New Business Intel

» Build Ad Agency New Business with a New Business Funnel

Prospecting is a numbers game and knowing your numbers is the key to success

Start at the bottom to end at the top.

When speaking at the 2006-2008 Mirren New Business Conferences, we talked about how agencies should build their new business “funnel” from the bottom up. A new business funnel fills an agency’s pipeline with prospective client leads.

It’s quite easy if you know your numbers. If you don’t, I strongly suggest that you start tracking every part of your agency's sales process.

(This approach assumes you're going after new business proactively, not using search consultants or expecting prospective clients will call you directly.)

Keeping it really simple, here are three numbers you need to build your funnel:

1. How many clients do you need to win in the next 24 months?
2. What percent of your initial client meetings from proactive outreach result in a win?
3. What percent of the prospects you target meet with you?

Let’s assume the following:

• 6 new clients needed;
• 10% of initial meetings result in a win;
• 10% of the prospects we call agree to meet us.

Now, let’s build your funnel:

• 6 new clients / 10% = 60 initial meetings needed
• 60 initial meetings / 10% = 600 prospects needed

Assuming you have a good new business (sales) person on staff, a compelling reason for prospects to consider you, and good creative, you now need to identify 600 prospective clients to reach out to. How to go through that process is the subject of another post.

» Slow and Steady Ad Agency New Business

Your new business program will benefit from applying the principals of healthy living

I was struck by the parallels between maintaining good personal health and a successful and healthy agency new business program when scanning the recent Zappos blog, Slow and Steady Wins the Race.

Consider these 5 well-known, but not always well-adhered to principals of healthy living and how you can reinterpret them for new business:

1. Don't do crash diets. Translation: practice new business consistently. Identify and put a 100% dedicated person in charge of new business.
2. Schedule your workouts. Translation: schedule your new business activities on your calendar. Sticking with your commitment to new business is much easier when you have an appointment to do it.
3. Clean up your eating habits. Translation: focus on companies that are a good potential fit for your agency. Pursue clients who fit with your culture, core principals, and will allow you to make a fair profit.
4. Be realistic. Translation: set achievable goals, so that hitting them will help you stick with your plan.
5. Log your time. Translation: track your activities. Knowing your metrics will make you a better new business person and allow you to determine what to change in order to improve.

Successful new business professionals do these 5 things every day. How are many do you do?

» Patience is Essential for Proactive Ad Agency New Business

Don’t plow up your crops before they have time to grow

I recently saw an email from Mark and David Sandler of Sandler Training that caught my eye.

The Sandler's company specializes in sales training. They understand very well that it takes time, hard work, and patience to build a sales funnel and then watch their efforts bear fruit.

Too often agency new business professionals or their management give up too early. Successful new business takes careful planning, diligent work over the long-term, and patience.

Here are a few noteworthy extracts from Mark and David:

How often are you asked, "How long does it take? To be better. To develop new behaviors that will lead to more and better sales. To better handle roadblocks and 'think it over' responses."

"Amazingly few people are willing to be patient. However, putting off gratification until later in order to obtain larger rewards than those immediately available is essential to achieve true success."

"If we put off doing a thing and find ourselves going nowhere, we are sabotaging ourselves. If we put off doing it but find that, with struggle and effort, we are slowly progressing toward the desired goal, we can congratulate ourselves..."

Before you jettison what your agency is currently doing, objectively evaluate whether you've done everything you set out to do to the best of your ability, for a long enough period of time to accurately measure the results.

» Agency CEO’s Managing Their Time for Proactive New Business

If you can find the time to write a blog, you can find the time for proactive new business

A few months ago I committed myself to writing a blog post every day for the professional enrichment it provides, in that you don't really know what you know until you write it down.

The interesting part of the process is that it forces you to focus on the most important things in your day, and eliminate time-wasters. Here's what I've learned to change:

• Email - only look at your messages and respond at certain hours of the day. You may say, "That's impossible, I need to be on email all the time." You'll be amazed at the hours and productivity you lose every time you check your email.
• Meetings - focus the conversation, and start and stop on time.
• Writing - lead with what's important, make it easy to scan, keep it on-subject. Some posts used to take me 1-2 hours to write; I can now write them in 45 minutes or less.

Over the years, numerous ad agency presidents have told me that they don't have time for proactive new business. I've nodded my head in understanding and then pushed them to find it.

