New business and social media

Following 678 - Followers 8

It’s my strong belief that anything you do when it comes to self-promotion should directly be linked to winning new business. Social media has become a quick and easy way to share results, key announcement and the work you actually produce. It can, however, also become an albatross around your neck (or at least several pigeons if you don’t have albatross in your region).

One quick exercise… take a look at your followers on any given social platform that you actively spend time posting on. How many of those might one day become customers, and how many are simply other agencies that want to keep an eye on you (or followed you back because you followed them)?

I imagine the ratio is pretty heavily weighted towards peers rather than future customers (let’s be honest, what are the chances BA’s Marketing Director follows loads of design agencies on Instagram?)

So, the larger question is, why are you spending all this time showing off to your competitors? Is it to prove you’re better than them? Is it to gather those eight ‘likes’ from chums in the industry who appear to spend their lives looking for things to like?

If you put all your time posting on social media down as building “good brand awareness” you’re simply trying to justify a massive waste of time in your day. The time you’ve spent showing off on social media could have been spent reaching out to potential customers.

Stop trying to make people who will never employ you think “oooh, how clever”.

Every time you get the urge to prove how clever you are, instead impress me by writing a great email to a potential client. You might not get any ‘likes’ that day but you might make a new connection and win some business.

In it for the likes

“Please like and subscribe” has become the modern day deal with the devil. “If you want to look at this THING, you have to become one of the stats that helps me monetise the THING”.

With something like YouTube, there’s a very simple and obvious monetising mechanic. However, don’t think for a minute that your heartfelt post on LinkedIn about returning hostages, invaded countries (or whatever’s the topic du jour) is just you sharing your inner thoughts because you’re a profoundly deep person and simply “have” to tell your audience how affected you are.

If you were really affected by something, you’d be off work talking to your mum or best friend about it, not broadcasting to a bunch of agency people you met at a conference in 2019 (who then joined your network in case you had some work for them and/or they had some work for you).

The fact that you’ve chosen to talk about non-business matters on a business platform can come over as a tad opportunist. If you’re thinking that’s a harsh appraisal, ask yourself how many times you checked to see the number of ‘likes’ you’d racked up on your latest earnest post. Why would you care about likes unless you’d hoped to boost your profile? People don’t talk to therapists to be told they’re great story-tellers…

Anyway, I’m being overly-mean because I’m trying to make a point, but why not impress and inspire people on LinkedIn with your business prowess, not by looking deep into the lens and tearfully sharing your thoughts on a plight that barely impacts on your life.

Point made (now LIKE and SUBSCRIBE for more tips on HOW TO DO NEW BUSINESS).

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.

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.

If you're going to be wrong, at least be consistent

When I was a young man, I worked for Xerox Copy Centre. This was back before most companies had all their own office equipment, so I worked in an industry supplying the services of photocopying, report binding and ruining original works of art by chewing them up in ADHs (automatic document handlers, abbreviation fans).

As a result of my many years working in the industry I was able to tell you the GSM (grams per square meter (wow - you abbreviation fans must be having a field day!)) of any piece of paper simply by giving it a gentle twiddle between my fingers. No restaurant menu, business card or waiting room magazine was safe when I was around. My friends and family LOVED it (I’d say “you can ask them if you don’t believe me” but mostly they don’t talk to me now).

A similarly absorbed ‘skill’ came after many years as a writer/editor, specifically that of being able to read any document and spot inconsistencies without even looking for them. Obvious issues include people simply not understanding how to use the basics such as commas, apostrophes and semi-colons, but a more tricky issue to spot (and one I’d urge you to check for when creating any copy to accompany your new business efforts - see, there WAS a point to this!) is simple inconsistencies in ‘rules’ that exist in your writing.

One simple example is referring to a company as a “they”. Companies are an “it” so you have to structure sentences saying thing like “Sponge was key to our success” rather than “Sponge were key to our success”.

You could say “THE TEAM at Sponge were key to our success” but by rights a company is always a singular entity.

HOWEVER… people don’t like this rule as they think it makes their company feel ‘spikey’ and ‘cold’ as an “it”. If you want to refer to your company as if it’s a team rather than an entity, fill your boots, but please make sure you then ALWAYS refer to it this way.

Back in my Marketing Director days (yes, I’m aware I’ve had lots of jobs) I would sometimes weed out agencies based on the thinnest of criteria. Not sticking to your own rules when writing was one of them.

You're not alone. Ish.

Steve and I were recently asked to guest present on an Agency Hackers’ video training session (check them out - there are some incredible agencies in their community), talking to agency owners about smart ways to improve their own business development. As lovely as it is to be asked to do such things, the part I actually enjoy the most is the Q&A session at the end.

Apart from it being a nice opportunity to interact with the many many faces floating on the screen, it’s also always interesting for us to hear which part of ‘new biz’ trips them up the most.

