Business development and competitive pitching is one of the constants of life in a digital agency. It’s a process that pulls together lots of the good bits of running a business – relationship building, creative thinking, structured planning and a big dollop of negotiation. Add in a few cold ones in the local pub if the business comes in and what’s not to like?! So a recent pitch we were involved in made me reflect on the process when you’re in a young business. There’s no snuggling under the comfort blanket of a long client list or batch of case studies – good work and client endorsements take time to build. The process is therefore stripped down to the merits of your proposition and your relationship with the client sitting in front of you. That’s a great motivator to come up with your very best work to ensure your solution matches and exceeds the brief.
It was with a raised eyebrow, therefore, that I received a request from the ‘other agency’ in a recent pitch where we’d been selected for the final stage. The suggestion was that our final proposals were exchanged and critiqued by each other as a way of helping the client make the final decision. Now I’ll admit that my initial (private) response may have been less than charitable. It was an interesting brief, a very good product and a client contact who ‘gets’ digital – in short everyone our side was clambering to get involved. A proposal had been submitted that we knew had gone the extra mile in detailing our strategy for optimising the client website. It was our best work and contained a significant amount of actionable thinking. On that basis why share it with a competitor?
But!
Such was the boldness (and in my experience the originality) of the request that an interesting discussion on transparency ensued. If we were confident our solution was the right one why not open it out and at the same time get a look at the thinking of another agency. After all, in the era of open source and the socialisation of media, transparency is only growing … and transparency is indeed one of the anchor terms on which our business is run.
But!!
Knowledge sharing, transparency and the open source concept works well when there’s a win-win scenario on offer. However a two-way pitch for an exciting SEO brief is definitively a win-lose scenario. On that basis we expressed a preference to keep our proposal for client eyes only. Luckily he agreed and we subsequently won the business (cue a visit to The White Hart). The client and Bluepost are now in that win-win scenario when knowledge transfer and transparency in our SEO techniques is part of the solution we have proposed.
I think that’s a sensible position to take if your business runs on the agency model and I’m glad our competitor made the bold suggestion in the first place. Maybe it was a sales gambit, maybe they believe in total transparency in the digital space. Either way, it sparked some good, healthy debate our end.