Upfront Business Development
Articles
Creating Credibility & Relevance to Prospective Clients
Strategic Development Director
• “IF IT ISN’T BROKE, DON’T FIX IT”
The easiest way to sell your agency will always be to focus on what you do best. This may seem like I’m stating the glaringly obvious, but the reality is that most agencies don’t place their focus where they have the best stories to tell. With all the challenges involved in growing businesses you really shouldn’t create barriers to working with you where none should exist. Trying to break into a market sector where you have no experience and collateral will inevitably disadvantage you against those who have a strong track record in that field.
Having said that there are sometimes circumstances where the decision to explore new sectors can be the right one, for example, an agency that has too much dependency on a single volatile sector, as Finance has recently proved to be. This is the exception though, not the rule
• ARTICULATING YOUR AGENCY BRAND
Bob Baker, author of “Poor Richard’s Branding Yourself Online” talks about creating a short (10-15 words) statement which concisely explains who you are, what you do and what the client benefit is in working with you. He refers to this as the “Brand Identity Statement”.
The “Elevator Pitch” is an extension of this and will usually be 30-40 words in total. It says who you are, what your agency does, and specifically what USP’s differentiate your agency from other agencies that do the same thing. Articulating this is difficult since it requires you to diffuse everything you offer into a sound-bite which you instinctively feel doesn’t reveal your agency for everything it is. The fact is, you have so much more to offer.
Of course, this is most likely true, but self indulgence rarely wins new prospects, and certainly won’t capture the interest of prospects during your early engagement. It is therefore essential that you can articulate this effectively. The questions you need to ask yourself are:
1. What does your company do? (For example, begin your answer with "We provide.")
2. Whom does your company do it for? (For example, begin your answer with "For small and midsized healthcare providers.")
3. Why do they care? Or, what’s in it for them? (For example, include in your answer "so that they can," "who can no longer afford," or "who are tired of.")
4. Why is your company different? (For example, begin your answer with "As opposed to" or "Unlike.")
5. What is your company? (For example, begin your answer with "My company is a digital agency”)
An example is, “UpFront Business Development are a specialist business development agency that helps marketing agencies grow by providing strategic consultancy, industry insights, lead generation and recruitment ”
Internally, this helps to form the “personality” of your agency, as well as providing some vision of where you see your identity as an agency. Externally it precisely conveys (through all offline and online communication) exactly what it is that customers can expect from your agency. Contrary to widely held belief, clients are inundated by “integrated” agencies that are all things to all people. Specialist, not generalist messages are what create relevance and credibility
• DEVELOPING YOUR PROPOSITION & COLLATERAL (INCLUDING AWARDS)
There’s an old saying in business development consultancy: “If you don’t know where you are going, then any road will do”. This speaks to the notion that those businesses who proclaim to “work with all sectors across all marketing disciplines” are less likely to attract new clients than those who demonstrate a clear and interesting proposition within specialist sectors, within specific disciplines. This does not mean that you cannot have multiple propositions within your agency. But you should be very clear in the messaging you use for each. Focus and relevance are they key words in developing your proposition.
As such, choose a sector or sectors you have a demonstrable track record within, clearly identify what it is that makes your agency unique or specialist within it, and make sure that your collateral reinforces this message. In terms how you should present your relevant stories, avoid using too much wording on presentations. Clients are more likely to engage with seeing your work and you speaking around it than they will be reading it off a slide set. As a rule, ask yourself, “Why am I showing the client this slide?” If the answer isn’t to demonstrate specific relevance then do not use it. If the answer is always the same, don’t overkill the same point.
• RESEARCH & INSIGHTS
The biggest hurdle in starting any new business campaign is finding the right people to contact. If you have the wrong contacts, you can waste time pitching the wrong people, or the message you’re selling isn’t relevant.
There are many ways to acquire good quality data including self validation (usually a very expensive way of doing in terms of time if you’re the BDD or MD sitting the meetings also), purchased lists, or subscriptions to industry specific business information sources (e.g. http://evolvewithdarwin.com ). Usually the latter will be preferable since in addition to the pure data, they can also provide industry and sector specific news releases, senior “movers and shakers” within the industry, and information regarding upcoming pitches. Again though, it is essential to a consistent and compelling script that the sectors and decision makers you are monitoring are those that are closely aligned with your key proposition. Resist the temptation to call on your list indiscriminately, or you will undo all the good work gone into defining your proposition in the first instance.
