Beyond the horse's mouth

I’m often asked why I left the video games industry - which is a fair question considering I’d spent some 15 years trying to progress my career, hit the dizzying ‘heights’ of European Marketing Director for a company called Midway Games (if you know anyone who likes pulling video character’s spines out with Mortal Kombat, that’s my fault that is) and then walked away to make poker tables in my garage while running down a very generous gardening leave allowance.

Apart from the fact that I felt like I’d run out of new things to learn, I mostly left due to the frustrations of working AS AN EXPERT with people who WANTED AN EXPERT but who then (magically) KNEW BETTER THAN AN EXPERT.

I have a billion related anecdotes, but a general recurring issue was having, say, an American supplier come to me and ask how best to release a title in Italy. My experience was pretty good in the Italian market but luckily, my ITALIAN team had LOADS of experience in ITALY (which is why I kept them around). So we got our heads together and put together a plan for success in Italy. The American MD in question was very grateful for our detailed and sensible plan… and then disregarded it completely, did exactly what he’d do for an American market, and failed in oh so many beautiful ways. The cultural tone was completely wrong, the imagery was way off the mark, and various decisions on timings were completely against our recommendations.

When things crashed and burned he asked why it had gone so horribly wrong. We could have given him a detailed breakdown of why, but this simple answer was: ‘you sought out experts, and then ignored them’.

A similar incident involved being totally ignored (by Americans again - sorry America!) when I recommended against releasing a jet ski game in a country where I knew (but apparently the Americans didn’t) jet skiing was frowned upon and in the process of being regulated due to some horrendous accidents. Telling them this changed nothing, so they released an average game into a market that wouldn’t talk about, advertise or promote an activity. Needless to say, I had the last laugh (I didn’t actually; I was just aware how smug I was sounding). #partridge

The point (finally) is… in any walk of life, if you’re lucky enough to have experts on hand to assist you in a task, TRUST THEM. If I walk into a dentist’s and he tells me I need a filling, I don’t challenge him. I don’t insist he proves it. I TRUST HIM. He is the expert. “Thank god you’re here!” I say. “Thank god you can stop the pain!”. (I also don’t tell him “I was rather hoping for a new hip”, but that’s for another blog about moving goal posts).

I’m stunned when a failing restaurant owner calls in Gordon Ramsay (therefore acknowledging they need some expert help) and then argue the toss over every point. “I think our food’s great” BUT YOU’RE FAILING! “I think our staff are great” BUT YOU’RE FAILING!

Don’t be a kitchen nightmare; if you need an expert’s help then 1) good on you for dispensing with ego and asking for help, and 2) DON’T IGNORE IT.

Happy hunting.

Just say no

Training any new member of staff is challenging (especially when remote) but training new staff for new business development is particularly tough, simply because cold channel is a very unforgiving sector to specialise in. Unless you’ve previously worked in door-to-door charity sales collecting for slightly injured badgers, you probably won’t have been told “no” as much in your life as your first day in biz dev.

The temptation for any newbie is to take too soft a “win”. Someone absent-mindedly says: “sure, send me some literature” and ol’ newbie puts that down as an interested party. It’s the kind of well-meaning positivity that can only come back to bite you in the rear when a client asks for more information about this ‘promising new contact’ only to find it was really nothing worth reporting.

The simple trick is to be honest with yourself. If you have a chat and someone says, “call me in June” is that because something is happening/changing in June, or is it just a smart way for them to ensure they don’t have to deal with you for another six months?

When someone says, “send me info” feel free to say no. Say something like “I’d much rather know when is a better time to have this conversation so that our details don’t simply get lost in all the noise”. You might score a few points for being brave/honest and you might have a slightly longer conversation than if you just agreed to send over a PDF and let them hang up.

Running a dishonest new business agency would easy. You can make the most uninterested prospect sound like they’re on the cusp of buying (keep them dangling there for months). Being honest in your assessment of interest levels is a tougher line to take, but it’ll serve your business development endeavours much better.

A quiet place Pt III

The end of December is always a tough time to stay effective (even if you’re one of the 5% of people still actually trying to get some work done). I prefer to bring Kerplunk and Hungry Hippos into the office around December 12th and make it Christmas EVERY day (just like Wizzard wished) but I’m aware there is still work to be done.

The key to end-year achievement is finding anything to do that doesn’t involve other humans - they are unreliable, already checked-out, drunk or at home in their PJs roasting chestnuts on an open fire, so just remove them from the equation.

