HIGH WIDE & HANDSOME on AdAge.com

In his most recent arti­cle for Adver­tis­ing Age, our chief cre­ative offi­cer encour­ages ad agen­cies to avoid the “bait-and-switch” when pur­su­ing new business. 

Because new busi­ness is often con­sid­ered the lifeblood of agen­cies, most shops are addicted to pitch­ing. Like most addic­tions, it’s an exhaust­ing habit that depletes vital resources like time, money, energy and opti­mism. But for all the injuries endured, fre­quent pitch­ing should, at min­i­mum, pro­vide par­tic­i­pants with invalu­able insight into the agency review process.

I’ve had the pleasure—and displeasure—of being actively involved in nearly a hun­dred pitches. Some were man­aged by search con­sul­tants; oth­ers weren’t. Some were pro­tracted engage­ments; oth­ers were abbre­vi­ated. Some were focused on cre­ative; oth­ers empha­sized media. But nearly all shared one thing in com­mon: at some point in the process, the prospec­tive client asked, “Are you just the pitch team, or will you actu­ally be work­ing on our business?”

One client was so con­cerned about the “bait-and-switch” that after our final pre­sen­ta­tion, the CMO used most of the Q&A ses­sion to dis­cuss the exact per­cent­age of time each of us would com­mit to his busi­ness. Later, when we were requested to return for an addi­tional meet­ing, we were told our pres­i­dent wasn’t wel­come unless he intended to spend at least 50-percent of each week work­ing on the account.

So what’s an agency to do? After all, isn’t new busi­ness too impor­tant to entrust to any­one but the most pol­ished pre­sen­ters? And aren’t the senior man­agers who pos­sess the show­man­ship skills too valu­able to focus on just one or two accounts? Here are some options:

Stick with the bait-and-switch. Of course, now that the jig is up, it’ll take a lot more con­vinc­ing; but if a client wants 50-percent of senior management’s time, promise them 50-percent of senior management’s time. Then, once the con­tract is signed, break out the smoke and mir­rors: an email here, a con­fer­ence call there, even the occa­sional in-person appear­ance to make it seem like senior man­age­ment is inti­mately involved (when, in fact, they’re out court­ing new clients to whom they’re promis­ing their undi­vided attention).

Obvi­ously over­promis­ing and under-delivering is not the best approach, but it’s likely the course many agen­cies will con­tinue to choose. Why? Because it’s a proven way to win busi­ness. The prob­lem, how­ever, is that it’s also a proven way to lose business.

So let’s con­sider a more rad­i­cal tack: honesty.

If you choose to cast your pitch team with senior man­agers who won’t be involved in the day-to-day oper­a­tions of the account, just say so. Don’t apol­o­gize for it; explain it. Tell the client that the senior man­agers set the tone for the agency: they assem­ble and direct the team assigned to each account; they estab­lish the strat­egy and expec­ta­tions and hold every employee account­able. And while they won’t be on every phone call or in every meet­ing, they will ensure the account is well man­aged. It’s a com­mon oper­a­tional struc­ture that most clients will relate to because it mir­rors the way many of their com­pa­nies are organized.

Alter­na­tively, and in my opin­ion, more effec­tively, you can com­prise your pitch team of the peo­ple who will actu­ally work on the busi­ness. If they aren’t the most expe­ri­enced pre­sen­ters in the agency, explain to the client why they’re in the room. Start the meet­ing by say­ing “We’re not here to show you how well we can per­form in a two-hour pre­sen­ta­tion, we’re here to show you how thought­fully we will han­dle your busi­ness for the next ten years. These are the tal­ented, hard-working peo­ple who will be ded­i­cated to your account every day. They aren’t a SWAT team, or an ‘A’ Team, or a pitch team…they’re your team.” This approach will not only dif­fer­en­ti­ate you from your com­pe­ti­tion, it will give your pre­sen­ta­tion authen­tic­ity while engag­ing more peo­ple at your agency in the busi­ness devel­op­ment process.

Yet another option is to struc­ture your agency in such a way that the senior staff mem­bers who pitch the busi­ness have the time to work on it if you win. I know of at least one size­able agency that has suc­cess­fully imple­mented this approach; I assume their fees are a bit higher to com­pen­sate for more senior staff, but it hasn’t stopped them from win­ning some highly cov­eted accounts in the past six months. Our agency’s solu­tion has been a bit sim­pler: we only take on the num­ber of clients our senior peo­ple can per­son­ally man­age. So far, it’s proven more effec­tive (and more hon­or­able) than bait­ing and switching—and it’s been an instant rem­edy for pitch addiction.