$40,000 Off Our Fees. Your Next New Business Pitch?
($ Canadian, that is.)
How many of us are willing to offer $40,000 off agency fees to bring in a client? Well that's what The BrainStorm Group did at the end of May. And it worked.
Ron Telpner, chairman and CEO of the independent Toronto-based agency, was asked by a reporter from Canada's National Post newspaper (read interview here), "Have you won any clients?" and he responded,
Yes, and we exceeded the other, equally important objectives we established for this campaign -- increasing the number of RFP invitations, dramatically increasing visits to our new website, and generating increased exposure and awareness through media coverage, which we saw in Canada, the U.S. and even in Japan.
They also did what he calls Walking The Talk: they advertised.
Telpner refers to the "inherent hypocrisy of an agency that would recommend advertising to its clients as a strategy while not having enough belief in the power of advertising to use it for themselves." So, they ran their $40,000 off coupon in newspapers and online, and it worked exactly as intended.
At first I thought this was just a terrific promotion, and then I thought about it from an ROI standpoint. Consider this (and mentally add to the list or feel free to comment, below):
- How many RFPs do you respond to each year?
- How many pitches do you participate in?
- How many of them do you win?
- How much do you spend on submitting RFPs? On pitching?
- What's your average cost per RFP submission? Per pitch? Per win?
If you do the analysis, my guess is that a $40,000 off offer isn't as expensive or outrageous as it first might seem.
While it has now been done, what other innovative ways might you generate new business leads, publicity, and buzz - that really aren't that expensive?
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