higher score than your competitors, you win the account. Some agencies now spend as much as $500,000 on new business presentations. They figure that if they win and keep the account for 20 years, they may come out ahead. Agencies which don’t have the money to make such bets are at a disadvantage. This long and expensive process does not necessarily result in the selection of the best agency. The agency which would create the best advertising over a period of years may not have the luck to come up with the best campaign in the few weeks allotted to the contest. In the next chapter I will suggest a better way to go about choosing an agency. The meeting At the meeting when you make your presentation, don’t sit the client’s team on one side of the table and your team opposite, like adversaries. Mix everybody up. Rehearse before the meeting, but never speak from a prepared text; it locks you into a position which may become irrelevant during the meeting. Above all, listen. The more you get the prospective client to talk, the easier it will be to decide whether you really want his account. A former head of Magnavox treated me to a two-hour lecture on advertising, about which he knew nothing. I gave him a cup of tea and showed him out. Tell your prospective client what your weak points are, before he notices them. This will make you more credible when you boast about your strong points. Don’t get bogged down in case histories or research numbers. They put prospects to sleep. No manufacturer ever hired an agency because it increased market-share for somebody else. The day after a new business presentation, send the prospect a three- page letter summarizing the reasons why he should pick your agency. This will help him make the right decision. If you are too feeble to get accounts under your own steam, you can buy them – by buying agencies. But this practice has a way of backfiring. Adolph Toigo used it to quintuple the billings of Lennen & Newell, but he was unable to weld his acquisitions into a cohesive body. The result