Built to Sell

Alex Stapleton wheeled the Range Rover into the parking lot of MNY Bank. He grabbed his portfolio from the backseat and sprinted to the doors. A quick check of his watch made it official: 9:06 a.m. He was late—again.

As a regular visitor, Alex’s name was on the list at reception, and the security guard waved him in. He found an open elevator and hit the button for the eighteenth floor. He took his first full breath of air since leaving his office.

As soon as the doors opened, Alex sprinted down the hallway and straight into the boardroom where he always conducted meetings at MNY Bank. His client, John Stevens, was waiting for him, looking testy. “Sorry I’m late, John. Traffic was crazy for a Friday and—”

John had worked at the bank for seven years. He’d landed a job as an account manager straight out of business school and spent a few years lending money to small businesses before getting a job in marketing at the bank’s head office. Pudgy and prematurely bald, he seemed angry at life, and even though he had no formal training in marketing, he insisted on directing every detail of Alex’s work.

Alex unzipped his portfolio, wiped his brow, and settled in for the long haul. He unveiled the first design and John didn’t flinch, waving Alex off the moment he began to explain the designer’s vision for the piece.

After Alex presented all eight concepts—several weeks’ work condensed to less than thirty minutes—John took his time before selecting a design and then gave his instructions. He wanted another illustration, the font changed, and the red to be more orange-red instead of the pink-red selected by Alex’s designer. John droned on with more feedback, and Alex felt as if he were back in elementary school. Despite being woefully unqualified, John seemed to relish his new role as art critic. Alex left the meeting room promising John another round of mock-ups by Monday morning. He pulled out of the parking lot feeling broken.

If John Stevens had been an atypical client, Alex could have lived with it. Unfortunately, John represented the bulk of Alex’s clients: marketing managers with crappy jobs who seemed to like pushing around their marketing agency.

Alex had started the Stapleton Agency eight years before, after moving up the ladder at a multinational marketing agency. Once he’d gotten as much out of that job as he felt he could, he decided he needed a new challenge and ventured out on his own. He started out designing logos and brochures for small businesses and gradually moved up to becoming an approved vendor for MNY Bank. Having approved vendor status meant that the bank paid their bills and kept the Stapleton Agency on a short list of alternative suppliers to their agency of record. When the bank’s main marketing agency rejected smaller jobs, the bank summoned the Stapleton Agency.

When Alex started the agency, he dreamed of working on important campaigns with large budgets. He imagined directing models and actors between booze-soaked lunches with chief marketing officers. He wanted to be part of the scene. Instead, he was trying to figure out how to explain to his designer that she would need to work through the weekend because the client—a middle manager who had never taken a design course, doing a job he was completely unqualified for—insisted on what amounted to a design overhaul.

The Stapleton Agency was located in a funky part of the city just west of downtown. Alex paid $4,000 a month for more space than he needed with the hope that it would impress clients. The office had all of the requisite touches befitting a creative shop: exposed brick walls, glass-encased boardroom, twelve-foot-long boardroom table, and a permanently mounted overhead projector. Sadly, it rarely served its purpose—MNY Bank insisted that Alex come to them.

Upon returning to the office, Alex tried to slip into his office without his senior designer, Sarah Buckner, noticing, but she heard his keys jangle. She looked up from her computer.

With that, Alex went into his office and shut the door. He needed caffeine. The day’s mail was on his desk and he quickly scanned it for the familiar blue-and-gold logo of MNY Bank. He was expecting a check.

Alex collected his thoughts and prioritized the next few hours. He needed to get Sarah working on the MNY Bank changes, go across town for lunch, get back to write a proposal, and find time to call his banker.

Sarah rolled her eyes as Alex delivered the news. He knew how hard Sarah had worked on this project—and how much she’d hated doing it—so he tried to present John’s instructions in a way that wouldn’t squash her motivation. She accepted her sentence, donned her sound-canceling earphones to shut out the sorry world she found herself in, and set out to find the proper shade of orange-red that would appease Lord Stevens.

Alex kicked himself for not standing up to John. He felt weak, but the reality was the Stapleton Agency could not afford to lose MNY Bank as a client. Last month, the bank amounted to $48,000 of the Stapleton Agency’s $120,000 in total billings. Alex, Sarah, and the other six employees of the Stapleton Agency needed MNY Bank.

Traffic was heavy on the way across town and Alex was late for his second meeting of the day. Sandy Garmalo sat at the table sipping San Pellegrino. She ran the marketing department for a law firm and had been Alex’s client for five years. The law firm never generated huge billings for the Stapleton Agency, but they were steady, which meant Alex had to spring for lunch once a quarter. For Sandy, Alex’s lunches were a nice escape from the overbearing lawyers she served.

Sandy was a divorced fifty-something woman, ten years older than Alex. She enjoyed flirting with him, and Alex obliged, knowing that a little harmless amusement would keep the projects flowing.

Appetizers were picked at. More wine arrived. As Sandy rambled on about the lawyers she worked for, Alex became increasingly disinterested. Eventually, the waiter cleared the plates and dessert was offered and refused. Sandy requested a coffee. Resigning himself to another ten minutes of meaningless banter, he ordered an espresso.

The bill came and Alex produced his credit card. One of the perks of owning the Stapleton Agency was the ability to charge $8,000 worth of expenses per month on his card, which generated a nice stash of travel points that he promised himself he’d use this year to take his wife and two kids on a vacation. Alex sat nervously as the waiter went away, and he asked the credit gods for a little bit of understanding. He’d been late paying off his balance last month and was cut off until his account was back in good standing. His bill was due again sometime this week and he hoped the date had not passed.

