Agencies struggle to extract the value they deserve from client relationships not because they aren't charging enough, but because they're selling the wrong thing to their clients.  This economic misalignment is responsible for a decades-long erosion of agency profits, but also a serious erosion in agency-client relationships.

Agencies are on the defense -- not the offense -- because they are mired in industrial-age pricing practices.  Instead of bringing 21st-century pricing methodologies to the table, they are stuck in the bad habit of negotiating their costs instead of selling their value.  A decades-long decline in agency profitability has produced a cascading series of challenges, not the least of which is the ability afford and retain the best talent. 

Time to join the pricing revolution

It's not too late to reverse this trend.  Many recent studies have shown that the single most powerful way to improve agency profits is not to cut costs, or even increase revenues, but rather to improve pricing.  Just a 1% improvement in pricing can produce an 11% improvement in profitability.

During this thought-provoking workshop we'll explore together:

• The many other progressive pricing strategies used by today's businesses and how they can easily apply to professional services like agencies

• Why the "billable hour" is not a "unit of value" (only a unit of cost) and how to effectively sell the value you create in other more effective forms

• Why your costs are really none of your client's business, and how to change to dialogue away from transparency of agency costs to what really matters: the value being created for the marketer

We'll also investigate why the client community favors a change in agency compensation.  Some of the world's largest and best-known marketers now pay their agency partners based on outputs and outcomes (instead of inputs), which not only equates to value received but also radically improves the dynamics of the agency-client relationship. 

Dramatically different practices

We’ll review more effective ways of thinking about how your firm creates value and the many different ways you can get paid for it.  Based on real-life examples from firms around the world, you'll be inspired to develop your competencies as a professional seller better equipped to deal with the professional buyers on the other side of the table, including such concepts as:

• How to charge for the value of outputs vs. the cost of inputs

• The importance of separating the value of ideation and implementation

• Why all price setting should begin with an estimation of value, not cost

• The power of choice architecture in pricing

• How to replace bottom-up costing with top-down pricing

• Why and how to put “Scope of Value” ahead of Scope of Work

• How to provide more creative, effective pricing proposals in new business

• How to create new revenue streams and diversify your remuneration portfolio