New Business Intel

» New Promotions Technology Builds 1:1 Relationships, Increases Revenue, Organic Growth

Sparkfly personalizes offers to influence shopper behavior and drive maximum margins

One of the "if only we could" wishes of B2C Chief Marketing Offers is delivering highly personalized, one-to-one offers to customers - offers that result in increased brand loyalty and higher profit margins. I've come across a company that now delivers on that wish.

This is a way for your advertising agency to bring new technology and significant value to your current clients.

Here are some of the technological innovations now taking place in the sales promotion industry:

• Personalization is now possible in real-time - while customers are present in-store.
• Retailers are focused on customer loyalty and retention more than ever before.
• Personalization tools and processes are being integrated at the Point of Sale (POS).
• Post-promotion analysis can now be done in hours, not months.

Technologies that integrate real-time promotions into the POS deliver:

• Much better customer targeting
• Much higher redemption
• Tighter segmentation
• Greater market share
• Reduced traditional media spend
• Revenue gains

According to a white paper published by Retail TouchPoints,

The new paradigm makes possible a 1:1 relationship between seller and buyer that was inconceivable a few short years ago.

Besides new technology, what makes all this possible is that "the consumer is absolutely willing to sign up for personalized loyalty and rewards programs on the Web", says Sahir Anand of Aberdeen Group.

According to Retail TouchPoints, Sparkfly has "emerged as a leader in the transformation of existing POS systems, smarter CRM data integration, and a vastly improved consumer experience."

Sparkfly CEO Catherine Tabor adds this tantalizing summary of her company's solution:

Imagine a world where you know exactly which of your products an individual consumer is purchasing; when and where they're purchasing; and based on that behavioral purchase history, you can then communicate a very tailored and personalized offer to the individual consumer that will drive them back into the store, the restaurant, or to your product, at no incremental cost.

Without mentioning the Fortune 100 companies that Sparkly is now working with, after visiting the company's offices and seeing their clients' results, this may be a technology you want your clients to implement. It can and will benefit them, their customers, and further solidify your relationship.

» New Business Metrics - How To Measure Your Performance

It's tough to improve if you don't know how you're doing

How do you measure the performance of your new business team? Is it just number of wins and revenue generated? If those numbers are good, do you know what they're doing well? If those numbers aren't good, do you know where they're falling short?

If you consistently measure the right things, you'll have all the information you need to hire, fire, train, and retain a high performance advertising agency new business person or team.

Measuring how you're doing is only effective if you're measuring against something. You first need to set an annual goal for each item. Then, break the goal down into monthly increments, and if appropriate, weekly and daily. With the goal, you can then measure your performance against your target. In addition, you want to measure yourself against how you did for the same period last year, and perhaps last quarter.

Marketing Metrics

Social media: On your blog, measure followers against your goal. Review posts that get the most reads (and be sure to write more of them). Identify which ones don't get read and adjust accordingly. Track how many reads you get per day and per week against your goal. Identify steps to improve reads based on how they're trending (up or down). Measure traffic sources - where does your traffic come from - and track it against plan.

Events you host: How many guests do you expect to attend; how many show - that's the show rate, which you need to predict future attendance. How much did the event cost? What's the event's cost per attendee? How many new business meetings do you get from each event? What's the event's cost per new business meeting held? How many pieces of new business do you win as a result of an event? What's the cost per new account landed? Over time you'll have enough numbers to evaluate whether to continue hosting events or perhaps to increase the number of events, and it'll be based on a true ROI.

Events that you attend: What's your cost to attend? How many new business meetings do you secure from each one? What's the event's cost per meeting held? How many pieces of new business do you win as a result of each event? What's the cost per new business account landed? Over time you will have enough numbers to evaluate whether to continue attending certain events and perhaps if you should increase the number of events you attend. That decision will also be based on a true ROI.

Branding Email: If you use email as a branding vehicle - measure how many emails you send with each blast. What's the overall cost per blast, and per email? How many opens do you get? What's the cost per open? How many inquiries do you receive? What the total cost per inquiry? What new business do you win from emails? What's the email cost per new business account landed?

