You have set your objectives and selected a consultancy but how can you make sure your working relationship flourishes? We point the way

It might seem simplistic but the key to a good working relationship between client and consultancy is to agree as much as possible, as early on as possible. Draw up a contract to reflect all the elements agreed by both parties and get it checked by both the company's and consultancy's lawyers. Clear agreement at the outset can save both parties time and money.

Areas to be decided on at the outset include individual responsibilities, sound reporting mechanisms and mutual expectations for the programme. In addition, the frequency of meetings, the recording of their content and follow-up, budget and billing procedures, performance evaluation and confidentiality, should also all be agreed at the start.

Working together
The key points of contact must be identified and regular contact meetings to review all progress should be scheduled into diaries plus quarterly or six-monthly reviews agreed.

Contact reports are important documents, as they record the decisions made, actions assigned and deadlines agreed. Successful implementation of the programme is dependent on all members of the team completing their actions on time and you, as the client, are a key member of this team. They are also useful documents to refer to if disagreement occurs as to what was said/agreed/commissioned by whom.

Status reports are summaries of account-related events and actions to date and inform you of how the account is progressing and what the next key steps will be. They should be provided on a regular, usually quarterly or six monthly basis, allied to the review meetings to allow discussion and re-focusing of tactics and objectives if required.

Budget and billing
Lack of clarity about budget at the start of the programme can undermine the trusting relationship between client and consultancy. It is crucially important for both sides to understand how much each activity will cost, what the mark-up will be (if any) and identify areas of potential under-budgeting where additional budget or reallocation of funding may be required at a later date.

The use of invoicing schedules setting out fees and expenses can provide financial structure and help manage expectations. A major worry to many agencies are the delays in invoice payment. Most clients require a purchase order (PO) number before an invoice can be raised (which often takes many weeks, or months) and even after they have the PO and raise the invoice, agencies can often wait for more than 60 days for payment.

Clients who pay on time are held in high regard by agencies and always promote the best endeavours of the account team.

Confidentiality
Your consultancy will often have to make informed decisions on your behalf. It is, therefore, vital that you share all-important product-shaping information with them. An example of the importance of this is where the consultancy may be organising a symposium for you and is at the stage where they are drafting a presentation on behalf of one of your designated speakers.

It is highly unlikely that the focus of the presentation will echo your key messages if you have recently updated your marketing plan or conducted some market research without informing the agency. The knock-on effects would therefore be:

• The presentation will take longer to pass approval and delay project outputs
• The presentation may have to be redrafted costing more money
• Client/agency trust will suffer.

It is relatively common for clients to assume that information (e.g., market research, customer feedback and sales data) is of no relevance to the PR consultancy whereas actually nearly all information is relevant and ensures that the consultancy has an up-to-date picture of current product issues.

The golden rule is; if in doubt, share the information anyway! Issues of confidentiality can be easily overcome.

Evaluation
Evaluating PR has historically been regarded as difficult to carry out and, although the issue is industry-wide, it is still contentious. Unlike other elements of the promotional mix, especially advertising, there are no true off-the-shelf PR evaluation packages.

Recent research conducted by the Healthcare Communications Association (HCA) has shown that most of those involved in commissioning or implementing PR programmes are strongly committed to evaluating PR efforts and acknowledge that there are many benefits.

The key benefits were identified as:

• Being able to show return on investment
• Justifying PR spend to senior management
• Learning lessons for future projects.

The same research also found that most companies and consultancies currently spend 2-5 per cent of their budgets on evaluation but believe it should be higher.

The HCA currently recommends that 5-10 per cent of the planned PR spend should be allocated to evaluation. However, it is aware that a lack of conviction about the need for comprehensive evaluation means that many clients are unlikely to dedicate that amount of the budget to the process.

If you are bewildered by the prospect of evaluating your programme, as a guiding principle, things will be made easier if you have set agreed communications objectives from the start. Communications objectives can differ from marketing objectives as shown in the example below:

Marketing objective - achieve use of the new-class antibiotic by 25 per cent of respiratory consultants within 12 months
Communications objective - build awareness of the new-class antibiotic among 25 per cent of respiratory consultants.

The two objectives are clearly related but it is possible for the communications objective to be achieved (and measured) without the marketing objective having been reached.

It is, therefore, mutually beneficial to develop agreed SMART communications objectives - strategic, measurable, achievable, realistic and timed - at the start of any major campaign, as delivery of these objectives is a win-win situation for both you and your agency.

Outputs and outcomes
As a client, it is entirely reasonable for you to expect your consultancy to provide regular and comprehensive evaluation of outputs. The better consultancies now do this as a matter of course. Evaluated outputs relating to the communication objectives in the previous example could include:

• The number of target opinion leaders who attended your symposium
• Quantitative delegate ratings on the meeting via an evaluation form
• Column inches from media campaign
• Number of media coverage targets achieved
• Number of key messages communicated within that coverage.

These measurement criteria provide some indication of how well the activities have been executed and to what standard. However, they give no indication of what happened as a result of the activity. For example, the media campaign may have exceeded all coverage targets but did it actually change prescribing habits or drive greater patient presentation?

If this information is required, benchmarks need to be established and outcomes research built into the programme from the initial stages.

Increasingly, best practice dictates that the product manager and the wider marketing team (such as a representative from the market research department) should sit down with the PR consultancy prior to the start of the PR programme. Together they should then design the research that will measure the desired outputs and outcomes.

