Preparing for your agency’s group presentations and pitches

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Chip Griffin: Hello, and welcome to another episode of the Agency Leadership Podcast. I’m Chip Griffin.

Gini Dietrich: And I’m Gini Dietrich.

Chip Griffin: And today we’re gonna play Canadian Doubles. No, we’re not. For those of you who are not familiar, Canadian Doubles is a version of tennis where you have two players on one side of the net and one player on the other side.

Did you know that?

Gini Dietrich: I have so many, I have so many questions.

Chip Griffin: I don’t know why they do that. And the only reason I even know about it is because of discussions that we’ve had, in the past, or that I had, you know, 30 years ago with some business partners was how you, what the dynamics are of meeting with teams, particularly from a prospect when you’re pitching them on things.

And so we always said, you know, we wanna avoid playing Canadian doubles, basically where you’re outnumbering your opponent or prospect in this case.

Gini Dietrich: Yeah, I think that’s really smart because you, you probably want to at least balance it, if not come just a little bit under, because when you have more people from your team than the client has, it tends to overpower them and become a little bit overwhelming for ’em, which is not what you want.

That’s not the impression you want to leave.

Chip Griffin: No. I mean, it’s, uh, you know, any time that, that you, you are in a position where you are confronted by a larger number of people, whether that’s, you know, in combat, in sales, in whatever. You know, you, you don’t like that you, you kind of want even numbers, right? But that’s, we’re gonna go beyond that, folks.

So just so you know, we’re not talking just about the numbers of people.

Gini Dietrich: The end.

Chip Griffin: But really, you know, I thought it would be helpful for us to have a conversation about how you handle group presentations with prospects or even potentially with clients or those sorts of things, because it’s something that many of us, even in small agencies often do where we’ll have more than one person in the room or on a call, pitching to a client, talking them through things.

So there’s a lot of things that go into that. How many people, how do you split up the presentation time? How do you make sure that everybody looks like they’re contributing in a meaningful way? How do you manage the time when you’ve got multiple voices speaking and make sure that you’ve got a real dialogue?

So. I think there’s a lot of things to consider anytime you’re doing group presentations and it’s something that since we often end up having to do it, it’s worth thinking about how to do it well.

Gini Dietrich: Yeah, I completely agree. It’s, you know, one of the things that we think about it all the time, especially we, not just with new business, but with clients too.

You know, we had a meeting a couple of weeks ago with a client and they really wanted me in the room, but there were only two of them and there were five of us, and so we had to kind of decide is it really important for me to be in the room? Then, and that’s the case then who are we not going to have in the room from, you know, the client team perspective.

And so we went back and forth about it to decide who, who needed to be there for sure, and who was sort of ancillary and who could just get updates later. But it’s definitely something we think about all the time, not just with prospects, both with clients too.

Chip Griffin: Yeah. And when I’ve worked in larger agencies, I mean, there have been times where, you know, you feel like you’re in an international summit because, you know, one side’s got 10 people, the other side’s got, you know, 12 or 13.

And, and I think those are just silly on both sides. I mean, I don’t understand the value of having that many people in the room for a pitch, really, at any point. So for most of our listeners, that’s not the size and scale that we’re talking about, but I do think it’s important to think through why every single person is in that conversation.

From your side in particular. Obviously you can’t really control who the other side brings, although it is worth understanding who they’re bringing and maybe asking them questions about, you know, whether, you know, whether that’s the right mix. Do they need to add somebody? Does, does that person really need to be there for this conversation?

You can do that diplomatically so that you have the right mix of people on both sides. But everybody on your side, at least the side you control, needs to have a clear purpose for being there. And you shouldn’t throw extra bodies in just to show Hey, we’ve got these smart people. ’cause I’ve been in plenty of those presentations where like, we don’t really need you for anything.

We just want you to be here so that they know that you exist.

Gini Dietrich: Yeah.

Chip Griffin: And that’s an important temptation to resist because oftentimes the other side will walk out saying, well, why was that person there? That didn’t make any sense.

Gini Dietrich: Right. Yes. I think too, if you do your due diligence to say, you know, who from your side is going to be there, then you can sort of match expertise, right?

