Blair Enns Helps You Say 'No' to Free Pitching through Business Practice, Pricing and Professionalism

25th March, 2011

Don't miss out - last chance to book for the remaining seminars and workshop in Perth and Sydney - final leg of Blair Enn's seven-city tour for AGDA.

Learn how your business practices, pricing and professionalism can transform your business and build new clients.

Canadian business consultant Blair Enns is touring seven cities for the 12th AGDA International Speaker Tour.

Blair Enns changed the way I view business development. His outlook and experience inspired me to alter my strategies completely, giving me confidence and strengthening my business' position and culture immediately. If you ever get the chance to hear him present... take it, your mind will be blown.

- Graeme Caplen | Union Lane

AGDA's international guest for 2011, Canadian Blair Enns, challenges Australian designers to become specialists in a niche area with such a significant depth of expertise that they are effectively raised above competing studios.

He provides some practical ways for studios to identify their point of difference - and his arguments are wise.

Even in Canberra, where he acknowledged government processes can make such concepts difficult to put into practice (something that brought knowing smiles throughout his capacity audience), there were strong messages that are applicable.

As AGDA ACT President Geoff Hinchcliffe said, 'As an academic who is sheltered from a lot of the harsh realities of commercial practice, I found myself watching through the eyes of my fellow councillors and business owners. Pretty confronting stuff.' Cheers, Blair.

- David Whitbread | author of 'The Design Manual'

Design business books that came before Blair Enns are kitty litter compared with the wisdom that emanates from him and his manifesto. He nails it. Yet I still read his book three times the first week I got it. Amongst many other things, it will give you a renewed sense of optimism that our industry doesn't have to screw itself into an increasingly pointless downward spiral of free pitching. His title is correct, this isn't a book, it's a manifesto.

- Andrew Hoyne | Hoyne Design 

Win Without Pitching - Blair Enns
AGDA International Speaker Tour
90 minutes Seminar | 3 hour Workshop

Canberra
Seminar Mon March 21 (Sold Out)

Brisbane
Seminar Tue March 22

Adelaide
Seminar Wed March 23
Workshop Thu March 24 (Sold Out)

Melbourne
Seminar Fri March 25
Workshop Tue March 29 (Sold Out)

Hobart
Seminar Mon March 28

Perth
Seminar Wed March 30

Sydney
Seminar Mon April 4
Workshop Tue Apr 5

The Workshop
Blair Enns leads a three-hour workshop on transforming your design practice from one that pitches free ideas to one that wins without pitching. Enns' approach is a contrarian one. In addition to his dislike of pitching, he'll reform your thinking on proposal writing (it need not be done at all, he says), presenting, leveraging personality and chemistry in the buying cycle and other standards of the design firm business development approach.

In this workshop you will learn:
- the root causes of the free pitching problem
- the only meaningful basis for setting yourself apart from your competition
- why designers struggle more than most when it comes to positioning their firm
- a whole new perspective on what it means to sell
- how to replace presentations with conversations
- how to get out of the proposal writing business
- how to derail the RFP process and competitive pitches

Blair Enns (Canada)
Blair Enns is on a mission to change the way creative services are bought and sold the world over. Through his global consulting practice Blair works with principals and personnel of design firms, ad agencies, public relations practices and other creative businesses to help them transform from a high cost, pitch-based business development strategy to one where the firm commands the high ground in the relationship and shapes how its services are bought and sold.

As a speaker and author, Blair endeavors to be the sand in the industry-wide pitch machine, questioning creative firms and clients alike on the sanity of the pitch-based approach. Beyond questioning, however, he offers an alternative way forward for creative businesses, delivering a new set of protocols on how to gain new clients without first parting with ideas or sacrificing respect.

Blair has lectured and consulted across the Americas, Europe, Australia and the Middle East, addressing many national and international conferences of design, advertising and public relations. Prior to launching Win Without Pitching in 2001, Blair spent 12 years working in account service and business development roles for some of the world's largest ad agencies and some of its smallest design firms.

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AGDA NATIONAL PREMIUM PARTNERS: ARTISAN RECRUITMENT | AUTODESK

EVENT PRINT SUPPORTER: FINSBURY GREEN

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