I am now experiencing first-hand a similar time challenge, and have discovered that while there are a limited number of hours in every day (for all of us), if there is sufficient time to write a blog, there is sufficient time for proactive new business.

» For Ad Agency New Business Success, Hire a Sales Person with These 4 Traits…

Hire someone with proven success in consultative sales ... then ... let them sell!

Sales is a profession and a critical business function. The sales professional's personality is very different from any other staff member.

These 4 traits are critical - and common - among successful sales people:

1. They are driven to make money
2. They don't take rejection personally
3. They are incredibly persistent
4. They think like a business owner

For sales success the first step is hiring the right person with the right traits and secondly, you must let them sell.

Does this sound familiar?

You win a big account. Your head of business development, (let's call her Sally) nurtured the relationship over 18 months, so your new client naturally asks, "Will Sally work on my business?" You don't know how to say, "No", so you naturally respond, "Absolutely"! Your client walks away happy and confident, while you've just torpedoed your new business development effort.

This is a familiar story for any consultancy, ad agency, and most marketing services companies. Your best new business people land the business and then have to work on the business. This approach works great until you lose the account or the project ends, at which point you have to (madly) scramble to ramp up your sales effort to quickly generate revenue.

The only way to break this cycle: hire someone who knows how to sell and then, let them do it. Account service shouldn't be part of their responsibilities.

The answer to the question, "Will Sally work on my business" is simple: "No." And then respond professionally with something like, "As I'm sure you understand, revenue growth is important for us as it is for you. If Sally were to work on your business we would stop growing and jeopardize the health of the company. That would be bad for both of us."

» Procrastination Can Kill Your Ad Agency New Business Program

Any excuse is a good excuse not to make prospect calls

Just last month an agency president told me, "Over 20 years I've made up every possible excuse in order to NOT make the new business calls I needed to make."

Here are 4 common forms of new business procrastination:

• You find a great opportunity to talk to someone down the hall rather than picking up the phone.
• You schedule meetings during time you blocked off for contacting prospects or networking.
• You discover another interesting web site to "research"...
• You take part in a new business committee meeting that doesn't accomplish anything except make everyone feel good about doing something.

I've seen the following tactics break the procrastination habit:

1. Create monthly, weekly and daily new business objectives for yourself.
2. Don't leave work until you meet your daily objective(s).
3. Block time on your calendar. On schedule, close your email, put your phone on DND and focus on what you need to do.
4. If you must attend a meeting during your dedicated new business time, immediately reschedule it for later in the day or another day that week.
5. Set a maximum amount of time to research a company (minutes, not hours).
6. Decline any new business committee meeting and ask for the minutes instead.

The only way to be successful at ad agency new business development is to actually do it.

» Call Sheet to Improve your Ad Agency’s Proactive New Business Program

Tracking what you do is the best way to determine how to improve your prospecting

Here is a very simple call sheet, which you can reproduce on a single sheet of paper and use to track the effectiveness of your outbound prospecting efforts. Using this form let's you see at a glance whether you're hitting your daily goals. I know new business people who track their calls this way, whether or not they have a CRM system.

Use this as follows:

1. Set weekly goals for yourself: number of attempts (dials) and conversations.
2. Record each call with a hash-mark. If you leave a voicemail or have a conversation, check that in addition to your attempt.
3. Daily: don't leave until you hit your daily goals.
4. Weekly & Monthly: calculate the following ratios:
   • Attempts / Goal
   • Conversations / Goal
   • Voicemails / Attempts
   • Conversations / Attempt
   • Total Attempts / Total Goal
   • Total Conversations / Total Goal
   • Meetings / Conversations
5. Interpret your results:
   • Attempts and Conversations / Goal: what % of goal are you achieving? How does this change over time?
   • Voicemails/Attempts: what % of the time do you leave a voicemail? If your rate is greater than 25%, you are leaving too many.
   • Conversations / Attempt: how often do you get your prospect on the phone? If you’re great the phone and leave terrific voicemails your “connect rate” will go up. If you’re in the single digits you need to work on your technique.
   • Total Attempts /Goal: are you achieving what you set out to do during the week/month? If so, great! If not, what are you going to do differently next month to catch up?
   • Total Conversations / Goal: This is all about technique – improve your telephone skills and your number of conversations will go up.
   • Meetings / Conversations: what % of your conversations result in meetings set? The higher your rate, the fewer calls you’re going to need to make.

