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How To Run A Profitable Advertising Agency (2 of 2)

Peter · September 23, 2014 · Leave a Comment

Here is Part Two of my blog post on how to run a profitable advertising agency.

You might want to start at Part One. Part One also tells you, based on my own personal perspective of myself, why you might want to believe most, if not all, of what I am about to tell you.

13. Grow your digital assets faster. Bring on more technologists to leapfrog even early-adopter digital agencies. A lot of agencies are now behind simply because they didn’t start hiring more geeks sooner.

14. Pick a growth area. It’s not too late to become the smartest video or mobile agency (no one is yet.) Not even the big boys have mobile figured out. However, it may be too late to be known as the best “social media agency” given the sea of social experts. One more digital point, and I know that you know this — digital agencies have a higher multiple than full-service agencies. If you want to sell in the next three years, you best add valuable digital skill-sets.

15. Provide exceptional client service. All AE’s must know how to think like a client in order to anticipate client needs and address any potential issues before they materialize and metastasize. Consider sending your AE’s to an AE class. The worst call I could ever imagine is a client telling me that our account service sucked. It’s just too easy to fix. Fixing creativity is much harder.

16. Create an agency work process that is dedicated to profitability. Then stick with it. The ever-elastic creative process must be tamed. If you need a work process template ask me and I’ll shoot you one. [Read more…] about How To Run A Profitable Advertising Agency (2 of 2)

How To Run A Profitable Advertising Agency (1 of 2)

Peter · September 22, 2014 · Leave a Comment

How To Run A Profitable Advertising Agency?

Don’t Take My Word For It, Yet…

I’ve been working as a senior executive and owner in the advertising, digital and Internet startup worlds since the golden 1980’s. My global and regional clients and new business wins include General Mills, Harrah’s, J&J, Intel, Microsoft, Nabisco, Northwest Airlines and Nike. And, many smaller regional clients you might never have heard of unless you are on the west coast.

Over the years, I’ve made hundreds of business decisions. Some were brilliant and some were ‘learning experiences’. I’ve decided to share my top 25 business-building lessons with you. No, I am not so crazy to think that these will instantly make your agency the next 72andSunny. But, I do know that most of these lessons represent best practices that, if followed, can help make you be more successful.

The path that got me here included sixteen years at Saatchi & Saatchi Advertising Worldwide as Business Development Director North America, General Manager Minneapolis, European Director in London and Management Director in New York. After I discovered the Internet browser in 1994, I left advertising for seven years to be CEO and founder of two Internet publishing and technology startups. One was one of the first major online newspapers. The other company created technology that allowed people to have meaningful conversations with a computer – Microsoft bought the technology in 2005. If you were online in the early 2000’s you might have talked with our SmarterChild bot on instant messaging platforms. Over 20 million people did.

After my digital sojourn, I moved from New York to Oregon in 2002 to buy the advertising agency RalstonGroup. In the ten years that I ran the agency, we bought the sports marketing agency Citrus, took their name and added clients like Dr. Martens, Legalzoom, Montana Lottery, Nike’s AOR college and Major League Baseball accounts and the U.N.

I understand the advertising industry from the perspective of huge to small agencies and have sat on the client side of the table.

By the way, I now run an agency consultation business that specializes in business development. I help agencies find their positioning sweet spot and build action-oriented business development plans. I just published my second book, The Levitan Pitch. Buy This Book. Win More Pitches. This book is a very detailed how-to about how to manage and create business-winning new business pitches.

My experience as a consultant and the opportunity to look under the hood of many agencies has confirmed that the following ideas can help add value to most, if not all, agencies.

I hope that by now you think that I must know what I am talking about. If so, here you go…

Here are the first 12 of my 25 key lessons I’ve learned over the years. Part two is up tomorrow.

Inside My Book On Advertising Agency Pitching

Peter · September 16, 2014 · Leave a Comment

What’s Inside My Book On Pitching?

As some of you know, I am speaking at HubSpot’s Inbound 2014 conference. I am talking about how to write a B2B book in less than 6 months.

Since I am not actually talking about the art of pitching for advertising agency new business that is the subject of The Levitan Pitch. Buy This Book. Win More Pitches. (which I wrote in 5 months), I thought that I should share what’s inside the 251 page book. I find that people dig the title but still wonder what they are actually going to get. How will this book actually help them win more advertising pitches? Can’t blame them. There are a few books on pitching out there and while I know that I’ve designed my book to be insightful and easy to read, how can anyone other than a reader know this without picking up a copy. So, here you go… (from the book’s introduction)…

Chapter One

In Chapter One of this book, I discuss the very high cost of failing to run well-crafted, efficient pitches. The costs of failure include poor agency staff morale, individual employee burnout, and the financial cost to an agency’s bottom-line that comes from the cost of participating in four-month agency searches and funding an agency’s annual business development plan. There can also be significant costs to career advancement, as you will see from my personal experience in my Saatchi & Saatchi story about “The Worst Advertising Pitch Ever”.

Chapter Two

Chapter Two offers an escape hatch. You should not pitch every account that comes knocking. I give you a handy tool to gauge both the value of the prospective client and your agency’s chances of winning. This is a rather good exercise to do before you embark on the path of winding up the agency to build your finalist pitch.

Chapter Three

Chapter Three begins to help you position the pitch for success. We look at the essential facts of the pitch and dig into understanding the client’s mindset by understanding the type of assignment, type of relationship they are looking for, and what type of agency will fulfill their needs.

Chapter Four

Chapter Four delivers my list of “The 12 Deadliest Presentation Mistakes”. These are identified pitch killers that come from my personal experience and the experiences of agency CEO’s, clients, and search consultants. The accompanying cartoons wouldn’t be as funny if these mistakes were not being made over and over, even by the most sophisticated agencies.

Chapter Five

In Chapter Five I lay out thirty short but very sweet suggestions for how to build a brilliant presentation that I know will greatly increase your odds of winning. These ideas cover three core elements of a successful pitch: process management, content development, and how to deliver a standout presentation. Each rule is supported by a tip or insight that offers a fast way to achieve your objectives. One of my favorite insights is how to use LinkedIn recommendations to understand the personalities and interests of the clients that will be in the presentation. This insight isn’t what you think.

Chapter Six

Chapter Six is all about don’t take my word for it. This chapter brings in valuable learning via fourteen interviews with a range of communications industry experts. It is informative and often mind-blowing to hear the pitch related experiences and advice of agency search consultants, compensation experts, an ex P&G procurement executive, a negotiation trainer, the 4A’s, the Association of National Advertisers, a silicon valley presentation guru, a leading agency strategist, an ex-Nike and W+K executive on building chemistry, an IP lawyer on who actually owns your pitch ideas, the CEO of a London advertising agency, and the CEO of an independent agency network who has been on both sides of the table.

Chapter Seven

Finally, I’ve included insights about all too common agency pitch mistakes from 16 of the world’s leading search consultants.

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That’s it. Hope this sounds like a book that you’ll want to read. My goal is to help you win more pitches. I can almost guarantee that if you pay attention to the book’s advice — you will win more. By the way, take a look inside the book on Amazon.