When it comes to managing clients, they all have annual marketing budgets and most suppliers are unaware of the impact of them not spending this within the year it is budgeted for. Failing to spend all of the allocated investment may result in the following years’ budgets being trimmed back. So start having conversations with your clients ahead of their year end and support them by adding ideas and value on how to ensure that they don’t cause themselves tighter budgets next year due to prudence this year!
You don’t need to be offering to deliver more stuff now – you can help them with their next year plans and use this years’ budget to support the investment. This is called “forward invoicing” where you are paid in advance and you sit on the payment until the work is called off. This normally happens around the end of a company’s financial year where they work out how much budget they have left and how quickly they need to spend it.
I have known marketing divisions of some large companies “save” £100k+ from their spend in year one, only to see their budgets reduced by over £100k the following year as they “didn’t spend what was allocated to them previously.” Don’t let your clients be caught in this trap.
