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Creative New Business

5 key tips for gaining and retaining new business

By Lucy Mann, Director

The Future Factory

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The Drum Network article

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February 14, 2017 | 6 min read

Following the success of its invaluable last event on how to avoid the three common PR pitfalls agencies face, the Future Factory held its quarterly breakfast session at Forge & Co. Shoreditch last week, where I had the pleasure of presenting my thoughts on gaining and retaining new business.

Lucy Mann

In 25 years of new business, with agencies of all shapes, sizes and disciplines, I have observed repeated patterns of behaviour. The ebbs and flows of revenue, the formulas for success and reasons for failure.

New business is not rocket science but consistency is what sets apart a successful new business programme from the feast and famine rollercoaster familiar to many of the agencies I meet.

A big campaign idea or an expensive, well connected sales resource is a nice thing to have, but what I’m really interested in is how we get better at the detail. The small efforts, repeated day in, day out. This has never been more relevant than today.

The change of the new business model

Before the internet, the agency new business formula was relatively simple:

Send a mailer of some kind (show reel, brochure, campaign mailer); follow up on the phone; meeting; entertain the client; strike a deal.

Intermediaries aside, this was the how it worked. Bigger agencies with bigger budgets might add a bit of advertising or hire a PR but for small agencies the options were limited.

Then the internet arrived and shook up the system as we knew it.

Today there are infinite ways for any agency – global network, hot-desk start-up and everyone in between – to have a voice, to be seen and to be heard. But this myriad of channels needs a strategy and planning and content. It means that we need a different and more complex formula, and there are more parts of the process to control. How do we make sure we are effective?

Marginal gains

Elite athletes have been using a marginal gains approach to winning for many years now with dramatic results. Andy Murray hasn’t become world No.1 by just training harder; there is a team of people crunching the data on first serve percentages, unforced errors, nutrition, hydration and more. Sir David Brailsford famously transformed the fortunes of the Sky cycling team using marginal gains to maximise performance through changes to skin suits, mattresses and bicycle aerodynamics. How do we apply this technique to agency new business? I call this Small Spark Theory and it is the most effective way to optimise performance.

Here are 5 key tips to improve gaining and retaining new business:

Have smarter objectives

Don’t just have a revenue figure, break it down; what does that mean in terms of types of clients? For example, if you you need a new “pillar” client for next year, identify the shortlist now. Plan your approach – you may not see the revenue in the first year but if they match the profile they will have the potential to grow. Include softer profile objectives. What do you want to be known for? Is there a conference you should be speaking at?

Improve your planning

Effective planning is your secret weapon. Your marketing plan should show small incremental steps rather than just deliverables, otherwise everyone will get busy and key activities will slip, or worse, not take effect. The same goes for pitch planning. Be forensic!

Devise a light, workable, clean plan, which is based on your objectives. (A long-winded plan can be too complicated and tedious, rendering it unusable.) Measure everything. Look at numbers all the way through the year so you can keep track of progress and identify source of setbacks.

Upskill the team

New business meetings are costly! Make sure you don’t waste them; be honest about the presentation skills of the team who’ll be attending. A small investment in training here will reap huge rewards.

Make friends with LinkedIn

It’s powerful, yet we still don’t use it to its potential. It isn’t just about InMails, get involved... Start conversations, use published posts, recommend and congratulate people and encourage your colleagues to do the same. Use sales navigator for lead tracking and insight to keep updated with client/prospect news. If you feel as though you don’t have the time, download the app to your phone. Ten minutes a day on your commute or waiting for coffee will be time well spent.

Put yourself in your prospect’s shoes

At every stage, whether prospecting, presenting at your first meeting, pitching, sending proposals or writing your website, take a step back. Don’t think about what you want to say, think about what your audience needs to hear. Are you making it easy for them to buy from you?

Lucy Mann is director of Gunpowder Consulting.

The Small Spark Theory podcast is available on iTunes.

Creative New Business

Content by The Drum Network member:

The Future Factory

With a mix of lead generation, board level consultancy and coaching, we help to make the future more predictable for agency Owners, Founder and Directors. www.thefuturefactory.co.uk

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