To Capture More Value, First Create More Value

By Tim Williams

What makes a great meal at a great restaurant? Most restaurants buy similar ingredients from just a handful of major food service suppliers. Connoisseurs of cuisine would likely agree that while quality ingredients are important, it’s the way these ingredients are selected, combined, and cooked that makes a delectable dining experience.

In the agency business, your clients don’t buy ingredients, they buy increased market share, improved brand reputation, or a seamless customer service experience. Professional proficiency in core areas is the foundation of what you sell, but your clients are paying for a finished product, not an assemblage of qualifications.

Most agency leaders will readily admit to this point yet persist in littering their websites with bullet-point lists of skills and services. This is the equivalent of a fine restaurant featuring the components of their dishes rather than the composed dish itself.

Marketing professionals are taught to “sell the sizzle, not the steak,” a principle they routinely apply to the work we do for their clients. But when it comes to describing their own offerings, they very often just list the cuts of beef.

Known and Unknown

To sell solutions instead of services, professionals must overcome their aversion to “productization.” The purist view is that agencies approach every engagement as a unique problem with a unique solution. While it’s important to avoid being known for cookie cutter” work, that doesn’t prevent agencies from developing bundles of solutions that can be applied to what could be called Known Problems. Every engagement can be categorized into one of the four quadrants in the following grid:

Quadrant A represents the majority of the assignments in a majority of firms. These are Known Problems with Known Solutions — prime candidates for programs and products. A classic example is a social media community management program. There’s no need to completely reinvent this wheel each time a client comes to you with the need for a more effective social media presence. Your firm can offer up three or four different pre-defined programs, each with a different level of outputs and support depending on the client’s needs and budget. While this seems like common sense, it’s surprisingly uncommon to find these standing packages available in advertising agencies.

Quadrant B is similar, except it takes a bit more diagnostic work. However, once the problem has been properly defined, a Known Solution can usually be applied. A Known Solution doesn’t mean the firm is applying off-the-shelf creativity, just a repeatable framework that defines the key elements of the solution set and a roadmap for how the program could be executed.

Quadrants C and D require an Unknown Solution, which often makes packaged solution sets impractical. While most firms will occasionally undertake these types of assignments, they represent only a fraction of their annual revenue. Curiously, most agencies operate as though they are constantly addressing Unknown Problems with Unknown Solutions. No doubt it’s the uncharted territory that often excites and motivates the best of us, but that’s not an argument for approaching every assignment in a completely bespoke way. Again, we can apply inimitable thinking and creativity without also having to apply a completely singular approach and methodology.

Expertise = we’ve seen this before

While every client likes to believe their problems are special and unique, the reality is most experienced agencies have seen these challenges before. Weber Shandwick, the global public relations firm, tackles a plurality of client problems through its suite of programs and products. Prospective clients who need more effective DE&I strategies are offered Weber Shandwick’s “Code+ify” program. To solve problems with internal culture, clients of Weber Shandwick can employ the agency’s “Cultural Vigilance” program, a suite of offerings that help organizations surface and address cultural vulnerabilities.

The independent agency Wray Ward presents not “Services” but rather “Solutions” on its website, including a program that packages up the firm’s extensive experience dealing with sales channels, which they have labeled “Trade Love.” Clients can choose from three different iterations of Trade Love — Comprehensive, Enhanced, or Baseline — each delivering a different mix of outputs. While the executed program would look vastly different for each client, the program framework stays the same:

1.   Why do this (a brief description of the what the solution is designed to accomplish)

2.   What we do (the various disciplines and competencies you will marshal to solve this problem)

3.   What we deliver (the specific outputs and deliverables)

4.   What it takes (the talent, skill set, time and investment required for this solution)

The common complaint among many prospective agency clients is that agencies look and sound alike. Agency leaders bristle at this criticism, but it’s largely true, driven by the fact that most agency websites still serve up a bullet-point list of services that are also available from their competitors. To stand out, and to look more valuable to clients and prospects, showcase your unique bundles of solutions — named programs and products that demonstrate the deep expertise you bring to bear against the most important types of client problems.