There are some things that new business agencies don't want to say out loud in case you don't hire them. We'd much rather you know what a cold-channel business development campaign looks like. Then we'll work together for a much longer time, finding the wins that make it worthwhile for you and of course us. Here are some simple truths about how a cold-channel campaign can pan out.

It's not the same as converting referrals.
Referrals convert at around 80% (opportunity/win). Cold approaches will convert at a MUCH lower rate. It can take months upon months for the first win to land. It's not because you're not good at pitching. It's not because we're not good at finding the right opportunities. It's because referrals are out there winning 80% of things and VERY often, the decision-maker choosing an agency will talk to a few other people to ensure the referral is competitive. You will VERY rarely know you're often a makeweight. It's tough. Quitting after 5-10 meetings/opportunities is probably too early unless the meetings are "coffee and creds" meetings, in which case quit now, then hire us.

You're going to need to spend some money (and no, we're not going to do it for free/per meeting/for a win bonus).
We charge £3000+VAT/month. That means grown-up business developers who can speak at a senior level to prospects in a conversational way. It means strategy from me with my 19 years of business development experience (all for agencies). It means consultancy from Matt Broughton, formerly International Head of Comms for Atari. It means Emma and our team of research consultants, building lists from scratch to ensure amazing data. And even with the level of resource pulling you forward - it takes time. If you've got enough for a couple of months and "if we win something you'll be able to continue", don't hire us. Instead, phone me (I'm Steve) and I'll give you a 15-minute call for free. You can ask me what you CAN be doing while spending very little if anything.

You're gonna be selling.
When we put you in front of a decision-maker, they're not handing you the business. You will have to sell what you do in a compelling way. We can help you to learn these skills if you're worried about that - and it's included in the service (see? the monthly fee is pretty good value really).

But please remember that you’re selling what the prospect wants to achieve, not a set of processes. Think about the business outcomes they want to make happen. Sell those outcomes. This means leaving out some of your usual spiel. It’s worth it - this is SO important.

Send in the big guns.
If you get an opportunity, have the MD in the first meeting. Unless you're one of the massive agencies, this is expected. Actually, if you're one of the massive agencies, it's a hugely compelling thing to send in the boss. I've met some of the CEOs of the monster agencies and they've always got an air of confidence and capability that is beyond any sales pitch.

This is the long game.
There's no magic wand for this. Anyone selling you fast cold-channel business development for significant-sized wins is taking you for a ride. Much of what we do is relationship maintenance. We're not there to strong-arm decision-makers. We're there to seem like a great way to solve some problems. If you're a business owner, ask yourself: how good does it feel to find a great supplier for something? Amazing, right? Making you into that is our job. It takes time, tenacity, and organisation. Trust the process.

No we can't give you constant updates.
Our time is best spent doing the things that make the conversations happen. We can introduce you to a couple of our competitors who produce MUCH prettier reports and give you a "live dashboard". It's great for the paranoid micro-manager in you, who hired us and immediately decides not to trust us to be experts at this. I bet you LOVE clients like that yourself, right? No? Oh.

No, we can't go after the "low hanging fruit".

There are over 25,000 marketing agencies of different types and sizes in the UK. If each decided there was one sector in which there were "easy wins", it wouldn't be long before that list of low-hanging fruit was pretty much every target company in the UK. There are no low-hanging fruit, other than referrals. Stop looking for quick wins. Nothing worth doing is easy.

Year one might not be amazing.
If we get one or two decent wins in year one, we're pretty happy. More is great. Remember how good you are at getting referrals? Well get some from those wins and suddenly we're your best sales channel. Ignore that and you'll quickly decide that we're not worth the money. The thing is we are, almost every time. But there's a level of commercial patience that is crucial. We don't ask that you tolerate poor performance - we find opportunities every month - just not to expect the impossible. A current client used two of our competitors and between them, they got 2 meetings in two years. We would hope you'd fire us waaaaaaaaay before that happened (to be honest, we'd resign - our guys don't want to be running a project like that). Side note, that same agency got five wins in their last full calendar year with us and has been with us for over four years. Year one wasn't amazing, but we were the first new business agency they didn't fire.