A quick post focusing on “the now.” Take a minute to think about your current clients. Don’t Forget Thinking about your new business plan ongoing is, of course, critically important, but three things in regards to current clients you shouldn’t forget: 1)      Do you have a plan to retain current clients? If not, you need […]

A tale of agency new business positioning from sunny California: We were there for a new client kickoff, had beautiful weather and an hour or so before the meeting and decided to take in the neighborhood. We essentially walked around the same block a few times and the second time around, I noticed a Mandarin restaurant that I could have sworn was on the other side of the block. Well, there were in fact two Mandarin restaurants in the same block. While not shocking, it was strange that they would do so little to differentiate themselves. Not knowing how old each restaurant was, perhaps the neighborhood just really loved their Mandarin cuisine? Agency New Business Positioning-All the Same Fast forward to a few hours later in our new […]

Consistency and time are two of the biggest enemies agencies face when it comes to new business, on top of that-your prospects are insanely busy. And now you’re thinking, ‘Thanks for the revelation Lee, yeah and so are we.” Well, that’s true, you are busy. But what we consistently find is a new business effort […]

57 channels and nothin on

I was originally led to the Content Marketing Institute (CMI) site in a discussion with an agency principal and I would recommend it as reading that will help boost your agency new business content efforts, and one post specifically, The 7 Business Goals of Content Marketing: Inbound Marketing Isn’t Enough. The first half of the post delves […]

A post in the Harvard Business Review (How the Rift Between Sales and Marketing Undermines Reps) has several effective tips relative to new business, and specifically, for the purpose of this post, agency collateral, often the bane of agency new business. What does the messaging look like, how long or short, is it worth doing at […]

There are several reasons agencies comes to us to handle their new business program: time/clients always coming first, can’t find a good salesperson internally who gets it and no new business structure or strategy-to name a few. There’s another as well-that agency client who accounts for a large, sometimes very large, percentage of your overall […]

Rather than the traditional post, I’m going to throw out a few agency new business tips of extreme importance in rapid-fire form.  A few may even border on rants, but it’s done out of love-it truly is.  Let’s get to it: Agency New Business Tip 1: Keep things simple for your prospects. A prospect signing up […]

Ad Agency social media-has it been beaten to death yet? Why aren’t you using it, should you be using it-we’ve covered this ground. But it is ground worth covering. And it would seem agencies are, in fact, embracing social media, but based on stats from our survey, for all the wrong reasons.   Are You Posting About Kittens? […]

remBBQ

One of my favorite  bands, R.E.M., broke up in September 2011. What does that have to do with the new business letter? Read on. It is widely argued that perhaps it should have happened when original drummer Bill Berry left in 1997.  (I am, sadly, inclined to agree.) Nevertheless, they left a great legacy, with […]

Was meeting with a prospect here at RSW/US the other week and as we talked about the potential of a relationship together, he said that he’s been in relationships before with his own clients where they hired him (the dog) and then proceeded to do their own barking….and talked about how he did not want […]