Recently I had conversations with a few clients who feel they are being “used” and that is not what a partnership is all about. Either their prospective partners or existing partners keep asking them for “more”.
Ugh… I can relate. As an agency we get it all the time. We as a company share a ton of content for free. I spend over 8 hours a month in formal mentoring programs within the industry supporting our “next gen” in the sponsorship industry. Add onto that the un-official mentoring I support. This year during our 25th Anniversary we will give away a combined total of over $250,000 of support to our clients and the sponsorship sector. But still there are those people who keep asking for a favor here or a favour there. You help them out and they ask for more. It is just crazy. Then they say “oh this will look good on you when you bid on the business”. We support organizations with bits of pro bono here and there to help out… not to win the business. We are very capable of standing with any competitor and bidding on the business… we don’t need to do “freebie” work to get the “edge”.
What is worse than doing this to an agency is doing it to a property. Asking for tickets, getting those tickets then asking for more. Or asking for more and more details (lol… agencies are awful for this when they are representing a brand) so they can build a case for support to go up the ladder. They won’t work with the property to build that case for support (lol again… typically because they are asking several properties for this information) – they will take only what makes them look good not what will necessarily work!!
I just wish that people could have a little more consideration for their partners or partners to be. There was one case where we did not bid on some business because by the time the RFP came out that person had asked for so much help and support (versus us offering) that we did not want the business. When asked why we were not submitting, my reply in the email to that person and their superior was “based on the level of how ‘high maintenance’ you were before we even bid on the business told me you will be even worse once we are under contract and there is not enough money in the world for us to have to jump through that many hoops to serve you. We don’t want “partners” like you.”
Maybe that is why we have clients that say to us “we hired you because you and your team will tell us what we need to know not necessarily what we want to hear”. And we stand by that. But please, brands, agencies and properties, we all need to work together – let’s do our best to not ask for stuff you truly are not entitled to for free! If someone offers, that is cool but quit putting extra pressure on your partners to get free stuff.
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