The obvious task to address is planning for next year, so here are a few things you can be doing to set yourself up for a rolling-start come 2022:

Segment your data

You no doubt have a nice big wish list of prospects. Now is the time to organise it into something a bit better than the digital equivalent of a beer mat. Segment it by temperature, industry, size… whatever will help you attack this list in a meaningful way once everyone is back at their desks.

Personalise

Now is a great time to do some proper research on your prospects. Try to find one piece of work you could mention/talk about if/when you’re lucky enough to make direct contact. Note it down as a “nugget” of information about them; it’s a great ice-breaker and they’ll probably appreciate the effort on your part compared to the last phone-jockey that pestered them.

Set some goals

Kind of obvious, but actually write down and commit to a target. How many people do you want to try to talk to in January and how are you planning to do that? If you want to talk to 100 people by phone, think about how that breaks down into weekly/daily targets. If some are going to be emailed and some are going to be via LinkedIn, decide which is which now and add this to your beautifully-segmentation data (and don’t forget to use those nuggets!)

Happy hunting, and happy new year.

I don't want to be your friend

I used to be in an originals band, rehearsing, writing and recording week-in, week-out. I never imagined that one day my various masterpieces would end their lives on C90 cassettes in landfill (I had much grander dreams back then). Such was the effort we’d put into each and every song, constantly asking ourselves: “what would people like to hear in our songs?”

The answer is - of course - an impossible one to answer. We’d debut new material to friends and family. My dad would say “I hate that one about the flip top bins, but that’s probably a good thing” while the rest of the audience would be 50/50 split between which was their favourite and least favourite. It was a maddening process of non-discovery.

Truthfully, you can drive yourself mad trying to get any ‘please-all’ formula right, but ultimately the realisation is that all you can do is produce something YOU like and hope that the majority agrees with your choices.

Which brings me smoothly (see, you can tell I was once a creative sort) to the new business-related question: “how friendly should you be on the phone?”

Sponge has been in existence for nearly twenty years now. As you might imagine, in that time we’ve had various staff through the doors, each bringing their own personalities (or lack thereof) and styles to the gig. One chap would shout “GOOD MORNING!” down the line to each prospect, hoping that his 200% enthusiastic delivery would make people instantly like him. And then there’s the ‘building a rapport’ stuff [shudder].

The use of “how are you?” has changed in recent years. If anyone asked me that question before 2010 I’d have always answered honestly and politely, now I mostly hang up. It’s gone from a simple question to a shrieking warning that one of your ten-a-day sales calls has arrived.

I’m a big fan of one rule: RESPECT PEOPLE’S TIME. If Dean McProspect picks up the phone, you’re already winning in my book. Feel free to thank him for taking your call, but immediately respect his time by explaining why you’re calling rather than trying to become his new friend. Asking how someone is today, or how the weather is in [insert cleverly researched office location here] just forces someone to be false back at you.

Don’t do it; get to the point instead. I promise they’ll like you MUCH more if you respect their time rather than try to engage them in pleasantries.

But that might just be me; I’m still VERY bitter about the landfill.

Do what you say you do, not do what you do do. Do.

By its very definition, hyperbole is never honest. That, however, doesn’t mean it’s interesting (or worth mentioning).

If you genuinely think that the most remarkable thing about your agency is that you’re responsive, then fair doos - go ahead and remark upon it. It’s not exactly exciting (and one would like to hope that any agency worth its salt would be responsive) but if that’s the first thing you want to say about yourselves to a new prospect, then fill your boots.

You will, however, then have to ensure that you are faultless in that attribute. If you EVER aren’t the most responsive agency in the world, well… now you just look silly (we’ve even had clients who didn’t bother to turn up to a meeting we’d slaved to win them, and shrugged it off as if it were of no importance). Responsive you say? Hmm…

Would it not be MUCH better to actually be the guys that are super-responsive rather than the ones that tell people about it? Now anyone in contact with you can experience how responsive you are rather than read all about it and then hope you are. Now you can replace that sentence on your site with something more meaningful (perhaps a great testimonial or a key result achieved).

Successful new business is about making lots of small improvements to the way cold prospects see you. When you stop listing things as remarkable (that any prospect would simply expect) then you suddenly free up lots of space to say things that might move the needle.

Oh and don’t even get me started on “on budget, on time”…

Flash no longer supported

I took my first pay check as a salesman back in the late 80s. White fluffy socks were still acceptable in social situations, fax machines were new and exciting, and the use of electric guitars in chart music was frowned upon. It was a fun time to be alive.

