All the elements are in place. You've identified the key accounts that you need to land or expand in order to get to your number. You've tallied up the number of deals that need to close per quarter and assigned them each a probability. And you've marshaled all the resources you'll need to get the job done; aligning with other departments and making certain the presentations and demos you'll need to sway the market are in production. Your sales strategy is perfect except for one thing.
It won't work.
Failure is predestined not because of anything you've done, but rather because of a flawed assumption at the core of your strategy: You've based it on the principle of inclusion. You started with who's budgeting for what, when the agency planning teams are going to receive those budgets and how you'll win your share of each. It's all about how you'll be included in the budgets and plans and buys. But the game is rigged. The playing field is not level. This is not a fair fight.
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In addition to the natural consolidation in the market - the rich platforms getting richer - the politics and economics of the agencies themselves come into play. Never forget that as they spend their clients' money, they are also running their own businesses...enterprises which are inextricably linked to one another through their parent companies. The choice of vendors, approaches to buying, pricing models and more are all impacted. And even if you don't completely agree with my premise, you still see distribution lists for RFPs getting smaller and smaller.
No, in a time of consolidation, a strategy of inclusion is no longer valid. You must embrace a strategy of disruption. From who you call on to how you approach them to your pricing and business models to your range of services, you must disrupt. Not on a handful of accounts, not once a year...every day. Pull your team's focus away from fully formed budgets and planning cycles and push them toward opportunity creation - identification of business and marketing problems and the relentless pursuit of senior customers who care about them.
Disruption means getting there earlier and fighting for senior customer access harder than any of your erstwhile competitors. It means operating left of budget - letting the customer decide which budgets she'll draw from or combine to pay for your smart solution. Disruption means getting out of the media spending business and signing up for the business value creation business.
It's not easy and it can be daunting. But it's the future of digital sales. And there is no long term alternative.
