By Lee Drew
In the best of all possible worlds, there would be no need for Sherra Bell. As it is, Bell makes a respectable living in the gray terrain between creative genius and the ability to buy groceries.
By Lee Drew
In the best of all possible worlds, there would be no need for Sherra Bell. As it is, Bell makes a respectable living in the gray terrain between creative genius and the ability to buy groceries.
She is a rainmaker.
She does the dirtiest work known to copywriters, illustrators, graphic artists, photographers, musicians and agency heads. She finds work. And, in this town, she is increasingly not alone.
With the economy still in a slump but hinting at recovery, a number of companies and individuals in Atlanta are working the matchmaking niche between freelance artists, or firms, and clients and advertising agencies.
Rainmaking is not a discipline that is well defined. Some rainmakers are little more than agents or custodians of coveted contact lists. Nor is the profession in its heyday. Still, rainmakers retain importance because of the notorious inability – or perhaps just disinclination – of advertising agencies, and allied creatives, to sell themselves.
Any number of factors play into that failing. But the sum of it is pretty simple, says Alf Nucifora, a marketing consultant, journalist and former agency head who, for more than two decades has been a central figure in the Atlanta ad community.
"Advertising agencies are stupid," says Nucifora bluntly. "They tend not to promote themselves very well, and most are not proactive about new business. Too many of them expect it to walk in the door."
If the business isn't walking in the agency door, then chances are it's not walking in the door of the freelance copywriter or the illustrator or the graphic artist or the art director or the musician who is a step further from the mainstreet of available work.
The expectations of rainmakers are often as outlandish as their reputations. The name springs from storied figures who could conjure water from a cloudless sky. Nucifora characterizes these mythological characters as "part man, part god."
What they generally, and traditionally, have been in their modern manifestation is a disappointment.
"When I ran an agency we hired four different rainmakers at different times," says Nucifora. "And none of them paid out." The reasons for rainmakers producing crop failure were manifold and predictable, says Nucifora. Expectations of them are unrealistic. The time frame for the delivery of results is too immediate and short term. The company is not committed to the process. And the compensation basis is out of skew: they get paid too much for too little.
On top of that, he says, rainmakers are creatures out of sync with corporate culture.
"They are like bounty hunters, or gun slingers," says Nucifora. "They don't fit in. And inevitably egos get involved. In almost every case, it's a relationship that is doomed to fail."
Another problem with rainmakers: It's hard to know when to hire one because it requires a recognition and admission that you might not know what you’re doing. Or, at the very least, you don't have time to do it right.
Scott Banks is an example of that. Banks is a Partner in BAD Studio, a branding and identity graphic design firm that has done steady and topflight work in Atlanta for more than a decade. The studio’s recent jobs include a package redesign for Diet Cherry Coke and a promotion for Turner Classic Movies.
Business flowed steadily in the door. But, two years ago, Banks saw the future slipping away. "I did the selling for us, the new business work, but I just didn't devote enough time to it," he says. "Most of my jobs were referrals. And even then it would take me two or three days to follow up on the referral."
His difficulties were typical of a creative balancing an artistic workload with the business of running a business. If Banks set aside two hours a day to make calls and follow up on leads or referrals it took four hours. "The whole process of preparing and getting myself in the right frame of mind always took twice as long as I thought it would," he says. Sometimes he would burn half a day on a job that initially looked like it would take as much time as a long lunch.
Banks is exceptional in one regard. He is adept at, even enjoys, pitching new business and networking with old and prospective clients. More typical is the creative who started in the agency business when there was a distinct line between the creative and account sides – and never the twain should meet, unless it was for a pitch, or the AE was picking up the bar tab.
Morgan Shorey, a Principal in the Atlanta-based firm The List – a company that links agencies and individuals to client prospects through an extensive database of contacts – says creatives often recoil at the idea of forcing themselves on a client prospect. "I'm not sure why that is, but I have a theory," she says. "Everyone has had an experience with a sales person that felt dirty, someone that interacted with you and it felt dirty. And that is the emotion many creatives feel when they go out and do this, try to sell themselves. They feel dirty."
