Common mistakes agencies make when pursuing new business

Most agencies want to do whatever it takes to win new accounts. There is a natural urge to please prospects and demonstrate your expertise to get that contract signed.

There are some common mistakes that agencies make, especially in the excitement that comes around a pitch or proposal.

Chip and Gini explore some of the mistakes they have seen made, as well as how they suggest avoiding them.

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Chip Griffin 

Hello, and welcome to another episode of the Agency Leadership Podcast. I’m Chip Griffin,

Gini Dietrich 

and I’m Gini Dietrich,

Chip Griffin 

and we’re going to talk about all the things that you’re doing wrong when you try to get new business because we like scolding people. And that’s what we’ll do in this episode. Right after this. And if truth be told, I’m not the scold, you are, this is your topic. You have a bee in your bonnet today, and we’re gonna let you excise it.

Gini Dietrich 

Okay, listen. We’ve talked about before that I am leading a marketing team for a client, and new you’re currently going through an agency search. It is so bad, so bad. Like, in every meeting we’ve had so far, I take notes on things you should not do in a new business pitch. Everything from not following the requests for proposal. We had simple questions in there, we wanted everyone to answer during a presentation, not presenting anything, not being on camera for while the prospect is on camera. They all sorts of things. It’s astoundingly Bad, bad, bad, bad, bad, bad, bad.

Chip Griffin 

And why do you think that is?

Gini Dietrich 

I honestly don’t know. Because I think I think there’s a few things, I think that there are lots of quote unquote experts out there who have said, You should do things this way. And that’s what they do. And, quite honestly, there are things that I have seen some of these agencies do that we’ve done, because we thought that that was the right thing to do. But from a client’s perspective, it’s really bad. Like, tell me who’s gonna be on the account team, tell me who I’m going to be working with. And in the past, I would protect my team, from new business meetings, because it takes time, and it’s not billable, and yada, yada, yada. But as a client, I would never hire an agency without meeting the team that I was I’d be working with. So is there’s just like, things, I think that we’re told, as we build our agencies to do that, from a client’s perspective is not good, it’s not good. And I get that I might be a little. A little, my expectations may be a little higher than most, because this is what I do for a living, but it’s bad, bad.

Chip Griffin 

Well, I mean, some of these things, I would argue, aren’t even good from an agency perspective. I mean, and in the past, I’ve been of the same mindset that you don’t, you know, you don’t waste your team’s time, if you will, with new business development meetings and that kind of stuff. But that’s, it’s absolutely the wrong way to look at it, because it has a huge impact on retention and the success of a project because, frankly, if your team doesn’t gel with their team, you want to know that before you’ve actually agreed to do something, right.