Branding/direct mail: If you use direct mail as a branding vehicle - measure how many pieces you send with each mailing, and the mailing's total cost. What's the cost per piece? How many inquiries do you receive (if any)? What's the cost per new business inquiry received? What new business do you win from direct mail? What's the direct mail cost per new account landed?

As you can see, if you measure all of your marketing activities, you'll soon have metrics on the marketing cost per new business inquiry, per new business meeting, and per new account win. This is incredibly valuable information for your future planning.

Outreach metrics

Networking / referral program: If you employ a networking and/or referral strategy, how many meetings or requests does it take for you to get one referral? How many new business meetings do you get for every 10 referrals? How many of these turn into new clients? You want to know these ratios so that you can determine how many referrals it takes to generate one new piece of business. Then, you can extrapolate and plan for the future.

Search consultants:  If part of your new business strategy is to keep in touch with various search consultants, I encourage you to track your efforts and the ROI. How many consultants do you keep in touch with? How often do you do so? What does it cost (in terms of time, travel expense, mailings, etc.) to stay on their radar? How many RFPs do you get from them? How many do you respond to? How many do you win?

RFPs: How many RFPs do you receive (separate from search consultants)? From whom? Be sure to track the source of each RFP (i.e. how did they hear about your agency) so that you can better target your future marketing efforts. Track the cost (in terms of time, out-of-pocket expense, mailings, etc.) to submit an RFP. How many RFPs do you get from each source? How many do you respond to? How many do you win? What's the cost per submission? What's the cost per new account won?

Directories: Many agencies submit their creative work and other information to websites that cater to corporate marketers. You should measure these sources as well. Capture the cost of each directory, the number of times your profile is viewed by a corporate marketer, and the conversations, meetings held, and new client wins from each directory. Then, calculate the cost per profile viewed, per new business conversation or meeting held, per account won, etc. This way you'll be able to evaluate whether the particular directory you choose is providing you ROI. [Note: some of these sites may be considered "branding sites" - i.e. the cost is relatively minimal and you just need to be there. That may influence your decision to maintain a presence on the site.]

The most important metrics with outreach activities is the cost per win and the cost per source. You need to be able to answer the questions, "What does it cost us to land a new piece of business? And, "What are the least (and most) expensive sources of our new business wins?" One of the best ways to do this over time is to rank your sources by the number of accounts won from each. 

Activity metrics

Using a CRM system, I recommend that you track all the outbound activities between your new business person and potential clients, which are typically the following:

• Emails Sent
• Emails Received
• Quick Chat (example, "I'm sorry I've caught you at a bad time, I'll call you tomorrow.")
• Good Conversations (this is a substantive conversation that moves the prospect down the sales funnel)
• VM (left voicemail message)
• DNLVM (did not leave voicemail)
• Received VM (received a voicemail from a prospect)
• Meeting Set (set up a meeting with a potential prospect)
• Meeting Held (meeting was held with a potential prospect)
• Business Won

With these activity measurements, you can create metrics that will allow you to determine what's working and what's not. Here are those I find to be the most valuable:

Total outbound activities = emails sent + quick chat + conversations + VM + DNLVM. You should use this daily, weekly, monthly, etc. to measure and ensure that activity is taking place.

Activities per day = total outbound activities for the month / # work days in the month (or week, quarter, etc.). How much is enough? Someone in new business who's charged with outbound prospecting to a significant number of potential clients should make at least 30 outbound calls per day.

Calls : conversations = total activities / total conversations. This is a measure of how many total activities it takes to have a good conversation with a prospect. These days, having one substantive conversation out of every five or six calls is good. 

Meetings per conversation: Total meetings set / total conversations. This tells you how many conversations it takes to secure an initial meeting. The lower the number the better your new business person is able to establish rapport, ask relevant questions, and establish a reason to meet. I think you should aim for a 1:2 ratio, or one meeting from every two good conversations. If you find that the ratio is higher, I recommend doing role practice to improve your new business person's skills.

