Writing

Winning
Proposals,
Giving
Winning
Pitches
A Second Wind Publication
 Writing Winning Proposals, Giving Winning Pitches
A Second Wind Publication

Published by Second Wind Ltd.

1120 Hobart Avenue, Suite C • P.O. Box 6284
Wyomissing, PA 19610-0284
Phone: (610) 374-9093
Fax: (610) 374-9238
Email: info@secondwindnetwork.com.
Website: www.secondwindnetwork.com.

Copyright © 2002-2006 by Anthony P. Mikes and Second Wind Ltd.

First Edition 8/02; Second Edition 6/03;

Third Edition 1/04; Fourth Edition 4/06

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or

transmitted in any form or by any information storage or retrieval system,
without the written permission of the publisher except where permitted by law.

Printed in the United States of America

Layout and design by Deborah Budd

Table of Contents
Page No.

New Business in Today’s Advertising Industry 1

Ten Things That Agencies Are Doing to Gain New Business 3

WRITING PROPOSALS
AND RESPONDING TO RFPS 7

WINNING PITCHES AND PRESENTATIONS 69

THE REST OF THE AGENCY

NEW BUSINESS PROCESS 111
Who You Need, What You Need
and Whom to Pursue 113
How to Do New Business Research 157
Executing a Full-Court Press 211

Strategic Marketing Planning:

An Overview 245
About the Author
What Is Second Wind?
Second Wind Publications
High-Performance DVDs

P&P
Skills
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 Exhibits
Exhibit
No. Item Page No.

1 Bid/No Bid Checklist 21

2 Sample Letter Declining an RFP 28
3 Agency Proposal Procedure Flow Chart 41
4 Sample Request for Proposal 57
5 Agency Bingo Card 72
6 Five Things to Remember When Selling
Creative to Account Executives… 99
7 Seven Things You Need to Do to Sell Creative to Clients… 101
8 Agency New Business Pitch Evaluation Form 109
9 Myers-Briggs Ideal Personality Types 127
10 Prospect Profile Survey Form 146
11 Client/Prospect Evaluation Form 152
12 New Business Budget Spending Survey 156
13 Advertising Agencies vs. Consulting Firms 163
14 The Value of Research (Slides) 185
15 What Is a Strategic Marketing Partner? 191
16 Business in America – Power in the Channel 194
17 The Integrated Marketing Mix 197
18 Comprehensive Marketing Communications Program 198
19 Sample Integrated Marketing Strategy 200
20 Integrated Marketing Communications: An Overview 201
21 The New Business Intelligence Book 216
22 Sample Integrated Strategic Portfolio 221
23 Sample Acknowledgement of Intellectual Property Rights 224
24 Sample Advertising Non-Disclosure Agreement 228
25 Examples of Strategic Deliverables 238
26 Speculative Presentations Survey Results 242
27 How to Write a Stategic marketing Plan 265
28 Sample Objectives-Driven Creative Brief 269
29 Strategic Plan Checklist 274 P&P
30 Marketing Campaign Checklist 285 Skills
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New Business
in Today’s
Advertising
Industry

P&P
Skills
1
 Ten Things That Agencies Are Now Doing
to Gain New Business…
1. How’s your own brand?

2. Principal Passion

3. First team

P&P
Skills
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 4. Point Person

5. Your List

6. SSP

7. Voracious Mailing

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8. Community Web Sites

9. First meeting dynamics

10. Agency Tour dynamics.

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5
 Be Holistic!

P&P
Skills
6
Writing
Proposals and
Responding
to RFPs

P&P
Skills
7
 The New Business Proposal—
a Key to a Better Presentation
New business is a subject that could take up endless chapters. It ensures the exis-
tence of your agency. You must continue to sell and prospect or eventually you
will die, yet it amazes me when I see how little time or planning goes into the pur-
suit of future success. Today’s agency owners all seem to be too busy getting
today’s problems solved to worry about tomorrow. As Ray Kroc of McDonalds
said, “When you’re up to your ass in alligators, it’s hard to remember that your job
was to drain the swamp.”

One of the reasons you are too busy on a daily basis is because most of you have
the wrong mix of clients. You never gave a thought to who you wanted to do busi-
ness with. You just took, as a client, whoever came in first. Now you have a mix-
ture of clients whose goals may not match yours. Chances are you also have too
many clients, some of whom contribute only a small portion of your AGI, but take
disproportionate amounts of your time. You must constantly prune your account
list, keeping only those clients who meet your client criteria formula.

