Listen:
In my second episode I’m delighted to be chatting to Tina Fegent. Tina is a Marketing Procurement Consultant with 28 years experience.
The interesting thing about Tina is that she’s spent her career in marketing procurement for companies like Orange but has also worked agency side for a couple of agencies where she held the role of Commercial Director.
In this episode Tina shares her thoughts on why she thinks it’s beneficial for agencies to have a Commercial Director who speaks procurement’s language and can liaise directly with them and why Financial Directors are not always best placed for this role.
We also cover:
1. The most common complaint she hears from clients about agency account management
2. What great account management looks like for her
3. Why developing relationships with procurement is good for agency business
4. Ideas you can try right now for how to engage with procurement
5. What to avoid when pitching
6. What management consultancies are doing really well that agencies should be doing more of….
….and lots more!
You’ll want to grab a pen for this one because it’s full of golden nuggets to help you understand more about what procurement are looking for and why it’s important not to ignore them!
We recorded this in August 2020 and we had fans on and windows open so there’s a little background noise which I hope doesn’t detract from the value you’ll get from listening.
If you’d like more information about how you can retain and grow existing client relationships, you’ll find information about the latest training for agency account managers here.
If you’re an agency owner with three employees or more and haven’t already joined the AGENCYNOMICS free community where you’ll network with your peers and exchange relevant information relating to your role as agency leader, here’s the link to join.
If you enjoyed this episode, I’d love your support by leaving a review and also drop me a line to say hello at jenny@accountmanagementskills.com.
Transcript:
Welcome to Episode two of the Creative Agency Account Manager podcast. Today I’m thrilled to speak to Tina Fegent. Tina is a marketing procurement consultant with 28 years experience, and the great thing about Tina is she’s worked for agencies but also for clients, and she’s going to tell you a bit about that.There are loads of golden nuggets for you in this episode, and I really hope you enjoy it. She’s going to cover what she sees has changed in terms of procuring services with remote pitching, and some of the trends she’s seeing. We’re recording this in August 2020. She going to share her views on the latest IPA report about the future of account management. She’s going to talk to us about why you need to be developing relationships with procurement and some brilliant insider tips on what to do during a pitch.
And there were loads more nuggets of wisdom that she shares with us. So grab a pen and take some notes, because I think it’s really valuable stuff. A side note, there’s a bit of background noise in this episode, which I hope is not too distracting. We happened to record it on one of the hottest days of the year in August 2020 and we have Windows open and fans on, so I hope it doesn’t distract from the core of this episode, and you come away with some value.
Jenny: All right, well, I am thrilled to have as my second guest Tina Fegent, who is a marketing procurement consultant with over 25 years experience and I first met Tina probably a couple of years ago. We had a few coffees together didn’t we, but the moment that I remember the most was when we were walking into the IPA conference business conference together like being with a rock star. Everyone was like Tina, Tina, you’re so popular.
So she knows everyone in the industry, and a couple of things that stand out for me before I asked her to introduce herself is she has worked both agency and clients site, so she’s got really good understanding of you know how things work on both sides of the fence, which I think is really insightful for us. The second point is, she’s very active in the marketing procurement community, and she’s sort of got leadership quality. She’s always posting articles, she writes for Campaign magazine, so she really shares her voice and lends her voice. So she’s very inspiring. I’ve already listened to a couple of podcasts with her before. Super impressive and, yeah, I’m really excited about getting her views on things and just diving into the interview. So, Tina, welcome.
Tina: Thank you, Jenny.
Jenny: That’s all right. Perhaps you could spend a couple of minutes just introducing yourself – anything that I’ve missed.
Tina: I am honoured to be the second guest on your podcast. Thank you for the kind intro. So yes, I’ve got over 25 years on this but that makes me sound a bit old if I’m getting toward 30 years. So firstly in marketing procurement, when I worked for Cellnet, I don’t if your listeners will know but that is now Telefonica. I got there and, again, for the older generation, the user guides for mobile phones used to be really big and massive. I got there and the advertising agency was buying them. I was, like, from a procurement point of view, you know, can I look at going direct, and it was a 50% saving, so that’s why I go into market procurement. And at that time, hardly anybody else was looking at marketing procurement globally. I think the guys at Guinness were, and Natwest were, so yes, I have always been in procurement. I worked for SmithKlineBeecham, Ribena vending machines and Lucozade. Then I went to Orange. I had a fantastic time there, I still have my Orange number and I can’t bear to move away from the Orange/EE network. Then I went to with two advertising agencies as a commercial director, so quite an interesting, quite a shock to then work agency-side. I’ve never worked so hard in my life, but great insight from the point of view as commercial director and I started my own consultancy 14 years ago actually. Actually, to begin with, for agencies but to get involved with clients that could be with CMOs, pitches, could be reviewing the whole agency base, mentoring for procurement people and actually I do a bit of agency work as well, and obviously you and I have worked recently on a client. So looking at tenders, doing trade and stuff like that. I chair our trade body CIPS and I chair the marketing group there. So, yes, I’ve been doing it for 25 years now.
