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If I was nervous before, now I was downright panicky. I had really rehearsed for this presentation, and I had paid particular attention to my opening remarks.
It was still all there, lodged safely in my brain. I took a deep breath, and went back to the conference room to meet the clients.
When it was my turn to present, I got up and delivered my slides with confidence. I got through my presentation mainly because I knew my opening cold. You feel bad about the mistake, it throws you off, and you make another mistake. When you relax, the rest of your presentation will flow.
You will enjoy yourself. It will show, and the presentation will be a success. The theory applies not just to rain, but to account management. The idea is to anticipate what might happen and prepare for it.
I never let that happen again. For a different creative presentation, I remember rushing to get all the work together, and neglecting to bring 74 a copy of the creative brief. Instead, I looked pretty foolish. So I suggest you make a checklist for yourself. This will force you to anticipate the questions or issues that might arise in the discussion, then will help you create and compile all the materials you might need to respond.
Even if you have to walk into the meeting with a shopping bag bursting with background material. My agency colleagues and I were presenting an ad campaign to a prospective client.
Key to the campaign was a particular celebrity spokesperson. We believed this spokesperson was perfect for the client, and for the audience we were trying to reach.
We just assumed the client would agree with us. So when the client asked us for some data or research to support our recommendation, all we could do is offer more opinions. We probably were right about the celebrity working well for this client, but the client was unequivocally right to expect us to make a sound case for our recommen76 dation. Well before you make a presentation, check it for any claims it makes. We presented with great self-assurance for more than 90 minutes.
Speaking on behalf of my colleagues, I want to thank you for all your effort. No questions? Not a single one? All we could do was thank the clients for their time, shake their hands, and leave. A week later we heard from the client. The company had selected another agency.
It should have come as no surprise to us. During our presentation, we did all the talking. I later learned the client felt browbeaten and excluded. We should have known then what I know now: If, at the end of your presentation, you and your colleagues have done all the talking, you will know that you have failed. The goal is to be effective, and that means engaging the client, as early and as often as possible, in a discussion that leads to a sharing of ideas and opinions, and that ultimately leads to a meeting of the minds.
In one of the best new business pitches I ever participated in, my colleagues and I never actually got to present. We certainly were prepared, but the client preferred to talk, and we let him. It led to a freewheeling, wideranging discussion. We went well over our allotted time.
Ultimately we were awarded the account. It was the best presentation I never made. I doubt it. Okay, with client meetings agencies certainly try to be punctual.
But then the clients usually keep the agency waiting. If the problem is chronic with your clients, you have two options: 1 put up with it, or 2 gently, very gently, remind them they are paying for all those people cooling their heels in the conference room. With internal meetings at the agency, usually everyone keeps everyone else waiting. You can do something about it, however. Do that a couple of times and people will get the message. With everyone on call to clients, there are going to be occasions when people will be late for internal meetings.
The goal is to make that the exception, not the 81 rule. Once a meeting is underway, the goal should be to make it as short as possible. Get it done so everyone can get out and do the work. If people are chronically late to meetings, it might be the result of too many meetings that add too little value to the work process. If you do these things, you will become known as a person who gets things done. Assuming the meeting is necessary, you should create an agenda, and not just in your head.
Putting it on paper shows respect for the other participants. It also gives you a way to solicit input. This is particularly important when preparing for client meetings. Agendas are not written in stone, and agencies are in the idea business.
If a meeting takes an unexpected but promising turn, be prepared to go with the flow. In some of these situations, my agency colleagues and I were meeting on something quite unrelated to the breakthrough we achieved. The way to shorten those meetings and conversations is to come to the table prepared.
Know what you want the outcome of the meeting, the conversation, or the presentation to be. Say what you have to say quickly, clearly, and concisely. The workday is long enough as it is. Above all, know when to close your briefcase. If you continue to talk, you might talk people out of what they just agreed to. I know one CEO who can be very persuasive. He makes his case—people often agree with him—but then he keeps talking, and before long those he persuaded are rethinking their decision.
You want to make sure all voices are heard, and actively seek participation from those who are more inclined to listen than contribute. If anything is unclear, your job is to make sure it becomes clear by probing the other people in the room or on the phone.
With clients, there will be times when you detect a subtext to a comment or a reaction, but choose to deal with it privately, after the meeting. For example, if the subject of cost comes up in a large group meeting, it sometimes is better to take the conversation offline, where you and your client can speak privately.
It could be nothing, or it could be a sign of a bigger, deeper problem. The right course of action is to follow-up in private with your client. In-person meetings are easy to run compared with teleconferences, but teleconferences are an unfortunate reality, especially with out-of-town colleagues or clients. Voice inflections become muddy.