So we had a new business, a new business meeting last week, and from their side they had the VP of comms from two business lines. They had the chief communications officer and they had two data analytics people. So from my side, I ensured that we had at least two communications professionals, at least one data person, myself and our chief Revenue Officer were there.

And so it sort of matched the same level of expertise. And everybody was able to have conversations with their peers to be able to understand, okay, this is what they’ll do and this is how they’ll help us. And it was really, really valuable from that perspective.

You know, could I have handled the communications piece of it for probably three or four of them? Sure. But I also don’t, I’m not gonna be the point of contact from a day-to-day perspective. So I wanted to make sure that the people that were in the room also were gonna be the day-to-day point points of contact.

So you, you can kind of massage that a little bit based on who’s in the room from the client’s perspective or the prospect’s perspective and really understanding, okay, You know, we have to think about it both from the perspective of do we have the expertise on our side to match that. And who will be the day-to-day contact on our side that they would be working with. So that they don’t feel like we’re doing a swap, you know, once the business is won that they’ve then now have to work with the lower class employees.

Chip Griffin: Right. I mean, those are, those are two fantastic points. And, so I really wanna underscore those. The first is the simplest one, which is you can’t do the bait and switch. You’ve gotta make sure that whoever they’re getting to know during the prospecting phase, that that’s who they’re going to be working with.

Maybe not every single person who’s in the room, but at least whoever they main contact is. If they become a client, absolutely needs to be there. And that’s, that’s important from the client’s perspective so that they get to know that person and it, they can make a, an intelligent, informed decision about whether they want to work with that person, right?

So they don’t get surprised after the fact. But it’s just as important for your team as well because by having that person in the room, they can help make, they’ll have heard firsthand what the client is looking for. You don’t have to play a game of telephone with them. They’ll be up to speed from day one.

They will also help you to better spec out the proposal and pricing. Yep. Because they will have heard it and, and they’re not having it forced down their throats. They can be in a position to help guide what do you make for promises in terms of results, deadlines, the amount of time involved, those kinds of things.

So really important from that perspective. But the second one is equally important, which is that you match up expertise. Particularly from the perspective, I think of, part of it’s the ability to have conversations with peers, but part of it is making sure that if you see someone bringing an expertise on their side, who is likely to ask particular questions or have particular concerns, that you have somebody on your side who can address those questions and concerns.

Whether that’s a true subject matter expert on it or whether it’s in your case you’re an owner, you, you happen to know enough about that area that you could handle it if you had to. Sometimes you need to make judgements, but you know, if you’re pitching a website redesign and they say they’re gonna have their IT security guy in the room, you better have somebody in that room who can address their IT security questions.

Gini Dietrich: Mm-hmm. Yes.

Chip Griffin: Whether that’s you or somebody else. Yes. The fact that they’ve invited them to the meeting means it’s probably going to be a topic of conversation because you generally don’t invite your IT security guys just for

Gini Dietrich: Yeah.

Chip Griffin: You know, content conversations. They’re there for a particular reason or concern.

Gini Dietrich: We find that a lot with the clients that we work with. When they invite their compliance, somebody from their compliance team, you’re like, okay, all right. We’re gonna make sure that we, got it. You’re taking this seriously. Okay. There, there are gonna be questions that I cannot answer. Okay. We’re gonna make sure somebody from our side is.

So same kind of thing. You just have to understand who from their side is invited so that you can match that expertise.

Chip Griffin: Right. Or, or you happen to notice they’ve invited their IT security guy or something like that and you say, Hey, I, I noticed you’ve invited so and so. I don’t know if this is the right forum for that.

Maybe we have a, you know, maybe we should set up a separate conversation so that the whole team doesn’t get bogged down in this. Because, and, and a lot of times the IT security guy will be just as receptive to that, that he doesn’t have to sit through a whole bunch of conversation that is boring to him.

And, and it may work better from your side just to have the experts have that conversation as a sidebar instead of eating up valuable time in the group presentation. So certainly look at who’s being brought into the room so that you can maybe address some of those things in advance. And steer it in a direction that’s more likely to achieve the outcome that you are looking for.

