Agency New Business: THE meritocracy

My first full-time job was at a well-known high street chemist. I was in one of the larger stores selling records and stereos (if you’re under 25, please ask an adult what ‘records’ and ‘stereos’ are or you’ll have no context).

I was told that a management role was definitely a possibility, as long as I was prepared to work there for the next 55 years and wait while everyone above me retired or died. It was at that point I thought it might be better to find a more meritocratic company to work for.

Being rewarded and progressing based entirely upon your merit has always worked out well for me, but anyone moving into business development might have a tough time initially. The interesting thing about new biz is that the only way to go about it and expect results is full steam. Being ‘part-time’ or ‘when I have time’ about cold channel prospecting will most certainly fail.

The challenging part of new business (both to companies and individuals) is that you can be doing an absolutely top job on paper and yet see nothing in the bank for your efforts. It’s demoralising and forces you to constantly wonder ‘am I doing this right?’. Until you start converting cold channel outreach into wins you’ll ALWAYS doubt yourself (and even once you trust your methods, it only takes one dry patch to send you spiralling back down into self-doubt again).

So, if you plan to attack new business, then do exactly that - ATTACK. Don’t ‘have a go’ or ‘spend a little time on it’. All you’ll do is have a bad experience and give yourself a thin reason to believe that cold new business doesn’t work. It does work - it just takes a lot of sustained effort.

Good luck.

The Data Doughnut (TM)

Yeah yeah… go ahead and snigger. So I’ve got a ‘thing’.

I accidentally said it one day… and then liked it enough to use again in conversation (multiple times). But you mind my words (sonny boy) once I take you through The Data Doughnut (TM) you’ll be eating your words. Your delicious doughnuty words.

I should also quickly point out that though I’m aware there’s a way to get a proper trademark symbol to appear, I like to simply put the letters T and M into brackets to show that I’m not precious about it (use it, however, without prior permission and I will hunt you down and kill you).

Anyway… The Data Doughnut (TM) is a FANTASTIC visual representation of your database. A mistake I see often is people building a database, starting to work on the database, and then, when not even halfway round ‘the ring’ (as we call it) adding a bunch of new prospects. So, just as you were approaching 6 o’clock (yes, I know I’m mixing metaphors - don’t tell me how to live my life) you’ve sudden expanded the ring and sent yourself back to 4 o’clock.

And then off you go, continuing round this slightly larger doughnut, and then… BAM! - you add even more data! You’re taking what was a manageable, well-thought-out and reasonably-sized database, and warped it into an unmanageable monster. And while you think you’re doing a dandy job of ‘augmenting’ your database, the data sitting at 11 o’clock is getting older and mouldier (and further away). You’re sabotaging your own doughnut you lunatic!

I am of course assuming you did a good job of building your database in the first place, so now just focus on working it. As data is removed (taking ‘a bite’ if you will) don’t replace it, just continue round the ring. Give all this freshly-baked data a chance to bear fruit (again, don’t worry about the metaphor - it’ll be fine).

Some of the doughnut will require a second pass (maybe even three) but that’s the nature of a new business prospect database - it takes time and tenacity. Only once you feel you’re chewing on the same bits over and over should you think about building it back up with fresh entries.

Anyway… data, rings, doughnuts, trademarks. I’m sure you get the idea.

Good luck and goodbye.

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.

Agency new business. What works?

There are so many ways to build a sales campaign for an agency. Many agency bosses don’t want to be seen as needing to sell, but once you’re past the honeymoon phase and it’s time to scale-up beyond what falls in your lap, you’re going to need to have some outreach strategy.

Cold-channel business development is, when considered in isolation, inefficient. But there are ways to make it work better. It takes discipline and you have to throw out any ideas you have about high-volume telesales campaigns or mass-email outreach. Forget transactional selling (for at least 95% of the process) and sell something that has huge relevancy to your prospect. A recent Dun & Bradstreet report showed that 67% of b2b buyers see “relevant communication” as a top influence for choosing one vendor over another.

But it’s more complicated than that. A Gartner report found that the number of people in a company buying decision has increased from 1-2, to 7-8 in a small business (up to 500 staff). Each level of decision-maker will have a different idea of what is relevant.

Luckily, it’s not just the direct outreach that can create that relevancy. Your content marketing is part of what makes you relevant. A Forrester report from a while back (2014) found that even back then, half of b2b prospects will view at least 8 content pieces during the buying process. 80% of them looked at a minimum of 5 content pieces. This is all part of the selling process and your direct outreach should dovetail nicely with the content you produce. Sadly agencies’ content is all too often the sort of thing that impresses other agencies rather than prospects.

The reason agency new business endeavours are so frustrating at times is the need to maintain relevant contact with a large number of prospects, who have rarely been profiled and segmented properly. And if you get busy, you drop new business. And if it doesn’t bring in new clients quickly, you drop new business. And that’s why it becomes cyclical. You blame everything in turn. Your proposition. Your creds. Your Business Development Manager. A new business agency. The prospects. Your website. You. Another new business agency. You might be right (about one or two of them), but the chances are that nobody has ever really explained how cold-channel outreach works. It’s literally the opposite of winning through referral. It’s very, very hard. But it can work.

