Agency New Business And The Demise of Voicemail-What to Do About It

When corporate powerhouses like Coca Cola and JP Morgan Chase eliminate employee voicemail services, it may seem that the job of agency new business development just got harder. Hold the phone though! It’s an opportunity to leverage live conversations, as well as other prospecting resources.

  “When we are planning for a conversation or meeting, typically we think about the task and objectives.  But how much time do we plan the relationship?…how can we connect at a deeper level…?”   These lines jumped out at me as I recently read excerpts of an interview conducted by the Center for Creative […]

I was on a call with a few agency principals and the subject of prospect/list volume came up. They were in the position of having an abundance of work with one (large) client, a very smart, talented mid-size agency, and wanted to be selective about what they went after. I mean, really selective, like potentially […]

The Lexus Hoverboard: this is a product concept that grabs the imagination doesn’t it? From the Jetsons to Back to the Future, the concept may not be new, but Lexus has a prototype. Forbes quoted Lexus EVP, Mark Templin reflecting on the culture that underlies this commitment to innovate: “At Lexus, we constantly challenge ourselves […]

Geoffrey James of Inc. wrote a post on sales development, 6 Steps for Developing Sales Opportunities and he makes a good initial point (with a caveat I’ll add below): Salespeople similarly expend a huge amount of thought and energy on closing deals that turn those sales leads into real, live paying customers. Ironically, the beginning […]

“NO” stings. A recent Wall Street Journal post offering a CEO’s recommendations for dealing with rejection brought my thoughts to remarks people make when they hear about my work. “Oh!” they say.  “Where do you get the courage to pick up the phone and call people you’ve never met before and try to sell them […]

This past week Tony Mikes, the founder of Second Wind, passed away after a year-long struggle with brain cancer. In 1988, after many years as an agency owner, Tony founded Second Wind: his self-professed “second life.” Tony felt strongly that smaller agencies needed resources and information designed to help them build better agencies and it […]