I was never a flashy salesman. I hated some (i.e. “many”, aka “pretty much all”) of my colleagues - predictable twatty sales ‘blokes’ in waistcoats and tie pins, hair slicked back like Gordon Gekko, jamming up Balls Bros of a lunchtime and drinking with their teeth wrapped round the glass.

My own sales technique was more slinky. I’m just here to tell you something without pressuring you. I’ll trap you with some cunning open questions and then leave you to close the sale on yourself while I pop down the coffee shop for another round of toast.

I was SO un-salesy that compared to all the Gekkos sliding up and down the halls on their own hair, prospects seemed relieved to have a human to deal with. Even though they still didn’t want to be sold to, I was the lesser of various waist-coated evils.

It’s a style that’s served us VERY well over the last 17 months while face-to-face meetings have been off the menu. If your success at selling involves crashing into the meeting room through the ceiling like Lord Flashheart and dazzling everyone with your piercing man-eyes, a 720p web cam and £7.99 amazon desk mic probably aren’t quite doing the job.

Rather than bemoan the shape of remote sales, instead use this opportunity to refine your sales techniques. If you’re one of the “I can sell anything to anyone… in person” types, it’s time to rebuild. Assess your service or product, stop selling it, and just start talking to people about it. Be it in person, by Zoom, or down a crackly land line, good sales is still good sales.

Now go and put some trousers on.

USPs are mostly nonsense.

This is an excerpt from our article: Is your USP useless? Download the full article at https://www.spongenb.com/download1

Most of the people seeing this will be from a marketing agency of some sort (whether or not you like being labelled that…). I’m going to explain why selling any part of your service as unique is a mistake. I don’t mean you shouldn’t offer it. I mean you should understand why it might (or might not) be compelling.

USPs fall into a few categories:

1)      The “not actually unique”
We hear these a lot. They include:
 - We really get under the skin of your brand.
 - Our team take the time to understand your brand before we do ANY work.
 - Our unique experience in your sector…
 - Our senior team actually work on your business
 - Our team hail from <insert huge agency name here> but you don’t pay big agency fees with us!

2)      The indecipherable
“Our multi-track, media-ambivalent, high-trust methodology engenders a client/supplier authority equivalence not found in other ideation studios”. Nobody’s buying it (literally or figuratively).

3)      The process-obsessed
So many agency web sites are mired in process, without a hint of an outcome. Without the outcome, or the suggestion of a type of result, nobody cares what your processes are.

 People buy outcomes (and only then do “people buy people” – and here’s why)

We’ve all said it – “People buy people”. It’s not true, it just seems like it. Correlation and causality are as different as we all know they are but we all see patterns where they don’t really exist. People do buy people sometimes, but only once some other needs are fulfilled. “People buy people” would be better summed up as “Being an arse to someone makes them less likely to buy from you”. Nobody chooses a supplier whose outcomes aren’t clear and whose selling proposition is indecipherable but who is just a really nice person.

Remember, the full article can be found at https://www.spongenb.com/download1

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.

Here to help

We have a surprising number of conversations with companies that already have their own in-house new business person, but want to know “what their options are”. It feels a little cutthroat to pursue such discussions, but you might be surprised to hear that you don’t have choose between us - you can have an internal cold channel champion AND an external business development agency.

FIGHT!

(Only joking).

If we encounter the objection “we already have someone in-house” we don’t try to oust them, we just want to be sure there’s not something we can do to assist them. Invariably the disadvantage of an in-house person (apart from them being head-hunted VERY quickly if they’re any good) is that 1) you’re now a sales manager (just like you never dreamt of), 2) they live in the very cold and lonely world of being told “no” for 99% of his or her day while the rest of the company have more ‘fun’ jobs, and 3) after a short while burning through their little black book of contacts, they run dry. (There are way more to numbers to list but I didn’t want the post to get too negative).

Bringing in an external agency on top of your staffer can help with plenty of those ‘issues’. Firstly, we’re all over data. If you’re running dry on prospects, we can build new databases for your in-house specialist to chew through. Secondly, we’re like-minded folk who know just how tough a nut new business can be to crack. Having sympathetic colleagues to bitch with on the phone is great for morale. And finally (well, for this post anyway…) we’re pretty smart cookies ourselves and are always happy to share the various methods we’ve developed over the years with our partners.

So, don’t see us as ONLY an alternative to in-house; we also play well with others.