Again, whether it’s a prospective client or an existing client and you’re trying to steer a project in a certain direction.

Gini Dietrich: Yeah, absolutely. I think it’s so smart, and I think you, what you said earlier about, you know, ensuring that the day-to-day contact is there is critical. You know, that’s one of the mistakes I made early, early on from my perspective, is I always felt like new business wasn’t billable and – well, not felt like – it wasn’t billable.

And so I didn’t wanna ask my team to go to those meetings. And I was doing a lot in the beginning. Because it was, it would eat into their billable time. Right? And so I would leave them in the office and I would go to the meetings. But you’re right, like you miss the nuance. You miss the context. I would go to the meetings.

I would create the proposal. I would sell it, I would close it, and then I would hand it off. And my team was like, they weren’t bought in. They didn’t understand. They may have had their own ideas that, you know, I hadn’t had on my own. The client always felt like, well, I wanna work with you because you were in the room and that’s who we bought, and now you’re having…

So it was just like, it was a hard lesson for me to have to learn. But, you know, it’s, it’s a good lesson and I think if you can avoid some of those mistakes, that’s a good way to, to think about it. Because yes, it’s not billable and yes, your team still has to, if you’re, you know, tracking billable hours and capacity and all that, they still have to do that.

But you can reduce their percentage that they have to get because they’re participating in new business and they will have ideas as well. Like I, I had a boss earlier in my career who was so smart, and he was a great idea guy. Like, he would go in and he could see a client’s problem or a prospect’s problem immediately, and he would say, okay, this is how you need to solve it.

And he’d be like, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom. And when I wasn’t in the room, he would sell all of that stuff. But we didn’t have the capability to do it.

Chip Griffin: Yep.

Gini Dietrich: And so once I sat in the room, I literally would kick him under the table if he started to sell something we couldn’t do because he would sell stuff that, yeah, it should have been done, but the agency didn’t have the internal capability to be able to do it.

And so I started. I, I invited myself to new business meetings so that I could literally sit on, sit across from him and I would kick him underneath the table every time he started to, to sell something that we couldn’t do. And, you know, so all to say that there is an opportunity for your team to help, not just, not that you’re necessarily doing that, but for your team to help but also understand and be bought into the process.

And from a client’s perspective, they’re buying the team. They’re buying the people, and a lot of it is chemistry. A lot of it is whether or not I can work with these people. So you wanna have those people in the room.

Chip Griffin: It’s, it’s funny when you, when you talk about selling things that you don’t do and you kicking under the table, because I, I had a business partner who, he sort of, reveled in the ability to sell things that we didn’t currently have the capability to do.

And then we would walk out of the meeting and he’d kind of have a twinkle in his eye and look over at me and say, do you like how I did that? He’s like, you can do that, right? I’m like, so I’ll be figuring it out now.

Gini Dietrich: I mean, we’ll figure it out!

Chip Griffin: Because I was the one who owned the figuring it out part.

He was the one who leaned into the selling part.

Gini Dietrich: Yes.

Chip Griffin: So, it certainly made for some, some interesting times. But, but we always seemed to come out okay. Which unfortunately encouraged him to continue doing that.

Gini Dietrich: Of course it did. Yes.

Chip Griffin: You know, it is what it is. But okay, so, you know, we, we really thought through who we’ve got in the room.

Now. Let’s think about how do we actually prepare the presentation or the, really the discussion, because I think we think of these things as presentations, but more often than not, I mean, this is not, you know, you’re not getting up and, and doing an audition on stage where you’ve got, you know, the director, producer, whatever, they’re taking notes and making a decision.

It should be more of a dialogue in most cases. So. How do you think about preparing for these, setting the agenda for them, preparing your team for the conversation so that it doesn’t become just, you know, we’re gonna just, you know, do a death march through PowerPoint slides, split up over four people over the next, you know, 60 minutes and there’s no time for conversation at all.

Gini Dietrich: Oh, yeah, no, that’s, we, we do not do that. So one of the things that we do is, is typically there is a relationship internally that somebody already has with the prospect. And so that person sort of leads the conversation, right? They make the introductions, they kind of set the agenda. They are the ones that sort of lead the agenda in the conversation.