The kinds of questions we got asked on this occasion included:

How big should my database be?

How should I approach our ‘dream clients’?

What email platform should I use?

As you might imagine, we had a lovely time addressing all of these questions (no, I’m not giving you the answers ‘for free’ here – you’ll have to give us a buzz for those gems) but more important/interesting is that you get to see how – with just a simple prod in the right direction – the weight lifts from some seriously-intelligent people who just happen to not know where to begin when it comes to business development.

So… you’re not alone! If you know you should be doing some/more/better business development but don’t even know how to get beyond a napkin with a few prospects scribbled down, fear not; lots of other smart people are in exactly the same boat.

It took the SpongeNB collective many years to feel confident enough to host such a video session, so there’s no way you’re going to get everything right in your first few attempts to reach out into the (never-forgiving) cold channel.

And before you ask, no, I don’t have a copy of the video to share (but I do have a VHS of Robocop if that’s any use).

Trick yourself (and get some work done)

As someone who gave up office life more than 15 years ago, it was interesting to watch the entire nation deal with something that I had to address back then: working from home.

If you have a dog, a ukulele, a biscuit barrel, a PlayStation, a garden, Candy Crush, Netflix or perhaps a keen interest in adult entertainment, working from home can initially prove challenging when it comes to staying focused. Without a boss calling you into their office or staff wandering by your screen to keep you honest, it can be hard to self-discipline and stay on-task with so many distractions around you (and no one to stop you from doing whatever you fancy).

Ironically, if you can stop your eyes twitching to something more interesting, you’ll be stunned at how much work you can get done (though there’s no one hassling to keep you working, there’s also no one hassling to STOP you working). Tea and coffee intake will initially go through the roof (you don’t have to make ANYONE else a cup!) but once you get control of that obsession you should find a more productive WFH balance is entirely achievable.

I enjoyed a blog by Rachel Degginger at Heinz Marketing, offering “4 Tips to Improving Your WFH Experience”. In the blog Rachel talks about improving her WFH situation by mimicking her old work setup (down to an office-replicating raised laptop, external keyboard, second monitor, etc.) to ‘trick’ herself into entering her own personal ‘office space’ with the right mindset.

Though workers are already returning to offices, many are still working from home, and who knows if we’ll all be sent home again in the coming months and years. It’s for this reason that it’s so important to get your WFH workspace arranged in a way that allows you to enjoy the benefits of working from home (no commuting!) without compromising your productivity.

Now close that Incognito window.

Scores on the doors

Here’s fun: Open up your cold channel creds deck (you know, the one that you have JUST for people who wish they’d not answered the phone to you but did and are now trapped having agreed to look at “some creds”).

Ok – real quick… flick through and award each page a score from 0 to 5 based upon how likely they are to be a deal-clinching slide. “Hello” pages get 0, quirky photos of staff in circles also score 0, case studies showing not only the sexy work you produced but also the commercial outcomes they resulted in get a 5. Come back to me when you’re done.

Hi. So, you probably have a score sheet that looks something like 0, 1, 0, 0, 1, 4, 4, 3, 5, 5, CONTACT US!

It might be better than this, but chances are we’re about to disagree over what information impresses prospects and what information simply impresses yourselves. Agency new business is our thing, so trust us for a mo…

The second part of this fun exercise (isn’t it though!) requires you to now delete the second half of your deck. If you had 12 pages, p7 and onwards no longer exist. Why? Well because if you think anyone looks through ALL your creds out of the blue, you’re kidding yourself.

The first few pages ‘earn’ you the chance to have more pages read. If (after killing the end 50% of your deck) you are left with a bunch of really low-scoring pages that include photos of yourselves, a page that discusses the year in which you were founded (and how your office was once a toothpaste factory) then you’re missing the point of cold channel creds. You aren’t having a cup of tea with referred chums; you’ve been given three seconds of a cold prospect’s day to shout something so exciting in their face that they give you a further 30 seconds.

“Hi – we’re the guys that increased IKEA’s online sales by 35%. Then we increased engagements by 4,000 a month for Pot Noodle. Then we… etc.” THESE are deal-clinching slides. If they’re not at the VERY front, then you’re kidding yourself as to how many companies hire you because of your faces.

GAME OVER. Now try again at a harder level.

The Honey Trap (or “How to not not get picked”)

I do - and have done - lots of different things. I won’t list them all here, but the two that you’ll need to know about for the next two minutes are: 1) I was a Marketing Director who hired/fired lots of agencies, 2) I’m a beekeeper.

