Peter Levitan is the Author of this Classic ” Buy This Book. Win More Pitches “, a veritable wake up call book for ad agency owners and negotiators. Here are some of the key insights from the interviews conducted by Peter on Negotiations, Compensation and Procurement:
- Know the client’s compensation plan before you begin to pitch for their business. Most agencies don’t get into a serious compensation and negotiation discussion until after the pitch.
- Agencies should mention their own attention to financial detail in the RFP and in the pitch, even if the client isn’t asking about it. You should proactively manage the message that we spend every dime thoughtfully, carefully and professionally.
- Negotiations is a word that strikes fear into agency executives. Agencies have a lot of power and a lot at stake, but incorrectly think they are impotent.
- Agencies approach negotiations thinking they are terribly weak, in part because they think the other side has all the power.
- While agencies are focused on “principled” (win-win) negotiating approaches, procurement people are schooled in “positional” negotiating strategies and tactics, (win-lose), and positional beats principled every time.
- Agencies tend to prefer win-win approaches to negotiation because we hate conflict and we want to live in harmony.
- Most agencies don’t do any formal negotiating training for their staff.
- Clients are much better negotiators than agency managers.
- Agencies are up against professional negotiators and they tend to put into the negotiation process their unskilled (in negotiations), nicest, most accommodating people. They get beaten.
- Most agencies don’t understand the role of procurement in agency selection.
- Work on winning procurement over. Don’t just complain about them.
- Agencies are walking into a negotiation with what they would like to have, but don’t plan out what they actually intend to get out of the meeting.
- We train our buyers how to treat us and we’ve done it for years, but we don’t train them how to treat us differently.
- Agencies need to establish a lead negotiator, the person who is going to run the negotiation – it’s not always the CEO.
- What makes agencies weaker in negotiations? It tends to be their excitement around the creative.
- Creative directors need to be taught if they give something away, they need to get something in return.
- In negotiations, prepare well and prepare as a team. Prepare the team who will be there and then the others who may get called in after the meeting. This way you don’t inadvertently give something away that you did not intend to trade.
- You gain power in your negotiation if you are the one out of the gate with the first proposal.
Do you have the right formula in negotiating winning contracts for your agency?
