Webinars on Demand
Why Agencies Win Pitches
Why Agencies Win Pitches: How to Increase Your Agency’s Win Rate New business is the engine that drives agency growth and frequently the difference between winning a pitch and coming in “second” is very small. Having a few new tools in your new business toolbox can be just what is needed to raise your agency’s win rate. Join Mark Schnurman,... read more »
Managing Presentation Nerves
Managing Nerves during Presentations, Pitches & Q&A Nervous reactions can sabotage even the most highly skilled presenter. The result can be career limiting, since clients often get the impression that the presenter is either not smart, is under prepared or lacks knowledge - which couldn’t be further from the truth. Since nervous reactions vary by individual, this webinar covers tactics... read more »
The Secrets to Keeping Clients Longer
Someone once said, “The only sure thing in our business is that you’ll lose business.” The cruel fact is that eventually all your current clients will go away. Client departures often disrupt an agency and frequently force it to lay off talented staff. Sometimes the event even forces the agency to go out of business. All these are great reasons... read more »
Defending Creative Work Without Getting Defensive
Getting a client excited about an idea is an important step in getting a concept accepted. But nearly all creative work will elicit some observations or "suggestions" from a client or prospect. How a creative or account person handles that suggestion goes a long way toward whether that concept will be accepted or not by the client. Frequently, agency staff... read more »
Selling Creative Work to Clients and Prospects
The challenge with getting clients to accept great creative work is that the client often cannot see what makes the creative great. The creative staff and the client simply think differently and overcoming that challenge can be the key to getting work approved. Join Mark Schnurman as he provides you with the tools and language necessary to generate enthusiasm for... read more »
The Agency Website: What Prospects Look For
The agency website is a prospect’s first impression of your agency. 100% of prospects check out the web sites of the agencies they’re considering before they contact the agency. If your site isn't presenting the agency effectively, you can expect the agency to be crossed off the consideration list. The problem with most agency sites is they are designed to... read more »
How To Evaluate Creative Ideas and Make Them Better with Tracy Wong
We’re in a business driven by creative ideas. And we succeed and fail based on the quality of those ideas. But has anyone ever told you how to evaluate an idea? Or explained to you what makes a good one, what makes a bad one, and how to tell the difference? Better yet, how to turn a bad one into... read more »
Negotiating Skills for Account Staff
“The minute you get an account is the minute you start losing it.” Advertising Hall of Famer Carl Ally. It is a function of agency account service to maintain the agency-client relationship by constantly negotiating with clients. One of the best examples of a negotiation is marriage. Getting the agreement is the easy part; keeping it is the hard part. ... read more »
Crafting Killer Presentations: Bringing Agency Ideas To Life
In the agency world, there’s nothing worse than being trapped for hours in a conference room squinting at a wall or staring blankly at a handout crammed full of pie charts, spreadsheets and hundreds of words in 8-point font. There’s also nothing less motivating when the message gets lost in the mess. Smart, passionate people tend to expound on their... read more »
Building the Future of Agency Management
The global talent war is on. To successfully combat it requires a steady stream of emerging leaders at every level. Cultivating the next generation of agency management is one of the most critical tasks at hand. It takes deliberate effort and, done right, can help build a powerful pipeline of qualified internal leaders. Done wrong or not at all, can... read more »
A Successful Succession: An Agency Guide For Getting Ready
Have you discussed with your senior managers options and requirements for transitioning your “small to midsize” independent agency to new leadership and ownership? Do you want to learn more about the current Merger and Acquisition landscape, employee purchase plans and how to determine the value of your agency? Per Harry Paster, former EVP, 4As, “Looking to sell the agency? You... read more »
With Clients, Everything is a Negotiation
Negotiation is a part of any agency staff’s daily experience. Whether we are talking about timelines, logo size, strategic ideas, internal resources, media spends…everything is negotiable. The challenge is that these negotiations, whether with colleagues or clients, happen so frequently that often our first impulse is to resolve them quickly. However these daily negotiations can set the tone for... read more »
17 New Business Mistakes Agencies Make; And How To Avoid Them