So you need to work extra hard to ensure all views are expressed and heard. You must pay extra attention to hear the subtext of any client commentary. Every meeting should have a well-defined ending, where you recap any decisions reached, next steps to be taken, and who owns them. This requires not only that you listen well, but also that you take careful notes. In short, meetings matter. We discuss, negotiate, agree. Or so I think. Colleagues are not immune from the disease either, and I admit I myself have suffered from it on occasion.
You finish a discussion, you think you have consensus, only to discover there is a disconnect somewhere. Never assume there is closure; secure closure. Immediately after the meeting concludes, follow up with an e-mail conference report.
Simply bullet the decisions reached and the next steps required. You should do this for all meetings, but it is crucial for client meetings, because it provides an audit trail.
Should a dispute arise later in the process, the conference reports will quickly confirm who agreed to what, and when. Have I been clear? Or do I need to go over this again? The deeper challenge is to have the judgment needed to do and say exactly the right thing in exactly the right way to exactly the right person at exactly the right time.
Some account people seem to have great instincts about this. Their good judgment comes in part from previous bad judgment. This is a book of rules, but an account executive works in a world of exceptions. No rule can accommodate every situation, and no list of rules is exhaustive. In the end, the only rule you can rely on is this: Judgment rules.
The character played by Dustin Hoffman is called Stanley Motss. Stanley is a movie producer. At one point in the movie he does a riff on how everyone knows what the directors and actors do, but no one understands what a producer does. A lesson to us all. Poor Stanley might just as well have been an agency account executive. As an account exec, your job is to give the credit—to your clients, to your colleagues—not to take it. Often, the only people who truly appreciate what you do are other account people.
Years ago, a creative team I was working with wanted to present some envelope-pushing work to our client. I knew my client tended to quickly kill new thinking if it made her even slightly nervous. We went without anyone else from the agency or her company. We had a great time talking about everything except work. All of the work is really smart, but some of the best stuff is pretty edgy. Try to keep an open mind. I was expecting a fight. I knew I had helped achieve the right outcome, and that was good enough for me.
The creative team could have the credit. They earned it. That company worked with multiple agencies; our shop was the only one not in New York. I learned early on that if we were going to hold our own against the competitors, I would have to spend more time in New York than Boston. I earned an astonishing number of frequent flyer miles shuttling between the two cities. You around that day? In between the meetings I scheduled I would walk the halls to say hello to my other contacts.
You need to visit your clients regularly, no matter if they are on the next street or in the next time zone. Spend time with clients when things are going well. Most clients have little patience for account people who only show up when something goes wrong. My colleague was a very senior guy, critical to building a relationship with top management.
During the years the agency worked with this client, my colleague was an all-too-infrequent presence at client headquarters. There were lots of reasons why we were dismissed. Perhaps if there had been one, the outcome would have been different.
It is almost impossible to spend too much time with clients. So, if you lack a specific reason to see your clients, create one. In truly extreme cases, an account person can shop the client to competing agencies. If the account person switches agencies, the client switches with them. Yes, one of your primary responsibilities is to forge a strong bond with your client. Yes, people work with people, not with organizations. But this does not give you license to ignore your obligations to the agency that employs you.
This is the primary reason agencies now make senior executives sign nonsolicit, noncompete agreements that are designed to prevent account people from taking clients with them when they switch agencies. Your job is to build a strong client relationship on behalf of your agency, not on behalf of yourself. You do not own the client relationship; you are merely the keeper of it. You have a fiduciary and an ethical responsibility to do everything in your power to ensure that the client feels loyal not just to you, but to other people in the agency, and to the agency as a whole.
If you have done your best to facilitate ties between your client and the agency, the client is much less likely to go with you if you change agencies. In the context of a long career, that is far more valuable than any short-term gain you might derive from an account you are able to transport to a new agency.
Think of all the client-agency marriages that dissolved, even though they were characterized by great work. Ikea and Deutsch. Staples and Cliff Freeman. Add your own examples.
The list can get very, very long. But you guys are just too hard to deal with; everything is a fight. We thought if we did great work, the relationship stuff would take care of itself. I mean relationship as in doing all of the things, and being all of the things, that build trust with the client. Asking the right questions. Anticipating and solving problems. Meeting commitments. Managing expectations. Eliminating unpleasant surprises. Taking ownership. Acting with integrity.
A client who trusts you will seek your counsel. A client who trusts you will forgive your honest mistakes, and will work with you to correct them. A client who trusts you will partner with you in taking the risks that lead to great work.
A relationship is like a brand: you have to invest in it, and understand that it gets built over time. Business is about relationships, and a great relationship allows great work to flourish. The reason I pay attention to Ben is I worry about the enemies of great advertising. The creation of advertising and everything that surrounds it—the plans, presentations, budgets, and schedules—is a collaborative process.
