New Business Intel

» Prepare Now for the Year-End Game of New Business Musical Chairs

Don't manage your career, Exceed Expectations

Come year-end, we'll see ad agency new business people engage in the annual ritual of getting fired and finding new jobs at different firms.

This game of musical chairs creates turmoil within agencies and for those terminated, and can be avoided. But the onus falls on the new business person to remain in the game.

What we know for sure is this: the ritual will begin in the next two months, and conversations about performance are taking place now as management teams plan for 2010. If you're a new business person, what should you be doing today?

I recently read an interview with Alan Mulally, CEO of Ford Motor Company, who was asked by Adam Bryan of the New York Times, "What's your best career advice?"

Here's Mr. Mulally's answer:

Don't manage your career. Think about just exceeding expectations in every job you do, continually ask for feedback on how you can do an even better job, and the world will beat down your door to ask you to do more and more. I've never laid out a career, and, frankly, I'd propose that you really don't know what a job is until you're in it.

Exceeding expectations means:

• First agreeing on measurable outcomes with your boss.
• Meeting or exceeding those outcomes.
• Solciiting feedback, and then raising the bar and repeating your success next year.

As you have only 2.5 months to deliver on your 2009 goals, if you're behind you have your work cut out for you. If you feel you'll keep your job, start now to build your 2010 plan - if you haven't already - with your boss' input.

If you think about it, Q4 is late to start working towards your 2010 goals, as today's efforts likely won't pay off until Q2 next year.

If you see the writing on the wall in terms of your future employment, it's also not too early to start looking for a new job, so you have a seat when the music stops.

» Guest Post: Repairing the Ad Agency New Business Highway

Signs of a turnaround

Dave Currie, President of Catapult New Business sits in a fairly unique seat. Catapult gets meetings with corporate marketers for its agency clients. While Dave speaks with dozens of agencies a week, his new business team talks with hundreds of corporate marketers. He quickly feels changes in the new business climate, so its in that capacity that I asked him to give us an update on the recession.

So what are you seeing out there in terms of a recovery, asked an eager new business director at a Chicago-based agency earlier this morning? Are some categories showing more promise than others?

These questions have become the norm in recent months while talking with a wide variety of business development people across the country.

I'm happy to report that, yes, we're seeing significant signs of an initial recovery in all our key indicators. There are also several categories that are showing more promise than others.

Three Quantitative and Qualitative Key Indicators We're Watching

1. Internal New Business Metrics

• In the past 12 weeks Catapult has noted a 20+% increase in conversion ratios within our clients' new business funnels.
• In the last 6 months, initial interactions with prospective clients, quality conversations, and qualified meetings have all steadily increased.

2. Reported New Business Wins

Quantitatively reviewing our clients results as well as information provided by MediaPost's "Accounts on the Move" (subscribe here), reveals that in the last three months there's been a 12% lift in awarded new business.

From a qualitative perspective, on each call and email exchange I have with agencies, I ask how they're doing. Increasingly, the response is positive. This morning, for example, I received an email from a large, full-service agency in New England whose principal said, "We're seeing things pick up a bit, let's hope the trend continues!"

We also speak with hundreds of corporate marketers each day. From these conversations we've identified that marketers are:

• Increasing their spend over the same period in 2008.
• Looking to invest their remaining 2009 budget so they don't lose it in 2010.
• Open to conversations around proven results and ROI.
• Seeking better value through alternative compensation models.
• Open to innovation.

3. Traditional Market Analysis

Here are three indicators, among others, that continue to provide good insights into market (and mood) shifts:

1. Wall Street Journal's daily economic data
2. The U.S. Leading Indicator at Econtrends
3. The S&P 500 snapshot at CNN

The general consensus seems to be that, although a broad-based recovery may be 12 months ahead, it looks like we have a relatively stable foundation for growth.

On the new business front, some markets are showing signs of recovery faster than others. If you can take advantage of opportunities earlier than your competitors you may be able to capitalize on a changing market.

Some of the positive changes that we're seeing now and expect to continue into 2010 include:

• Big-box retailers. The upcoming holiday season / seasonal influence is helping.
• Regional finance and banking. This sector is experiencing positive changes, though some banks are still in trouble.
• Consumer OTC and health care. Seasonality is impacting the sector (cough / cold / flu and consistent spending through the downturn).
• Consumer package goods. In particular, the healthy snacks category.
• Quick-serve restaurants and casual dining. We've seen a 45% increase in opportunities in the last six weeks.

What can you do to take advantage of this opportunity?