Evaluating your agency
More general evaluation of consultancy performance should be happening on an ongoing basis. Clearly, update meetings, status reports and ongoing measurement of outputs provides a good sense of how work is progressing, but an important part of the evaluation process is to look at how an agency performs beyond delivery of agreed outcomes.

The level of proactivity being shown by the consultancy is a useful measure of its value and contribution. With the constantly changing healthcare environment, it is important for the consultancy to keep you one step ahead of your competitors. They should be able to suggest innovative and productive customer-focused activities and methods of negating potentially damaging marketing and regulatory issues.

All internal and external documentation should be accurate and well written. Budget management should be clear and accurate and administrative procedures such as production of contact and status reports should always be prompt.

Some consultancies will request strategic reviews with their clients to discuss overall account health and direction. In addition, they may wish to conduct an independent client survey to provide vital external feedback on their performance.

Although these steps may appear to involve even more of your valuable time, they are worth the investment. A true working partnership cannot be too highly valued but even the very best can go off course sometimes. It is worth working at them because forming a new relationship is incredibly labour-intensive and can be expensive.

There are no fixed rules about the maximum length of time a consultancy should work on the same piece of business. With the right level of input from client and consultancy alike (even with frequent changes of personnel on both sides) there is no reason why that relationship shouldn't continue indefinitely.

Who pays for evaluation?
Opinion varies widely on who should pay for the evaluation - client or agency? The research mentioned earlier found inconsistency in client expectations on this issue; the majority of clients felt that healthcare consultancies should pay for all evaluation of the PR programme.

Yet when questioned about the practice in advertising, clients confessed to paying for evaluation themselves. For this argument to be resolved there needs to be a change in relationship between consultancies and clients.

If consultancies are to shoulder some of the cost on a risk-sharing basis, and many clients seem to want this, then clients will have to be prepared for challenge on every aspect of their business planning from strategic goals to budget for implementation. They must also prepare themselves to brief out programmes on a much more consistent and comprehensive basis.

On the other side of the coin, if agencies want clients to pay for all their evaluation, they need to be more transparent about the process, and not be afraid to communicate bad news and, ultimately, facilitate better working relationships.

Information on how to evaluate healthcare communications activities is available from the HCA. Its Evaluation Toolkit is based on research amongst industry and consultancy representatives and evidence-based best practice and provides a practical step-by-step guide to the design and implementation of evaluation methodologies.

How to be a good client
No client/consultancy relationship is identical but there are a number of rules which help make relationships trouble-free.

• Provide a thorough briefing. It is important to provide as much relevant and up-to date information to your agency as possible, in order for them to represent you to the best of their ability
• Don't over-haggle on price. A PR agency is as much a business as a pharmaceutical company. Professional consultancies will not consciously overcharge as they cannot risk a bad reputation. If you cannot afford a project, revise your plans. Cutting corners simply compromises the quality of your outputs - in a communications programme, it is better not to do it at all than to do it badly
• Avoid impossible deadlines. Unfortunately, it is common for agencies to be given mere days in which to prepare proposals for important projects or provide quality, written documents. Disappointment arises when they are not up to usual standards. Respect your consultancy's time and they will respect you
  Encourage an honest and open relationship. If you think the consultancy is performing badly, discuss it with them. Consultancies don't deliberately set out to perform below standard so your constructive feedback will provide them with a good idea of how you want the programme to run, which can lead to impressive results
• Your way is not always the best. Agencies employ communications experts who may have worked in this field for decades. It is important to respect what they say and listen to what they propose. Over-ruling them to proceed in your way against expert advice is a recipe for disaster
  The consultancy should not be the scapegoat. Human nature dictates that when mistakes occur, we look for someone to blame rather than accepting responsibility ourselves. Constantly assigning blame to the consultancy can sour the relationship, leading to reluctance to go the `extra mile' for you next time you have a tight deadline. Mistakes happen from time to time and best practice dictates that you should identify exactly what took place, rectify the matter and agree how to ensure that it doesn't happen again
• Provide consistent feedback. It is extremely unhelpful for a consultancy to receive contradictory comments on a proposal or document from different people within the same client company. Always appoint one person to collate comments from within the organisation (you may want to do this yourself) and ensure that only one person feeds back to the agency
• Encourage all consultancy feedback. Sometimes there will be bad news as well as good but it is important not be afraid of it. Encouraging all feedback leads to clearer thinking about future activities and is an important step in developing a good working relationship based on trust
  Set high standards. But don't forget to praise your consultancy when they reach or exceed them.

The final word
Whichever consultancy you select, however you select them, and whatever form of contract you use, the message about working with any consultancy is to do it in partnership. Be up-front and open at all times, share all the information you can, and make sure that both parties know exactly what is expected and by when. By following these simple ground rules, it is possible to turn your partnership into a fruitful and successful relationship.

The Author
Sarah Hart is the deputy managing director of Munro & Forster Communications. She can be contacted at sarah_hart@munroforster.com

Kindly reproduced with permission from PMLive.com.

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26-Jan-2004	HCA News Release - New HCA Chair
11-Nov-2003	PMLive Article - Categorically Speaking
03-Oct-2003	PMLive Article - Practical Guide: PR Consultancies: Part 2
03-Oct-2003	PMLive Article - Practical Guide: PR Consultancies: Part 3
24-Sep-2003	HCA News Release - Benchmarking Survey
01-Jul-2003	PMLive Article - Evaluating PR
09-Jun-2003	HCA News Release - Evaluation Toolkit
05-Nov-2002	PMLive Article - Get Up To Speed

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