Effective collaboration is key to making great advertising. So why are so many agencies siloed? Why do departments within agencies—account management, creative, media—often act more like competitors than colleagues? Why is it that many agencies are characterized by turf battles, warring egos, and petty politics? I suppose you could excuse some of this because of the inherently nonlinear, dysfunctional nature of creat- ing advertising.
But much of it, I think, is the result of people forgetting who and what the enemies are. To get your colleagues to hang together, remind them that the enemy is the competition. The enemy is never having enough time to do the work. The enemy is whatever stands in the way of making great work. Remind your colleagues that you need one another in order to create the best possible advertising in the most efficient and cost-effective way.
Remind them you are smarter together than you are alone. I dreaded telephone calls from this client; I would flinch before picking up the phone. I remember one particularly difficult discussion about a schedule. I want to see copy two days from now, not two weeks from now. I was intimidated by this client; I had never worked with anyone like him before. I also knew that saying no would mean rage right there. After I did some begging and pleading, they agreed to have something to the client in four days.
They delivered in four days. But I had managed to broker a solution without the client asking my boss to fire me, and without my colleagues thinking I had sold them down the river. What I took away from this experience is to make no commitment without consultation. When a client makes a request, let alone a demand, your first, and understandable, instinct is to say yes.
The more senior the client, the more urgent the need, the more strident the tone, the more you want to comply on the spot. Even with seemingly simple requests, a unilateral yes is not the right answer. It does a terrible disservice to everyone—your colleagues, yourself, and most of all, your client. A commitment without consultation ignores the collaborative nature of making advertising.
It pays no respect to the people you work with. Besides, you might not be able to deliver on your commitment. You may be a big fish in the agency food chain. You may have the power to say yes, but you and your client will soon feel the consequences of the unchecked exercise of that power.
It will undermine teamwork, erode morale, and destroy your credibility. The fact is, the more senior you are, the easier it is to explain to your client that you want to check with others before saying yes.
See Chapter The client needs an answer, quickly, that all of you can live with. No is a barrier builder. So, even when a client makes a seemingly unreasonable request—about a deadline, a budget, a change in the work—no is not the answer.
No helps no one—not the agency, not your colleagues, and of course, not the client. What is the right answer? First remember to make no commitment without consultation. I also lived to work another day. You should. Before you do, remember that your job is to be an expert source on the business—a source not just of opinions, but of facts. So get the facts on the table first. What you know about the competitors, the customers, or anything else that has a bearing on the discussion.
Everyone else has opinions, but as the facts you present demonstrate, yours is an informed one. Let us solve the problem. We want to help you get to the right place. These days, lots of clients hire agencies to execute, not to think. Clients are not entirely to blame; agencies have contributed to the erosion of their authority with clients.
Agencies have been better at making television ads than at solving marketing problems. If they make a decision, if they give you direction, respect what they say. Make sure you give the client what they wanted first, then show the client what you think they need.
Presented with a choice, many clients will make a wise decision. Especially if you truly respected their wishes and did the best possible job with the direction they gave you. Still, even the smartest clients will occasionally make choices that are not the smartest. Perhaps the next time the client will be more willing to ask the question, rather than provide the answer, and to rely on you and your agency for the solution.
The agency had agreed to create a print ad on a ridiculously tight schedule, with the understanding that we would do our creative presentation on a particular day. Normally we could. Normally we would be delighted to have an extra day to develop creative concepts.
It was broken down into hours, not days. A day lost was a big deal. It threatened to blow our closing dates. We could have insisted on holding to the original schedule. We could have won the argument, but we would have lost in the end. The client would remember. The message: Working with clients and colleagues is a never-ending process of negotiation and compromise.
Always think endgame. Remember that an argument won can become an account lost. I inherited this problem knowing that a cardinal rule of account service is to never surprise your clients about a cost overrun or a scheduling delay.
But I had the advantage of being the new guy on the account. I investigated the cost overrun. It appeared that roughly half of it was due to agency inefficiency, the other half due to excessive client changes and unbudgeted additional assignments. When the client made revisions to the work and added assignments, the agency of course should have adjusted its budgets and secured client approval for the higher fees. The agency, fearing for the future of the account, failed to do this.
Over time, as the problem grew larger and larger, it became increasingly difficult to address. Rather than bringing up the issue with the client, the account team ignored it.
Then I went to see the client. Instead of being angry, which she had every right to be, and instead of firing the agency on the spot, which she easily could have done, the client accepted my apology and my solution.
We went on to have a very productive relationship for years thereafter. This was a problem not of my own making, but even so, I vowed I would never be placed in that position again. I made a commitment to myself that I would always advise clients up front about the cost and timing implications of their decisions, so they could make fully informed decisions. And you avoid any after-the-fact surprises that result in painful consequences, ranging from a loss of money, to a loss of trust, to a lost account.