Nearly all agencies approach new business development the same way . . . the way they’ve always done it. As a result they have fallen victim to mistaken beliefs like: We don’t need a prospect list; we get referrals Prospecting is just about “cold calling” so why bother You have to sell hard if you get in front of a... read more »
Applying Agile Practices to Accelerate Agency Growth: How to create team workflow and structure to reduce costs, increase capacity and elevate quality
Many advertising and marketing agencies are struggling to deliver increasing amounts of digital and project-based work with their current operating model. Their margins, quality of work, team morale, and client experience suffer as a result. If this touches a nerve, it’s time to rethink how your agency works. Join Brian Kessman, agency growth and operations consultant, as he provides practical... read more »
Turning Customer and Consumer Insights into New Business Gold
67% of CEOs and Client Decision Makers say that unearthing and leveraging genuine consumer and customer insights is one of top three challenges in their job. Sadly, those same Decision Makers also say that while they want and expect their agencies to provide these insights – they usually cannot. This gap is a major opportunity for agencies both in existing... read more »
Developing & Training The Next Generation of Account Management
Take a couple of minutes and think about the current state of your agency’s account management department. How are they being mentored and coached? How are you instilling in them the courage and resourcefulness to adapt to changing conditions and capitalize on emerging industry trends? What are you doing to develop their leadership IQ? What are you doing to build... read more »
Why You Lost the Pitch – What Prospects are Not Telling You About Your Presentation
You did your homework, created a deck, rehearsed, pitched only to get the dreaded “You came in second place” phone call. As we all know, by some mystery of math…everyone came in second place. When it comes down to it, the prospect has two goals for that phone call. First, get you off the phone as quickly as possible. Second,... read more »
How to Convert More New Business with Better Storytelling
When it comes to an important new business pitch or meeting, agencies tend to pull out all the stops; agencies do research, bring target audience insights to life and develop and deliver killer creative campaigns and programs in the hopes of winning the business. What we tend to forget is how to bundle it all up, into one compelling and engaging... read more »
The Art of Prospecting for New Business
The Most Common Agency New Business Strategy: “Lying in the middle of the road and waiting to get run over.” Why prospecting is an insurance policy for a healthy agency. Almost all agencies occasionally send out examples of their work or promotional emails explaining how amazing they are to a list of 30-40 prospects. But when no one responds to... read more »
Getting to Great: Leading vs. Managing
Managing is all about getting things done; leading is making sure agency teams are getting the right things done. Exceptional agency leaders don’t just deliver great work. They rally their teams to develop new opportunities and improve the process. Vision plays a part, but more so, the ability to translate high level thinking into simple actions…focusing on critical issues, identifying... read more »
The Art of Creative Testing: Keeping an Open Mind
Join Robin Hafitz, CEO, Open Mind Strategy LLC, and Allison O’Keefe Wright, EVP, Managing Director, Research and Strategy, Open Mind Strategy LLC, who will provide key strategies for executing actionable and effective Creative Testing. This webinar will offer best practices (for when you are conducting testing of your own work) as well as key strategies for understanding and contextualizing testing... read more »
The Account Management and Creative Relationship: How to establish a strong partnership
The relationship between account managers and creatives can be a wonderful partnership that results in excellent work and business building ideas. But…more often than not, this relationship has challenges that lead to frustrated employees and a lack of teamwork between these two disciplines. By understanding what the creative team needs from their account counterparts and vice versa, each employee can... read more »
Negotiating Budgets, Deadlines, Scopes and Other Tough Topics with Clients
In today’s fast-paced, project-based world when there’s no time for missteps or miscommunication with clients, account managers and team leads must know how to navigate potentially difficult conversations when discussing budgets, fees, deadlines, project deliverables, success metrics, etc. These skills become particularly important when your firm is one of several agency partners working together on behalf of a common client... read more »
It’s Time to Give Your Approach to RFPs a Makeover! The systematic way to improve your agency’s answers and increase your win rate
You check your email and there it is. The promise of a great new client. A chance to do great work and increase your agency’s revenue. But first, you have to submit a successful RFP. If you are the CEO or a new business director of an agency, you know that weird mixture of feelings you get, when you see... read more »