Meetings held % = meetings held / meetings set. This is a measure of the quality of the meetings that are set. Over time, you should aim for nearly 100%, as this will mean that your new business person is doing an excellent job of identifying a need and establishing your agency's relevance to satisfy it. If meetings regularly don't take place, then they weren't quality meetings in the first place.

Business won% from meetings held = business won / meetings held. This will tell you how well you convert initial meetings generated from proactive outreach. Recall that in the above funnel, we used 10%. You should be able to do better. However, a note of caution: I can't tell you how many agency CEOs have told me over the years, "Put me in front of a prospect and I'll close the business." The exact same number have been terrible at moving an initial meeting along the process to actually winning. The objective of a first meeting is...a second meeting. Don't try to win on the first meeting. For more on this, read here.

With the information discussed in this post, you'll have all the information you need to allocate your resources to the sources and activities that drive the most new business for your agency.

» For CEOs: Creating an Ad Agency New Business Plan (Step 2)

Build your plan

Creating an advertising agency new business plan is a step-by-step process. With the outline of ingredients necessary to create a new business plan provided in this post, you'll be able to make the decisions necessary to put your plan together in a matter of days or weeks.

Important note: Many "new business initiatives" are unsuccessful because management isn't fully committed to the effort. To avoid this common result, I encourage you to read the prior post (Step 1) and then "take a time out". Think about what it says. Discuss it with your management team. Together, determine if you have the collective will to change your agency's new business culture. Without this commitment, implementing the suggestions in this post will only guarantee mediocre success (at best) or failure (more likely).

Step 2: Build Your Plan

Before we begin, I'd like you to put yourself in the right mindset. Creating a new business plan is creating a marketing and sales plan for your agency. You know how to do this for your clients; now you need to do it for yourself. Perhaps rename your new business plan 'New Business, Inc.' - this might help you give it the client-oriented importance it deserves.

INGREDIENTS

Who Are You; How Are You Different?

Every agency thinks they're unique, while clients think most agencies are alike. Everyone in your agency needs to know who you are, and how you're different. If you say, "We're a retail agency that delivers our big-box retail clients 15% annual year-over-year growth", you'll probably get a number of potential clients to meet with you pretty quickly. On the other hand if you say, "We're a full-service agency" and you only have 10 employees, there's going to be a disconnect.

What's your most effective approach?

Every agency needs to choose how they want to get noticed. What has worked best for you in the past, or how do you want to go about it in the future?

• Are you best when you do your own category research, and offer it as "bait" to a prospect?
• Are you most successful when you purchase research from 3rd parties and draw insights and conclusions from it?
• Or, are you best when you lead with your create work?

If you need help or are unsure about the most effective apporach, or the approach you're considering, you might ask an expert who works with agencies every day. People to consider include a friendly agency search consultant, consultants like Ignition Group, Robb High Consulting, Michael Gass, or Mirren Business Development, or one of the outsourcing companies like Linkergy or Catapult New Business.

Define Your Objectives

• How much new revenue do you want this year? Write it down.
• How much do you want to come from organic growth? From proactive new business? From passive new business (e.g. relationships with consultants, RFPs that "just show up")? Break down your revenue growth into these categories, and others if you have them.
• Now, turn your revenue growth numbers into a discreet number of wins by category. For example, how many clients do you need to land to hit your proactive new business number? Your revenue from review consultants or RFPs?

Turn Your Objectives Into Achievable Goals

Once you have your top-line numbers for each of your categories, determine how you're going to hit each of them.

• Proactive new business: using metrics from your recent past, create your sales funnel. This will show you how many prospects you need to target to have the meetings you need in order to win a new client. Extrapolate these numbers based on how many wins you want this year. These become your new business team's proactive sales goals, to which you will hold them accountable monthly, quarterly, and annually.
• Organic growth: using metrics from last year, determine the rate at which you win new business from current clients. Determine what you've done to achieve this growth. Ask yourself how you can do better this year. Assign revenue growth goals to each account team, communicate those goals to them, and incorporate them into their monthly, quarterly and annual goals, and hold them accountable to hit them.
• Passive new business: Your agency may have a "nurturing strategy" with various search consultants, or, "friends and family", among other groups that you keep in regular touch with. Set goals for each of these channels, communicate them to your new business team, and hold them accountable to hit them.

