Asking Simple Questions - ASQ

Improving your business development conversations with ASQ.

In a sales situation (which includes more things than you might imagine - networking meetings, being at the bar AFTER networking meetings, pitches, sales calls, chats in the park while pushing kids on the swing, chatting to a stranger at a party, Zoom meetings or plain old chemistry meetings), it's important that you find out as much about the prospect (yes, I know they're more than just a prospect, but let's employ sensible shorthand or we'll be here all day) as you tell them about yourself. Probably more.

Asking questions is crucial. To ask the right questions, you need to have done your research though. Asking Simple Questions (ASQ) is a good idea (and more of that in a moment) but Asking Really Stupid Excess questions (ARSE questions) is irritating and creates a disconnect between you and your prospect.

Here are some things we know:

• Your prospect's safest feeling comes from ignoring you and then tomorrow will be like today and that's fine. Low effort + tomorrow being the same as today = EASY DECISION.

• When you're pitching, your prospect perceives that they have CHOICE and POWER. They can substitute your offering with something else. Even if you insist they can't. And they want the power to choose. And they want an easy decision.

• The only way they'll care about what YOU want (or at least they'll start behaving like they do) is if you convince them that they're getting what THEY want. And you can't lie, so you’ll need to know what it is they want to achieve.

• The more information you vomit at them, the more chance you'll say something they can object to. In the early stages of a sale, you're part of a long list. The prospect needs to exclude you if at all possible.

• The prospect doesn't work for you. They don't have to answer lots of long, detailed questions.

• The questions you ask should be simple to answer and should demonstrate that you've thought about their company and its goals.

• You CANNOT work from a script for any of this. When a prospect answers, you need to be ready to go immediately off-piste (and remember that it's not off-piste for them - you're just joining them on their favourite red run).

• There will be things that you're desperate to tell a prospect that you MUST be ready to omit. The things that are important to you often aren't important to them.

So, how do you ASQ in a business development context?

• Be direct - ask your question and then stop dead. "How would we get to pitch for your next project?" is better than "I was wondering, as we're very keen and I feel there are synergies between our companies, that if there's a project some time in the future, we'd really like to be involved. How would we get to be one of the agencies you choose to hear from when the time is right, assuming you have anything?"

• Don't offer subliminal outs. SO many people say "or..." at the end of a question. Like this: "So, could we get the brief when it's done, or....?". It's like a little tic that makes you feel less forward. But it leads the prospect to the next word in the sentence which SIMPLY CANNOT BE A POSITIVE ONE. Seriously, complete the sentence. You've got to stick "...not" on the end (or something like it). Just like my first point in this list, stop dead. "So, can we get the brief?" is fine.

• Silence is okay. If you've ASQed, the prospect might leave a gap. You'll be tempted to fill it with something. Don't. They're not going to exclude you for waiting for an answer to a question. And if someone did exclude you, they weren't going to hire you anyway.

• If you're information-gathering, stick to one request in your question. "Tell me everything about your current PR endeavours" is a ridiculous ask. But "Do you use your PR agency to look for backlinks?" is a great ASQ. A really good ASQ will lead to more information than it asked for (ASQed for?).

• Listen to the answer. It'll often give you your next ASQ.
  

If you can master this, you'll find yourself in a good spot because not only does it show confidence without arrogance, it leads to the prospect speaking more than you do. By the end of a good call/pitch/chat with great ASQs, you'll barely be speaking as the information will be coming in your direction. And those conversations are the best.

Differentiation in agency-land.

Disruptive. Insightful. Client-led. Strategic.

"We really take the time to understand your brand". "Our team is more like a family". "We always challenge the brief". "Our unrivalled expertise".

I just found at least a dozen of each of those in the last 5 minutes.

They might all be true. It barely matters. Your prospects (unless they're a hot referral) don't believe you. True differentiation is hard. Uniqueness is near impossible. And so it goes that your claims are weakened. So, how can you stand out in a crowded market?

