BAM: 3 Letters to Evaluate Potential Client Relationships

Want to know how we vet every new business opportunity? If you’re seeking a compatible marketing agency to partner with, or you’re an agency owner, you should read this. We’re revealing a way we came up with to evaluate each and every new opportunity that comes our way.

We’ve been using it for almost five years now. It’s field-tested and has proven to be very effective. We’re happy to share this because we think it could benefit everyone – clients, agencies, and all the people in the relationship.

What is a “BAM” client? 

Our team is always talking about the kind of work we really want to be doing. I imagine everyone in our industry does this. How do we want to be challenged? What kinds of work will give our creative team something they can get excited about? What are our priorities?

One afternoon we were having a conversation about what really matters when it comes to new projects and clients. I got an idea. I jotted down some quick notes as I thought about a way to distill everything down to something we could use rapidly and remember easily.

Then it came to me… BAM! B.A.M. stands for three words that have become our way to evaluate new business opportunities. 

Budget. Aligned. Meaningful. ‘BAM’ for short.

B.A.M. stands for Budget, Aligned, and Meaningful. This is how we use “BAM” to evaluate and identify our ideal prospective clients, and to identify projects that we choose to decline or to not pursue. 

For this to become a truly useful evaluation tool, we needed to establish and share a common understanding of the meaning of each of these three words, the three components of BAM. If you try it out you’ll need to do this with your team to get the best results.

Is there a Budget?

On the surface, Budget seems pretty obvious – Is the potential client prepared to invest a realistic budget to work with us to accomplish their desired goals? And do they have the ability to pay for the work? 

We discuss the budget early in our conversations with a prospective client. This helps to avoid putting in a ton of work only to discover that they can’t or won’t invest the necessary dollars to the work. I use my instincts on this one. If the prospect seems serious and they have previous experience working with professional marketing firms, I don’t necessarily “pre-qualify” them. If they request a proposal/estimate for services, the first time they see a budget number is when we submit a written estimate. This has been a successful approach for us. We rarely have to do a lot of advance work before receiving either approval or decline of an estimate.

When we consider the “B”, we mean a budget appropriate for the amount of work required, the type of client (small business, large corporation, not-for-profit org), and the expertise we are bringing to the engagement. If they require something that’s exactly what we do, and have done before for similar clients, we know we bring additional value to their project. We offer experience and efficiencies, so we should be compensated for doing so. 

We learn from every client engagement, but some work can be more routine than others. If the work is something we actively want to gain more experience in, and potentially add to our portfolio to attract future clients in the same area, we may be prepared to work with a tighter budget.

As you can see, Budget needs to be in balance with a number of factors, and yours may differ from ours.

Are we Aligned?

My favourite definition of the word ‘Aligned’ is:  “to join with others in a cause”. We ask ourselves, “Are we aligned with this prospective client?” What we mean is: Do we share common values, causes, and vision? Do we agree with their business model, their industry, and their approach to customer service? Do we share common values? 

Ideally, we need to be aligned with both the company or organization and with the people we will be working with. The goal is for this to be a rewarding experience for us and for the client. Being aligned helps to ensure this happens.

What is Meaningful?

Our team has ongoing discussions about what we mean by “meaningful”. We have agreed that in this case, we mean “Is this potentially meaningful for us, our team and our agency?” 

The work could be meaningful because it’s challenging, it expands our skillset, or could enhance our portfolio, attracting the kind of work we want to do more of. Could this be a prestigious engagement with the potential to be submitted for awards and recognitions? Will it increase our profile and visibility? Is this a sector we want to do more work in?

As you can see, your “meaningful” may have different ingredients than ours. But I think that is the beauty of BAM. It’s a structure for evaluating opportunities that provides important room for personalization. Getting the best results using BAM requires taking the time to think deeply about what matters to you, and to your business. 

I think the BAM approach can also be used by individuals who are making career path decisions and educational choices. When considering a post-secondary degree, an apprenticeship program or the next job opportunity, using BAM could provide helpful insights. And I can see it working for more than marketing agencies. If you’re in any kind of creative industry, and if who you work with really matters to you, you might just benefit from using the BAM approach.

Do you have a unique way of evaluating your opportunities? Let me know! I would be very interested in hearing from anyone that test-drives the BAM method.

~Mark