Jenny: It is so impressive. And I think what we forgot to mention, which I was hoping you would, but you were voted one of the most powerful people in advertising. You were the first marketed procurement person to be voted most powerful by Campaign magazine, right?
Tina: Yeah, really. I was really touched. 2017 to being included, and I’ve been in there every year since and I think last year I got ‘good egg’ rating, so really good from a procurement point of view that the trade press thinks that, actually, and you said, you know, I just spent quite a lot of my time talking about good procurement, you know?
Jenny: Well done, honestly. Before I get on to the questions, just something you said there that you were brought in by a couple of agencies to be commercial director. And just for those maybe agency leaders thinking about, is there a need for a commercial director that has a better understanding of procurement? So can you talk a bit about what your role actually was in that commercial director role?
Tina: Yeah, I think it’s a great question because actually you’ve got FDs? And, if you’ve got FDs, why do you need a commercial person? But I think in my two roles I just got a different slant and I think, you know, you are facing procurement more and more as an agency, and I think agency land can be very negative about procurement. They don’t want them there. So I think FDs, rightly or wrongly, haven’t always got the relevant experience to know how to work procurement and are often more internally focused. So I think my roles were both internal and external when I was agency side.
“Actually, I’ve been surprised how there is still quite a lack of procurement people, agency side, but actually, you need to have people that understand the interface with the client side, you know, it’s not just about doing fees.”
It’s about doing quarterly commercial reviews , it’s being practical on your spend and actually if you’ve got a client question that sort of stuff, to have someone on the agency side that is attuned to everything that’s come from it is a difficult mindset from Finance, so I do think agencies could look to invest in that support not necessarily in a full time role, but I think with an increased level of understanding of procurement, that’s what my role was, when I was agency side.
Jenny: It’s really interesting you say that because I’ve been thinking about this for a long, long time. Agency leaders who go into a traditional kind of negotiation with procurement. My understanding is procurement people typically are very well versed in negotiation skills. The training is a lot more comprehensive. Is that right?
Tina: Yes. I mean, you know, we are trained in procurement, we’ve all done negotiation training and agencies often haven’t. It could be little nuggets, like reading things upside down. You know, we might look at someone’s notepad and have they got, you know, their rates or ‘mustn’t go lower’, things like that. You know, having time out when you’re in negotiation, you see the agency person getting redder and redder. We can say ‘we’ll have time out’. We go away talk about the options. We would have prepared. We would have had two or three scenarios, terms like ‘MDO’, most desired offer, but it does cut the negotiation process down to like an hour. No, I totally agree, Jenny. I think it is an art.
Jenny: I think it sounds like it absolutely would be, because the investment that you put into some kind of advice from a procurement specialist would ultimately save you money in the long term, couldn’t it? These tiny little things, all of these things add up. Just talking about your procurement services at the moment and the types of consultancy pieces that you’ve been involved with lately. Obviously, we’re recording this mid August 2020. We’re in the middle of a pandemic, the Covid 19 situation, we’re starting to come out of lock down. Just curious to know what have you seen, if anything, of different trends that are happening recently that maybe as a result of the pandemic have caused I don’t know, companies to put a procurement process in place to kind of look at their supply list.
Tina: Yeah, I think what I’ve seen is that procurement has moved up the supply chain, as it were. So I was interviewing for another conference the head of procurement for M&S and he was saying he’s now dealing with C Suite on a more regular basis because, and I know listeners are going to hate it, but it was about cost savings. It had to be, you know, because the food part carried on and pushed the fashion side off. But you know, I’ve found colleagues in banks and FMCG, they’ve all been really, really busy because I think it has helped cement their role in that they are a key player. I think before we’ve always had a bit of a chip on our shoulder that you don’t often have someone at board level. If you’re involved in indirect procurement, these things are not always involved at manufacturing level. Spending direct, so if you work for Diageo, the oats to make the Guinness and the tin cans. Indirect will be marketing, HR, IT services, so obviously marketing is indirect procurement. We’re often sometimes not on the board, so I think what’s happened coming out of this from a procurement point of view is it’s elevated the role and actually a lot of my procurement clients say they’ve never been so busy. Because people are coming to them. There’s been a recapitalisation of suppliers again, the M&S chap was saying that he spent a long time prioritising their suppliers, Tier 1 and Tier 2. And then what happens is, at a level above that’s pandemic criticial, so for example pest control. It’s not a marketing example, but actually, he would never put them as Tier 1 or tier 2 supplier. Of course, now come the pandemic they are now critical. So it’s really interesting how they categorise their suppliers. So I think, you know, it’s really been elevated in stages. I think it’s maybe think about the strategic partnerships. Agencies have responded on the whole really well. There’s been a few that I’ve heard that haven’t done as great, you know, taking a month or two to ring up the clients. But on the whole, you know, agencies I think have really stepped in and again we used the word partnership it’s a word at procurement we hate and agencies love it, but I think we have seen a lot of partnerships really come to the forefront where those key strategic relationships with the clients that are continuing to invest, or maybe having to cut back but make money work a bit harder because there’s obviously not point going on outdoor and cinema when no one’s around, I think it really bears fruition because I think those were in the trenches together, will really help. And also I’ve been very busy during this period with pitches, doing them virtually online. I do think that at one stage you do need to have a face to face because marketing is a people business. Much as we’re all experts in Zoom etc and Teams now, I do think we do need that degree of face to face. But I think clients have been more available as they’re not travelling, they’re not spending an hour and half each way.
