Agency New Business-Tom Petty Was Right

Tom Petty was right, wasn’t he? The waiting is the hardest part, especially when it comes to agency new business. I was reminded of this, yet again, when speaking with an agency principal this week and it also tied into a piece I read the other day.

This principal mentioned they were in the same boat as many agencies, that is, the cobbler’s children story, where new business tends to come last. In this principal’s particular case, she had a very good local and regional reputation and referrals tended to be the bulk of her business.

A good “problem” to have, certainly. But she knew there needed to be more than just referrals, thinking long-term, and started to address this by creating an attractive postcard mailer (which she very graciously emailed and shared with me.) However, the postcard was sent out and nothing really happened.

A lot of questions of course, as to the target list that was being mailed to and how the simple postcard could have been made to stand out more effectively, for example, but specifically I asked how they followed up on the card and the answer was, some follow up but not necessarily as organized or thorough as it could have been.

This made me think of a recent article, Is Your Lead Generation System Causing You to Lose Clients (see link below) and the quote below:

It's simple to drop someone from your target list; having dropped them, they are
out of sight and out of mind. Your sight, your mind, that is. But they have
memories of you. Did you simply drop them? Did you not return the last call?

Now, a caveat in regards to the above quote; unfortunately, not many prospects are waiting by the phone once they receive your mailer and are then put off when you only call them back once or twice. But the quote still makes a good point-prospects do remember a good piece and we’ve heard examples where prospects say they remember the piece very well and there was a voicemail, but they were travelling and never heard back.

So you see where I’m going at this point I hope. You can’t send out the mailer and follow up with one call and be done. It doesn’t work that way. Be reasonable in the initial list you’re building before you send something out to prospects, break it down into something you can manage and follow up respectfully but consistently over months, not just days or weeks.

Yes, Tom is right, waiting is the hardest part, but waiting by itself won’t get you far, take smart and effective action and your efforts will pay off

Click here for Is Your Lead Generation System Causing You to Lose Clients? by Charles H. Green