One size does not fit all

It’s very easy (and quite tempting) to spend time putting together a creds deck specifically for use in the cold channel and then pop the kettle on, safe in the knowledge that you’re done with that until your next unnecessary internal rebrand/renaming.

However, it’s worth remembering that in the course of your new business endeavours you’ll probably be approaching a fairly varied selection of targets. You’ll likely hit up some small teams with a big freelance roster… some start-ups… maybe some industry giants. Because of this, you always need to be prepared to review your static creds and ask, “are these as targeted as they could be?”

One area where we see lots of mismatches occurring is with testimonials.

If you’re about to hit a bunch of local companies to cash in on that ‘stay local’ vibe, make sure your testimonials come from sources that these prospects will relate to. If you’re hitting a four-man operation a mere two years into their existence, a quote from IKEA (about work you did six years ago) isn’t going to resonate with them. Yes, it will probably impress them, but it might also make them think “blimey - we don’t have the kind of budget IKEA must have spent” and file you away under “too big for us”.

Make sure all your testimonials are about the same ‘scale’ as the prospects you’re approaching. Show them output similar to the work you’d like to be doing for them, with relevant testimonials and budgets. If at your first point of contact you already seem like a great match, you’re now ahead of your competitor (who was so busy impressing people that they frightened half of them away).

Remember: don’t wear a suit if everyone is in flip-flops.

Know thy enemy

Any new client that comes on board with Sponge NB gets a thorough MOT and servicing. Not only do we kick the tires and check the oil, but often we also punch the doors in and then set fire to the sunroof.

Abandoning this immediately prohibiting metaphor, one of the aspects of working with Sponge that seems to fire up all new clients (besides some STUNNING new business development, obv) is having an outsider tell them honestly how they look to the outside world.

If the “About Us” page is a sprawling 20-minute read that we feel should be culled, we’ll be way more honest about this than any friends, colleagues or nans would be.

if you’re not quite ready to bring us on board (you short-sighted fools) then there’s an easy way to hold a mirror up to yourselves, and that’s to take a grumbling look at your competition. Pick the three “other ones” you keep crashing into and take an emotionless tour around their world. Fire up their website. Do they immediately launch into case studies? Do you? Which of you think has the most impact in the first five seconds of contact?

Do any of your competitors’ sites immediately spark up a full-screen showreel that leaves you in no doubt as to the work they’ve produced and the brands they’ve served? Does it impress you? Why don’t you have one of those?

Are their site and creds littered with glowing testimonials while yours is full of self-penned hyperbole? Which do you think has the most impact on a first-time visitor?

It’s very easy to sneer at competitors and ‘know’ that you are better, but the fact is they are also somehow still in business because a potential client of yours did their due diligence and didn’t choose you. It might not be down to how you appear to an unguided visitor, but why not give yourself every chance to do better.

Give your team a task: visit five of your competitors’ sites and make a list ONLY of things you prefer about their site to yours. At worst your team are now more familiar with the landscape you operate in. At best, you might find it uncovers some failings in your self-presentation that you wouldn’t have rectified otherwise.

Good luck out there; it’s a jungle (and some of it is in HTML).

New Business is not sales

Through evolution rather than design, we’ve ended up being known as specialists in the creative sector (although we actually serve plenty of companies across almost every other industry).

One of the facets of creative agencies (i.e. branding, PR, design, events, etc.) is that they don’t tend to have a lot of ‘sales’ people, especially in the smaller teams. This is probably why we’ve done so well for such companies in the past, specifically because they see cold channel business development as ‘sales’…

But we don’t.

Our success (over the last 18 years no less) has been down to an approach that is very much against traditional sales styles. There’s no setting of agendas, bamboozling or hard closing. Instead, there is a gentle conversational approach designed to introduce our clients to their prospects and to find out if there are any opportunities to work together (if not in the moment, then at least in the not too distant future).

Once you stop trying to sell, you immediately bring a level of calm that allows the time and space to research, listen and react when in contact with a prospect rather than trying to control a conversation to suit your goals. Our ‘goal’ is to have a good conversation, so as soon as we start talking to a prospect we’ve already won. Now we can settle down and listen to what they have to say.

The next time you gird your sales loins to pick up a phone to ‘hassle’ a prospect, try to set a softer goal. Look to simply make contact (having invested some time to research so that you can discuss their work and the impact you think you can make on their business). You simply want to tell them about the great work you’ve done (and the results it achieved) and how much you’d like to do something similar for them.