“The pitches that I’ve been involved in (during Covid), the clients have been much more open to having more time, we’ve had two or three meetings where usually you’d have perhaps one, trying to get everyone involved. It’s easy to get a guy from New York to dial in.”
I think, it’s been positive, on the negative side unfortunately there’s redundancies and I’ve got CMO clients that are now having to look around. It’s mid August, the furlough scheme has started to come to an end. So that’s sad to see, on agency side. But we’ll come out of it whenever and I think relationships will be stronger and deeper and we will have different ways of working? However they evolve, it will be great. You just got to try and look at the positives and work together on this sort of thing.
Jenny: You mentioned the agencies have been responding really well in terms of partnering with their clients. Can you give us a couple of examples? Have they been sort of more flexible with payment terms or, I don’t know, just stepping up to offer more advice or more direction, what kinds of things that they’ve been doing differently?
Tina: Yeah, I think it’s all of that. It’s like, ‘we were going to spend £5 million on media but it might be 5, it might be two and half, it might be one’ . So let’s go through some more modelling on the media side. I’ve seen agency come back and say ‘actually we’ve look at this technology and we could do this online experience’. Or I talked to a retail client last week that actually have done an experience with their media cost two weeks ago. So, yeah, I think they’ve been really practical, I think they been looking at what other clients have been doing. Obviously each client has been in their own bubble. But, you know, we’re looking at what’s a Bank doing FMCG, versus Manufacture? I think they’ve been really helpful in terms of saying ‘look, you know, this is what other clients are doing’, and then having discussions about what happens to the staff, because staff did need to be furloughed, so working with clients on what works best.
“Some clients obviously had their spend cut, some have carried on spending, some have reduced, but they will come back. They will remember the agencies that work with them. It’s always been about being proactive, you know, a good agency, a good account person is someone who is proactive, and I think on the whole its been really good to during this pandemic, people have stepped up.”
Jenny: That’s excellent. You mentioned before that one of the key skills for an account manager off the relationship is proactivity. Just sort of expanding on that, given your number of years in the business, what other skills do you think are key for a really good account manager?
Tina: Being proactive, I think being able to hold senior level discussions. I think that’s the big crux of the IPA report. But being able to deal with senior people. I think, being financially aware, I think that is an area that could be improved in terms of having those ‘why are we all doing this?’ (conversations). Magic logic, which is now 15 years ago, said, it’s about getting profitable ideas that work for both sides. Why is the client investing the money in that PR, that digital, that event? Because they need to drive sales. agrees it. An account person who’s not even focussed that well, how can they deliver for the client? So I think it’s being able to have the dialogue with senior people on the client side, being financially aware and I think also management, because I think their role is very much about co-ordinating agency’s resource because they take the brief, go out and work with the creative, production, planners etc to deliver what is right for that client.
“But being able to manage, to be to coordinate and effect change, deliver for that client is really key, and to have that client top of mind. It’s obviously being able to deliver for the agency as well, you can’t deliver for the client at 0% profit because you’re not delivering for the agency then. It’s making sure you can get the skills of the agency resources to deliver to match the client’s brief on time and in line with the budget as well. And that is a skill.”
It does take a skill to do that, and I think account managers, the right ones, are really, really good. At the end of the day the key one is being focussed on the client’s business. That’s what is top of their mind.
“To me, what is the difference between a senior account manager and a junior account director? There’s absolutely no difference. You do not need twelve roles in account management. So I think they have a great role to play but I think there needs to be less of them. I think they need to be more senior and I think they need to be more focussed.”
“Be it face to face, be it online, in the pitch process, the account manager is the one in charge. The best examples of the ones I deal with is someone who is the conductor of the orchestra.”
“Please don’t leave the procurement section to the last budget slide. Even engage them beforehand, do not leave it to the pitch. Even if they are not in the briefing process, engage with procurement – get it over and done with!”
“Procurement often get involved in the pitch but then obviously agencies don’t often see them. So my biggest tip for agencies, let them see you look them on LinkedIn”
“I do think agencies have reacted (to the advent of consultancies), agencies have sharpened their pencil a bit in terms of senior people. In terms of strategic insight, planning. I think in a way it’s helped, it has made many agencies step up to the table a bit more.”
“Go and spend time with the client, sit in those boardroom meetings and that’s exactly what account management’s role is, to translate that back to their organisation. “
“For me, it’s commerciality, invest in understanding a client’s business and how to work with more senior people and be credible.”