Agencies that have undertaken the following are seeing improved new business results:

• Having a clear, unified vision and brand.
• Differentiating themselves in a saturated market.
• Positioning themselves as experts to their prospects.
• Investing in self-marketing.
• Communicating with prospects throughout the economic downturn.
• Addressing a known or assumed business challenge.
• Carefully targeting the right prospects.
• Sending specific messages to specific job titles.
• Utilizing a mixed-media approach in their outreach, including social media, and employing multiple prospect touch-points (up to 15 in many cases).

» Your Favorite New Business Questions

What are the best questions to get corporate marketers talking?

We all have our favorites, so why not combine our knowledge and put together a list of the best? Below is a form to enter your favorites.

Submit yours and then I'll create a Top 10 Questions list that you'll be able to use.

» Agency New Business Killer or Promoter: Your Director of First Impressions

You are judged on first impressions

A recent survey reveals that only one in three agency receptionists meet the characteristics of a Director of First Impressions. Staffed well and you'll have another new business weapon in your arsenal.

Prospects start evaluating your agency on their first interaction, which is often the person who answers your phone.

Done well, in the eyes of your prospect or client, your agency may gain a competitive advantage over anyone else they're talking to. Done poorly, and well...they may dread the idea of calling, and won't.

Personally, I've been struck by the rudeness of receptionists at certain agencies. To get a better feel for how widespread the problem is, I asked eleven of our sales and new business people to give an overall grade to the receptionists they speak with at agencies all over North America. Now, these eleven speak with about 35 agencies a day, so that's about 385 per day, 5 days a week, 50 weeks a year. That's a lot of agencies, so while not scientifically based, it's a decent sample.

In answer to the question:

What percent of agency receptionists fulfill the role of a good Director of First Impressions? Only 34%.

There were some highs and lows (e.g. New York agencies: 5%), but even accounting for them the average was the same. This is not good news for ad agency new business.

What to do to fix the problem?

Below are some suggestions. I'd like to thank Jann Driscoll from Catapult New Business who significantly contributed to the list. She used to work at Cox Communications and for a time was in charge of training people in this critical role.

1. Evaluate how you're doing. Call in from a phone your receptionist won't recognize, or ask a friend to do it for you. Evaluate how they handle the call.
2. Think about the skills you want in the role. A director of first impressions needs to have a passion for the agency and also be able to do a tough job - be the gatekeeper, research director, operator, friend, and of course the first impression anyone has with your brand.
3. Teach them your brand. No one off the street can possibly step in on day one and understand the history of your agency, its culture, positioning, etc.
4. Set expectations. They need to know that their job is making a superior first impression with every human interaction….never just passing someone off, always exuding empathy, courtesy, and confidence, and always demonstrating that they are a true resource for the person on the other end of the phone.
5. Train them in customer service. This means both internal and external customer service. How you want them to treat employees is as important as how they're to treat prospects and clients.
6. Broadcast their title. Put it on their business card, on their employee file, on your website. Let them know that their role is critical to your future business success.

The challenge for most agencies is that the "front desk" job is often taken for granted, and perhaps even considered a necessary evil. If senior management makes sure that your Director of First Impressions is welcomed into the business, treated well, and provided ongoing coaching and encouragement, you'll have created another member of your new business team.

So, you must be asking yourself, "Who does it well?" Well, here's one agency that does: Brains on Fire. if you want to hear what a great Director of First Impressions sounds like, give them a call. If you want to see what one looks like, click here!

» Skillful Listening Critical to Ad Agency New Business

Listening = Winning

We've all heard the expression, "People love to hear themselves talk." When it comes to new business, your success is often determined by how well you get your prospects to do the talking.

I've asked some great new business hunters what they think about that and the common answer has been, "When I'm on my game, I'm asking questions and listening really carefully to both what's being said, and what's not."

I've also asked sales coaches to recommend a target percentage for the amount of time a prospect should talk. They've said,

You should be listening at least 60% of the time.

As that's more than half the time the question is, how do you improve your listening skills? Here are the steps that I recommend:

Eliminate Distractions

1. Turn off your cell phone.
2. If you'll be talking on the phone, turn off your computer monitor - unless you need it for your presentation, in which case close your email.
3. Turn away from your desk or clear away anything that might take your mind off your current conversation.

Focus

1. Put yourself in a "student mentality". You want to be curious and open to new ideas. Remember, this is all about what you can learn from the person you're talking to.
2. Think only about your prospect: Give them 100% of your attention.