Remember: If you don’t rush in waving a sword, no one will put their defences up.

#metaphorswork

Four good reasons to invest in new business development

The objection we hear most often when approaching companies about helping them do better new business development is: “we’re already busy with work; we don’t need any more”. Ironically, THIS is the perfect scenario to do some effective new biz. If you wait until you NEED new clients, you’ll be operating under stress, rushing a process that needs space to accommodate the inherently long leads times.

This objection also ignores the fact that running a new business campaign brings more benefits than the obvious. Because people like lists, I shall stop writing in paragraphs and instead switch to a four-point list. Enjoy.

WHY IS NEW BUSINESS IMPORTANT?

1) Growth. The obvious point of New Biz is to boost your revenue and client base. Reaching out to new companies and partners moves you away from relying on the phone ringing and email pinging with incoming enquiries. It also means you’ll create new opportunities to increase your referrals from these new contacts.

2) Image. New Biz can be incredibly beneficial to your company’s image. Even in instances where you don’t necessarily succeed in securing work, your ‘Rolodex’ grows as more companies who had never heard of you previously, now know who you are and what you do.

3) Opportunities. This could be where you talk to someone new to find that there is some business to be done… just not the business you were expecting. You may have contacted a prospect about “service X” only to find them asking if you can provide “service Y” instead.

4) Relationships. We’ve had relationships that have grown over years. From a pitch that didn’t close… to a keeping in touch… to a friendly regular ‘checking in’… many of our strongest relationships started simply by being smart, reliable and consistent in outreach. By the time you close that long-lead new business you’re already ahead of the game on a personal level.

There are even more great reasons to be doing better new business development, but we’ll save those for when we talk inperson. Until then, happy hunting.

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.

Chemistry vs coffee

There was a time we would be VERY fussy about what meetings we would accept for our clients. If a company hired us to run their new business development, we wouldn’t want to then burn the first month of their engagement sending them round the country to drink coffee and deliver presentations to indifferent prospects before heading back to the office wondering why they wasted a day out of the office.

…And then someone had the smart idea of taking the phrase “coffee and creds” and turning it into “chemistry meeting”. It was like changing “Coke Lite” to “Coke Zero” - exactly the same hollow experience, just with a slightly better name.

So now we have to tell our clients that someone who has no project and no budget wants to meet them so that - if they ever do have a project and a budget - they already ‘know’ some people. But… but… but that’s exactly what we promised we wouldn’t do!

However… despite my sceptical sarcasm (available 24/7, 365 BTW) there does appear to be some merit in this pursuit. We’ve had some apparently thin ‘chemistry meetings’ actually turn into serious projects. It turns out that smart companies do like meetings smart agencies.

The truth is, if you’re smart and engaging you can turn a handshake and a 30 second chat into business. If you’re poor in person, no amount of minutes and pages of Powerpoint will turn things around.

No doubt you’re expecting a point, so let me conclude: ANY opportunity to meet a prospect is worthwhile but 1) you need to have a business development partner you trust setting them up for you, and 2) if you’re finding you convert none of these fleeting encounters into a full blown affair, there’s probably something wrong with your pitch rather than the meetings you’re attending.

Words are results too

We’re constantly asked for advice from both clients and business acquaintances regarding the best way to present case studies. Our reply probably seems a little simplistic but - in a nutshell - it’s “results results results”.

People don’t buy processes and they don’t buy services; these are just the mechanics necessary to get what they really want - i.e. the aforementioned results (results, results).

Business Development (especially PURE cold channel new business) is all about maximum impact in a minimum of time. When people say you have three seconds to grab a cold prospect’s attention, they really aren’t exaggerating.

With that in mind, don’t drag your heels when presenting case studies. People aren’t ‘fascinated’ to hear all about “The Brief”… “The Problem”… “The Solution”… etc. They want to know… “DID YOU WIN?”

Don’t show me your copywriting ‘skillz’ with a text-heavy case study… SHOW ME THE MONEY! (or at least show me the outcome, which is more accurate but not as much fun to shout).

And if you don’t have a great big “400% INCREASE IN SALES” or “15,000 IMPRESSIONS” to shout about, make use of a testimonial. If the ONLY thing a prospect sees about your case study is the CEO of Aldi saying “OUR SALES INCREASED” then your three seconds have been well spent (and you’ve probably got a 1.5 seconds left to play with).

If you can’t say it with numbers, say it with words.