Simple. Act exactly as you claim, consistently. From the first interaction, your prospects are judging you.

Respond to emails immediately, even if it's just a brief acknowledgement. Don't keep potential leads waiting while you craft the perfect response. Promptness and attentiveness always surpass ornate but delayed replies.

Avoid jargon. Nobody is impressed by it. Your complex, trademarked processes with fancy names have no place when engaging with unfamiliar audiences.

Use plain English to describe what you do and how your work achieves commercial objectives. Avoid flowery paragraphs and analogies that make visitors close your website.

Ask straightforward questions. During early discussions, don't assume prospects will guide you. It's your responsibility, not theirs.

In the initial stages, don't give prospects reasons to exclude you. Swearing isn't edgy; it's off-putting. Boasting about being picky with clients makes you sound foolish to new contacts. Funny videos and personal anecdotes have no place in these early, exclusory phases. Focus on value.

Be the agency that understands the prospect's desired commercial outcomes. Emphasize your ability to contribute to those goals. Describe your methods concisely. Ask intelligent, simple questions, and show genuine interest in the answers. Respond swiftly to emails and messages. When possible, answer the phone promptly. By doing these things, you'll belong to a small but distinguished group. Not entirely unique, but far more differentiated than those who merely claim to be disruptive, strategic, client-led, and unrivalled. Ugh.

#agencygrowth #agencylife #businessdevelopment #newbusinessdevelopment #valuepropositions

"About us" matters

We often tell an anecdote during pitches about consulting for an agency in the medical services sector. We went into a second meeting armed with a fairly brutal critique of their “About us” page (they had asked us to do it BTW, we weren’t just being gits for no reason).

The tricky part was when they told us they’d spent two days ‘perfecting’ their current “About us” page, labouring over each and every drop of hyperbole, the intricate description of their backgrounds, their combined years of experience, their business ethos and trademarked processes… (it went on a fair while).

The problem is, no one hires you because of that stuff. Yes it’s nice to be reassured, but think about all the funky new agencies with young, spunky talent, winning work with nothing but skateboards and stunning creativity (and just how impressive/relevant do you think “we’ve got 225 years of combined experience in our team” really is?)

So (we ventured at the time, and say to you now) why not let yourselves be defined by your successes and results. Rather than “We were founded in 2012 and Dave used to work for a big agency”, why not lead with “We’re the guys behind the 75% increase in Visa’s sales last year”?

Such an “About us” can’t be denied. If I say “We’re the smartest agency in London” you could challenge it. If I however told you “We’re the agency that created the campaign that got Youngs into Waitrose”… well, feel free to challenge it, but (unless I’m a complete liar) I’ll be able to prove the statement.

An “About us” created using this approach achieves much: you get to name-drop a client you’ve worked for (establishing credibility), you get to show the kinds of results your work leads to (to get them fantasising about enjoy similar success) and you come over as smart enough to know that cunningly squeezing a case study into an “About us” page has way more value than talking about how you’re always “on time and on budget”.

It might seem picky, but we’re talking about cold channel new business. EVERY second on a call and every inch on an email or web site is critical.

Don’t waste time talking about the office dog and how quirky you are when you could be selling your brilliance to a potential customer.

Happy hunting.

Avoiding the new business 'pest' trap

There was a time my phone would ring and I’d be excited. Now I just stare at the number from Glasgow or +31 or UNKNOWN and wonder who I’ll be hanging up on today.

No, I haven’t have a car accident in the last two years. No, I don’t want to change my mobile phone tariff. No, I can’t answer three simple questions about my life insurance. And no, I don’t want to go to my sister’s for lunch on Sunday (that last one was my mum, but you get the idea).

The problem with this rush of cold calling sales activity is that we’re now all set up to expect the worst when answering a call from an unknown. Which is a shame, because when WE call a prospect, we’ve probably got a really good reason to be doing so. Which bring me to…

How to not be a pest

The bad rep new business agencies carry is very much a case of the bad apples spoiling those of us who consider ourselves to be Golden Delicious; companies with warehouses full of phone jockeys wearing Britney Spears headsets, churning through random numbers in the hope of accidentally finding a customer once every 1,000th call.