Note about accountability: we've all heard the expression, "What gets measured gets done". The great thing about this one is that it's true. If you don't know what you want to achieve, you won't achieve what you want. So, set goals ahead of time, and then make your team responsible to hit them.

Staffing

Too many ad agency new business plans fail because the agency doesn't have a 100% dedicated, talented new business person who is regularly measured, and held accountable to the effort.

The challenge for many advertising agency CEOs is that dedication means the new business person can't work on client business, and won't be billable. I encourage you to look at this situation as you would one of your clients: do they have billable sales reps? Or, are those sales reps 100% dedicated to revenue generation? You know the answer to the question.

So, the decision you need to make is either:

• Will you appoint an internal person to be responsible for new business (if so, who?)?
• Will you hire someone from the outside?
• Or, will you outsource to a 3rd party expert, who will focus on proactive new business (only).

Whichever option you choose, your next step is to define the job description, how you're going to find them, and when you want them to start. Then, initiate the search. As an aside, if you're considering a recruiter, you might want to speak with Mirren Talent.

Marketing

Target criteria and segmentation: Decide on the criteria you want to use to target prospective clients.

• Are there specific companies you plan to pursue?
• If not, what industries, company size (by revenue and/or media spend) are best for you?
• In what geographical area?
• What are the titles of the decision makers you're best talking to?
• Are there particular brands you want to work with?
• Or, are there particular brand demographics that are best - e.g. brands targeting seniors or Gen X?

Data: Once you know who you want to target, you need to choose a new business database that will provide what you need. Be sure that the one you choose provides everything you need. There are a range of services available at various price points, starting with "free" and going up from there.

One thing I regularly hear from clients is this: "You get what you pay for". So, think before you go for the lowest price.

Five or ten years ago, direct mail was useful as a branding vehicle. Today, it may take doing things a bit differently to get noticed. However you do it, think about what you can do yourself, as well the leverage you can get from others. For example, there are websites on which you can post your work, testimonials, clients (and much more), that will essentially market your agency to prospective clients at an affordable monthly cost (one example is Marketing Mine - full disclosure, this is a sister company to The List).

Many agencies also utilize their CEO's blog to get noticed. This is a very powerful form of social networking. For more information about creating an agency blog, call Michael Gass.

Outreach

How do you want your agency to reach out to clients? For example, do you like the idea of someone making cold calls, or not? Decide, as a management team, what type of outreach you want to take place before you finalize the new business person's job description. Questions to consider include:

• Do you want them to make cold calls?
• Do they need to be an email expert?
• Will they network with search consultants?
• Will they interact with current clients to help drive organic growth?
• Do you want them to be a pitch specialist? (Are you willing to pay top dollar for this expertise?)
• Will they attend initial prospect meetings? If so, on their own or with someone else? Or, do you want them to stay focused on new business while others attend meetings?
• Or, do you plan to outsource your proactive outreach, and if so, what skills and responsibilities will be needed on the inside?

Once you define how you want your new business person or team to do outreach, you'll need to define the touch points they'll employ and goals you expect them to hit:

• If you use email, will you follow up with telephone calls? If so, what frequency do you expect? Do you want someone who sends a few targeted emails a day, or 50?
• If you're cold-calling, do you want someone to make 5 calls per day or 40? (Hint: not everyone who's comfortable making 5 a day will be able to consistently make 40.)
• What's your plan to use voicemail? Do you have a voicemail strategy?
• If networking is your preferred tactic, how do you plan to pursue it? How many connections do you expect per week, month and year?
• Or, perhaps you're best when you have a referral. How many referrals do you expect per week, month, year?