Our chief revenue officer has like a 12 minute, I’d say it’s 12 to 15 minute deck that he goes through that just introduces most, almost everybody knows PESO. So we just kind of give a high level… Like, and it’s a really, it’s a really nice, it’s not a dog and pony show. It’s not a capabilities presentation.

It’s more like this is what we know about you and the pain points we see that you have, and here’s how PESO solves it kind of thing. And then we open it up for, for conversations. And so usually the point of contact, the day-to-day person that would be, their day-to-day manages that piece. So it’s a lot of us asking questions and, you know, really listening and taking notes and understanding. And then the person who has the relationship wraps it up at the end and does the follow up. So it’s usually, I would say it’s usually three to five of us, depending on how many on their side. And that’s typically how we set up the agenda is based on that.

Chip Griffin: Yeah, I think it’s really smart to have whoever has the best relationship, be the person who is effectively managing the meeting, because that, that generally is gonna improve the comfort level on the other side of the table. And so, you know, you might as well lean into that unless for some reason it would be really weird, right? I mean, maybe it’s some super junior person who happens to just be, you know, friends with or used to work with someone. I mean, you know, maybe in those cases you don’t, but in the vast majority of cases where that relationship exists, you should take advantage of that. And, you know, certainly lean into that.

I think the other important thing is to, to think through how you, you spread the conversation around so that everybody feels like there’s a reason for being there, both on your side and theirs, right? You don’t want someone on your side to feel like, well, what was the point? Why did I even have to waste my time coming here or showing up for the call, depending on what it is.

But I, you know, so part of that is, is you as the leader, trying to think through how do you make sure that you don’t consume all the oxygen? Because I think there’s a real tendency on a lot of owner’s parts to just jump in because they probably do have an answer to most of the questions that would come up in these sessions.

It’s gonna be rare in I think most cases that you couldn’t give that answer in that one hour session that you’ve probably got. But you have to, to find a way to make sure that you’re weaving your team in. And if you’ve brought in an expert in paid media or something like that, and a paid media question comes up, resist the urge to answer yourself Uhhuh and bring your paid expert in to talk about that. When you’re doing the overall presentation, spread it around and let them talk about their areas of expertise.

But do make sure they understand what their limits are, because we all have those team members, and maybe it’s us, maybe it’s one of our team members, who just likes to keep going.

Gini Dietrich: Uh-huh.

Chip Griffin: We, I mean, I see this repeatedly where you get someone on one of these calls and you know you’ve told ’em they’ve got three minutes, 30 minutes later, they’re still going uhhuh because they’re just so excited about whatever they’re talking about. You’ve gotta manage that bit of it so that you have the right spread of discussion. Yes, and information dissemination in those meetings.

Gini Dietrich: Yes. I know some of those, I’ll tell you that shutting up and letting your team answer questions is probably one of the hardest jobs you have. And they’re going to answer it in a way that you necessarily wouldn’t. Or sometimes the prospect will ask a question and they do like the runaround, and you can tell they don’t really know the answer and they’re waiting to be saved and you can’t really save them.

But they don’t really answer the question, and so you have to figure out a way to sort of wrap it in a bow. It is literally one of the hardest things that you could do. And for those of you on video, I have a, a notebook full of notes where I sit in those meetings and I just, every time I want to interject, I just, and I just write down so that I can provide feedback later.

But I’m telling you, it is so challenging, so challenging.

Chip Griffin: And it, I would absolutely agree with you. It is one of the most difficult things that I had to learn as I was running teams. But I, I eventually did get to that point where I, I felt like I was pretty good at being able to decide, is this so important that it’s worth me interjecting, correcting, whatever it may be. Because there are times, I mean, you should never just completely zip it and, and let the wrong impression be left or something like that. If you, if you know that it needs clean up on aisle six, just a little yeah, clean up on aisle six, please. But it, but if it’s just not exactly the way you would do it or it’s really, it’s inconsequential to the outcome of the meeting, let it go. Because the more you talk, it does two things. First of all. Well, it does three things really. It undermines the confidence of your team member. Yep. It undermines the confidence of the client in your team.

