4 New Business Development Techniques That Will Never Work

Newsflash: selling is tough and agency new business can be even tougher.

Our new business directors operate on principles of polite persistence, consistency and reaching out with value.

We strive to avoid overly aggressive reach-outs, generic messaging and the crappy tricks we see some salespeople use.

And speaking of those crappy tricks, here are a few I’ve had used on me recently by salespeople, and I’m guessing you’ve experienced these as well.

These are examples of the new business development tactics to avoid-no one likes them and they don’t work.

1. The Subject Line Has Urgent in it

A definitive “boy crying wolf” tactic, and ethically dubious. And if something is truly urgent, it’s typically not positive news anyway, so using this tactic is only going to make a prospect irritated, or worse.

2. Apologizing in the subject line (for something that didn’t happen)

I received an email this week with the subject line “Re: Ugh I am so sorry!”.  Several terrible things about this email: First, usage of “Re” where no one replied to anything.  Second, in the email this person apologized for sending an incorrect link previously-he did not, or at least, I never got the first one.  Basically a blatant lie.

3. Using “asap” in the subject line

Basically just pathetic.  Again, like using urgent, it implies a false sense of urgency which, one again, will only make your prospects want to bludgeon you.

4. Repeatedly calling from different numbers

I’m seeing this a lot lately-a salesperson changes up the phone number and corresponding city and then carpet bombs you with calls to trick you into picking up.

Avoid these folks, and make sure no one in your firm is employing these tactics.