My company has an agency football team. The new business team are the strikers. Account management are the midfielders. Client services are the defence and keeper. Every month is a new game against the opposition. A new client won is a goal for us. A client lost is a goal for the opposition. The objective is[…]
The first 100 days tenure of a CMO are so important for agency new business. According to research conducted by ICM on behalf of Oxford Strategic Marketing and Hunter Miller, where they interviewed 75 of the UK’s leading Marketing Directors, 70% either agreed or Strongly Agreed that they consider changing agencies to be one of[…]
The AABA pattern also known as a diacope, is a very common rhetorical device you are probably very familiar with. “Romeo, Romeo, wherefore art thou Romeo”; “my horse, my horse, my kingdom for a horse”; “alone, alone, all alone”; “You villain, villain, you damned, smiling villain.” And my personal favourite from Carry On Cleo, “Infamy,[…]
New business agency conversion rates are often the subject of many a conversation with prospective clients; both our own and those of our clients. Manifest has made more than 10m agency new business calls. We monitor both our own and our client’s success rates, taking standard deviations into consideration. We divide new business into what[…]
When agencies, speaking to clients on the telephone for the first time start asking them questions like “are you reviewing your agency arrangements? or “are you happy with your agency?” or even “what are the issues you need addressing?” before having fixed the meeting date, they are making a big mistake. Think of it like[…]
Agency differentiation for business development is all the rage isn’t it? In our role as advisor to agencies on how to find new clients, one thing has been nagging at us for a while now. Why is it that so many agencies spend so long trying to make themselves appear unique? Think about it for[…]
Think like a marketing director when you’re preparing for that all important first new business meeting with an important CMO. You’ve done your preparation, but remember, so has your prospect. Typically they’re pretty busy people and believe it or not they don’t spend all day thinking about agencies, dealing with agencies is typically about 10%[…]
Whilst on holiday I read Malcolm Gladwell’s new book, “What the Dog Saw”, a collection of his writing from The Spectator and it made my think about agency new business. One of the many insightful essays was on the vagaries of the stock market and hedge funds and how too much information can be a bad thing. His hypothesis was that in the pre internet age, trying to anticipate market movements was a puzzle.
Using the four cornerstones of sales in agency new business, like any sales operation, is a good way to effectively measure the performance of our teams . To do this effectively, it is always worth remembering the four cornerstones of sales upon which effective performance is built. They are, of course: 1) ABILITY – The[…]