Gini Dietrich: Yep.

Chip Griffin: And it also puts you in a position where you are putting yourself as more necessary to the ongoing success of the relationship.

And none of those things are good.

Gini Dietrich: Not good at all. Yeah, it’s super, super challenging, but I think it’s one of the things that you have to work on. And so one of the things that we do after a meeting is we do a debrief. Right. And I will, I will say, this was great, this was great. This was great. I probably would’ve answered this a little bit differently, and here’s why.

You know, and I, I give them the immediate feedback so that they can, and eventually what happens is you start to run like a well-oiled machine, right? But you have to be able to do those things, and every time you hire someone new and bring them into that process, you kind of have to build that well-oiled machine again.

And so it’s a constant funnel of having to provide feedback and, you know, take really good notes. And of course AI can take notes for you, but you’ll see things that AI won’t, right? Yeah. That you just wanna jot down. And really providing that instant feedback so that you’re doing that debrief and you’re starting to build that really well oiled machines so that eventually there have been a couple of newbies, the business meetings where I’ve been like, why was I there?

I was not needed. Right. And that’s what you wanna get to.

Chip Griffin: Absolutely. And I, I think these, you know, having, having meetings afterwards are important. I think having meetings before, so don’t, don’t of course, yes. Throw everybody in.

Gini Dietrich: Yes, yes. Yes. Hundred percent.

Chip Griffin: There’s a happy balance there too. Yes, because I’ve, I’ve seen a lot of these prep sessions go off the rails because it turns into almost a skit and so, you know.

There is a point of too much preparation and so you certainly need to have conversations beforehand. Who’s gonna do what, what are we generally gonna say? Are there any, you know, third rails that we should try to avoid here in this conversation? You know, share that information in advance, particularly for team members who may not be used to those kinds of conversations so that they kind of know, you know, what those guardrails are. But try to avoid scripting it out so heavily that it does come across like you’re doing a school play.

Yeah. Because I have been part of those. Mm-hmm. I have seen, I’ve had those presentations made to me. They are mind numbing. It has to be, it has to feel like you’re having a human expert conversation. Yeah. And it should not feel like, you know, I’ve got three and a half minutes and I’ve timed it down exactly like that.

And if anything comes up, I’m gonna be, you know, lost because now you’ve knocked me off of my course and I’m gonna hand it right over to you. I mean, treat it like a human conversation. And I think that’s gonna be the way you get the best result.

Gini Dietrich: And I will end this by saying that is 100% accurate. We have several clients who are going through the agency of record interview process right now.

And because we’re the PESO integrators, we’re part of that process. And, first of all, every large agency, every single one does exactly what you just said. They come in, they’re well rehearsed. They’re well practiced. They each have their part, they’ve memorized it all, and they spend an hour going through a capability stack.

And it is mind numbing. Like you just, you’re just like, oh my gosh. They don’t ask questions. They don’t try to better understand what the opportunity is, none of that. And then when it gets to the q and a, they don’t have answers because they didn’t practice that part. And so one of the things I think that sets a small agency apart from a large one is being able to diagnose the problem, being able to ask the questions and really have a conversation.

Instead of doing a dog and pony show. It’s gonna be so much more appreciated because now you’re treating yourselves like their partner instead of their vendor who’s just coming in and being like, wah wah wah wah wah.

Chip Griffin: And, and it helps your team too because they’re, they’ll be in a better position to handle the questions if, if everybody is so prepared.

Yes. It tends to make the q and a session really difficult because

Gini Dietrich: it’s very difficult.

Chip Griffin: People feel so locked in to what they’ve pre-prepared that anything outside of that they may not have the confidence to handle. So, yeah. Obviously every team is different. Every individual is different.

You gotta figure out how to get the most from them, but in general, drive it towards actual human conversation. Not a school play.

Gini Dietrich: Yeah, it works every single time.

Chip Griffin: Indeed. So with that, hopefully we’ve given you some good tips for your next group presentation to a prospect, a client, or whomever. And, please do, tune into the next episode.

In the meantime, I’m Chip Griffin.

Gini Dietrich: I’m Gini Dietrich

Chip Griffin: and it depends.