How to encourage your prospect to keep talking

• Use short, positive prompts. For example, "umm-hmmm", "Oh?", "I understand", "Then...?", "And...?"
• Use open-ended questions. Questions that start with What, Who, Which, or How can expand the conversation.
• Use close-ended questions. Questions that start with Would, Did, Do, Can, Is, Would, or Are can be used to prompt for specifics.
• Restate. Every so often repeat what you think your prospect said. Paraphrase in your own words. For example, "Let's see if I clearly understand..."
• Offer modest feedback. Share short insights and experiences, and then listen carefully to confirm.
• Probe. Ask questions to draw your prospect out and get deeper information. For example, you might ask, "What do you think would happen if you...?"
• Permit silence. Let comfortable pauses and periods of silence slow down the conversation. Give your prospect time to both think and talk.
• Summarize. Interpret what you heard and check for understanding. For example,"So it sounds to me as if...."

What not to do - things that may shut your prospect down

• Interrupt. This is the fastest way to have a short conversation.
• Dig for too much information. Use your intution before asking a probing or potentially too-personal question. Timing is everything. Ask the question too early and you've lost your prospect.
• Advise. Similarly, you are in no position to recommend a course of action until you've earned your prospect's respect.
• Patronize. Eliminate any phrases like, "I know just how you feel" from your vocabulary.
• Give unwelcome reassurance. For example, the common phrase "Don't worry about that" can be taken to mean the opposite, so don't use it. 

Last night, I came across a quote in the book "Same Kind of Different As Me" that's a perfect summary of our listening challenges, and also food for thought:

Those who should listen cannot get beyond the sound of their own voices.

Here's the corollary for new business: "The person talking is the person buying". Your key to success may be as simple as asking qood questions and then letting your prospect talk.

» Prospecting Tip: Use Your Cell Phone for Ad Agency New Business

One of the old rules may need to be rewritten

It wasn't long ago that calling a marketer on their cell phone was considered "too personal".

However, as cell phones are becoming mobile computers, and the lines between work-time and personal-time are blurring, doing so is becoming less verboten.

Just the other day I heard from a new business person who said that after being transferred to her prospect's voicemail, he offered his cell phone number "in case of emergency". Figuring it was worth a try, she called and he answered, and they had a great conversation. He was driving, didn't have any interruptions, and was able to fully engage with her.

The other advantage of this technique: No caller ID.

So, if you're not already doing so, it may be time to incorporate your cell phone into your trio of outreach tools:

• Office phone
• Email
• Cell phone

One other suggestion: Forward your office phone to your cell phone.

You may have had a marketer leave you a voicemail on your office phone in the evening or over the weekend, assuming that you wouldn't be there to answer. If you do forward your phone, though, just be ready to have a surprised marketer on the other end. Be prepared to ask questions and try to engage them, even though it may be Sunday afternoon!

» Knowing your Target is Key to New Business Prospecting

White paper reveals benefits of good prospect targeting

There's a direct correlation, in our data and in our experience, between companies who know more about their targets, and how successful they are at generating leads.

RainToday.com's research report, What's Working in Lead Generation, is the result of interviews with 730 B2B marketers (including ad agencies and other marketing services firms).

It asked them, among other things, how well your company knows whom it should be targeting, in terms of:

• Your target market (industry, geography, size, etc.).
• Titles of decision makers in your target industries.
• Specific names of companies that are the best targets.
• Names of specific decision makers appropriate for you in your target companies.

Here are some surprising statistics:

• Only 30% of B2B marketers know the actual names of decision makers they target.
• Only 51% of those who rate themselves "Excellent" at generating leads know the names of actual decision makers.
• 13% of those who rate themselves "Poor" at generating leads know the names of actual decision makers.

If you don't know to whom you're marketing, you are wasting precious time, money, and business resources.

Taking their argument one step further, they argue that good prospect targeting provides your ad agency or marketing services firm 4 advantages:

1. Good prospect targeting improves the efficiency of your business development time.
2. Good prospect targeting lets you establish relationships with the prospects who matter most.
3. Good prospect targeting focuses your business development efforts for business growth.
4. Good prospecting targeting saves money.

RainToday's research is in sync with everything I've experienced over the years. If you'd like to read or download the white paper, click here (full disclosure: it's so relevant that The List has sponsored its wider distribution; however, we had nothing to do with the research. Note: you'll have to submit some information in order to download it).

» Hire Your Ad Agency’s Next New Business Person Without Meeting Them

Best predictor of job performance is a work sample

Dan Heath and Chip Heath, authors of "Made to Stick" wrote a provocative article in the June issue of Fast Company. It challenges our basic premise about how to hire successful employees.They argue that the reality is that

Interviews are less predictive of job performance than work samples, job-knowledge tests, and peer ratings of past job performance.