Given the number of hands that touch even the simplest assignment, it is astonishing how much work gets produced error-free. Still, things get derailed; on occasion, there is a fullscale train wreck. A deadline gets blown. There is a mistake in a print ad. The wrong commercial gets shipped. When something goes awry, get to your client with a full explanation of what happened and why. Whenever possible, be prepared to outline one or more ways to address the problem. Move quickly; you want to deliver the bad news to the clients.
If the agency is on the hook for serious money, get senior management involved immediately and work out what you are prepared to do financially before you call the client. Volunteer the financial solution before the client asks for it. Sure you might get away with it this time. Years ago an agency creative director and I had lunch with a trade publication reporter. The reporter asked about the work we were doing for one client. The creative director explained that we were working on a new product launch for that client.
There was just one small problem: The client had not announced the new product yet. The client was furious when he called me. He demanded to know how the agency could be so stupid. I explained it was my fault. You provide air cover for everyone in the agency. If something goes wrong in media, in creative, in production, then it happened on your watch.
You are responsible. Take ownership, and be prepared to take the heat from the client. When I arrived, I found everyone seated. A place was left for me at the end of the table. Nothing wrong with that, except. Except that I was seated next to agency colleagues, not clients. The clients were at the other end of a long table. I had to shout my greeting to them.
This was not what I expected. What I expected was a well-orchestrated seating arrangement. Because there were no place cards to direct people, seating became an ad hoc affair, clients sitting with clients, and agency people also bunched together.
The best way to ensure this is to intersperse client and agency people, with attention paid to specific pairings. I made the best of a less-than-optimal situation. From my end-of-the-table perch, I offered a toast to recognize a successful year of partnership, and to wish for many more holiday celebrations together.
I conducted an impromptu wine tasting. When a moment presented itself to switch seats, I did, so I could talk with a couple of clients. The evening was lovely; we all enjoyed ourselves. But for me it was a missed opportunity to get to know the clients better.
Make sure you plan every detail, to ensure you get the maximum benefit from the event. If you have clients coming from out of town, meet their plane personally. If you work in a city where that is impractical—New York, Chicago, or LA—have a reliable car service, one you know well, meet and bring them to your office.
Then call the concierge to arrange to have an amenity placed in their room prior to arrival. It could be flowers, a bottle of mineral water, a bowl of fresh fruit, or all of these.
Include a welcome note from the agency. The client will appreciate and be impressed by this small gesture. Also arrange to have the car service take the client back to the airport at the conclusion of the visit. Ask your client to have dinner with you, either the night before the meeting or the evening after its conclusion.
Assuming the client says yes, choose a restaurant that you know well, that will make your client feel both comfortable and special, and is quiet enough to conduct a conversation. A casual and unintimidating place, or a temple of fine dining? A classic experience, or the latest hot spot? Cast the dinner with care. Whom do the clients know and like? Whom do they need to meet, or get to know better? Who is good with clients at these events? Generally follow the rule of having no more than two agency people for every client person in attendance.
You want the agency people to focus on the client, not on each other. The maximum ratio ensures that; is even better. Besides, more than two agency people per client makes the dinner look like a boondoggle. A small group is better for business discussion; a large group is better for pure fun. Fun is good; fun is a legitimate client-dinner objective. In advance of the dinner, arrange a special menu and have printed copies at each place at the table.
This simplifies the evening, makes it feel more special, plus removes prices from view, which is a nice touch. Talk to the restaurant manager about where the group will be placed in the dining room. It might be preferable to select a restaurant that has a private dining room. On the other hand, the buzz of the main dining room might be more enjoyable. Run any dinner, large or small, as you would a meeting. Arrive ahead of your clients or with them.
Start on time. Act as the host; oversee the conversation, but do not dominate it. Keep every client engaged. Keep it lively: Conduct a wine or beer tasting, share some appetizers, have the chef talk about the menu, make some toasts. Do whatever is appropriate for the occasion. Remember that the dinner, while social, is still a business event. Watch what you drink. Keep an eye and ear open for cues from your clients, spoken or nonverbal. End the evening early if you are meeting the following morning or if the clients are leaving early—unless, of course, the clients want to continue the party.
If the clients are older, maybe a jazz club. Arrange for a car service; escort them if necessary. Call each client the following day. Tell them how much you appreciate their spending the evening with the agency. Let them know you and your colleagues had a good time. Reinforce the message in a handwritten note to each client. Then remember to thank your colleagues for joining you. For them, no matter how enjoyable the evening was, it still was an evening away from their family and friends.
It still was business. I make a point to read the sports reporting on major golf tournaments. That means being a voracious consumer of popular culture, and at least on passing terms with higher-brow pursuits.
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