By now you should've somehow realised what you gotta do

I used to teach kids to play guitar. Before I even taught my first lesson I asked a few music teachers I knew for tips. One trumpet teacher told me: “make sure they can go home and play something to their parents after every lesson.” The logic being that if the parents could see something was being achieved they’d keep sending little Johnny back for more (and nothing impresses a parent more than Wonderwall on the trumpet, apparently).

The problem with this approach was that rather than focusing on the fundamentals and scales (the kinds of things that would actually bring long-term success) it meant you were constantly trying to take short cuts as the lesson drew to a close, worried that if Johnny went home and showed his folks “yet another bloody scale” his dad would knock it on the head and send him to ballet instead.

The problem is, as with anything worthwhile in life, there’s rarely a ‘fast track’ route that’s sustainable or ultimately rewarding. I’d rather be honest and say “it’s going to be five weeks of scales before we even look in Wonderwall’s direction.” That way, at least you know what to expect, and when it takes five weeks to get to something sexy, it’s no surprise.

It’s a weird metaphor I know, but we have a similar stance when telling clients what to expect when they bring us onboard to boost their new business returns. If we fall over ourselves to “play you a tune you’ll like” after one month, we’re probably not actually doing a very good job with the fundamentals (in this case, not so much scales, more database management, research, collateral creation, quality of outreach, etc.).

So if we pitch to you and tell you it’ll possibly take six months to bring in the first win if we do things right, PLEASE don’t agree unless you actually agree. If, once we get started, we remind you it’ll possibly be six months before the first win is in the bank, again, please don’t nod and smile in agreement… ESPECIALLY if after three months you then wet the bed and give up because you haven’t won anything.

If you keep doing that, we’ll just teach you Wonderwall (metaphorically speaking) and you’ll end up with a really naff and unsustainable new business campaign. Oh, and one song (on guitar or trumpet - your choice).

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

Should your agency work with Sponge New Business?

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.

We’ll always make sure you can make an informed decision. We don’t always know how a campaign will go, but we won’t sell you crazy dreams just to get you on the books. Let’s talk - we might be the new business agency you don’t fire.

Use you're head

Your already sniggering aren’t you? Your looking at this thinking “what an idiot. He has NO IDEA how to use apostrophes”.

I - however - am sniggering back because…. Im doing it on purpose! (although it is making my OCD tingle like Spider-Man at a Doc Octopus convention*).

Basic spelling errors and apostrophe misuse are simple mistakes to make, but 1) it might be the difference that put’s you in second place to you’re competitor, and 2) its entirely avoidable FOR FREE.

Im talking about grammarly.com (and yes - im still doing it on pirpose).

It really doesn’t matter how good a writer you are or how excellent your spelling and punctuation generally is, you WILL make a mistake at some point - it’s just going to happen, trust me. So make sure you take advantage of the free tools afforded to us in the year 2021. Get a Grammarly extension for Chrome or just get into the habit of copying any large doc into a blank Grammarly page before it goes anywhere, just in case it spots something silly you’ve done or - god forbid - has a better idea to suggest.

You still use a calculator to check basic equations (yes, even the ones that make you hang your head in shame afterwards) so dont be a snob about it. (See what I did their?)

*We’re easily the nerdiest new business agency.

Being clever is enough™

You are probably excellent at what you do. I’d like you to tell me about it: tell me what you do, who you’ve done it for, and how successful it was. Feel free to use normal English; stick to describing the techniques employed and the skills involved. I think there’s a really good chance I’ll be impressed.

Don’t, however, try to make it sound more than it is. Being clever is absolutely enough to impress me.

Also: DEFINITELY don’t trademark a name or phrase you’ve made up for your process. If what genuinely happened was that you got some very clever people from your company together and solved a problem… then stick to that as an explanation. Don’t call it “The Nine Rs™” or “The Step-Up-Co-Collective-Laberation™” (and don’t use a word like Jigglewaftenkle™ and pretend it’s Norwegian ).

We do REALLY REALLY well for our clients simply by describing the skills they have and the amazing results they’ve achieved. Honestly, try it. You’ll spend so much less time explaining why the process is called THE NAME™ you’ve given it that you’ll probably end up having a nice chat and becoming friends.

In summary: you’re probably excellent, so just tell prospects why you’re excellent. If you do already have a trademarked process, fear not - there is a way around this… DON’T MENTION IT! There, now you can get on with the job of winning your agency new business.

I don't care about you

A harsh headline I know, but ask yourself this: when you were hungry and bought that Twix (without telling anyone, obv) did you stop to think about the history of the company, the story behind the iconic factory it was made in, or the individual humans who so kindly mixed the biscuit and poured the caramel?

No, of course you didn’t, because you don’t care, and that’s fine. You paid the asking price and therefore bought the privilege of not caring. And Twix should be grateful; you wanted their product so you bought their product.

Imagine if every time you wanted a Twix the company insisted you take a guided tour of the factory, read a ten-page history on the company and met all the key staff (who insisted on telling you all about their individual hobbies and interests). You wouldn’t bother because - to revisit our theme - YOU DON’T CARE.