Being a beekeeper means you end up with honey. Having honey means folks want you to enter honey competitions. Being me, I thought I’d make friends with a honey judge to get the low-down on how best to succeed. I wasn’t expecting what he told me to be reminiscent of hiring an agency, but one key part of his approach was familiar territory…

So, you’re now a honey judge. In front of you are 20 jars of honey (40 actually – competitors need to provide two identical samples). As a judge are you going to taste all 40? No, of course you’re not; honey is lovely, but not that lovely (like attending a beer festival – after 10 pints your taste buds stop working, hate you, and want to go home for a nice cup of tea and a lie down).

What a honey judge does is find small (really small) excuses to not bother tasting your honey at all. Before doing anything, he is looking to eliminate non-contenders without even touching a jar. Do your two samples not have exactly the same amount of honey? YOU’RE OUT! When you open the jar is there any honey on the inside of the lid? YOU’RE OUT! Do the two samples appear even slightly different when viewed through the honey grading glasses (I’m not making this stuff up by the way)? YOU’RE OUT!

I could go on, but you get my point: when choosing from lots of apparently similar options, the first act is to make life easier by quickly getting rid of options you know don’t stand a chance to begin with. SO DON’T BE THAT OPTION!

I’ve had days where many agencies were invited in to pitch for our business one after the other. Those with inflexible methodologies… those with ‘quirky’ MDs who impose their will on everything… those who chose to do their presentations on hand-chalked easels… those who CAN’T USE APOSTROPHES… you’re all just making it too easy for me to cut my options down to a more manageable size.

Show your talent, show your work, show your ability to listen… make it really tough for me to choose between you and the next agency. As long as you can avoid the ‘easy filter’ you stand a chance. Now all you have to be is really really good.

Things you need before deploying New Business support (Pt1)

Many of the companies that enlist our help have either never done real cold-channel business before or think they have (but on closer inspection realise that there was always some old connection or ‘good reason’ for the contact lurking just beneath the slightly warm surface).

It’s not a criticism incidentally; understandably, everyone prefers developing existing leads and working old connections rather than cold-calling prospects off a huge wish list. What it does mean, however, is that most companies coming to us looking to gain more business from cold-channel prospecting aren’t entirely equipped to do so.

The 30-page presentation they’re used to nonchalantly auto-piloting through in front of semi-interested parties is no longer much use. Someone barely interested in switching agencies might swipe through nine tight and mobile-optimised pages on the tube home, but to expect them to care about the history of your building, your copyrighted methodology and the beauty of your carefully-waxed moustache is probably hoping for too much from a cold prospect.

So… imagine a key prospect was only going to look at the first three pages. What would you include? Still want a “hello” page? Still want a gallery of your staff’s mug shots? No, of course not. You want your best case studies that had the most impact. Ok – now imagine you have six pages, what more might you show? Perhaps all the companies that trusted you with their brands? Further case studies showing more disciplines you’re good at? Good – now you’re getting the idea.

Cold-channel prospecting is about respecting the time and (likely) attention of your prospect. If you come at them in a sensible way, they’ll give you the time of day (or at least 30 seconds of it).

NEXT TIME: More stuff. (Such a tease!)

Making a start: What you need to know about employing a new business agency.

Employing and deploying a new business agency is no small investment. It’s obviously a commitment financially, but it’s also a big commitment of time: both in what you must give to the process for it to succeed and how patient you need to be for the process to yield results (it’s widely acknowledged that - barring the odd splendid fluke - any new business efforts require many months of ‘faith’ before any wins hove into view). If someone tells you otherwise, they really want you to sign a contract (and probably one with a six-month notice period).

The two questions we get asked the most from potential clients are: how long does it take to get started, and what do we need to do to prepare? Brilliantly, the answer to the first question is entirely reliant upon the client’s reaction to the second.

House in order
Probably the hardest part of the kick-off process for a new client is the culling of much-loved creds. This deck will probably have evolved over months and years to include:

• Photos of each and every staff member past and present (probably against the backdrop of a brick wall – am I right?).

• At least ten case studies (each a multiple page entry with some serious narrative – but not always any kind of commercial outcomes or results).

• Plenty of self-serving pages about when the company was formed, why it was formed, where it was formed, how it was formed, and the history of the fireplace (basically stuff that no one ever used to pick an agency).

• Welcome pages, goodbye pages, a page before the case studies saying CASE STUDIES (you know, just in case no one can follow your ground-breaking presentation style).

Anyway, you get the point: creds are pretty much always too long, too long-winded, and exactly the kind of size that leaves email systems chewing on them like a cow with a pack of wine gums. Some clients welcome a ruddy good creds beating, others will cling on to every one of the 26 pages clogging up their chances of success.

So… once we’ve established that your cold channel creds need to be slim and impactful… what’s next?

Target acquired
So, you’ve done the smart thing and bought yourselves a shiny new business cannon (if I do say so myself) so where do you want to point us? You might be surprised to learn that some entirely amazing agencies have got to this part of the process only to say: “Oh gosh… we don’t really know; some big brands… or something… maybe?”

