Hygiene and chemical factors in pitches. It’s a pretty safe bet that we all agree that there are (essentially) two types of factor that influence a decision makers choice of marketing agency (and probably most other types of supplier or partner as well for that matter!). We call them Hygiene and Chemical factors.
These factors vary in their importance during the different stages of the selection process.
To start with, the client is asking these questions.
What service do I need? Where do I want my partner to be based geographically? What size partner would be right for me? Is experience of my sector important? Do I mind if they work for a competitor? etc. These are the hygiene factors and they decide who gets on the long list.
From then on the Chemical factors start coming into play.
Do I like their creative output? Is their culture right for me? Do I like them as people? What is their philosophy (if they have one) and is it relevant to me?
Thankfully ( I think we’d all agree) the vast majority of clients make their final decisions based upon the latter.
But if you haven’t got the Hygiene factors, then you’ll never get to that final stage.
So WHY do so many agencies hide these Hygiene factors away? Clients and Intermediaries visit agency websites anonymously, looking for those whose profile matches the hygiene factors they are looking for. If you don’t make it easy for them to find out this information what do you think they do? Call you to ask? er, NO! they don’t want you to know they are thinking about reviewing if you don’t match their Hygiene factors because you’ll bother them and try to convince them to allow you to pitch anyway.
So they just move on to the next one …
And even if you were PERFECT, neither you nor they will ever know.
So take a good long look at your website and ask yourself if it makes life easy for clients and intermediaries; if it doesn’t, change it.
