Lest we not forget about the NBM: Still the tenure of a CMO

In our recent survey on agency new business, there has been a lot of attention given to the fact that agencies aren’t walking the talk when it comes to social media.  The big story as you may have seen, is agencies are selling social media to their clients, but they aren’t doing a very good job of doing it themselves. There’s been a lot of good dialogue generated, particularly in some of the posts after the AdWeek article featured the survey results.

Another story, overshadowed by the social media news, is one related to the success rates of agency new business managers.

Similar to last year, the lifespan of a new business manager rivals that of the average CMO. CMO’s are lasting about 18 months…new business managers…slightly longer.

Time and time again, we are brought into situations where agencies have tried new business managers and have failed. Let’s examine the whys:

1. Too many responsibilities. Agency principals see a body, have a task and divert the attention of the new business manager so they can’t stay focused on generating leads and getting great meetings for the agency;

2. Wrong skill set. Here’s a quote from an agency principal I recently reached out to, to re-introduce myself after meeting with him a couple years ago: “I remember you well. You were the (accurate) predictor of our (then) sales rep’s impending demise….ha!".  I’ve seen too many agencies try and hire the ex-healthcare sales guy or the ex-print production sales guy without regard for their real understanding of the agency business…and more importantly the marketing business. And it’s one thing to be able to sell, but it’s another thing to be able to operate on a phone, on email, via the mail in a persistent, compelling and value-added way;

3. No methodology. No consistency. Good sales people are probably a bit ADD, so absent a good, well-grounded methodology, your new business manager is going to have a hard time keeping organized and focused on staying with prospects. They might do well with 10-20 “Priority A” prospects, but numbers are part of what impacts the effectiveness of a program. If you can’t get your numbers up and you can’t manage those numbers with consistency, you’ll get nowhere;

4. No value. “Set up useless meetings” is one of the top reasons agency principals note as the reason why new business managers fail. What seems to happen is new business managers get desperate, and they just start pushing…without regard for bringing value to the prospect’s life. If all you do is “pound your chest and tell the world how great you are”, all you’ll end up with is “meet and greets”. We operate on a 110% principle of “value-add”. Everything we push out to prospects on behalf of our clients is about helping the prospect – either by giving them information that can help them, help themselves (kind of like I’m doing here) – or by giving them insight into how what we do (I’m speaking as an agency) can get them to a better place – which in and of its own right is a value-added offering. So keep the value and know what your new business manager is pushing out.

I could go on for hours about the things that need to be done to create a strong and effective program internally. Happy to talk to anyone about it…or send you a proposal so you can look at how we set it up in the proposal, and you can then use the framework of what exists in our proposal to set your own system up inside. While we are happy to follow a string of bad new business manager hires, we are happier when agencies as a whole succeed as it is good for the industry and our community at large. Call if you have any questions.