Thank you:
Thank you to our panel: Andrew Reeves, Fractional CFO who leads the Commercial Group,Barry Byrne, Fractional Chief Growth Officer at Umbrella, Sophie Connor, MD at Kingdom Creative and Paul Winterflood, Partner at Moore Kingston Smith for such an open and insightful discussion.
A clear theme from the session was that agencies shouldn’t treat procurement as something that only appears at the end of a pitch or negotiation. Procurement is increasingly influential in agency selection, and understanding its objectives and building those relationships early can give agencies a genuine competitive advantage.
Some of the key points from the discussion included:
- Understand procurement before you pitch. Look at your key clients and prospects, understand where procurement sits, how influential it is and what it is trying to achieve.
- Speak procurement’s language as well as marketing’s. Barry summed this up brilliantly: “Marketing needs to want to buy you. Procurement needs to be able to defend buying you.”
- Move the conversation beyond price. Look for opportunities to elevate discussions from rates and savings towards effectiveness, efficiencies, ROI and the wider commercial value your agency can deliver.
- Build procurement intelligence into your agency. You don’t necessarily need a procurement department, but agencies do need the knowledge and mindset to understand how procurement works and a plan for engaging with it.
Panellist Key Takeaways:
Barry Byrne: “The biggest opportunity for procurement isn’t another round of savings. It’s unlocking the commercial value already hiding in the spend. When procurement, marketing and growth come together, the conversation shifts from ‘what can we save?’ to ‘what can we make this investment deliver?’”
Andrew Reeves “Agencies need a procurement narrative, different to what is used for marketing. It should be baked in added value and built on procurement relationships. Agencies need to understand where each of their clients sit on the procurement spectrum, to best understand how added value can be created and presented for best effect. Agencies procurement proposition needs to sit clearly alongside its marketing proposition and treated the same in terms of its strategic importance.”
Paul Winterflood “The most successful agencies have a strategic value proposition that resonates strongly with their target market. By clearly articulating and evidencing the outcomes they deliver, they can shift procurement discussions from “How much does it cost?” to “What value does it create?””
Sophie Connor: “Build both the marketing and procurement relationships with your key clients. You want to ensure you’re more than just a name on a piece of paper by the time you get into the pitch procurement process.”
This was a point Sophie brought to life during the discussion, sharing how developing a direct relationship with procurement had enabled a much more constructive conversation about making the process work better for both the client and the agencies involved.
Thanks again to everyone who joined and contributed. We hope you came away with some practical ideas for building stronger procurement relationships, protecting agency value and ultimately improving your chances of winning and growing client business.
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