Cold-calling, networking and the alchemical magic of creating a golden opportunity out of what a second ago was a streak of bad luck, requires nerve and doggedness of assorted varieties, depending on the rainmaker, who he or she is representing, and what niche they are working.
The rainmakers at New York rainmaking firm, Corporate Rain, Inc., start by working the phone as hard as telemarketers, albeit with a more selective call list. Once they get a pre-sell appointment, the rainmakers set up meetings with top executives and mine the client for information that can be used in a pitch.
Shorey's company begins the process with an exhaustive tracking of key company personnel so thorough it rivals industrial espionage. "We manage the country’s largest database of corporate marketing decision makers," boasts Shorey. "We know their purchasing authority and what they do with what brand."
The company gathers the information by collating all published records of company business, reading every trade pub and newsletter, making phone calls and more calls to confirm the information. In the conquest of business there is no superfluous knowledge, says Shorey. "Every piece of information is vital. His name is Robert, but does he go by Bob? What his assistant's name? Is Pat male or female?" The List also reconnoiters the buying environment of the company and the infrastructure: are agency decisions made by a single or several executives, by committee? Is the person with hiring power on paper the same person who in fact makes that decision?
Rather than send an army of rainmakers into the field, The List is a weapons dealer. "We are the experts in the mechanics of new client acquisition," says Shorey, citing a list of agencies – from The Martin agency in Richmond, to Fallon in Minneapolis, and Bates in New York – her company has worked with.
Richard O'Gorman, a Principal with Atlanta-based Blueprint Communications, deals with rainmakers on the receiving end. His firm manages agency searches for large national corporate clients such as Verizon and ING Americas. Rainmakers have changed a lot since O'Gorman's days in New York on the agency side, working with the old Dancer Fitzgerald.
A rainmaker back then was as much a strategist as salesman, he says. "They were the person who knew tactics as well as marketing. A rainmaker was somebody who could run an agency." The rainmaker’s industry has become more specialized, while the advertising business has become more fragmented. How many shops still create the ads and place them too? Often this schism works against agencies that hire rainmakers who are little more than gifted door openers. "Sometimes these folks will confide in me that they haven't even worked in the agency business," says O'Gorman. "I have to say it surprises me that an agency would send out a rep who is not even in the industry."
O'Gorman says the analogy of rainmaker as matchmaker doesn't apply to the agency search process. "Were not a marriage broker. We don't represent both sides and we aren't trying to make a wedding happen. We represent the client."
Much of his company’s work with agency rainmakers – who, depending on the agency, might be the agency president or director of new business – is nuts and bolts assessment. Where are they located? Is the client going to need direct response advertising, or internet site development? Will the emphasis be on print or broadcast?
The first cuts come through a screening of standard agency guides including the agency Red Book and annual reports by "Advertising Age" and "Adweek." The first cut is determined by the agency size. Account conflicts are a key determinant. "With large agencies and holding companies sometimes those lines can blur," says O'Gorman. "But it doesn't matter what the agency thinks is a conflict. All that matters is how the client looks at it."
A newly emerging aspect of agency searches and selections is that client procurement and sourcing executives are getting involved in the process. Whereas marketing and sales executives are keyed to image and moving product, O'Gorman says procurement and sourcing types have a particular interest in compensation. They want a price on everything.
The rainmaker's job should also include an assessment of an agencies projected image. Nothing kills a pitch faster than perceived arrogance, says O'Gorman. It's one of the worst mistakes an agency can make. "This arrogance can be projected in many ways, including social behavior and the way the agency presents its case histories." he says. An agency that is overly confident, according to O'Gorman, can leave the impression it has a low regard for its incumbent clients. That's a sure deal killer. "Agencies that demonstrated the better client relationship skills enjoy more new business success," he says.
