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.

HAPPY NEW (Business) YEAR!

Let me guess:

1)      You’ve still got some of the yellow Quality Street left, but the Ferrero Rocher have mostly gone.

2)      You’ve put on 10kg but have already filled out the direct debit forms for the gym.

3)      You’re determined to properly address new business this year but have only got as far as writing “GOALS FOR 2020” on a white board.

4)      You still dislike a large percentage of your family.

How did I do?

I’m about the same on #1 and #2 (and pretty much there on #4) but CAN help re #3.

It’s a bit of cliché to come wanging through the office door on Jan 6th full of “Let’s do this!”-ness, but if you’re thinking it, a bunch of companies you’d love to work with are also thinking about all the tossers they accidentally signed up with in 2019 and can’t wait to ditch when their contracts run out.

People say: “oh I bet December and January are tough months for you” but they’re wrong. In December people are happy to have a long holiday ahead of them and start setting down plans to make their return easier. In January they actually start actioning those plans. If you’ve ever thought about engaging with a new business agency, don’t wait until March - do it NOW.

Talk to us today, give us two weeks to set everything up, and then let’s make sure the rest of Q1 sets up the rest of 2020.

Don’t just think about it, do about it.

(And don’t copy that phrase; I’m thinking about copyrighting it).

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.

Things you need before deploying New Business support (Pt2)

Assuming you read pt1 you’ve now got kick-ass cold-channel creds. Well done you… and you’re welcome (those bad boys are going to prove invaluable in all interactions that end with someone telling you that sending an email with creds is the only way to start the process).

But how can we avoid just becoming creds-emailing monkeys? Well, it’s basically down to your approach and setting realistic expectations. If you want to become Kellogg’s agency, you can’t just call the number on the website and tell whoever answers that you want to become their agency. It might seem the most direct route, but you just make it easy for the gatekeeper to send you back to your creds emailing duties. Instead, set yourself smaller goals: maybe just call to find out when their current agency is up for review. No agency is retained indefinitely, and when sales or impact dwindles (even if it’s not the agency’s fault) it’s one of the first things that gets a good shaking. If they’re nice enough to give you a time frame, just ask what you’d need to do to get your name in the hat. Simple, non-confrontational and non-salesy… you’re just having a chat.

If you try to sell cold and hard you WILL fail. If, however, you just try to find out a couple of simple pieces of information, you might end up having a better conversation than you expected.

NEXT TIME: Pt4. Just joking. Pt3.

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!)

My two favourite words: what creds can learn from Netflix

Do you know what my favourite two words in TV entertainment are? Breaking Bad? Stranger Things? Jessica Jones? Nope, none of those… it’s “SKIP INTRO”. Yes, that simple little option on Netflix to quickly get the show on the road without any further delay impresses me every time. How amazing that someone is happy to put ego (and 5 mins of random names) aside and simply ask themselves ‘why are people here?’.

I used to consider myself ‘king of the fast-forward’ back when VHS was a thing (and even more so once the likes of Sky and Virgin HDs took over from tape). I could land you on the first second of an actual show at will, laughing with glee as the impotent credits zipped past. If I added up all the seconds I’ve saved in my life (minus, of course, all the back and forth on the rare occasion I overshot) I’d have... well, a depressingly small amount of time now I come to think of it, but you get my point (i.e. that no one wants to watch all 10 minutes of Game of Thrones’ titles when there are dragons to be harpooned and buttocks to be flashed).

So why am I comparing this to agency creds? Simple: with every one of your 50 pages (groan) keep asking yourself ‘why are people here?’. While you blather on about what year you were formed, where your office is located, what processes you’ve decided to copyright in an attempt to appear more interesting than you are... why not ask ‘why are people here?’. Chances are they were thinking about hiring you and wanted to see some of your work… so show them that. Perhaps they want to sell more of their ‘things’ and want to see how many ‘things’ you’ve helped other people sell… so show them that. Cut out all the crap YOU care about and get on with the stuff your audience wants to see.

Obviously, if case studies, results and testimonials aren’t your thing, you could instead have endless portraits of every member of staff who’s ever worked there, tell them about the incredible ‘journey’ your company’s been on, or perhaps even force an infinite infographic on them explaining how awfully disruptive you are… or you could just “SKIP INTRO” and show them what they care about (you never know - they might even stay watching until the end). Happy hunting.

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.

What you can get from Sponge NB

Everything we do is done to find you new clients. We do the obvious things (I’ll list some of them below) and we do some less obvious things (I’ll list some of them below). We cost the same as hiring a full-timer and you get a fully-functioning business development department.

THINGS WE'LL DO

-    Research your prospects properly before contacting them.
-    Research you properly before contacting anyone for you.
-    Make really smart, non-salesy calls. Ask questions on those calls. Listen a lot on those calls. Not make too many of those calls.
-    Write readable, snappy, professional emails. Individual ones. Not some bulk-mailer “look, we’ve discovered Mailchimp” email/newsletter that any prospect deletes immediately. 
-    Consult properly for you. We have a vastly experienced project manager and sales trainer to make things work well. We have an ex-Global Marketing Director and Copywriter here, so your written communications are remarkable. We're not bashing out calls here.
-    Build sensible, well-managed databases. Refresh them often. Update them constantly.
-    Report honestly and usefully. 
-    Never enshroud our efforts in meaningless stats, graphs and numbers designed to provide false reassurance and keep the project running, even if it really needs reviewing/improving/sacking off. If it needs fixing, we’ll say so. Loudly.
-    Make sure you never think “I wonder what Sponge are up to?”. Speak to you regularly, but concisely. You don’t have time for fluff. You do have time to know what’s working and what’s not.
-    Conduct a really enjoyable and informative briefing day. We don’t need to learn “what you do”. If that’s not clear on your web site, we’ll be helping to make sure it becomes clear. We want to know your people, culture, language, highs/lows, hobbies, least favourite client. The stuff we’d know if we worked there.
-    Offer the benefit of our owner Steve’s experience – 15+ years of agency business development.
-    Find opportunities worth having. If it’s a meeting, one with an agenda, where we’ve asked about budgets. We average a couple of those a month for clients (that’s a historic number, so it might not be what you get. Some very large clients have seen fewer, some clients have seen far more).
-    Help you follow up those opportunities. Not pester, just keep up to date with.
-    Offer training if you want it. You might not need it but we can help polish even a decent business developer’s approach.
-    Give you a chunk of code for your web site so we (and you) know which companies have been on your web site. 
-    Think of smart things to make things happen for you. For example, we found a way to increase the number of senior marketers at larger companies with whom we could secure conversations. It takes an hour or two and you can then use it every day forever. 
-    Sell you actual things we’ll really do - however fuzzy - rather than impossible promises. Whatever you think of our web site, our size, our clunky logo, our address or our team photos, give us a call and you’ll only ever be sold the things we do every day. No inflated outcomes, no crazy KPIs . Honesty. 
-    Celebrate the wins we find for you and genuinely beat ourselves up when we don’t win. Our culture is to give a hoot. 

If you’re doing well in your business development endeavours, call us. Don’t’ wait until things are going badly. We can’t wave a magic wand, nor will we be likely to find really quick wins. If things are going badly, we can help you plan the right next steps. When things are comfortably plateauing, or growing nicely, we’re in a great position to help grow your company using a sensible, sustained approach.