I’ll finish with some insights from Hubspot – their survey of buyers said that the top things that lead to a positive sales outcome are:

-          Listening to the prospect’s needs (69%)

-          Not being pushy (61%)

-          Providing relevant information (See!) (61%)

-          Responding in a timely fashion (seriously, it’s such an easy win – and so many agencies screw this up) (51%)

We can help with all of these things. We can consult with you on your agency’s many value propositions, selling personas, positioning statements, outreach strategies, and content strategies. We can do the outreach for you. You’ll feel it move under your feet and you’ll finally be able to tick “get the new business sorted” off your to-do list. Let’s have a chat.

7 ways to stop making dreadful sales calls

First, let’s get something clear: we do a lot more than make phone calls for our clients. Today we’re just addressing the fact that most new business calls are remarkably bad. We don’t claim to have a magic wand, nor do we promise ridiculous results from our work. We do however make sure we avoid wasted opportunities. The phone call is a prime example of where waste can occur over and over in a single day. In a single hour. At a new business agency like Sponge NB, we see this affect outcomes directly - so we’re strict.

1 - Research it

The first compliment you can pay your prospect is having taken the time to research them. Even a little bit. It’ll make all the difference to your confidence. It’ll make all the difference to how receptive they will be. You don’t need to know their dog’s name (though if you do, please find a way to mention it without sounding like a stalker (on second thoughts, you will sound like a stalker. Probably keep it to yourself)), but knowing where they have worked before (Linkedin will help with that) or which agencies they’ve hired before (trade press can yield that information) will show that they’re not just a name on a list. You’d be stunned at how many BDMs don’t do the simplest research.

2 - Make it different

Most agencies’ new business calls open with something like “We’re Crunchy Frame Creative and we’re a creative agency and we’ve worked for Channel 6, Harbinsons’s Jam and Nevaslip Prophylactics. Can I have a minute to talk about your marketing?”. Other than the fact that you’ve already started talking to them without establishing that they are okay with having an agency badly described at them, it’s just dull. You’re an agency? With clients? Wow! When can we brief you? If you’ve done your research and you’re smart enough, you’ll be able to open with a question that prompts some conversation. Some of our team are sometimes guilty of not using their research to spark natural conversation – it makes the call far harder to get anything from. Nobody in any marketing department wants to know who you’ve worked for or what type of agency you are until you’ve created a compelling reason for them to desire that information. You might create that compulsion through your clever questions, your knowledge of their company or simply your genuine, carefully directed enthusiasm.

3 - Stick to what you say you’ll do

If you tell someone you’ll send them information straight away. That means moments after the call. If you’re not going to send it immediately, then tell them when they’ll get it. If you tell them 3pm, make it arrive at 3pm.

4 - Follow it up properly

Your prospects get a lot of calls. If you’re going to build any relationship with them then you will need to stay in touch. If you don’t then despite how amazing your agency’s work is, they won’t remember you. There’s a fine, nay (nay?) invisible line between “staying in touch” and “pestering the heck out of someone”. Stay on the right side, but don’t convince yourself that they’ll call when they need you. Too often they won’t. If polite contact from time to time is enough to annoy them then they weren’t going to hire you anyway.

5 - Don’t offer outs

“Can we respond to your next advertising brief, or……..”. This “or”, hanging off the end of the sentence is like a comfort blanket to new business people. In fact I’ve heard it from salespeople of all types over the years. Listen to your new business calls. If you hear that, then stop doing it the way you’re doing it and hire us (quoting SNB_OURPREVIOUSNEWBUSINESSCALLSWEREAWFULSOPLEASEHELPUS for a 7% discount). Don’t offer exits along the way. If the prospect doesn’t like your approach, or if your questioning uncovers the fact that they don’t want you, then they’ll find their own exit. You ought to be looking for the next best thing, all the time. When are they reviewing? How long is the current agency contract? Are there ever projects that fall outside of their current agency’s remit? But don’t roll out the red carpet to the exit door, or why did you call in the first place?

6 - Don’t immediately mention something you sent

You sent information and now you’re calling. You mention it, right? Let’s look at the possibilities:

1)      You call, saying that you sent the information about your amazing work on Harbinson’s Jam. The prospect remembers this information. But the prospect also remembers seeing it and not calling or emailing you. Otherwise you wouldn’t be calling them, eh?

2)      You call, saying that stuff about the PDF about the jam guys. The prospect doesn’t remember seeing it, or didn’t have time. Now you’re back at square one, but the prospect now views you as the guys who sent the information that he instantly forgot, or couldn’t be bothered to read.

3)      You call, use your research and intelligence to ask questions, building on the previous information that led you to send information. If the prospect doesn’t mention it, then you can send it as if they’ve never seen it. If they now remember it of their own volition, then their image of you is rather stronger – they remembered your jam work unprompted.