• UTILIZING PROSPECTING CHANNELS
So you know where your strengths lie, you’ve made them all consistent, credible and relevant to the clients you want to target, and you have the data required to make it happen. The question then is, “How do I engage my prospects?” There are several options, and each differs in the way (and degree to which) you create relevance. The familiar options are:
- Email marketing: It is always difficult to assure the relevance of a mass mailing, no matter how hard you endeavour to do so. Whilst there are of course sector wide similarities, the company and role dependent specifics will vary widely across the board. The question to ask is a simple one: “What key issues do the majority of our target prospect base face, and how can we help them solve them?” At Upfront, we know that most agencies have attempted to outsource at least one part of their new business at some point, and with wildly varying results. Equally the in-house options rarely work out for those who didn’t already have something in place. As such, a seminar titled, “Outsourcing your new business sales process: the pro’s and cons of all options” appeals to a wide demographic. Since our objective is usually to fill a seminar with around 30-40 prospects, this has sufficient relevance to be achieved by mailing a list of circa.500 contacts. Used on it’s own though, you will still fail to engage many by the lack of specific relevance this has to each individual key contact
- PR: Clearly specific PR releases can offer case or insight specific relevance, and arguably more so than any other medium which excludes immediate face-to-face communication. A PR release on awards won, or an article with interesting and engaging insights into the people which you are trying to attract, will often provide a level of engagement on a level which colder prospecting mediums will sadly fall short. It is however important that, if you are looking to generate business from this channel, as opposed to simply “heightening awareness” of your agency, results are best when supported by a wider contact management program ,for example follow up lead generation activity.
- Lead Generation: Targeted and relevant lead generation activity can be a highly effective medium for generating new business. The difficulty is that there are many pitfalls:
(1) The range of approaches and abilities of people engaging in this activity are huge. A poor cold approach is worse than no approach at all in terms of managing the perception of your agency
(2) Identifying, training and keeping business development staff in agencies can be difficult, especially those involved in cold calling. Their skill base is not “core” to the agency personnel as a whole, and it’s a job few want to do alone
(3) You cannot “sell” a consultancy based proposition easily over the phone. In marketing services, your product is your people. Rarely, if ever, will a senior member of staff want to spend hours on the phone trying to develop one meaningful conversation in the day, nor should they
The plus side to lead generation is that it offers an opportunity to create hugely increased relevance in your contact management program since you can ask questions, and develop specific client requirements and expectations. The job of someone cold calling on behalf of your agency is to create relevance where currently little or no information on the prospects situation exists at present. It is this point, above all else which leads to one failed new business meeting after another, since even senior agency staff find it difficult when there is no specific brief in place.
When supporting any of the other prospecting channels, lead generation through cold calling is a hugely effective, if difficult to execute option.
Networking, Events & Exhibitions
Many people attend lots of exhibitions and “networking” events, but few regularly bother to manage the real “output” of these in terms of business won. Whilst it is of course possible to have a “successful” event on many levels, ultimately the long term output that counts is winning new business.
As such make sure that the events you attend have the maximum number of potential prospects in attendance, and that you have a plan on how you will initiate contact with them (cold approaches, your own stand, a speaker slot or your own event). Where possible, get the delegate list in advance and make some pre-approaches (mailer or on the phone) to make some initial contact and gain some small insight into what they may be interested in seeing from you on the day. If you are running your own event then make sure you have a title which addresses the direct challenges faced by the people you are targeting, and capable and experienced speakers on the day. Additionally, leave time for drinks or lunch afterwards to spend some 1-1 time speaking to prospects about their own specific organization and job function.
- Referral: Clearly the most credible, relevant, and easiest to win business comes from recommendation. People will accredit you with instance respect if somebody they know recommends you to them directly. If you rarely if ever get referrals then you need to ask why this is. If you have many satisfied customers, but you have never asked for a referral then do so (would you rather engage in cold calling?).
• COMMERCIAL VIABILITY
I often work with agencies who speak proudly about their client base, their case studies, and the professionalism of their work. Usually, they have every right to be proud of all three. However, unless you’re a charitable organization, all of theses count for nothing if the business as a whole is not making profits from the work that you’re delivering. Often agencies feel compelled to accept work where margins are low because they need a minimum level of work to keep the agency staff fully employed, or because the agency has no proactive ways of generating the “right” sort of clients for your agency (in terms of “fit” and profitability). This is even more so during difficult economic times.
Successful businesses, no matter how big or small, need to make money.
