The following is a report on the third of NMK's series of seminars looking at business development. In association with Business Link for London (www.bl4london.com).

Report by Nicolle Farley, July 2002.

The seminar explored how to respond effectively to briefs and invitations to tender - from interrogating the brief and understanding the client, through to writing compelling proposals that help you stand out from your competitors.

Speakers: Hilary Kelsh, Head of Business Development, n1media; Pamela Frazer, Specialist Design Advisor, Business Link for London; Philip Rooke, CEO, iVillage UK; Paul Cowper, Brand Consultant, Brandsmiths.

1. The Approach to the Brief
2. Contacting the Client
3. Presentation and Format
4. Presenting your Proposal

The Approach to the Brief

Hilary Kelsh of n1media and chair of the evening, began by looking at how to approach a client brief when it arrives.

“The most important thing is to get inside the client’s shoes!”

To do this you have to interrogate the brief thoroughly. Understand and grasp what is required of you in your answering proposal. Start with the obvious task and read it - read it very well! Use as many resources as you have at your disposal. You should involve your entire team in the process of taking the brief apart and aim to generate 100’s of questions to aid the process of clarification.

One approach is to structure your questions around the ‘why’, ‘where’, ‘who’, ‘when’, ‘what’ and ‘how’ format. Pamela Frazer of Business Link for London said the questions you should be asking yourself include:

• ‘Why’ - Why have they come to you i.e. how has this come about?
• ‘Where’ - Where’s the revenue? Are they serious? Have they got the budget?
• 'Who’ - Who are they? What makes them tick i.e. what motivates them and what made them write the brief? Did someone else write the brief for them? Who are decision makers? Who are their competition? Who are their customers?
• ‘When’ - When’s it due - how long have I got?
• ‘What’ - What’s the real nature of the brief? What are the success criteria? What response are they expecting to see (e.g. storyboards, written documentation, a full blown technical presentation) and have you got the skills and manpower? What are the critical issues you must address? What’s the purpose of the proposal/presentation?
• ‘How’ - How many roles are involved (e.g. finance director, marketing director) and what might their different agenda’s be? How do you take their pain away/make their life easier/solve their problems?

Use research facilities to answer as many of these as you can. Check websites, Company’s House and trade magazines. Use techniques such as a PEST analysis to further analyse the client. Answering as many questions as you can during this stage of the process helps you to understand the brief better, highlights any further research that needs to be done to prepare your bid, and clarifies what questions you need to approach the client with.

Contacting the Client

Meeting with the client prior to presenting the proposal is an invaluable - if not essential - part of the process. Not only does it enable you to clarify any questions still unanswered, but it initiates direct client contact (if you did not previously know the client) and enables you to start building the relationship.

“Don’t be afraid to phone and ask questions, especially to find out client’s expectations.”

Hilary Kelsh particularly recommends the need to be proactive in contacting the client. Start a close relationship with them, “as if they are your new best friends”. Meet them at their ‘house’ or invite them to yours, get to know them. Contacting the client personally not only “opens doors for you” but helps you to manage expectations by checking and double checking your understanding of the client’s needs and being able to involve the client in your proposal. It helps to build and solidify rapport and trust.

Philip Rooke of iVillage gave the client’s perspective of personal contact. Agencies are far more likely to be successfully short listed if personal contact is involved but contact needs to be of the right sort as only 6 to 10 out of 100 replies to a bid get short-listed. Unsolicited email is usually deleted, junk mail is filed and not read, and phone calls only work if you’re lucky enough to get past the gatekeepers! The best form of contact is either personal contact, such as meeting people at events, or being known through reputation and PR activities, particularly since clients phone around each other to get recommendations.

“Would you buy a second hand car from this man? It’s all about trust.”

Getting close to the client enables you to manage and build the relationship and to manage expectations. It can give the extra help needed in preparing the successful proposal.

Presentation and Format

According to Paul Cowper of Brandsmiths, the aim of the proposal is to secure a meeting. Paul gave straightforward advice on how to approach the proposal and subsequent presentation. As it is a crucial part of winning the business, it is important to think about both what to put in and what to leave out.