Please know what you want – you’re now paying us so make it worth your while by knowing what it is that we’re going after for you. Please don’t say “something like Nike or Apple” (unless you really think it’s a realistic target) and please don’t say “more FMCG”. Understand your own successes, understand what you did so well, and now let’s find some more excellent (specific) targets for you to unleash us upon.

Release the hounds
Ok, so we now know what we’re saying about your company (by mirroring the language of the now-excellent creds) we have creds (result-oriented and tight as a squirrel’s headband) ready and able to email, and we also know where our efforts are to be focused. Thank you. We’ll be back to you shortly with the first of your well-qualified, super-focused new leads. You’re welcome.

When agencies outnumber opportunities.

Agencies from across the marketing spectrum are pretty bad at selling themselves. I don’t want any of them to become salesy, pushy “Wolf of Wall Street” types, employing hideous tricks and tactics. There are ways to be more compelling – more interesting to the decision-maker with too many options.

Agency decision-makers get dozens of approaches a month. Many get dozens a week. They receive endless creds documents. The nice ones read most of them. The less patient ones filter them out based on a few simple criteria. Some don’t read them at all.

Many of the things that agencies talk about are things that a decision-maker would use to exclude them as an option. Location, size, years in business. These can all be positives, but not very impressive ones. They can more easily be reasons to exclude. Marketing bods at companies can choose from many agencies. In our experience (and we’ve been doing this for 15 years*), they choose based on two things: the outcomes you can cause for your clients and the company you keep (your client list).

If you’re at a big outdoor event and there are 25 food stalls, you don’t look at all 25 and choose the one you will eat at. You exclude some first: “Well, I don’t fancy a burger, I don’t want to eat fish and chips while I’m walking around and I hate hot dogs”. Before you know it, you’re left with a few options. These are the ones that you now consider on merit. This is how marketing people whittle lists of agencies down. They exclude first. Often arbitrarily.

The opening chunk of your creds, website or proposal is crucial. It sets up the way the prospective client views the rest of the presentation. An incredible number of our clients started out with creds that opened with something like, “Based in Hexham, our team of 22 amazing people have worked on the most brilliant design projects for 18 years!”. Or maybe bullet points that illustrate the same thing:

About us

- 22 People

- Office and studio in Hexham

- Founded in 1998

- Fluent in Design and branding

Four boring facts that tell a potential client almost nothing. Imagine for a moment that your prospect last used an agency with 8 people, founded just three years ago, based in London. It went well. The outcomes were pretty good. Suddenly you’ve got nothing in common with this decent agency they quite liked. Now, everything you say is through the lens of someone who sees you as rather unlike the last guys. Maybe they liked that their agency was in London. Maybe they liked their small team. Maybe they liked that they were fresh and full off new ideas. Or maybe they liked them for a more important reason: It went well. The outcomes were pretty good. This is what you should lead out with.

If you’re the agency that increased shirt sales for Fullofit Shirts by 23% online, then that’s page one. If you’re the agency that raised staff retention for Slipless Gripmats plc by over 40%, then say so, early on. If you’re the agency that created a brand that staff and customers genuinely loved for Landwell Airways then make that the lead story. Your location, years in business and number of staff can go to the last page. Imagine blowing a potential client’s mind with your incredible results, then at the very end leaving them thinking, “All this from an agency way out in Hexham! Wow!”. It’s remarkably powerful to confound expectation.

And now all you have to do is make the rest of your story readable. A simple truth about sending out a creds PDF is that people are savvy to the size. They look at the file size. Above 5MB and they’re already planning to ditch it early. They’ll glance at the page count. 23 pages? No chance. This is a prospect in the cold-channel. They don’t care about your creative prowess. They don’t want to read a book about you. They don’t want to spend more than a couple of minutes on this. We’ve found that a page count of fewer than 10 pages is important. Single digits = readable. You are not trying to secure the deal remotely, just to create the next step. Tailor it. Make the filename refer to the prospective client if you’re sending it. Mention their name on the title page. People like this as much as they hate receiving something generic.

In cold-channel business development, you’re going to fail more than you succeed. 75%+ of wins go to a referral, or the incumbent. This doesn’t mean you shouldn’t have a strong cold-channel campaign. It does mean you shouldn’t have a poor one. Make every word, picture and page of your creds count. Make it about the prospect, not about you. Focus on their commercial goals. Leave aside your patented processes. Don’t crow too loudly about awards. If someone hires you for twelve months, the thing they’re buying – the thing you should be selling – it whatever it is that they’ll have in month thirteen that they didn’t have in month one.

*See, you don’t care how long we’ve been in business. That didn’t make you want to hire us. But if it DID, call Steve now on 01708 451311. Just don’t tell him that was your reason.