
By Mike Metz on in Agency Life & Leadership
Things going well? Bring in a partner.
It can come out of nowhere—you think everything is going great with a long-term client and suddenly you’re invited to re-pitch.
It shouldn’t be a surprise. Clients don’t want partners to get complacent. New faces join the team and want to make their own marks. Even your most switched-on team members get caught in thought traps. Knowing the client well—what they like and don’t like, what their legal team will sign off on, what’s worked in the past—can be a double-edged sword. The key is to shake things up before the client feels like they have to. And that’s where connecting with a partner comes in.
The client wins in a big way, as they get the benefit of your experience as well as new perspectives. It’s all upside for them, as they don’t have to invest the time and money to search for and onboard your replacement.
Bringing outside eyes to a marketing challenge (or any opportunity), is one of the reasons companies hire agencies in the first place. After a while on an account, that objectivity can get blurred. So asking in a partner to offer strategic, creative or technical ideas, or skill sets you don’t have in-house, can infuse energy with very little risk. You’re not hiring a whole team or throwing out your own talent.
The trick is to actually hear what the partner has to say, without discounting ideas because you may have tried them before or you think the client won’t bite. This is hard. No doubt about it. But clients send out an RFP when they want to be excited. A pitch is one of the few times they see blue-sky thinking that makes them uncomfortable but inspired. A partner can help you recreate that feeling today, before the stakes are higher. What’s more, we’ve found that once we dig a little deeper, ideas that sound similar to something we’ve done before may not be—with different people, at a different time, and with nuances that make them unique and viable.
The client wins in a big way, as they get the benefit of your experience as well as new perspectives. It’s all upside for them, as they don’t have to invest the time and money to search for and onboard your replacement. They aren’t pressured by the next provider to throw out everything that’s come before. It’s also a great opportunity to promote the steps you’re taking to keep things fresh.
People have short attention spans. We like new things. And when asked to re-pitch, incumbent agencies tend to have very low success rates. The best time to inject original thinking is before it ever gets to an RFP.
At FATFREE, we’ve used partners this way and we’ve been the partner who has been brought in. We’re happy to expand that circle. If you’d like to explore teaming up, pop us a quick note any time.