No matter your tactic(s), be sure that the person you appoint or hire is good at the approach you want them to use. If not, you'll experience a big disconnect and subsequent employee turnover.

Metrics and reporting

You also need to decide the following ahead of time:

• How are you going to measure the effectiveness of your efforts? What reports do you have to do so, or do you need to develop?
• Who's responsible to create them? Who's responsible to run them?
• Who will review them, and when? (I recommend at least monthly.)

As you think about metrics and reports, I encourage you to measure as many aspects of your new business performance as possible. Here are a few posts that may be of assistance: a simple call-tracking system; converting leads to opportunities; and, measuring your new business activity. There are quite a few others within this site. You might try using the search option on the home page. If you get stuck, don't hesitate to get in touch with me directly.

Filter Your Opportunities

What's your process going to be to review leads that you receive, as well as RFPs? Not every lead is a good one, and you probably don't want to pursue every RFP that comes in the door. Decide what you want to pursue ahead of time. Set the rules for your team so they know how you want them to respond when the moment arrives.

Here are three ways you might categorize opportunities:

• Core criteria: fits your pre-determined size, geography, category, discipline(s), etc.
• Strategic opportunity: Gives you the opportunity to move into a new category, geography, discipline, etc.
• Opportunistic: falls in your lap; represents something quick and easy to do; or, is a good source of cash.

When you've made your decisions about each of these new business plan ingredients, it's time to put your plan on paper. You now have a choice: do you want to create a document than sits on a shelf, or one that's a living, breathing guide to your agency's new business future? The former will probably become a binder and get distributed to key players throughout the agency, and end up on their bookshelf. The latter might be a one-page plan printed on colored paper that people bring with them to weekly new business meetings.

My favorite plan is the short version - overall objectives, specific numerical goals and tactics on one page. How you go about pursing outreach, marketing, job description(s), opportunity categories, etc. might become your "standard operating procedures". They should be written down, printed and distributed, but the team won't have to refer to them very often (once they understand them). Your metrics/reports will be a work in progress; as long as they're reviewed weekly or monthly, they'll become part of how you do business in no time at all.

A final thought...

The Little Things Really Matter

We sometimes forget the little things that make a big impact on a prospective client. Things like hand-written notes and welcome gifts. For best results, these should be thought-through ahead of time, included in your new business plan and made part of your agency culture. Little things like those noted in these posts, as well as the ideas you and your team come up with, are an easy way to differentiate your agency.

» For CEOs: Creating an Ad Agency New Business Plan (Step 1)

Are you committed?

It may be the result of losing a client, reading a book, article or blog, attending a conference or meeting, or perhaps just having a conversation with someone: every so often an ad agency CEO will say to him or herself, "We've got to do a better job of going after new business."

What comes next varies from agency to agency, but generally there's a flurry of activity, followed by (hopefully) a new business win, and then everything settles back to "normal", as in, no consistent new business effort.

Can you break the cycle and develop a consistent approach to new business?

Sure, but it may be easier said than done.

In this two-part post I'll help you create your annual new business plan. It's broken into two parts for a very important reason: Many "new business initiatives" are unsuccessful because management is not fully committed to the effort.

To avoid this common result, I encourage you to "take a time out" after reading this post. Think about what it says. Discuss it with your management team. Together, determine if you have the collective will to change your agency's new business culture. Without it, going on to Step 2 will only guarantee mediocre success (at best) or failure (more likely).

Step 1:  Commitment

An annual new business plan is more than creating a PowerPoint deck, producing a brochure, and assigning a junior account executive responsibility for new business (or perhaps creating a new business committee).

