DBA Members’ Forum | May Summary

• Getting your business to the stage of maturity when you can confidently decline requests for free creative work isn’t a quick fix – but there were plenty of valuable tips shared.
• These included developing your own client engagement policies, having a clear perspective on the issue to help to educate clients, collating evidence to prove your worth (the DBA Design Effectiveness Awards can help you to build solid case studies) and establishing core values that act as guiding principles. 
• Having a policy in place that pushes back on free pitches shows the creative team internally how valued they are – it reinforces the culture you’re trying to foster and underlines that you’re operating as a professional consultancy.
• Asking yourselves internally ‘When are we at our best’ can support you as a team to build your own relationship agreement from the outset. Include this in your credentials/capabilities deck. 
• Building strong, authentic relationships can help you bypass the pitch all together – the latest ‘What Clients Think’ Report can support with this. 
• There are trade offs: RFP’s still take time to compile. But if you’re not giving away creative work or ideas, you’re more likely to attract better-aligned clients.
• Clients might request free work if they aren’t seeing much differentiation between agencies – specialist firms tend not to have the free pitching problem. 
• Blair Enns’ Win Without Pitching is a great source of advice on this topic, and the 2 Bobs podcast comes highly recommended. 
• One member talked us through how they turned around a request for free creative with a meeting to understand the clients exact deliverables, which they answered with a proposal of the amount of time that would take to deliver and the associated costs. 
• Our very own Adam Fennelow, Membership Director at the DBA shared a clear illustration of why giving away free creative doesn’t make financial sense. Download the slides for the hard data behind the case.
• One important note is the amount of fee revenue vs your total income – large clients won’t want to make up more than 15-20% of your income, any more makes it risky for all involved – perhaps a question for the very beginning of the process.
• The DBA’s guides on this topic are all easy to find in the resources section of our website. From specific advice for agencies, information you can share with your clients and an example response to requests – we’re here to support you get paid for all the work you do. 

Coming up

Our next DBA Members’ Forum is on Monday 2 June at 4pm BST. Further details available soon.