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As marketing management consultants, we’ve observed numerous agency relationships that excel in functional skills but fall short in soft skills, ultimately overshadowing their technical capabilities. It’s crucial to recognize the significant impact of soft skills on agency evaluations.

Soft skills, as defined by Wikipedia, complement hard skills and are essential for effective job performance. They encompass emotional intelligence, intuition, and interpersonal abilities, providing a vital balance to cognitive skills. When selecting an agency, consider the importance of soft skills in fostering successful partnerships.

When defining agency requirements, it’s relatively straightforward to establish a framework of requirements – whether that’s around business expertise, specific capabilities or perhaps technical knowledge. But soft skills aren’t so easy to define and quantify because they require marketers to really understand themselves, and what attributes enhance their own unique business environments.

While soft skills are different for all marketers, here are eight of the most common attributes that we’ve seen make the difference – even when agencies seem to have the functional capabilities but the chemistry doesn’t seem quite right:

Innovation

As the marketing ecosystem has become more complex, innovation has steadily risen in importance for marketers when they’re choosing or evaluating agencies. The caution here is that “innovation” isn’t just another word for “creativity”. Innovation can take any number of forms – but it’s most often quantified around the strategic thought process and how insights are extracted.

Collaboration

Again, the complexity of the marketing ecosystem has spurned a growing requirement for multiple agencies to perform specialized roles. Agencies that can’t demonstrate an ability to collaborate and play nice in the marketing sandbox are typically ruled out faster because marketers want to focus on their own business, not their agencies.

Neutrality

Yup. It’s that complexity issue again. Now more than ever, marketers are looking for objectivity in their marketing mix modeling as ecosystems expand. Agencies that default to broadcast positions, or aren’t open to other agency partners leading a campaign launch, are often less appealing than those that demonstrate real neutrality in their approaches.

Accepting of criticism

We’ve seen marketers test criticism in agency pitch situations because they want to understand how easy agencies are to work with. This absolutely does not mean marketers are looking for agencies to roll over and agree with whatever’s being said – but it does require a balance between confidence in a point of view and taking input and criticism constructively.

Flexibility

Because plans change on a dime all the time, any agency that can demonstrate the flexibility and ability to adapt is appealing because it means the agency isn’t weighed down by rigid or layers of process that can’t flex when marketers have earthquakes. (And they do).

Curiosity

Curiosity is a hallmark of an ability to problem solve, provide insight and provides an important edge over competitive agencies. Any agency that is naturally curious about a marketer’s business is typically more appealing than one that’s just functionally proficient.

Ability to work under pressure

Whether it’s a last minute change of plans, high table stakes or virtually no time, working under pressure is a normal occurrence in marketing. So how the agency team can handle and deliver under pressure is a reassuring attribute that sets agencies apart.

Embrace change

Agencies that demonstrate adaptability and a willingness to embrace change are more likely to be long-term partners for marketers. While short-term fixes may be tempting, investing in a mid- to long-term agency relationship often yields greater rewards.

Soft skills play a crucial role in agency evaluations. We’ve observed that these skills can significantly impact an agency’s success. By understanding your organization’s specific needs and prioritizing the soft skills that align with your business, you can make more informed decisions when selecting an agency partner.

What other factors should you consider in your upcoming agency search?

 
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While there’s obviously work to be done in developing a fair evaluation grid and evaluation system during an agency search, preparation needs to begin even before you pull the trigger on an agency search.

Considering that the purpose of your agency review, how you propose to brief agencies and who you select to participate in your evaluation process, all play a role in a fair and transparent evaluation.  And the more diligent you are about structuring your proposed evaluation, the better the result you’ll likely achieve.

So with that as the context, here are some essential steps to help set any agency search evaluation up for success:

Be clear about your search and what you want to evaluate

This essentially sets the groundwork for everything – defining why you’re initiating your search and the questions and challenges you’ll then want addressed.  Any shortcuts in the planning at this stage will short-change you and your team’s ability to evaluate effectively.  And if you haven’t already done so – consider hiring an agency search consultant to help you.

Align stakeholders

Once you’ve defined your evaluation criteria, your stakeholders have to meet and agree this is how agencies will be evaluated. Aligning stakeholders before you get started is pivotal in your ability to evaluate as an organization rather than as individuals with separate agendas.

Dump preconceptions

As you align stakeholders on your approach, criteria and the challenges you want addressed, your evaluation team has to dump any baggage and preconceptions.

Easier said than done sometimes

But you need to be explicit in having this happen. This is particularly important if team members are expecting a creative presentation and the ask is focused on chemistry and approach.

Be transparent about what you’re evaluating

Openly sharing your evaluation criteria with agencies improves the entire search process. It will help your team make a more informed decision about the best agency for your business and gives agencies the opportunity to tailor their pitches to your specific needs.  Why hide it?

Develop a meaningful evaluation grid

Any evaluation grid needs to be a meaningful reflection of the key attributes of your search. But just as important, evaluation grids should be straightforward while allowing for an analysis that’s more than just a score.  A random score is meaningless unless you have some context on how your team arrived at their score.  Find out more on developing a meaningful scorecard here.