To really move forward and create a sustainable and successful new business effort, you - the CEO - need to affirmatively answer these four groups of questions:

1. Are you willing to change the agency to one that's prepared to proactively pursue new business over the long-term? Is your management team fully committed to this effort? If not, why not? How are you going to motivate them to change?
2. Are you fully prepared to treat 'New Business, Inc.' as a client? To invest the non-billable resources necessary to ensure that they remain a client for, say, 10 years?
3. Are you prepared to create annual plans with objective, measurable, transparent goals? Are you prepared to promote, hire, or outsource 100%-dedicated new business people to the team? Are you prepared to hold them accountable for results on a monthly, quarterly and annual basis?
4. Do the internal changes you'll need to make to ensure the success of New Business, Inc. mean that you need to make other changes to the agency? What are they? Are you prepared to make them, too?

With four 'Yes' answers you're ready to move on to Step 2 (the topic of my next post). If not, I encourage you to either keep doing what you're doing, or make the internal changes necessary to answer these questions affirmatively.

» 9 Steps to Close 60% of Your Ad Agency’s First Meetings

Case Study: Cinquino & Co.

Was your agency able to win new business from 71% of your first meetings in 2008? How about 60% in 2009? That's what one small agency in New Jersey accomplished after being on the brink of closing its doors in 2007.

Crisis often creates opportunity, which is what happened for John Cinquino. His agency won zero accounts after 34 first meetings in 2006-07.  As he and his team faced the possibility of losing their agency, they decided to things differently.

They made a pact to put the quality of first meetings before quantity. And they vowed to learn how to win.

Here's what they learned:

1. Start with a hard target list that's focused on specific categories.
2. Develop key case studies for each category.
3. Hire a strong new business hunter.
4. Your new business hunter is responsible to prospect and set up first meetings.
5. Your new business hunter also preps the prospect for a "10-minute qualification call"with one of the ad agency's principals, who will be the only person at the first meeting.
6. The agency principal uses the qualification call to identify the prospect's pain points and needs. When it goes well, this call may last 20-30 minutes (and the prospect will NOT be looking to get off the phone).This call:
   
   • Establishes rapport between principal and prospect.
   • Helps the principal understand, "What hurts?"
   • Provides specific areas for the agency to research to prep for the first meeting.

   John's recommended questions to ask the prospect:

   • What did you do in the last year that didn't work?
   • What issues are you having with your competition?
   • What issues are you having with your brand?

   The key is that you identify their pain points quickly, and then move on to the next question. You want to get just enough information to be able to connect the dots. This will enable you to do your research on the prospect's competitors, distributors, and the brand itself prior to the first meeting.

7. Conduct meaningful research based on what the agency principal learned on the qualification call. Keep top-of-mind that every prospect wants to know more about:
   • Their customers
   • Their competitors
8. The agency principal goes to the meeting prepared to take charge. Share your research and talk about the prospect's business. Try not to let them ask about you; when they do, answer briefly and then move on to something else you learned, or ask them another question.
9. The agency principal leaves the meeting with very clear next steps. By now you should have a very good idea what the prospect needs. Before you leave the meeting, agree on a date for you to return to present a proposal to solve one or more of their issues three (3) weeks later.

With this approach, Cinquino & Co. closed 71% of their first meetings in 2008 and 60% in 2009. They now have three new business hunters instead of just one...out of a total staff of eighteen people.

John has proven that these nine steps work and is now in rapid-growth mode - and did so right through the recession.

» For Agency CEOs:Three Challenges To Overcome To Thrive

In the words of Rishad Tobaccowala

Marketing is understanding and meeting customer requirements. In order to survive, companies must meet their requirements; technology is going to allow agencies to understand customers' requirements; and, new marketing tools will allow us to meet them. So argued the cerebral Rishad Tobaccowala, CEO of Denuo Group, at the 4As conference in San Francisco.

Here are his thoughts on how ad agencies can thrive in the next ten years:

To meet customer requirements, ad agencies must first overcome three challenges - internally and then ultimately with your clients:

1. The future does not fit in the containers of the past.

In other words, you have to think differently. Consider...

• Digital linkages are changing the way we do everything, and will continue to do so.
• Your people are analog - they operate based on feelings. The biggest driver - your incentive plan.

Show me your incentives and I will show you what will happen.

• Lack of speed kills. The biggest impediment to speed is your organizational structure. Push decision-making down to the lowest levels possible in the organization (see # 2).