That’s not how you get people to respond to your call. We prefer to make smaller numbers of calls and we 1) make sure we have a REALLY good reason to call, and 2) have done some research about the company we’re calling. You can’t do that if you’re making 1,000 calls a day.

Respect your prospect and they will give you ten more seconds of attention (which is a lot). Mention the work you enjoyed that they did for X (because you researched it) and how the work you’ve just done for Y (a relevant name-drop you chose based upon your research) yielded such great results that you want to suggest something similar.

Boom.

You’re no longer a random; you know who you’re talking to and why (and you even have a suggested course of action that drives the call).

YES you’re still a pest (to a degree) but you’ll be the best-dressed pest they’ve dealt with today, and often that’s enough to get the ball rolling.

#bestdressedpest (I’m keeping that one).

Three ways to get more from your Business Development agency

New Business is tough. The only reason Sponge NB exists is because YOU don’t want to make cold calls (we totally get it BTW - they suck). No one wants your cold call, especially when you’re the fifth ‘random’ to call out of the blue this week (maybe even today).

However, employing a new business agency is a proven way to keep your outreach at the levels required to bring in new business, and - as lovely as your existing clients are - new clients are the route to marginal growth that ultimately piles up and has a meaningful impact on your y-o-y growth plans.

So, here are three ways to get the most from your new biz agency:

1) Let them describe you to the outside world in the way that works for them, not just the way you like to be described.

Many agencies have a very specific idea of how they MUST be perceived in the outside world, and will instruct us to ONLY describe them in this way. It doesn’t help. We like to call your prospects and try to engage with them in a non-salesy way, letting the conversation flow in a more casual and natural way, exposing and exploring opportunities as they reveal themselves. If we’re preoccupied with making sure we get out key phrases and agency descriptions by your instruction it just gets in the way of progress. You’ve taken the leap of faith to pay us for our expertise, so now let us show it off a little.

2) Follow your agency’s instructions, especially when it comes to the ammo they need.

I’m mostly referring to creds here. If your new business expert asks for a tidy 8-page creds deck showing off a specific selection of case studies, trust them and do just that. If you return with a 20-pager because “we felt it was important to also show X and Y and Z and…” then you’ve taken the direction of an expert in the field (i.e. us) and gone against our best advice.

3) Don’t get hung up on numbers.

Successful new business IS (to a degree) about volume and tenacity, but that doesn’t mean there’s a direct and specific correlation between activity and results; there’s much more to it than that. So, if we made 70 calls on Wednesday and booked two meetings, don’t think that we get one meeting for every 35 calls we make (and therefore “can you make 90 calls a day to up the odds?”). On Thursday day we might book a meeting on the third call of the day. That doesn’t mean that on Thursdays we should ONLY make three calls.

Asking how many calls we made this week/month/year will waste valuable time as we compile meaningless reports for you - and just dump a lot of irrelevant data in your lap. Instead, chose your agency, and then TRUST them to do everything it takes to deliver the results they know will keep you a happy customer for years to come.

Happy hunting.

Don't expect New Business to sweep the leg

In the CLASSIC movie, Karate Kid, Mr Miyagi gets Daniel-san to clean his cars under the pretense of teaching him karate (by the way, I’m talking here about the original film, not that horrible remake with Will Smith’s cocky kid where you want to punch and drown him after five minutes). The “you work, I teach” manoeuvre from Miyagi is a genius move in the history of child labour and one I wager we’ll not see the likes of again in our lifetime.

Anyway, after LIKE FOREVER Mr Miyagi finally reveals that the moves involved in cleaning the cars are (very loosely, let’s be honest) related to the karate moves that are going to enable him to put other children into hospital (GREAT life lessons like this are littered throughout the film).

