WonderBoat. The stories we tell are some of the most powerful pitch tools we have in our arsenal. I’ve written more about this topic here, and here and here, but the bottom line is that we human beings are hardwired to engage with a story. We can’t help ourselves. If you can find a way to tell your prospects a story that’s relevant to them, they will very likely listen.
He presents believable evidence that there’s a problem based on his lived experience. There was no investment in expensive consumer research or spec work. His observations combined with his years of professional experience resulted in a believable argument that WonderBoat might just have a marketing problem.
However he didn’t share an opinion about what WonderBoat is doing wrong, which would likely have sounded presumptuous and insulting. He simply related a conversation he had with a boater that should have been a WonderBoat customer but went with a competitor instead.
He focuses on information the client cares about. He offers an unignorable morsel of information: a mini attitudinal study. Yes, a focus group of one doesn’t make for a strong sample size, but what CMO wouldn’t to tap into unvarnished consumer perceptions?
The brand aligns beautifully with this agency’s ideal client profile. We know this because he cites the work his agency has done with other high-end brands and I can corroborate this because I know the agency.
Even if you agree that this is a great cold pitch, you might also be thinking it’s just one brand and one great anecdote. That doesn’t make for a very robust list of prospects (by the way, for all I know this conversation was totally invented by the writer, in which case I was hoodwinked, but effectively so).
Fair enough. But, what I hope I’ve offered through my analysis is a framework of repeatable elements (storytelling, client-focused messaging, smart observations based on your experience) that you can follow.
And, if we ever get to work together, you now have no excuse not to ace this question when you come upon it in my assessment.