3 Ways Agencies Can Land And Expand

3 Ways Agencies Can Land And Expand

We’re going to talk three ways to look at how to land and expand, and how it ties into your overall new business strategy. Organic growth is one, if not the biggest profit driver for your agency, yet so many struggle with it.

Welcome to “3 Takeaways”, your agency new business video series where we focus on one new business category and give you three takeaways to help improve your new business program.  

Something we’ve gotten a lot of questions about lately from agencies is organic growth-how to land and expand. 

We’ll explore the topic further throughout this year, but we wanted to kick off the topic with this episode. 

The thing about organic growth-it’s driven by account managers, right?

And their mentality is often farming, not a bad thing, that’s inherent to the position typically. 

But to increase organic growth, you need them to be salespeople as well.  

That can be tough, I mean, there’s a reason why moving an account manager into a dedicated business development role rarely works. 

So how do you handle it? 

Well there are many strategies, but I want to give you three takeaways that will help both your organic growth effort (land and expand) and your outbound effort at the same time.

So, your first takeaway? 

Keep prospecting, even after they become a client 

Once your account folks take over, it’s heads down, let’s get it done, service the client as best we can. 

As it should be, as it has to be, but you need to foster a culture of organic growth as well, create a strategy that includes treating your client like they’re still a prospect-multiple touches, over time, providing value in each touch, above and beyond the work.

Now it’s obviously not the exact same process as outbound, but the bones of it are. 

That’s tricky though, isn’t it?

Your account folks may not be comfortable in that role, feel like it’s too pushy or just not something they want to do. 

One of the initial steps in this process is a bonus takeaway-treat your agency like a client. 

Keep your site up to date, create content, show your expertise and POV-these tools can help arm your outbound and organic effort

And that’s where your second takeaway comes in. 

Make your account managers comfortable with indirect selling

It’s not about telling the client, we do a lot more digital work and we could really help you there.

Instead, it’s showing your client just how much you can bring to the table beyond your current work, without shoving it down their throat-three quick paraphrased examples: one-bringing the work you’re doing for other clients to lifewhich you may not always be able to share, at least, not explicitly, but even better-something a competitor is having success with and that you could help your client accomplish or do betterwe know you’re aware of what x company is doing of courseand we’re keeping an eye on it as well-we have some ideas on how to push back” and then finally, another way-making sure your client is aware of a trend that could ultimately tie into future work you could do for them, or if nothing else, showing them you’re on top of it

“This is something we’re watching, not sure it applies at the moment, but could be a real driver for a future project, we’ll keep you updated.” 

That means you need to arm your account teams with the same content-posts, video, case studiesthat your new business director has on the outbound side.

Now, not every piece of that is going to be appropriate for organic growth.

But helpful and valuable content that relates to your client category, and that you’re getting in front of your client, will take you beyond order taking and will provide that much more value to your client

And this helps in creating content overall, when you know you’re using it to gain new clients, and keep your existing ones. 

Let’s bring it all together in your third takeaway: 

Recognize your account managers as part of your growth engine. 

That’s another step that’s going to help drive them, and ideally feel proud to keep excelling in that organic growth role. 

Thanks for watching 3 Takeaways-lots of new business content on our resources page at the URL below-we’re here to help you drive new business if you need it at rswus.com. 

 

 

I'm the VP of Sales at RSW/US. We specialize in working with services firms to help drive and close new business-if you need help with that, email me at lee@rswus.com. What I actually do: drive sales efforts to bring ad agencies and services firms on board with RSW, create content around successful new business tactics and help drive RSW/US marketing objectives, including social media channels, blog content, webinars, video and speaking engagements. Dig it.