Your metrics (in this case totals and ratios) are essential to building your sales funnel. You'll find that the more metrics you track, the better able you'll be to forecast your new business pipeline.

» Buy vs. Build your Ad Agency’s New Business Database

Smart business decision to expect new business director to build a prospecting database?

Not long ago, Jeff, a twenty-something new business guy gave me a call. He was a new employee at a well-known regional ad agency. His management team had given him a group of industry categories that they wanted him to pursue, and had charged him with identifying likely companies and people he should talk to.

So, he called my company, The List about purchasing a customized database of corporate marketers that fit their criteria. Jeff determined that he could purchase exactly what his agency needed for less than $3,000 and have it in 24 hours. He said he'd call back with his president's approval.

A few days later, I called Jeff and learned that his president had told him it was his job to build the database. I told him I'd call back in 6 months to hear how he was doing.

Right on schedule, I called Jeff 6 months later. Not surprisingly, he had just been fired for not generating any new business. Why? Because he'd spent the entire time building the database (at the request of his president).

Let's do some simple math: Assume Jeff was paid $50,000 a year. Add in benefits and his total annual cost was probably close to $60,000. So, over 6 months this regional agency spent $30,000 building a new business database they never used.

Think of the losers in this equation: Jeff is out of a job; the agency lost 6 months of potential revenue; and, the management team is disheartened about the "failure" of their new business effort.

This is a common mistake made by ad agencies and other marketing services companies that illustrates the fallacy and drawbacks of building instead of buying. I encourage readers to do the math to avoid making the same mistake.

» Proactive Ad Agency Business Development is Relationship-Building in Action

Jumping on a plane at the first whiff of potential client interest in your agency is a quick way to waste time and money

I had lunch the other day with a friend who's in charge of business development for an agency with a half-dozen locations across the country. She's a true expert in proactive business development, someone who can successfully bring a targeted prospect from no knowledge of her agency to new client, without a review.

She relayed the story of her new CEO's propensity to fly out to meet with any client who expresses any interest, however remote, in their agency. The expression she used to describe his behavior was off-color, to say the least (and very funny), but it drove home her point:

Successful proactive new business development is about developing relationships over time.

There are 4 easy to identify phases of the relationship-building process:

1. Awareness
2. Trust
3. Value
4. Decision

Awareness

Many of the clients on your prospect list may not even know that your agency exists. In this phase it is up to you to let them know who you are, what you do, and why they should care. This phase takes time and can't be rushed (hence flying out to meet them now is pointless).

Trust

In this phase your prospective client is starting to believe what you say and what you can do. This might be demonstrated by simply calling them when you said you would, or providing testimonials on case studies.

Value

Here you are showing that what you do generates ROI for your clients. This might be through relevant case studies or thought-pieces. You may also be successful by demonstrating that you are thinking about their business, asking them questions and bringing ideas to the table.

Decision

Naturally, agencies want to jump right to the decision phase. Sometimes it happens - you might call and be lucky enough to get into an RFP process. Even better, though, is when they have gotten to know you and have written the RFP with you in mind, or award you the work without a competitive review.

Think about these phases as you speak with your prospects. Recognize where you are in the process, where it makes sense to nurture the relationship by telephone, and when a face-to-face may move it forward. However, resist jumping on a plane too early - it will more than likely be a waste of time and money.

» Persistence Determines Successful Ad Agency New Business Development

CMO friends consistently tell me that new business people give up too early

Here are the unofficial statistics they cite about agencies' proactive business development people:

• 50% never follow up on the email or material they send
• 25% follow up only once or twice by phone
• 10% call 3-5 times
• 5% call more than 5 times

This does not mean that CMOs want you to call more. However, they do understand the sales process, and recognize "good sales" when they experience it.

If you see yourself in the above statistics, you might think about it this way – you're giving up before you've really begun the sales process. As one CMO said to me, "I won't ever take someone's call unless they've called me at least 5 times." When I asked why, she responded by saying. "I want to know that they really want to work with my company, and that they're not just looking for low-hanging fruit...I am NOT low hanging fruit!"

I recommend you consider doing the following 3 things to quickly improve your persistence:

• Follow up at least seven times: remember the marketing adage that it takes 5-7 impressions to make a first impression.
• Do what you say you're going to do; or, Set and fulfill expectations: if you say you're going to call on the 23rd, call on the 23rd.
• Use a CRM system (for example Act! or Salesforce) to record your notes and set next actions.