I studied Wadō-ryū myself under the legendary sensei, Yoshitsugu Shinohara, and never once did he trick me into learning karate. He’d simply say, “when someone tries to punch you in the face, move your arm up to block it”. In retrospect I feel somewhat cheated that he didn’t instead have me installing blinds in his kitchenette. Anyway, he’s dead now, so… lesson learned.

Still here? Wow. Thanks.

So, what you’ve ‘probably’ guessed from all this is… when bringing in a team of experts such as Sponge NB to do your new business, don’t expect to just be told “if you do {THING} you will immediately get {RESULT}”. It’s not that we’re going to have you cleaning our cars or anything (probably) it’s just that - like Mr Miyagi - we believe that a longer process without pressure actually leads to better, stronger and more sustainable outcomes.

Now we could simply tell you to block the punch on Monday and then enter you into the All Valley Karate Championship Tournament on Tuesday, but - frankly - you will end up in hospital with at least a punctured spleen. Being told the basic premise of a process isn’t the same as understanding it, working on it and benefiting from it.

We’d rather have you cleaning cars (again - for clarity - this IS a metaphor) for a while (and in real terms that might mean creating bespoke creds, compiling a solid database, practicing pitches, etc) before punching you in the face (again METAPHOR).

Look, we’ve all had a lot of fun with this blog, but in a word: New Business.

(Sayonara).

Cold outreach - when when when

I was going to headline this blog with “quando quando quando” but realised it would ruin our SEO so thought better of it. None the less, a big question in new business is often “when?” and the answer is - always, and without exception - “now”.

If you’re thinking about initiating some cold outreach, do it “now”. If you’re wondering what month to schedule it into your 2022 plans, go for “now”. And if you’re looking back at 2021 wondering if you should have done some cold outreach, the answer is “now” (even though I appreciate it makes no sense in that context and “yes” would have worked much better).

The truth is, there’s no ‘perfect’ time to initiate cold outreach; you just have to do it.

Obviously summer holidays and key celebrations are quieter times, but you’ll always be able to find an excuse to NOT do some cold outreach, so just get on with it.

Success in new business comes from tenacity, having an organised approach, and putting in the time it takes (which is not inconsiderable). January too early? February still too early? March too near the end of the quarter? April too Eastery? May too late into Q2? June too near the end of Q2? etc.

See how easy it is to do nothing?

Seriously. There is no perfect time to start your cold outreach, but the worst time to not be doing some is right now. So stop reading this excellent blog and get some work done (the colder, the better),

Agency new business emails

You’re using email to approach potential new clients (aren’t you?), but knowing what to put in them is hard. So here are some simple strategies and tips to help you.

Research

If you’re going to hit someone up using email, research them and their company. Use the info you find to truly personalise the outreach. If you’re automating, make the entire first paragraph a content field and tailor it if you want to make an impact.

Use your research to guide your subject line. Everyone hates cheesy subject lines and they can spot a “Hey [firstname]!” a mile off.

Use simple tools to find the golden nuggets of inspiration. Google News is great, newsnow.co.uk is great - there are hundreds of resources to make your emails pop.

Design

You’re gonna hate this, but ditch the flashy templates. If you want to seem like you’ve just tapped out an email to someone individually, it needs to look like that. So design it by not designing it.

Opening lines

Make it about them, using that research you’ve now done. If you can’t figure out how to phrase it without sounding false, try something like “I was supposed to be doing detailed research into [COMPANYNAME] but I ended up nerding out over your new range of [NERDYPRODUCT]”. Human tone beats polished copy every time.

What to sell

Nothing. Don’t just describe services at them, as if they’re someone who really needs a creative agency but has forgotten how to use their search engine. Focus on outcomes - these are not always numerical - and you can work backwards to the process proposition. A paragraph that basically says “You know how keeping your best team members is tough but worthwhile? well we make it a lot less tough - look, here’s us doing it for [IMPRESSIVECASESTUDY]” will beat a load of patented processes any day.