Content Marketing: How To Incorporate It Into Client Strategies
Agencies often focus on the paid advertising channels and ignore the powerful impact strategic use of content marketing can have for their clients – and their own bottom lines. Content marketing can become an excellent source of new customers and a way to keep a community of customers engaged and increase their long term value. As an agency offering, clients... read more »
Managing to Lead: How Agency Managers Become Great Leaders
You are a machine when it comes to getting things done. Your work is as good as it gets and nothing waits on you. That’s why you keep getting promoted. Now comes the hard part…getting other people to perform as well as you. The skills required to be a strong agency manager are growing increasingly complex, especially dotted line connections... read more »
Improve Your Agency Culture. Improve Your ROI. Believe It
Your agency’s culture may be one of the most misunderstood and underutilized tools for greater productivity and higher profits. This webinar examines what a culture is and isn’t. It demonstrates how a carefully installed culture can actually increase productivity and profits. Everyone thinks their agency has a culture but few can articulate it, understand how it comes to be and... read more »
Innovation: Recasting your Agency’s Future
Who doesn’t love that Eureka moment when a flash of insight inspires us to shift our creative development process? Who equally hates the heartache of losing accounts because we don’t have the optimum account management process? And who is tired of managing the challenges of decreasing recurring revenue with the increasing price of talent? Inspired by Disruption, the proprietary methodology... read more »
How to Raise Your Agency’s Visibility Through Agency PR: Creating And Navigating An Effective Agency PR Strategy
As the media landscape has changed, so have the opportunities to earn press coverage for an advertising agency, no matter what its size. Investing in and devoting time to Agency PR is important for reaching clients, getting into pitches, and recruiting and retaining employees, yet it’s hard to allocate the time and resources to make a consistent effort and see... read more »
Marketing in the Age of Artificial Intelligence
Penetration of smart speakers and chat interfaces is growing at a rate that rivals the growth of the iPhone User behavior towards voice search and engagement with bots is on a trajectory to radically change the way we discover content and services Agencies and marketers are as unprepared for this paradigm shift as they were for the dot com explosion... read more »
Employee Onboarding: Design and personalize an onboarding process that helps new employees succeed
22% of staff turnover occurs in the first 45 days of new employment. As HR professionals and managers, it is important to set new employees up for success. By giving new employees an engaging, thorough and consistent on-boarding experience, they will become immersed in the company culture and loyal from the start Agencies spend an inordinate amount of time interviewing... read more »
7 Keys to Managing Other People
Many strong and talented individual performers find it difficult to make the transition from relying on themselves to getting work done through other people. Managing other people can be a tough challenge, especially when the styles and work patterns of different generations clash. In this webinar, supervisors will learn techniques in seven key areas for improving both their one-to-one relationships... read more »
Confessions of a Hypercritical Client: What Your Clients Don’t Say, But Should
Clients can be frustrating with unreal expectations, last minute rushes, endless direction changes and redo’s. But too often, they feel pushback and wonder if their agency partner really gets it. Agency says “We’ll think about it,” clients hear “Not doing it.” Agency says “We’re working on it,” clients hear “Not going to be done on time.” Most clients would love... read more »
Turning Data Into Brand Stories
These days we have more data than ever, but to make that data worth anything, you have to know how to discern the signal from the noise. Most important to remember, it's not how much you know, but what you do with it. In short, it's never been more critical to hone your skills for turning data into stories. Join... read more »
Engaging Procurement and Revamping the Agency-Client Compensation Dialogue
The significant involvement of the procurement function in shaping the business relationship between clients and their marketing service providers is a relatively recent phenomenon, emerging as a common factor in marketing service negotiations in just the last twenty years. Today’s agencies typically face imposing challenges and questions in understanding the role of procurement in the agency-client relationship: What is the... read more »
Writing an Annual Plan for New Business: Why It’s Important, Where to Start and What to Include