In case it’s not clear, number 3 is best. So if you sent info, don’t mention it. Sounds counter-intuitive, but it isn’t about your ego, it’s about creating a compelling reason for a prospect to hire you.

7 - Close, boldly, openly and honestly.

There are loads of different types of closes – the assumptive close, the Ben Franklin, the negative close. Bin them – they’re too prescriptive. How about something like:

“I hope I haven’t interrupted your day too horribly, but if I did then here’s the short version: we’re a cracking new business agency and you’re an agency that could do with a long-term, coherent, effective new business campaign. How can we do some work for you?”. Too prescriptive? Of course it is. The conversation should guide the words you use to close. Do close though. It’s the bit that’ll start your stomach churning but when it works (and if you follow all of the above, it’ll work more often), it results in those lovely highs that make the new business slog worth it.

We’re Sponge NB and you can hire us to do ALL of this for you. Call 01708 451311 or email Steve on steve@spongenb.com

How agencies can improve their creds deck's "About us" section.

Agencies can win more business by understanding the differences between prospecting in the cold channel and prospecting to referrals. Here we discuss the "about us" or "who we are" section, which is often seen as a place to inject lots of processes, founded dates and info on what the team gets up to in their spare time.

Summary (in case you can’t view the video):

The “about us” section of a creds deck or agency website can often present lots of subjective things that in fact give a prospect a reason to eliminate an agency rather than choose them. “About us” should be written with the underlying context of outcomes and results. If the processes you talk about on an agency “about us” page aren’t linked in some useful way to the commercial outcomes you cause for clients, then the prospect can’t be expected to do the work of joining those dots for you. If you’re an agency that creates brands that drive long-term commercial growth, then say that first. Once the prospect is interested in how you do that, then you can tell them.

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.

Be prepared to change your trousers (especially if it gets the job done)

An interesting point of resistance we regularly face with clients is the reluctance to let go of an imagined self-identity. This happens even if 1) the agency is the only one apparently aware of (and married to) this identity, 2) clinging onto it isn’t exactly working a treat anyway, and 3) we’re guaranteeing a stone-cold improvement in results if the agency in question relaxes its stance.

Some agencies see themselves as working exclusively with - for instance - luxury brands, or in fashion, or tell everyone they’re specialists in the construction sector. What a shame; imagine all the invoices you could send out if you opened yourself up to sectors ‘beneath’ you.

Don’t be defined by the work you’ve done (or the work you’d rather only be doing); instead look at that unique group of people in your office (and your people really are the ONLY unique thing you can ever boast about) understand what they are just brilliant at delivering, and then think not about where they’ve been successful so you can fight for more of that, but how you could change shape slightly, change your trousers (even if it’s ditching the metaphorical tweed for ripped jeans) and start profiting as a flexible business that changes shape depending upon which configuration will most appeal to the prospect being targeted.

Create creds or sections of your website that make you look the way you want to look to a specific audience. Then invite them in and reap the rewards of being smart enough to know it’s not how you want to look that matters.

You can always change your trousers again tomorrow.

Three reasons you don’t want to go in-house with New Business Development.

Ok, so that headline is heavily loaded in my favour because I work at a new business agency and want you to employ us rather than take things in-house. However (he said, legitimising his ulterior motive) though there’s little disputing that having your own kick-ass in-house new biz person is a wonderful way to be, there are a few things you might want to consider if choosing between going in-house or out-house.

1)      Did you want to be a sales manager? If you work in one of the creative agencies, you’re probably successful primarily because you’re incredibly creative (duh). You see things people don’t see… you have ideas others would never have… you know the difference between grey and teal (is that how it’s spelt?) Anyway, you get the idea. But now you’ve got an in-house biz dev person… a SALESPERSON. So that makes you a… gulp… sales manager! Time to get salesy: set some targets… implement some KPIs… and then somehow tell the difference between someone doing their best and getting nowhere (it happens A LOT in the cold channel) and someone doing nothing and getting away with murder.

2)      Little black books run dry. You might have an initial wish list of companies you want to prospect to keep your new biz body busy but do you have the internal resources to generate (and accurately populate) the up-to-date lists necessary to keep a new biz database relevant.

3)      They are brilliant… and now they’ve gone. Finding people skilled, tenacious, creative and resilient enough to be consistently good at new business is tricky (believe me – it took a LONG TIME to build the fabulous team we have right now!) And then they get cocky, get poached or use their successes to negotiate a move to a competitor.  

Yes, I’m scare-mongering, and yes, I’m blowing things up a tad to prove a point… but not that much. If you’ve never had to manage an in-house new business function you won’t have experienced these things. And that’s exactly why you should hire us instead (oh go on). We’ll take care of all these things. We are the New Business Landlords. We recruit, we train, we worry, we manage. And you can just sit back and grow. Win win. Win.

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.

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.