Goes Through an Agency?
I was shocked last week when I asked an account executive for the contact name at one of her clients. Her reply was, “That goes through an agency now so I no longer have a contact at the client level.”
Are you kidding me?
It’s time to wake up and smell the coffee!
The only justification for local reps handling agency accounts is because they do have a relationship with the client and intimate knowledge of the account.
1.) All media buys are ultimately approved by the client.
2.) The client will fire the agency (they always do).
3.) No agency can sell your station to a client as well as you.
4.) Many ‘agencies’ are merely graphics design houses, web-design companies or TV production houses, selling strategies that give them, not your clients, the most profit.
5.) You can’t make relevant presentations to the agency if you don’t know what the client is thinking.
6.) On occasion, you will have a station promotion which might not fit the agency’s plans but does dovetail with something the client is doing.
I’m not usually big on rules, but here is one every station should implement;
All agency accounts are to be handled by our national or regional reps unless the local reps make a valid* business contact with the client directly a minimum of once per quarter.
* A valid business contact is any contact in which you deliver something of value to the client.