Everyone participates against the same framework

To maintain objectivity, the search team should base their assessments exclusively on the pre-determined search criteria.  And if you have stakeholders who can’t attend all presentations, they don’t get to vote – it’s unfair to allow participation on some agency presentations and not on others.

The search consultant doesn’t vote

The job of your search consultant – if you have one – is to provide objective, neutral input – not to weigh-in on agency performance.  Ask your search consultant for guidance, help to weigh the pros and cons – but don’t ask your consultant to vote – they need to be neutral at all times.

How will you find your proverbial needle in the haystack?

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For more than a decade, we’ve had the privilege of writing RFPs for some of Canada’s leading marketers and I’d like to think we’ve learned a thing or two about what works and what doesn’t along the way.

Periodically, we’ll come across an RFP document written by a client – often edited or ‘enhanced’ by asks from procurement or legal (or both) – for the resulting pig’s breakfast to then make its way to agency inboxes.

When it’s bad, agencies often call us to ask how best to respond. And when it’s really bad, it’s a journalist looking for more on a story. Some come wrapped in red-tape with (literally) 50 pages of terms and conditions, others are so laden with asks they’ll sink before they set sail, while others are just bizarre. Case in point was one that crossed my desk last recently stating that their target audience for their ask was: “CXOs, CIOs, CFOs and CEOs of enterprises that are 500 men and above” Now, I’m assuming that just means ‘people‘ – or not(?) – but you get the point. Jaw dropping.

The reality is, RFPs are as much a reflection of you and your organization as they are about finding the right agency partner for your business. Whatever you put out, typically reflects what you’re like as a client. Lots of terms, conditions and red tape? Well, that’s likely what agencies will need to expect. Short timelines with an unreasonable number of asks? Rapid response teams will probably be what’s needed on the business. And so on.

So it occurs to me this week that it might be helpful to shine a little light for anyone working on a home-grown RFP and point out some pitfalls well worth avoiding:

Ditch the Overload

The biggest mistake most marketers make with home-grown RFPs is over-stuffing them to the point of bursting. Ask everything you can possibly think of, before passing it on to another group who want to ask a whole different set of questions and so on down the line until it goes out. The result is either a 300 page response from each agency you asked to participate (which will take weeks for your internal teams to evaluate), or, presentations which can only possibly hope to answer the first four questions in your document. If there’s one thing you should take away from this, please – keep it simple and remember that less is almost certainly more – so please channel your inner Marie Kondo, embrace minimalism and keep your RFP concise, focusing only the essentials.

Be the Roadmap, Not the Maze

OK, let’s get to the good stuff and ask to see creative, right? Hold on a moment… Before asking for anything you need to provide agencies with a sense what they’re pitching for. This includes details of your RFP process, your anticipated budget, key requirements, scope of the business that’s up for grabs as well how agencies will be evaluated. This is essentially the agency’s roadmap for success and without it they’re just having to guess as to whether you’re right for them, just as you’re guessing whether they’re right for you.

Forget the Silver Bullet

Contrary to what some might believe, RFPs aren’t an invitation to provide a silver bullet solution to all your marketing problems in one presentation. No agency can ever be expected to understand your business as well as you do, or appreciate the nuances of what makes you, your teams and your organization unique. So if your expectation is that you’ll find a silver bullet strategy or creative idea that will miraculously catapult your brand into the stratosphere, you should pack a parachute. Ideas presented in pitches are typically only ever directional and demonstrate how an agency might approach your business – they’re not a shortcut to whatever final solution you might be looking for.

Skip the Busywork, Ask the Right Questions

We’ve seen a huge number of RFPs that ask some painfully unnecessary questions – ‘do you have an office in Quebéc‘, for example or ‘do you provide account management‘ (yes really, that was a suggested question), or ‘do you have a process…?‘ (yep, that was a proposed question too…) And while those kinds of questions may tick some governance boxes, they’re not doing much else. In fact, they’re actually taking away from your time and the questions that really matter – particularly if you’re in a situation where you need to evaluate based on a 60 or 90 minute presentation. Typically the basics can be determined with some minimal desk research and leave plenty of room for your RFP to focus on what’s really important. So skip the busywork and get to the meaningful stuff.

Include Critical Information

OK, let’s get to the good stuff and ask to see creative, right? Hold on a moment… Before asking for anything you need to provide agencies with a sense what they’re pitching for. This includes details of your RFP process, your anticipated budget, key requirements, scope of the business that’s up for grabs as well how agencies will be evaluated. This is essentially the agency’s roadmap for success and without it they’re just having to guess as to whether you’re right for them, just as you’re guessing whether they’re right for you.

So are we being too tough here?

No, I don’t think so. But I do think expectations are sometimes out of alignment with reality – either because marketers don’t weed out unnecessary questions, or because they expect too much from their RFP documents, and / or because they expect too much from their participating agencies.

Care and clarity of thought need to be poured into RFP documents to maximize the results. And while it may seem counter intuitive, the answers often lie in taking out, rather than adding in. Focus on what’s really important and remove all else, and agencies will likely reflect that back in powerful and unexpected ways that may even leave you spoiled for choice.