Everybody has some kind of agenda.  Some more blatantly obvious than others, right?

You’ve got the CFO and/or Procurement who are out to save a buck.

You’ve got the internal marketing/agency team who feel a bit threatened by this whole “need some new thinking” agency search.

And of course the CMO, whose job is always on the line, looking for an agency that isn’t too risky, but definitely capable of carrying the ball forward to a new and better place for the brand.

And you’re the Director of Marketing who has been tasked with managing the search and finding a new firm…and what you care most about is making sure it all moves along swimmingly!

All coming at it from different points of view and different perspectives.

So how do you wrangle this herd of cats to make sure they’re all aligned going into an agency search.

Job #1:  Define your scope.

Get the team together (if you can) and have them talk about what they want in a new agency, what kind of business and marketing challenges they need the new agency to be able to address, and gain consensus on the type and level of expertise everyone is looking for in a new firm.

Job #2:  Get aligned on your timing.

Different stakeholders are going to have different timing needs.  The CMO is going to want to rid themselves of the legacy agency as quickly as they can and might be willing to cut corners to do it, but you need to help them be realistic, and help them understand the consequences of moving too quickly.  And just the opposite – moving too slowly – can be demoralizing not only to the agencies involve, but your peers as well.  You need to strike while the iron’s hot and don’t want to lose team member engagement, but that will do nothing but harm the process.

Job #3: Establish review criteria.

Don’t go into the search unless you all are aligned on how you’re going to evaluate each firm.  Create some kind of a scoring device that looks at the different components you built up in the Scope of Search document and creates level of importance so you’re all prioritizing the same things, the same way.

Job #4: Debrief quickly.

Don’t let a final pitch presentation end, without a good hearty conversation about the firm you just met with. You break from the meeting without this conversation and it’s going to be hard to remember all the salient points you wanted to share with the team.

So, never easy coordinating a large group of team members when you’re involved in an agency search, but it is possible.  We just finished up a search for a mobility firm and they had about 8 key constituents involved in the review.  My initial reaction was “oh my…how is this going to work”.  But they followed our process and get themselves aligned and at the end of the day (believe it or not) all 8 of them were 100% aligned behind the agency they wanted to bring on to their business.  Everyone’s happy, in step with each other, and ready to engage with a brand new and better marketing firm!

Hats off to them for doing it right!

If you’re thinking about looking for some fresh perspective as you roll into 2024, happy to talk about how to work with your internal team in achieving a very similar end.  Drop me a line and happy to help!