As primary evidence, they report on an unplanned, fascinating experiment that started in 1979 at the University of Texas Medical School. The school interviewed the top 800 candidates, scoring each on a seven-point scale. They admitted the top 350. Then, unexpectedly, the Texas legislature required that they admit 50 more students. It was so late in the process that only the candidates with the lowest scores were available, and they were admitted with everyone else.

The expectation: those with the worst scores would end up at the bottom of the class.

The reality: There was absolutely no performance difference.

And then the graduates went on to their residencies, where their inferior capabilities in actual work in actual hospitals would be clear. Right? "Nope, didn't happen. Both groups performed equally well in the first year of residency." The entrance interviews "correlated with nothing other than the ability to interview."

So, you need to figure out whether or not your candidates can do the job - without interviewing them.

If you're hiring a proactive ad agency new business person, whose job it is to sell, then ask them to sell you something. Here's how you do it:

• Set up a telephone interview.
• Create two role practice scenarios (for more details on how to do role practice, read this post).
• You'll be the marketer and your candidate will represent your agency.
• Run through each scenario once, listening for the questions they ask you, their ability to engage you, their comfort level when you attempt to shut them down, etc.
• Observe how well they understand your agency: are they a quick study, did they prepare well or wing it?

I've found this to be the easiest way to weed out new business candidates who claim skills that exceed their capabilities. And this is something you definitely want to know before you hire that smooth-talking interviewer.

» 10 Things MBA Schools Won’t Teach You About Managing Your Agency

Input from entrepreneurs on management, marketing and sales

If your ad agency is new or entrepreneurial, you're in a start-up marketing services company, or you're a CEO, you'll relate to this list of 10 things MBA schools won't teach you and the follow-on comments from street-smart entrepreneurs.

This list was culled from two posts on Dharmesh Shah's OnStartups.com, plus reader comments. I've picked the ten I liked most, that I thought were applicable to anyone thinking about new business or managing your agency. 

From the original post, "10 Things MBA Schools Won’t Teach You":

• There are an infinite number of ways to spend money on marketing.  You have no idea what’s actually going to work.  The idea is to experiment broadly and learn lessons cheaply.  On a related note, no amount of MBA marketing classes will prepare you for the day that you have to produce leads in order to close sales.  As it turns out, marketing is about more than product feature matrices and the right shade of blue for your logo.

• No amount of strategic planning will ever substitute for managing your cash flow.  Financial statements are great.  The most important one is your bank account statement.

• There’s a lot of value to being likable.  Good things happen when people like you.  When people like you, bad things have less of a chance of being fatal.  I advise being likable. 

And from the follow-up post, "37 Pithy Insights from Street-Smart Entrepreneurs":

• Infect employees with pride of ownership. If the employees feel like they are part of something bigger than themselves, then they'll work that way.

• Ritualize the work atmosphere -- every time a contract comes in, ring a bell or gong and let everyone celebrate. There's a reason Survivor has rituals.

• Leave your ego at the door and hire people without big egos that can understand how to look at a problem and be open to solutions no matter where they come from.  Keep those people.

• How are you continuing to invest in your customers and their experience after they have purchased your product? Value relates to the entire customer experience

• Ultimately, the CEO's position is to simultaneously lead and serve others.

• It is important that you like your customers. If you do not like your customers you will by design not do the best you can for them because they annoy you.

• A big lesson for me was SALES. There's very little coursework in MBA curricula around how Sales works... Can be a rude awakening for freshly-minted MBAs who know all about Porter's Forces, and nothing about how the Sales mind, the Sales organization, and Sales processes work.

What are some of the lessons you've learned?

» New Business and the Art of Relaxation

How to you decompress and rejuvinate?

As you read this I'll have just gotten off a beautiful kayaking river in Idaho. We planned this trip a year ago. With us are members of my wife's family and very close friends with great senses of humor. Part of the plan was going to a place where we were forced to completely unplug.

When you're in a canyon in the middle of nowhere, there's no other option.

Getting away from thinking about new business and business development is important - we all know it helps us relax and have fun so we can return with renewed focus and energy. The challenge is that it's so hard to get away for long enough to really gain the benefits of an extended break.

I recently finished Doris Kearns Goodwin's "Team of Rivals". It's the story of Abraham Lincoln's rise to the presidency and the cabinet of political rivals he created and adroitly managed.

It also reveals how one of our great presidents decompressed and relieved the stress of his job (remember, he was president during the Civil War). I discovered that Lincoln went to the theatre over 100 times during his presidency. Here's what was said about how the theatre helped him mentally relax and re-energize:

...driving his mind to other channels of thought, afforded him the most entire relief.

What do you do to take your mind completely off work? Where do you go? Have you found a way to do this in a couple of hours, as Lincoln did? I'd love to hear your ideas.