Agency New Business – sort out your approach

 

Agency New Business is not easy, there’s no magic wand, no silver bullet. But there are some things you can attend to, to sort out your new business.

This was the message coming cover loud and clear at two different events I attended this week in Manchester.

Both aimed broadly at the agency / creative services industry.

Art Of New Business

The first was an event run by The Art Of New Business –

a joint venture between @karlahuntfarm and @sarahcheal  – who are looking to innovate the way agencies prospect for new business.

I won’t round up the event (it was very good though), there’s already a nice review here from Jon Clements : http://www.pr-media-blog.co.uk/manchester-agency-biz-dev-makeover/.

But a lot of what I heard re new business resonated with my own experience in the last few years and more recently (and keenly) over the last 6 months as a consultant.  Both advice I give myself* and advice I’ve been giving some of my clients, specifically the parts about inbound marketing, having a robust social media plan of action, great content etc.

* Actually, as per the ‘cobbler’s shoes’ analogy it’s one thing to advise others and another to do that yourself when you’re focussing on client work.

So I took a step back recently at the 6 month mark and had a health check on what strategies I’d been using.. spending some time in a workshop with Sarah (see above) from Acquire. And very helpful it was too.

Manchester Digital New Business evening

The second event was a Manchester Digital thing, the first of a set of events bringing in some industry luminaries called ‘Harder, Better, Faster, Stronger’ – search #hbfs on twitter.

The three speakers were all very good ( @huey@andybudd &@tonyfoggett) but for the purposes of this particular post the insights in the last two talks , from agency owners/founders Andy and Tony; resonated with a lot of people in the room I think and could have sat well in the first event.

So, here are some of the soundbites / mantra-esque take outs / a mashup of the notes that I made from both events. Obviously it takes more than a list (and this is an incomplete one) to successfully grow and sustain a business but some of these new business thoughts may be useful for you.

A checklist for Agency New Business:

  • Be Nice. Make this part of your culture.

  • Inbound marketing / social media is really important. Client-world discovered the direct-to-voicemail option a long time ago.

  • Do the Networking thing: as in meeting actual people in the same room is also (still) important.

  • Forget cold calls as the answer. Try some cold calls (I know.. rules are to be broken etc).

  • Try some ‘warm’ calls after checking who has looked at your site, downloaded content, interacted with you on social..
  • Don’t forget email (still works if done well and not standard creds shotgun approach)
  • There’s no magic bullet – use email, social media, direct mail – but use them well and with insight into the people you’re contacting.
  • Keep learning – keep your offer / skills relevant.

  • Learn to say No. Don’t take on projects just because someone approached you – if there’s no culture /  chemistry fit, if budgets are too small or won’t be shared, if it looks like a tire-kicking exercise, if there are twenty others being invited to pitch.. say no.
  • Do your homework before you approach a client.

  • Don’t just focus  the MD / Marketing Director – good organisations delegate and managers will want to hear how you can (genuinely) help them too

  • Ask questions early – qualify out / in the opportunity.

  • Specialise. Find your Niche. Even if your specialism is ‘Full service / Integrated’ Big Agency. I had to think about this one, I agree though.
  • Quality counts. That takes time. So don’t under-sell how long something will take just to snaffle the pitch.
  • Delivery also counts. So don’t jeopardise projects with over-cooking the QA.
  • Keep focussed on new business – even if you don’t use outbound sales people  – that means keeping your site / blog / network of contacts energised.

1 thought on “Agency New Business – sort out your approach”

Leave a Reply

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.