Calls to action

Ask for what you want, simply and directly. “Can we have a conversation next Monday afternoon - I think it’ll be more than worth 15 minutes of your day and I’m not going to turn salesy?” will do it, as will many other simple and direct CTAs. As long as you have one and it clearly asks for a thing to happen. Never send cold outreach without telling someone what happens next.

Stages

Create follow-up emails but maintain the human tone. With any email copy, if you can read it in the style of a DFS advert or it’d slip easily into your creds PDF then it’s wrong.

There’s more. There’s always more. But the above will keep you in the right zone. Imagine the sort of email you’d respond to. Bet it’d be simple, direct, personable and I very much doubt it’d be in a gorgeous HTML template. And I bet you’d be more likely to respond if the person had done you the courtesy of doing a little research before crashing into your inbox.

Steve Fair can be found writing all sorts of business development content on LinkedIn at https://www.linkedin.com/in/spongenb/

Don't promise; just communicate

As you might imagine, I look at LOTS of agency sites every week. We’re always interested to see the good work done by creative folks, but we’re also (being honest) looking for people doing a dreadful job of representing themselves in case there’s an opportunity to swoop in and save them from themselves.

As a result of said browsing excursions, I encounter LOTS of bullshit, hyperbole, and criminally wasted space (why would someone pass on showing a killer case study to instead tell me what they were like at school, how they met CFO “Dean”, when they were established, why they chose their office building, etc. etc?)

One of the most common BS plops I encounter are statements that were no doubt written while standing proudly atop a mountain, chest out, staring heroically into the sun, but are - under brief examination - utter guff.

“Will will only take on a client if we believe we have the knowledge and expertise to help them.”

Yeah. Right. So when Client X turns up with a bag of gold you’re REALLY going to turn them away because you don’t think you have the expertise to help them?

We’re meant to read such statements and think “Gosh darn it; these guys have integrity” but all we do is snort tea out of our noses and roll out eyes (which isn’t as easy as I make it sound).

I Skyped the statement to my colleague (yeah, we’re total bitches) who replied: “It's such a bullshit line: it's easy to claim, impossible to disprove and unlikely to be true.“

Wise words mate.

So, in summary, stop saying silly things. We all see straight through you, and all those heroic statements are taking up space that could be used to impress us with your work and the outcomes attached to it.

Bring me your unicorns

There are some situations where the lowering of standards is a good thing. Let me immediately say that I can’t think of very many, but the one that led me to the opening statement was how (since COVID) people have stopped worrying about the quality of what’s behind them when making Zoom calls.

Previous to COVID, the world of video conferencing revolved around some VERY showy boardrooms (and those omni-directional microphones that look like a manta ray having a lie down in the middle of the table).

But then we got trapped in our homes and realised that the priority should be with continuing to communicate face-to-(screen-to-)face rather than never seeing another human again. Sure you get some hilarious (and famous) instances (pants-less children wandering into view while top politicians speak to the BBC come to mind) but on the whole, pitching via video to a CEO backed by pink wallpaper covered in unicorns has become commonplace.

Beware, however, the dangers of taking this relaxation of standards too far. Having a “take me as I am” attitude is great for maintaining a “Keep calm and carry on” resolve, but please don’t think that having the odd background unicorn means you can let other standards slip too.

In the same way I’d never turn up to a real-world meeting in a t-shirt, I’d similarly never turn up to a video meeting in a t-shirt that I’d won in a pub quiz (see, it’s all relative).

We’ve recently attended video calls where the attendees had not only not worried about their background, but had also not worried about remembering why we were meeting or who we were. I know none of us look as professional as we did in 2019 (when we all still shaved and used nearly all the buttons on our ironed shirts) but you can still be professional from the corner of your kids’ play room.

Just because we’re relaxed about how things look in video meetings doesn’t mean that you should be any less professional in your preparation and commitment to the meetings themselves.

Impress me with your professionalism, not your unicorns*.

*Now there’s a sentence I never thought I’d be saying back in 2019.