2. Talent Scales.

• Top companies are fixated on talent, passionate about talent. All companies have to be that way if they are going to thrive.
• To create a renaissance in marketing and advertising, we need to hire builders - talented younger people who want to create something.
• Incentive systems typically incent seniority; don't forget to incent your builders or they will build elsewhere.
• Builders will embrace accountability - if it aligns with what they want to do.
• Builders want skin in the game - a purpose for being there.

Understanding and meeting customer requirements = purpose.

3. "Us" the leaders.

Your people are curious about where you're going to take them. Do you know? Do they know?

• Audacity and dreams make a difference. They attract builders.
• If you want to know your culture, talk to the people at the bottom of the organizational chart; they may tell you if they trust you.

As CEOs, getting it right inside your agency will position you to meet the ever-changing needs of your clients.

» Become The Voice of the Customer

The glue in the marketing organization

The marketing organization inside many of your larger prospects or clients is becoming increasingly fractured and siloed, creating a big opportunity for agencies to exercise leadership and vocally represent the voice of the customer. So argued Larry Light, President and CEO of Arcature yesterday at the 4As Transformations 2010 conference in San Francisco.

Larry is a management consultant credited with helping to turn around McDonalds and Nissan.

He made the case that in a big client's marketing organization, you might find a CMO and various chiefs of insight, analytics, merchandising, strategy, branding, and maybe more. Each has turf they're trying to protect and grow, and each is firmly entrenched in their own silo. From his experience, Larry has found that silos only serve to decrease accountability and increase the ability to blame others when there's a problem.

What's the opportunity for ad agencies, and new business people in particular? Become the voice of the customer. In many of the companies he's worked with, Larry said that no one truly represents the customer. That's a leadership role agencies are perfectly suited to assume.

Agencies shouldn't just be coordinators of marketing communication - not when the real prize is to be the glue that holds the client's marketing organization together.

Assuming the mantle of "the voice of the customer" would put your agency in the role of saying to your client,

"What kind of exciting future can we create for your business?"

Here are two important ways that Larry says you can do this:

1. Come up with a real insight. Before you state that it's an insight, though, you'd better be surprised by what you learned. If your insight is that "people like food that tastes great", keep digging.
2. As a result of your insight, how will behaviors change? If the insight doesn't cause you and your client to change the way you do things, then you only created an "interesting insight". You need a business-changing insight.

There are clear opportunities here for new business pros to use insights to crack open prospects' doors. Likewise, for agency management to think about the roles you play in your clients' organizations, and how you can better represent the voice of the customer to assume a greater leadership role.

Thought-provoking stuff; hope it generates an idea or two.

» For CEOs: O.K.R.s for Better Management of Agency New Business

Objectives and Key Results

Two days ago I was introduced to a management technique that's widely used at Intel and Google, about which I was previously unaware. The idea is to get everyone in the company focused on the three most important priorities that matter most, and no more.

Managers who use this technique call it O.K.Rs, which is short for Objectives and Key Results. An interview in Sunday's New York Times with Mark Pincus, CEO of Zynga, a provider of online social games, describes it this way:

...the idea is that the whole company and every group has one objective and three measurable key results...it's a simple principle that keeps everyone focused....

Pincus credits John Doerr, the well-known venture capitalist, with the idea; he's pictured above.

Here's how Pincus puts it into action:

1. On Sunday night or Monday morning, everyone writes down their three (3) priorities for the week.
2. On Friday, we see how they did against them.

He's found that:

...this is the only way people can stay focused and not burn out.

This simple management technique should be very effective for any ad agency that has had to cut staff due to the recession. While a smaller group may not get as much done as a larger group, the key question to ask yourself is, "Are we getting the right things done right now?" This approach will keep everyone focused on the getting the most important things done - this week.

It should be especially effective for new business people. For example, staying focused on nurturing a long-term prospect, completing the RFP that's due on Thursday, or making twenty calls every day this week.

