The New Normal: what brands are currently thinking and the impact on client agency relationships | webinar
Webinar | 2pm BST on Thursday, 4th June 2020 As consumer spending plummets, client budgets fall and we enter the most difficult recession in living memory, it’s no surprise that the client-agency dynamic will change. Increasing consumer spending and confidence will be crucial in our…
Managing your relationship risk
In these unique times it’s difficult to be certain about so many things that we have previously taken for granted. It reminds me a little of the Donald Rumsfeld quote about there being ‘known knowns’, ‘known unknowns and ‘unknown unknowns’. So navigating your way through…
Perception vs reality; do you know or do you think you know?
In 20 years of assessing buyer-supplier business relationships, one of the constant themes we have seen is how often relationships suffer from the perception-reality gap. The implications of this can be commercially catastrophic if you are a service provider who thinks a client…
Ten guaranteed ways to lose a pitch
“Winning a pitch takes a lot of time and effort. Unfortunately, some suppliers seem to go out of their way to lose by lack of preparation and research.” Winning new business takes a lot of time and effort. There are a number of ways…
Is your senior team ever enough to win a pitch by themselves?
Over the last few weeks I’ve been working on a number of reviews of pitches and tenders that have been lost by agencies and professional services firms. There has been a common theme that has contributed to all of these, and that has been the…
It’s what you don’t know that gets you fired
In this article, I want to introduce you to a new concept called Relationship Risk Management. The notion of Risk Management is a well-established business idea. Managing stakeholder relationship is not traditionally associated with risk management but in our view, it could be the biggest…
Building Strong Client-Agency Relationships
Judy Neer, CEO of the Pile Group, recently asked in AdAge why an industry founded on the principles of good communications is so reluctant to engage in regular professional assessment of its service relationships. Given her own search firm has the most to gain…
Supplier Relationship Management – A series of short discussions
Managing supplier relationships to manage risk How seriously does your organisation take supplier relationship management (SRM)? In some organisations, the management of supplier relationships is delegated to those who may be at the more junior end of the experience continuum and adopt a heavily…
When is a supplier a partner?
Many service providers like to think of themselves as partners with their clients but all too often they’re self-deluded. In the client’s eyes, they are still suppliers. Why? Because the right to call yourself a partner is not something that comes the moment you win…
Scorecards during tenders – how do you make them work?
One of the most popular discussions in this group is the use of scorecards in terms of managing supplier relationships. What we find is that they can raise as many questions as they answer. For me, one of the big ones (which emerged recently when…