Dress for success

When you go to dinner with your in-laws, do you dress the way you would to wash the car on a hungover Sunday morning?

When you send a “Happy New Year” WhatsApp to your aunt, do you include a photo of your personal body parts?

When you get an email from the hospital about your appointment, is it an animating HTML showcase with various fonts, colours and a funky auto-signature?

I’m sure some people might answer the first question with a “sometimes” but I’m hoping “never” is the universal answer to question two.

I also feel very confident that question three comes with a solid “no” across the board.

The point of this jovial Q&A is to drive home the fact that genuine communications tend to be quite simple. If I receive an email that looks like it’s been written just for me, comes in a standard font, and is in and out of my brain in two or three paragraphs, I approach it as genuine and worth looking at.

The moment I open an email to see some ‘impressive’ HTML monstrosity, I know I’m being sold to or on a newsletter mail group (or its my aunt using her Etsy account to get back at me for that WhatsApp message).

Don’t be tempted to ‘impress’ cold prospects with how great you are at HTML. Give your email a chance to succeed by writing it well and having something worthwhile to say (plenty of our other blogs have advice on this).

If you REALLY want to make some progress with your emails, you’ll just have to talk to us (or write to us… just not in HTML. Please).

Stalking with confidence

Good people tend to move about in an industry. Luckily for us we have LinkedIn, which not only lets us know when a ‘connection’ changes jobs but then demands we congratulate them with the idle click of a button. How sincere.

The more important thing to consider is how you should react to any new appointments you’re privy to.

When a new Marketing Director (for example) arrives at a company, they are generally expected to sprinkle glitter over existing problems and solve a few key issues. Here’s your chance to be smart and become a part of the solution.

Congratulate them, certainly, but more importantly do some research and try to ascertain what problems that new hire might be confronted with. If you know that the company in question has recently merged, how might you help in this tumultuous time? If they’ve recently won new business, how might you help nail that new client’s needs. In a nutshell, how do you make the new hire look awesome by being his or her ‘secret sauce’.

Don’t just list your services when you say “well done”; let them know you’ve done your homework and already know what the Post-it notes on their screen say.

If you’re going to stalk, you might as well do it with purpose and style.

Just say no

Training any new member of staff is challenging (especially when remote) but training new staff for new business development is particularly tough, simply because cold channel is a very unforgiving sector to specialise in. Unless you’ve previously worked in door-to-door charity sales collecting for slightly injured badgers, you probably won’t have been told “no” as much in your life as your first day in biz dev.

The temptation for any newbie is to take too soft a “win”. Someone absent-mindedly says: “sure, send me some literature” and ol’ newbie puts that down as an interested party. It’s the kind of well-meaning positivity that can only come back to bite you in the rear when a client asks for more information about this ‘promising new contact’ only to find it was really nothing worth reporting.

The simple trick is to be honest with yourself. If you have a chat and someone says, “call me in June” is that because something is happening/changing in June, or is it just a smart way for them to ensure they don’t have to deal with you for another six months?

When someone says, “send me info” feel free to say no. Say something like “I’d much rather know when is a better time to have this conversation so that our details don’t simply get lost in all the noise”. You might score a few points for being brave/honest and you might have a slightly longer conversation than if you just agreed to send over a PDF and let them hang up.

Running a dishonest new business agency would easy. You can make the most uninterested prospect sound like they’re on the cusp of buying (keep them dangling there for months). Being honest in your assessment of interest levels is a tougher line to take, but it’ll serve your business development endeavours much better.

Do what you say you do, not do what you do do. Do.

By its very definition, hyperbole is never honest. That, however, doesn’t mean it’s interesting (or worth mentioning).

If you genuinely think that the most remarkable thing about your agency is that you’re responsive, then fair doos - go ahead and remark upon it. It’s not exactly exciting (and one would like to hope that any agency worth its salt would be responsive) but if that’s the first thing you want to say about yourselves to a new prospect, then fill your boots.

