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Testimonials
"TimeFox has been great! I really love it. It scares me to think how long I haven't been tracking time on projects in a concise, organized way. When I review the reports with TimeFox ... it's a real eye opener!"
Sharon Simoncini
ZigZag Creative
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"I love TimeFox! It's making a difference for me because I have a better handle on what it actually takes to accomplish my tasks. It's helped me refine pricing on new business, and has certainly helped me know when a project is going over budget."
Ross Hogin
Ross Hogin Design
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"We're loving TimeFox and have just completed our first full year using it. The owners ran several reports and determined which clients aren't as profitable as they should be for us to continue working with them. They also determined that we were spending too much time on internal tasks that are not billable. TimeFox is definitely making a big difference in the way we run our ad agency!"
Marla Rush
ADSmith Communications
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FunctionFox is committed to helping smaller creative companies improve their business. TimeFox, our web-based time and project-tracking tool, is designed to help smaller advertising, design, marketing and PR firms manage their business, and do more with their valuable time.
Would you like to win more work without giving your ideas away for nothing? This month, business development consultant Blair Enns tells you how to 'win without pitching' in our feature article.
Check out our free 30 minute webinar
on March 27th for more about this revolutionary approach.
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Feature Article: Twelve Proclamations of a Win Without Pitching Agency
FunctionFox Webinar Series: How to Win Without Pitching
FunctionFox Product Announcement: Announcing the Release of TimeFox Premier
Creative Resources
Advertising and Design News
Contact FunctionFox
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A Call to Arms: Twelve Proclamations of a Win Without Pitching Agency
by Blair Enns
The forces of the creative industry are aligned against the artist. These forces pressure him to give his work away for free as a means of proving his worthiness of the assignment. Clients demand it. Industry associations deride it but offer alternatives that are just as costly and commoditizing. Agencies resign themselves to it. Search consultants, business development consultants and out-sourced business development services firms all earn their living by perpetuating it. And business development conferences put the worst offenders from all sides on stage and have them preach about how to get better at it.
It is a mistake to look to the industry to deal with this issue. Speculative creative – free pitching – will only be beaten one agency at a time, with little help and much loud opposition from the creative industry itself. This battle is but a collection of individual struggles, the single artist or creative services firm against the many allied forces of the status quo.
But while collectively the battle may seem lost, some individual firms are fighting and winning. What follows are twelve proclamations of a Win Without Pitching agency – a manifesto for firms that have made the difficult business decisions and transformed themselves and the way they go about getting new business. These firms have resisted the industry-wide pressure to tow the free-pitching line; they have gone from order-takers to expert advisors and then forged a more satisfying and lucrative way of getting and doing business.
The Twelve Proclamations
1. We will specialize. We will acknowledge that it is the availability of substitutes - the legitimate alternatives to the offerings of our firm - that robs us of power and allows the client to ask us for, and often compels us to give away for free, our most valuable product. If we are not seen as more specialized, more creative or otherwise more expert than our competition then we are viewed as one in a sea of many and we have little power in our relationships with our clients and clients-to-be.
2. We will replace presentations with conversations. We will break free of our addiction to the Big Reveal and the adrenaline rush that comes from putting ourselves in the win-or-lose situation of the presentation. When we pitch we are in part satisfying our craving for this adrenaline and we understand that until we break ourselves of this addiction we will never be free of the Pitch. 'Presentation,' like 'pitch,' is a word that we will leave behind as we seek conversations and collaboration in their place.
3. We will do with words what we used to do with paper. We will understand that proposals are the words that come out of our mouths and that written documentation of such proposals are contracts-items that need be created only once an agreement has been reached. We will examine all the reasons we ask, and are asked, to write unpaid proposals and we will never again ask documents to propose for us what we ourselves should propose.
4. We will seek to better understand the client. We will search for
more...
This article has been reprinted with permission from Blair Enns. Enns is the founder of the Win Without Pitching movement and an advisor to marketing communication agencies. For more information, please visit
winwithoutpitching.com
For more articles and resources, see
www.functionfox.com/articles/.
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Enmark Performance Development presents:
How to Win Without Pitching
Thursday March 27, 2008
4PM Eastern | 1 PM Pacific
Business development consultant and Win Without Pitching founder Blair Enns examines the roots of the free pitching problem (why clients ask creative services firms to part with their thinking for free, and why agencies agree to it) and all its implications. He then lays out a three-step path to help small firms compete with the big boys, without pitching free ideas.
This 30 minute webinar will be followed by 15 minutes of Q+A.
March 2008
for this free webinar.
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Announcing the Release of TimeFox Premier
As the leading provider of time and project management software for creative professionals, the team at FunctionFox is excited to announce the release of our latest product, TimeFox Premier.
Building on the success of our industry leading time and project management software TimeFox, we've introduced significant new task assignment, scheduling, calendaring and timeline functionality with the release of TimeFox Premier.
FunctionFox Founder and CEO Mary-Lynn Bellamy-Willms explains, "Our goal with TimeFox Premier has been to develop useful project management and scheduling tools relevant to managing creative projects. The creative service industry has seen a shift over the last several years towards smaller shops, virtual firms, remote offices and increased use of freelance talent. With this has come an increased need for online tools for managing and reporting on projects. TimeFox Premier addresses this need."
Read More >>
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Logo Savvy
We are proud to announce that one of our Fox friends has recently published a very cool book on international naming and brand identity design entitled "Logo Savvy: Top Brand Design Firms Share their Naming and Identity Strategies".
Check it out at
Amazon.com
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Managing Creatives and Creativity
Being an Effective and Confident Creative Director
May 1-2, in Nashville, TN
With one-third of the content new this year, this two-day ReCourses seminar (May 1-2, in Nashville, TN) was developed especially for creative directors in design and advertising, and it covers everything about being both an effective and satisfied creative director.
Anyone who manages the creative process will find it to be a must attend seminar, whether that person is a principal, creative director, design director, art director, or just someone soon to be promoted to a role that includes managing people or the creative process.
You'll learn what your role should be, whether you are a good fit for it, how to perform that role well, how to adjust for your own strengths/weaknesses as you deal with creatives, how to find and screen good creatives, and how to guide the careers of those in your care.
Best of all, sign up for a
TimeFox demo
by March 31, 2008 with offer code CDC05 and you'll be entered for a chance to win a free registration to this conference!
More information at
http://www.recourses.com/seminars.
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For a TimeFox Demo, go to:
www.functionfox.com/demo
To arrange a guided tour of TimeFox, please send your request to:
info@functionfox.com
To order a TimeFox subscription, go to:
www.functionfox.com/purchase
If you would like your company to be featured in a TimeFox
newsletter, on our website or in our promotional package,
please send your request to:
info@functionfox.com
You can opt out of the About Time Newsletter at:
www.functionfox.com/newsletter/no_thanks.asp
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