"You can't manage what you can't measure.”--Peter Drucker The new business function at many ad agencies is more about blocking and tackling than thoughtful planning. But by taking the time to create a plan that sets expectations for your new business team (as well as the agency as a whole), you’ll shift from reactive, scattershot pitching to more thoughtful, proactive growth. If... read more »
Using Metrics to Win - and Keep – Clients: Applying Metrics to Your Advantage
Digital Marketing has added new layers of complexity, an explosion of data, AND new ways to track and measure success to the marketing strategies of every agency’s clients. Yet most agencies are afraid to track and review key metrics with clients despite clear demand in the marketplace for ROI driven solutions. Join Jeremy Kagan as he reviews the kinds... read more »
How Are Your Agency’s Economic Vital Signs? Keys to Developing an Agency Financial Health Self-Assessment
Responsible agency leaders are typically very conscious of the quality of their new business development efforts, client service skills, and the comparative strengths and weaknesses of their work product. Those are appropriate focal points of agency management teams and are certainly critical to continued growth and success. Often times, however, much less time and attention is paid to assessing the... read more »
Digital Project Management: Strategically Managing Expectations and Outcomes
Managing all the moving parts of digital projects - that’s the role of a Digital Project Manager. With digital projects, however, new techniques are needed to succeed and thrive. Changing priorities? New deadlines or resource changes? Scope Creep? Just keeping current on current technologies and what can be done is tough enough. Although adapting to change is part of the job description,... read more »
The Secrets to Creating a Motivational Work Environment: How to Keep Agency Employees Engaged
One of the hardest parts of being a manager is to keep employees engaged and motivated. Different things motivate every individual. How can you discover what motivates your employees and keep employees happy and satisfied in their jobs for the long run? Join Denise Rosenblum, President, Dynamic Development, as she explores the fundamentals behind motivation and how to build and... read more »
Negotiating Agency-Client Contracts from a Position of Strength
You’ve just gotten the call from the client and it’s good news. After weeks (or months) of hard work, long hours, and sacrifice, your agency has won the business. It’s time to celebrate – almost. No deal is done until the contract is signed. Unfortunately, a lot of agencies rush through this process in the excitement of welcoming a new... read more »
Social and Content, Done Right: The Legal Tools Every Agency Needs
The legal heat has been turned up significantly on marketers using social media and content marketing and, more recently, native advertising tactics. New FTC guidelines and increased regulatory enforcement have raised stakes for both brands AND agencies. And in addition to the regulatory hurdles, marketers need to be knowledgeable about legal issues including copyright infringement, proper trademark use, and fair... read more »
Get Past the RFP! Success Strategies for Winning Proposals
Responding to RFPs is time consuming and risky. Skilled new business practitioners can sometimes circumvent them altogether, but for most ad agencies they are an unavoidable first step in winning a new account or assignment. This webinar will show you not only how to mitigate the risk and manage the process, but how to treat an RFP response like the... read more »
How To Survive As A Working Mother in Advertising
Being a working mother is hard. Being a working mother in advertising is ridiculously hard. Demanding client schedules and shoots across the country can often feel at odds with an end-goal of work-life balance. Based on research with over 5,000 working mothers across the country, this webinar will share what no one else is willing to say about the struggles... read more »
40 Lessons Learned In 40 Years
40 Lessons Learned In 40 Years: Best Practices for Navigating Your Career and Running a Successful Agency Ad agency veteran Pat Doody has been in advertising for what he describes as ”forty breathless years”. He has worked for agencies in New York, Los Angeles and Seattle – from big to small, from stodgy to innovative. He’s been an assistant account... read more »
The Creative Process Is Broken
Why The Creative Process Is Broken And How To Fix It It seems like 99 percent of the time, the crap ideas win. Why is that? Because the creative process is completely f*cking broken. For every bad idea that makes it out into the world, there are dozens, hundreds, thousands of great ideas that will never see the light of... read more »
The Art of Executive Presence
THE ART OF EXECUTIVE PRESENCE: How To Stand Out, Speak Up and Impress VIPs and Peers In business, certain people just seem to have it. They don’t wait to be offered a seat at the table or asked for their opinion--people with executive presence join right in no matter who’s in the room. “It” is called executive presence, a current... read more »