This issue of the right kind of new business is very important. We have spoken
about the qualities of a good client. We also discussed an ideal distribution of AGI
per client formula. We discussed the letter of engagement, and its importance to
the agency. We also discussed getting your portfolio in shape and keeping it that
way. Now we’re going to discuss the new business proposal.

One of the most important elements of your new business package is the proposal.
The proposal is the written marketing document submitted to show clients what
your agency will do with their money. The proposal represents everything you
have: your talent, your business sense, your knowledge. It’s your one proprietary
piece of the world. Yet, time after time, we see agencies submitting proposals to
clients that fall considerably short of being professional, not only in their content,
but in the way they are organized and presented. There’s not much we can do
about your ability to develop and execute a marketing strategy for your client ex-
cept to instill in you a proper respect for those who do their research and market-
ing homework.

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 The Marketing
Proposal Document
Your marketing strategies should
be formatted based on an agency,
rather than individual, standard.
In this way you can ensure that
all pertinent information is included.

Here is a good outline to follow.

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 The Marketing Proposal Document

Marketing Objective
This is like the theme statement you did for your college term papers. In one short
paragraph, summarize clearly what your strategy will accomplish.

Overview
Take one page to set the stage. Speak to the industry in general, the client’s back-
ground, their relative position in the industry, and any facts that readers should
know to bring themselves up to date on the marketing issue at hand. Write this as
if you were speaking to someone with no prior knowledge of the situation. This
serves two purposes. It reaffirms to the client that you have a grasp of the overall
situation, and it aids your staff as the project progresses (more about that later).

Marketing Strategy
Use this section to completely explain the strategy you have developed to meet the
marketing objectives. This is the guts of the report. If you’ve done your home-
work, studied the competition and the marketplace, figured out the demographics
and preferences of the buyer, established a target audience, done all the things nec-
essary to ensure that your firm knows what it’s talking about—this section will
show it.

Creative Strategy
This section presents and explains the main creative thrust you have developed to
attain the marketing objectives. It’s the “big idea.”

Creative Presentation
If necessary, follow the presentation of the creative strategy or “big idea” with some
level of detailed creative presentation including comps of ads, collateral literature,
logos, slogans, storyboards, scripts, etc.

Media Strategy
This section of the proposal presents the basic strategy and explains why certain
media, or a combination of certain media, will be more effective in reaching the
client’s marketing objectives.

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 Media Plan
Once again, if necessary, follow the media strategy section of your proposal with a
detailed media plan.

Public Relations, Publicity, Promotion

This section details any public relations, publicity or promotional strategies you
plan to use.

The Agency
This section should be standardized and included with every proposal. It should
contain: a brief history and philosophy of the agency; agency size (this is one of the
few times that the “capitalized billings” figure should be used); and a brief resumé
of all those people, including top management, who will service the account. In a
smaller agency, this account service team would be, for all practical purposes, the
same for each account. Nevertheless, give the client a team to work with by name
and function. The client will feel more comfortable if he knows there is a group of
people at the agency who service his account, rather than just an account executive.
This is also the place to include any awards the agency may have won for previous
work.

Budget
This speaks for itself. Cover yourself as well as you can. If you present only a creat-
ive strategy, and/or a media strategy, don’t give a detailed budget breakdown. On
the other hand, if you submit comps, copy or recommend certain media, by all
means include ranged estimates.

This is not the only format that can be used in presenting to a client, but whatever
you finally decide is best for your agency, be consistent. This consistency helps
you to organize your thinking in an orderly manner. It puts the presentation at an
agency level. It discourages account executives from hoarding accounts and knowl-
edge. Most importantly, it serves as an easily understood roadmap for the agency
staff to use while executing the plan for the client.

Regarding the proposal’s appearance, involve your designers in formatting your pro-
posal. Your account executives or clerical staff can set up a document, but you want
to make an especially good impression—remember, the proposal is going to be left
in the prospect’s hands for lengthy review. Sharp design, accurate content and a
clear format will position you far above the competition. Design and print some
high quality covers. Plus, buy some kind of “perfect binding system” to assemble
the report.

Then, take your well thought-out, well-presented new business proposal with the
P&P status covers and the professional binding and get out on the street and sell some
Skills advertising!
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