Only fools & horses

The business of pitching for new business in these straightened times seems to involve jumping through ever more convoluted hoops as clients become more nervous about parting with their cash. This is naturally understandable, but increasingly we feel that it goes beyond the reasonable.

You wouldn’t say to a lawyer, can you just put a case together for me, and then we’ll discuss whether we want to progress with it. Nor would you go into an estate agent and say, can you show me the best houses and no, I’m not going to tell you how much I have to spend. But sometimes prospective customers find it perfectly reasonable to ask a marketing agency to do the equivalent of these things – i.e. put together a full creative marketing proposal with no set budget.

We’re always delighted to receive new business queries, and like to do our utmost to ensure that clients feel confident that we understand their challenges and can deliver what they need. But there’s a limit to the amount of ‘free’ time and ideas which is appropriate before we’re actually engaged in a concrete project. And in the end it often just wastes the client’s time too. So often clients just haven’t done the groundwork and set real objectives before they pick up the phone and start asking for speculative ideas. What’s the point of wading through proposal after proposal if you’ve not got a fixed budget, or are even sure if you need to go ahead?

In these cases often the client would be better off using a day’s consultancy to really thrash out the challenges. That way, nobody loses. The client gets a feel for working with the agency, their approach and an understanding of how they will manage the account. And the agency is being paid to invest proper time in the business and come up with the most effective solution. After all, only fools and horses work for free; and who wants an agency staffed by fools and horses?

Picture by Lewis Collard, from Wikimedia Commons