The waiter returned. The card had snuck under the watchful eyes of the bank’s credit department. Alex smiled, retrieved the card, signed the receipt, and got on with the business of extracting himself from lunch. Sandy made some vague overtures about upcoming projects she would need the Stapleton Agency’s help with. Alex feigned interest and eventually made his escape.

After grabbing yet another coffee en route, Alex returned to the office to work on the proposal he’d promised to tackle that afternoon. The request for proposal had come in from Urban Sports Warehouse (USW), a local sporting goods retailer. They had grown tired of their agency and were looking for a new marketing firm to handle all of their work, which included newspaper ads, local radio spots, store banners, and an e-commerce-enabled Web site.

Alex knew that his team could handle the print ads and instore signage. He had a friend at a production house who could help with the radio work. Most of the Web site work would be outsourced, but USW didn’t need to know that.

After pasting the requisite drivel about the history of his agency, its creative credentials and awards, Alex began to estimate his fees. There would be hard costs for studio time, proofs, and freelance Web designers. Then he tried to estimate the staff’s time. He billed his designers at $200 per hour and his own time at $300 per hour. These were largely arbitrary rates established over time by researching how much competitors charged.

Alex hated the process of estimating hours. He knew it was an inexact science and that his actual hours invested would have no resemblance to what he was estimating. Creating marketing material was such an iterative process that there was no way to estimate his time accurately.

After four hours of writing and doing some fuzzy math, the proposal was done. It was 6:30 p.m. and he had missed the FedEx guy for the day, so he dropped the proposal off at the depot on the way home. He handed it to the clerk and hoped that USW would be the client that would finally make him less reliant on MNY Bank and the likes of John Stevens.

Alex decided it was safe to call Mary Pradham’s office, given the late hour and knowing that she usually left early to get home to her kids. Mary was his account manager at MNY Bank, which had required him to move his business banking there after he made it onto the bank’s approved vendor list. Alex was bumping up against his $150,000 line of credit, and by steering clear of a live conversation with Mary, he could avoid another one of her cash flow lectures. Ironically, he’d been expecting a check from Mary’s employer today, but it hadn’t arrived.

Alex left Mary a voice mail explaining that he’d pay down his line of credit as soon as he received the anticipated check. He hoped that would buy him a few days. The Stapleton Agency provided him with a decent income and a great vehicle for tax writeoffs. He ran the Range Rover through the business and was sure to keep the bill whenever he ate out with friends. He had been able to give himself a bonus of $150,000 last year on top of his $100,000 annual salary. Not bad, but the cash flow was lumpy, and this wasn’t his first after-hours call to Mary.

Alex spent a good deal of his Saturday in the office under the guise of catching up on paperwork—which did need to be done. But his main reason for sending his wife and kids shopping without him while he returned to the office was so he could be on hand to supervise Sarah’s work. She was his best designer, but she hadn’t heard John Stevens’s criticisms firsthand. He had. By the time the two of them left that afternoon, he felt Sarah had everything under control and would be able to finish up rather quickly on Sunday.

On Monday morning, Alex met for breakfast with an old client who owned a local car dealership, so it was after 10:00 a.m. by the time he got to his office. As soon as he arrived, he knew it was going to be a bad day. Taped to his door was a note from Sarah:

Sunday, 4:00 p.m.

Alex:
We need to talk.

Sarah

This was not going to be good. He’d hired Sarah away from a rival agency last year. He needed her for all of the MNY Bank work. Resigned, he walked over to her desk.

“Look, Alex, I like you and the rest of the team here, but I’m going back to my old job at Curve Designs. I’ll wrap up the brochure project for MNY, but when that’s done, I’m out.”

Alex felt rejected. He knew that there was nothing he could say or do. Working the weekend to revise the MNY Bank brochure to accommodate a client who knew nothing about design had finally pushed Sarah over the edge.

The meeting ended with Alex making some weak attempts to thank her for her service. Both knew the damage was done, and neither wanted to be where they were at that moment. Sarah went back to her earphones and computer. Alex sat back in his chair and considered the rest of his team.

Leveling with himself, Alex knew that he had assembled a mediocre staff. Sarah was the best of the lot. He had two other designers who were generalists. They could create decent brochures, functional Web sites, and acceptable print ads. Neither of them excelled at any one discipline. His account directors were equally average. Before joining the Stapleton Agency, Dean Richardson had been an account supervisor at a large local agency. Having been passed over twice for promotion to account director, he had been easy prey for Alex to recruit with an offer of becoming an account director at the Stapleton Agency. Alex knew titles were a currency he could afford to be liberal with.

Rhina Sullivan was the other account director at the Stapleton Agency. She was efficient and detail-oriented. However, as account director, she was also responsible for client strategy, which was over her head.

Despite Dean and Rhina (or perhaps because of them), all of the Stapleton Agency’s clients wanted to deal with the boss. Alex’s name was on the door, so he needed to attend virtually all client meetings. Losing Sarah meant his other designers would need to work overtime. He’d need to rely on Dean and Rhina to handle more clients while he spent time recruiting a new designer. His team, average to begin with, would be stretched to their limits.

When he started his agency, Alex had dreamt of attracting the best talent in the city, paying them well, building a magical work environment, and eventually selling out to a multinational agency holding company. In reality, he had second-rate generalists working at the beck and call of ignorant clients. It wasn’t supposed to be like this.