So let’s turn that on ourselves: we’re agencies (biscuit makers), we have services (biscuits) and we’re hoping new clients want to buy our services (possibly biscuits - I’ve slightly lost track of my metaphor but I’m sure it’ll come back round in a minute). So WHY are we not simply showing them biscuits on page one of our creds and web sites, instead demanding that they first chew their way through our family-sized ABOUT US pages?

If someone wants PR, show them the PR you do. If someone wants branding, show them the branding you do. If someone wants biscuits, show them biscuits (Jesus, I’m hungry now).

No one came to your site to learn all about Dean and his penchant for recreating Hollyoaks episodes in Lego. They came to see the things you do, not who you are. Show them your work, and once they’re dazzled by that they MIGHT be kind enough to show interest in the history of your building or when you were founded.

Just because you think you’re important, you’re not. Always remember that.

Meet your Creator

It’s very unlikely you’ll get more than a few inches down your LinkedIn page today without a video busting into auto-play life. It’ll probably be a desperate-for-likes CEO showing off his tap dancing while dressed as a character from Frozen, or perhaps a VERY close-up sales consultant telling you how you should live your business life (making sure you notice their huge, expensive watch while a guitar they can’t play hangs in the background).

Up until now, less narcissistic business folks have had the luxury of snorting at such video-foolery while getting on with some real work, but Creator Mode is about to shake things up. Described as a way to grow your following and “establish your voice”, Creator Mode is looking to take LinkedIn’s profile pages (which do currently look a bit like a messy desk in a busy factory office) and “more promptly display your content”. The only problem with this could be… what if you don’t have any content?

A bit like how little you thought about having no tattoos until you noticed how many tattoos everyone else had, now that everyone’s content will be front and centre, isn’t that going to make everyone notice how little content you have?

“Content is king” but not if that content is shit. Then “Content is shit” – which is a completely different thing.

There are good ways to make content (feel free to get in touch and we’ll share our thoughts on that) but don’t just start posting content because everyone else seems to have so much of it (you’ll do more harm than good, honest). A good one-liner can get way more laughs than a weak five minutes of stand-up, so choose your output wisely. And remember, you’re only as good as your last tap-dancing snowman.  

Nice to see you, to see you… sometimes

I spoke before about the need to get comfortable staring into a camera regardless of how much you loath the way you look and sound recorded. However, there’s also danger to be had on the other side of the coin; if you’re too comfortable in front of a web cam’s lens you can quickly become a performing monkey, losing as much credibility as you might have gained from publishing worthwhile content.

It’ll sound nothing short of bitchy to say this, but in the past 12 months I’ve cringed alongside colleagues as we’ve watched relatively senior personnel appear on LinkedIn doing press-ups, singing and dancing, or just talking utter drivel into their device of choice as they chased single figure likes and shares (mostly from pedantic colleagues and established ‘chummy’ connections). “Oh Barry! LEGEND!” etc.

The deluded also appear to have found a new home on the small screen. Young ‘business experts’ (sometimes with as much as seven months’ experience, no less!) appear in 20-minute recordings, sharing their often-laughable idealistic thoughts on how business should be done (while their little brother no doubt whoops them on from the bunk bed off-screen).

Yes, there is an expectation to create content, but it’s no longer hard to do so don’t feel you have to say something just because you’ve got 4GB of memory left on your iPhone. We’ve worked hard of late to understand what content has an impact (and how long you get to convey that before the audience moves on to the next dancing CEO). Soon it’ll be a level playing field – everyone will have the same HD capabilities with chromakey and animations at the touch of a button. I can’t wait because – as is always the way – we’ll be back to “content is king” (and we’ve got LOADS of that!). Now, shut up and dance monkey boy Head of Sales.

Through gritted teeth

It’s a million miles from sitting on the phone making cold calls, but it seems the ability to quickly get your face and thoughts onto someone else’s screen is becoming increasingly key in new business outreach. I happen to have a background in TV from previous careers so nattering like a loon into a camera doesn’t faze me, but for many ‘normal’ people, the difference between the need to project themselves via video and their instinctive hatred of how they look and sound in a clip can be a real obstacle.

The simple message is… get over it. Harsh I know, but it’s 2021; a generation is on its way that has never known anything but selfies (nor will they know the terror of handing complete strangers your camera to get a holiday snap).

In a world of TikTok, Instagram, LinkedIn (and *sigh* selfie-sticks) we all need to find a way to utilise - and capitalise on - this instant output. We’re all expected to be able to point a camera at our faces and do what needs to be done. And for good reason…

Research has shown that LinkedIn users are TWENTY times more likely to re-share a video post than any other type of content. If you want other LinkedIn members to help spread your message for you, video is the way to go.

We (of course!) have a way to help you with this, so do get in touch if you’d like to know more. Until then, you’re on your own, so you’ll just have to grin and bear it (while pressing record).

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.