You will, however, then have to ensure that you are faultless in that attribute. If you EVER aren’t the most responsive agency in the world, well… now you just look silly (we’ve even had clients who didn’t bother to turn up to a meeting we’d slaved to win them, and shrugged it off as if it were of no importance). Responsive you say? Hmm…

Would it not be MUCH better to actually be the guys that are super-responsive rather than the ones that tell people about it? Now anyone in contact with you can experience how responsive you are rather than read all about it and then hope you are. Now you can replace that sentence on your site with something more meaningful (perhaps a great testimonial or a key result achieved).

Successful new business is about making lots of small improvements to the way cold prospects see you. When you stop listing things as remarkable (that any prospect would simply expect) then you suddenly free up lots of space to say things that might move the needle.

Oh and don’t even get me started on “on budget, on time”…

USPs are mostly nonsense.

This is an excerpt from our article: Is your USP useless? Download the full article at https://www.spongenb.com/download1

Most of the people seeing this will be from a marketing agency of some sort (whether or not you like being labelled that…). I’m going to explain why selling any part of your service as unique is a mistake. I don’t mean you shouldn’t offer it. I mean you should understand why it might (or might not) be compelling.

USPs fall into a few categories:

1)      The “not actually unique”
We hear these a lot. They include:
 - We really get under the skin of your brand.
 - Our team take the time to understand your brand before we do ANY work.
 - Our unique experience in your sector…
 - Our senior team actually work on your business
 - Our team hail from <insert huge agency name here> but you don’t pay big agency fees with us!

2)      The indecipherable
“Our multi-track, media-ambivalent, high-trust methodology engenders a client/supplier authority equivalence not found in other ideation studios”. Nobody’s buying it (literally or figuratively).

3)      The process-obsessed
So many agency web sites are mired in process, without a hint of an outcome. Without the outcome, or the suggestion of a type of result, nobody cares what your processes are.

 People buy outcomes (and only then do “people buy people” – and here’s why)

We’ve all said it – “People buy people”. It’s not true, it just seems like it. Correlation and causality are as different as we all know they are but we all see patterns where they don’t really exist. People do buy people sometimes, but only once some other needs are fulfilled. “People buy people” would be better summed up as “Being an arse to someone makes them less likely to buy from you”. Nobody chooses a supplier whose outcomes aren’t clear and whose selling proposition is indecipherable but who is just a really nice person.

Remember, the full article can be found at https://www.spongenb.com/download1

Four ways to improve your case studies

For various reasons, we’re massive fans of case studies when deploying any new business efforts . One reason is simply that they can’t be argued with. While every agency blabs about how unique they are and the only ones that “really get under the skin” of their clients, etc etc., the truth is that everyone says this, and the only things unique about you are your staff (unless they work for more than one company!) and the work you’ve produced.

This is why we recommend very ‘front and centre’ use of case studies in all cold communications. Here are four ways to make better use of case studies in your creds and comms:

GO BACKWARDS: Most case studies we see start with The Client, followed by The Brief, followed by The Method, then The Problem, then The Solution, then… etc etc. If you’re lucky, at the VERY end you get The Results - arguably the MOST IMPORTANT part of the entire case study. So start with this (oh, and make sure the results are in a REALLY BIG font).

TRIM THE DETAIL: Remember that you want your cold prospect to see this case study and have questions for you. “How did you achieve these incredible results?”… “What time scale did it take to implement this?”… etc. Don’t give them a page full of text and every detail. Leave them wanting to get in touch to find out more.

SHOW OFF: As well as the results, make use of all the space you’ve just gained by trimming the text to show off your work. If it was creative work, SHOW IT OFF! Don’t leave huge white borders because “it’s your house style”, make use of the space to impress your audience.

USE TESTIMONIALS: If you’re thinking “but we don’t have any “150% increase in sales” results to share” then use testimonials. Your client’s MD saying how much impact you had on business or how creative you were in the face of a tough brief… these are results too.