It's easy to get caught up in all the little things that need to be done, putting aside for a while the big things that matter most. The little things do need to get done; however, it's getting the big things done that has the most impact on individual performance, and the agency as a whole.

» What It Takes to be a World Class Ad Agency New Business Person

How hard are you willing to work, and for how long?

Most ad agency new business people are competitive, and want to be the very best they can be. What separates the average from the great? The experts from the "wannabes"? I was struck by a section of Outliers, by Malcolm Gladwell, that provides a very simple answer.

Gladwell relates a study by psychologist K. Anders Ericsson and two colleagues at Berlin's Academy of Music. In the study, the school's violinists were divided into three groups: those who were stars; those who were good; and, those who were unlikely to ever play professionally.They were all asked the same question:

Over the course of your entire career...how many hours have you practiced?

What the researchers found is that everyone started off playing at about the same age - five or six years old. They all practiced about the same amount: two to three hours a week. But after about three years of study, those who ended up being best in their class started to increase the amount of practice time: "six hours a week by age nine, eight hours a week by age twelve, sixteen hours a week by age fourteen, and up and up until by the age of twenty, they were practicing - that is, purposely and single-mindedly playing their instruments with the intent to get better - well over thirty hours a week."

In fact, by the age of twenty, the elite performers had each totaled ten thousand hours hours of practice.

Gladwell goes on to say that the researchers couldn't find any "naturals" who were able to perform at a high level with little effort. What they found, instead, was that:

...the thing that distinguishes one performer from another is hard work. That's it. And what's more, the people at the very top don't work just harder or even much harder than everyone else. They work much, much harder.

He then reports that study after study has confirmed that 10,000 hours of practice is the qualifying line for world class talent - whether in music, sports, chess, or even to be a master criminal.

So, what does 10,000 hours of practice represent to a new business person? Let's say you work 40 hours a week and work forty-nine weeks a year. Ten thousand hours is equivalent to:

• More than 5 years of dedicated, focused effort at improving your skills - assuming you work at it full time.
• More than 10 years of dedicated effort if you work at it half-time.
• And, if you're like many agency principals who dabble at it for five hours a week: it will take you 41 years to master new business.

This should be sobering. If your agency doesn't have a full-time new business person, and a team of people who practice really hard at their craft, can you ever (realistically) hope to be really, really good at new business?

Or, if you're younger or relatively new to the new business game, are your expectations realistically set? Are you willing to work really hard, full-time, for at least five years before claiming to be good at new business?

These findings resonate with me - as a still-competitive athlete and a business person with enough years in the seat to recognize that knowledge really does comes from practice and experience.

It takes a lot of hard work, making mistakes and overcoming them - over many years - to be good at something. You've got to be in it for the long term, with a desire - and a serious commitment - to be the best you can be.

» For CEOs: Increase New Business Performance with a Follow Up Email

Making sure you and your new business director are on the same page

Every now and then you learn a management technique that's so easy and powerful that you can't believe you didn't know about it before. I learned one of these tactics recently from an executive coach who helps develop executive teams, and thought it would be worth passing along.

The technique is this: After you meet with one of your direct reports, ask them to send you a confirmation email summarizing what they heard.

As you can see, this is far from rocket science. However, think about what it does:

• Ensures that you and your new business director, or any other direct report for that matter, are on the same page.
• You immediately know if they heard what you said; and, if you implied things but didn't come right out and say them, did they "read between the lines"?
• You receive a written summary of what will be done, by when.

Making a request like this after routine communication meetings may be overkill. I find that the time to use it is when you've just covered a lot of important details, or if there's a problem that you need to get resolved.

Too often, we assume that what we've said was 100% understood. However, the truth is that the percentage may be considerably less. A fellow CEO reported to me that one of his employees repeatedly understood less than 50% of what was communicated during one-on-one meetings. This technique saved that employee's job, helping him to take better notes and effectively prioritize his work.

So, as you're working on your ad agency's new business plan this year, you might try this technique, and then be sure to let me know how it goes.