Include the basics such as:

• Background on yourself
• Experience with other clients, especially similar work examples
• Your view of the issues involved with the task
• Your view on opportunities involved with the task
• A summary of any media comment

Be thorough in structuring the proposal by answering the brief point-by-point. Don’t lose marks by not answering the question! Draw attention to your unique attributes - what makes you different, what marks you out as distinctive. This is where knowing your reader well pays off as you are able to reflect the client’s desires and fears, and position yourself as the ‘best fit’ choice.

Agree your document structure and stick to it. Use one ‘voice’ or one editor to ensure the document ‘flows’ and, where possible, have the document writer as the presenter. As a last touch, review (again) what you know about the background. Have a full team meeting and discuss it and anticipate the clients questions and issues.

When the bulk of the work has been done you can start thinking about the ‘Wow Factor’. Hilary Kelsh looked at some of the examples of where the unusual and the unexpected can win you the job, whether its having a pink tie or a beautifully bound document - whatever it takes to win the client over. One agency delivered their pitch by sending a girl dressed in the client’s football colours to the client’s office. She got through to see him even though the agency had never met the client before.

But it’s not just tricks that work.

“We asked Monsoon why they chose us and they said it was because we put a flower on the cover of the proposal!”

Paul Cowper suggested a number of different ways you could make yourself stand out from the competition. You may have a certain process that’s different and makes the client notice you or you may have experience in a particular aspect of the market that would pique the client’s interest and give you a competitive advantage. Preparing parallel examples can show that you have worked on something similar and so may be the best person to offer the approach the client is looking for. Lastly, gathering third party opinion shows you’ve done independent research into the client’s market and can be a great way of bringing issues to the client’s attention that only you can address.

In preparation for your presentation, Pamela Frazer recommends the technique of ‘role playing’. Determine who might be involved from the client side, give them personalities or types and then brainstorm the brief from their viewpoint. For example, ‘types’ can include the ‘Dreamer’ - this may represent the client’s marketing function; the ‘Realist’ - this may be the finance department; the ‘Critic’ - the operations people; and the ‘Neutral Observer’ - the balanced view of the CEO or MD. The technique involves the team ‘playing’ each of the roles in turn. As the ‘Dreaming Client’ you think up the most creative brief you can to appeal to the marketing client. Take each of the other roles separately to determine what each ‘client’ may be looking for from you. This approach enables you to anticipate questions and to deal with separate client issues in your presentation.

Presenting Your Proposal

The presentation stage is where you have the opportunity to sell yourself, your company and your idea and to get ‘under the client’s skin’. Phillip Rooke wants an agency to make an effort to understand his issues and needs and sell directly to him. His prime concern if for an agency that’s going to work with him, in a genuine open partnership.

“This is a personal relationship and I’m testing how the agency is going to work with me”.

The design, look and feel of the presentation, can be used to create rapport with the client. Pamela Frazer talked about the use of multi-media techniques including sound, colour, language and movement to connect with the client on different levels. Building rapport can be done through the use of creative analogies and metaphors and the use of mood boards and multi-media techniques can bring the presentation alive.

But people often put effort in the wrong places. You must focus on clarity, summarise the basics, be distinctive and be yourself.

“One pitch was 3 hours long. I don’t like people to run away with it!”

Phillip Rooke prefers the shorter, sharper pitch and recalls a successful presentation. “They didn’t linger over dull stuff, they skipped through two slides of credentials and summarised the needs as they saw them”. He contrasts this to other agencies who have poured over the history of their company and presented research they had found on the users’ attitudes to the internet. Phillip said “we already had that research ourselves, that’s not what we wanted to hear”.

“They were able to assess what was wanted as they went along, so I left room with a better idea of what I wanted!”

The thing that makes a successful agency stand out is their interest in the client and his/her needs. Phillip recalls a pitch made by an agency he later employed. The key for him was the focus by the agency on his concerns. "They were always digging to find out our concerns. They kept checking what was wanted, they checked a dozen times".

Hilary Kelsh summed up by reminding us that there is no substitute for planning and hard work when it comes to creating a successful proposal or presentation.

• Plan, plan, plan!
• Rehearse rehearse rehearse!
• Aim to exceed expectations!

This event was presented in association with Business Link for London (www.bl4london.com )

To have a look at the original event go here.