Let’s talk about proposals, and proposal pitfalls. More specifically the timing and expectations around them, and three proposal pitfalls to avoid. Like anything else new-business related, we’ve seen agencies that crank out proposals and some that agonize over every part of them. Both have their issues. If you’re cranking them out, they’re probably fairly cookie […]
We got some great news from a client who’s been with us just over a year, that they won a sizable piece of business (900k+) from a door we opened for them and helped nurture. It’s not the topic of my post-but a quick initial takeaway: New business takes patience. This may seem so obvious […]
There’s a time and a place for storytelling in agency new business, and it’s not in your initial outreach. You’ve probably read or heard a good deal about storytelling in sales in the past couple of years. Just google storytelling in sales or some version of that and you will see countless articles/blog posts. AS […]
My musical tastes tend to stay around 80’s and 90’s indie music, but I have a soft spot for several classic metal acts, and that culminated in taking my teenage son to see Iron Maiden. Regardless of your thoughts on the music, 45 years in, they put on an amazing show and are as proficient […]
Agencies love to talk about the culture they’ve created, and it is important, but far too many firms use their culture as the main driver of their new business effort. That’s a mistake, because your prospects don’t care about your culture – at least not right out of the gate. Think about how busy you […]
I tend to save the attempts I get from salespeople in their quest to try and get in the door with a prospect. In this case, our Director of Marketing Communications, Miguel, sent over a sales email he received. The subject line was Titanic!, and the first sentence was Hi Miguel, Pretty good ice breaker, […]
Seemingly a constant topic of agency new business discussion, are in-house agencies losing luster? Granted, it’s only one report, but in a survey of marketers by the ANA, 63% report challenges around keeping in-house agency talent energized. Rejoice! You no longer have to worry! All kidding aside, I mentioned in a previous post (How Is […]
One of the most frustrating challenges in agency new business? When prospects go dark. Always tough, and agencies tend to get worried or even desperate when it’s been a few days or weeks, understandably so. You can’t get anxious (easy for me to say I know) and when you do reach back out, find something […]
Project work is the primary way agencies get business these days, and we’ve talked to firms who are handling way too many smaller projects. It creates an untenable project hamster wheel where your team gets burned out because they’re working just as hard on the smaller projects as they do on the bigger projects. So […]
Wondering Why Your New Business Efforts Aren’t Effective? I can throw out several potential reasons: no consistency, no plan, no one owns the effort, to name a few. These are all valid reasons and I don’t mean to diminish their importance with a quick list, but recently, I’ve seen several patterns reoccur across multiple firms […]