Rainmaker Sherra Bell says it is vital that she be a seamless extension of the client she represents when she makes new business contacts. "In the early stages of developing the contact, they (the new business prospect) don't care what my relationship is exactly with the company I am representing," she says. "It would confuse the situation that I work for multiple companies."
Bell's expertise in the field she represents – graphic artists – makes the specifics of her relationship a non-issue, she says. In addition, she only represents the studios up to the first meeting. In the graphic design business, the span of time from first meeting to signing to work in and work out the door can take years.
Bell has worked for LIFT Packaging & Promotions Creative for a year, says Principal Beth McPherson. Still, as a team, they have yet to ink a contract. "She works for us 8 to 10 hours a week and every week I sit down with her and we see where we are," says McPherson. "She has enough leads on the table and enough possibilities we have no doubt over time it will pan out." The 12 year old firm – which counts among its clients Welch, Georgia Pacific, and ConAgra – hired Bell because "I just didn't have the time," says McPherson. "I'm comfortable talking about our business, listen to me, I have a big mouth. But we were so busy selling for others we didn't make it a priority to sell ourselves."
Bell’s compensation package is a combination of contracted "small" hourly rate, and a percentage on business she brings in the door. "I think you need some kind of commission built in to motivate the close," she says.
Rainmakers say the single most important aspect they bring to a client’s new business plan is cohesion, focus, and devotion. "The biggest issue that separates those who are successful in new business and those who are not is the integrated approach," says Morgan Shorey.
According to Shorey, these are the most common mistakes that creatives and their firms make in promoting themselves and not breaking out of what Shorey calls the "sell and do" cycle.
1. Failure to create promotional materials for themselves or
failure to commit.
"Most agency’s brochures sound interchangeable," says Shorey. "The message that gives to clients is that the agency won't commit to an expertise, or niche, which indicates to the client that the agency is looking for anything with a pulse," a complete turn off to a client.
2. The "Procrastination Perfection Curve."
When an agency puts off pursuing new business because the thinking is that the project being worked on now will be better in one week, superb in two, and sheer genius in three, Shorey says the company is caught in a pattern that is familiar, a pattern doomed to squelch timely new business.
"Agencies always have laundry lists of why they are not pursuing news business," says Shorey. Another common procrastination she says is "Event X." The agency will get on the new business trail as soon as it finishes Event X, which could be everything from throwing a Christmas party to finishing its website.
3. Failure to follow up.
"Nobody runs one Tide commercial or one Bank One commercial and expects people to get the message," says Shorey. "So why do agencies think they can sell themselves with a single mailer?"
The only effective promotional campaign is consistent and driven through an array of media. Prospects have to receive your message multiple times over a long period of time.
4. Dependence on referrals.
This works in the legal profession, although law firms now retain rainmakers, too; and it works in the accounting business, but maybe not so well since Enron and Anderson Consulting.
"Advertising is a business baby," she says. "And it a competitive business with lots of players. You can't sit out there and wait for it to come to you."
5. Think big, and you'll stay small.
"At a lot of agencies, especially big agencies, the new business plan is 'I answer my phone'," says Shorey. "They build new business strategy against the opportunity in order to win the opportunity. Small agencies must prospect. If they act like BBDO, they're going to go out of business."
6. Don't mass market yourself.
"Any effort that appears to be impersonal, unintelligent or uninformed and mass produced will be less successful than an initiative where you approach the prospect on a personal level that is informed and intelligent," says Shorey.
Marketing Consultant Nucifora cautions that even the most aggressive rainmaker and most systematic and relentless new business program is apt to fall short of expectations because the reality is most agencies are a commodity, a parity product. So what's your selling point of distinction?
That you're knocking on the door in the first place, say rainmakers.
After a decade long economic boom in which some companies were born that have "never had to sell themselves," says Sherra Bell, that's a big change. Knocking on a door these days and asking for business may carry as much cache as winning a Gold Pencil in the One Show.
That's an exaggeration, of course. Isn't it?
