Want to know how to win more pitches? be the ONLY agency pitching!
Here we are again on the brink of another autumn of reviews, pitches, RFI’s and tenders. So, what can you do to gain an advantage in what is a VERY competitive marketplace? Well, for one thing, you could try selling your agency rather than marketing it.
SELLING YOUR AGENCY
When you market your agency the general idea is to make sure that as and when someone is thinking about reviewing, your agency is one they remember and decide to include in the selection process.
This is typically the mantra of the inbound marketer, nurture the lead until they are ready to buy before engaging with them face-to-face or over the telephone. This is all well and good when you have, say, 100,000 potential B2B customers. But many agencies only have a couple of hundred, in which case we would advise a sales led approach may be more effective; think of the new business meeting not as part of the closing process but as part of the nurturing process.
THE LIFECYCLE
So knowing when you should be meeting prospective new clients is absolutely the key to how to win more pitches. Take a look at the diagram below which shows the stages of a typical client/agency relationship. The timescales aren’t that important, it is the stages that we’re really discussing here.
A client in the honeymoon stage is not worth meeting. One in the boredom stage should be nurtured. Those in the frustration and wanderlust stages should be met. Those in the dating stage you should have met before they got there!
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When you sell your agency, what you are doing is going out there and meeting with people who may not YET have definitely decided whether to review. You are being more pro-active in your approaches and providing your prospects, in a face-to-face meeting, with a compelling reason as to why they SHOULD review their incumbent. If successful, you often end up being the only agency pitching and that is how to win more pitches!
Sure, it’s hard work, but if you have the time and the inclination, then we have the expertise and experience to open the doors for you.
