Prospecting new business in 2010

These are the key takeouts from the Mirren New Business Conference, held at the Digital Sandbox, New York, in April 2010.

Herewith, a primer from Brian Goodall, general manager of Jones Lundin Beals:

• When it comes to new business, while it’s never part of the client’s official selection criteria, clients never hire an agency it hasn’t fallen in love with.

• When a client says ‘it’s all about the work, I just roll my eyes.’ Leave your boring presenters behind. Never overlook the fact that it’s show business.

• Remember to tell clients something proactive that they’ve not heard before.

• Chemistry is at least 50% of what goes into an agency selection. You just cannot overlook it.

• If a client doesn’t like you, they won’t buy your big idea. They may not even buy that it is a big idea.

• When it comes to new business, it has very little to do with you. It has everything to do with the client. When an agency asks you to present your credentials, find a way to make it about them. Agencies forget this all the time.

Alex Bogusky delivered a provocative take on why we need to look at the business in completely different ways – more like contrarians – to better break away from the pack, to better innovate. The only way to grow is by thinking differently and challenging the paradigms of the business. “If you’re thinking about the business as it is right now, you’re as outdated as someone from Mad Men. I encourage you to think of new rules.”

• Be careful of looking to other agencies for ideas. Without fully making an idea or strategy your own, it can quickly create parity of thinking.

• You must define success for yourself. Exactly what does success look like for you, for your agency? Despite aspiring to be like others you admire, you still need to make success your own unique success.

• Be prepared for the battle when you start breaking the rules, when you start innovating. Everyone will protect the old way. The industry will try to push back: other leaders, other agencies, the press. There is a vested interest in keeping things the same. Are you ready for the fight?

• Competitive pitching is good: you get to know the client first. When you don’t move through the extended dating period, it’s like an arranged marriage.

• Cheating. We’re taught all our lives not to do it. But who made the rules? And why don’t they want you to cheat? To protect their own existing wealth, that’s why. The forces protecting the old ways are strong. You have to be prepared to step outside the culture – and potentially be seen as an outcast.

• By breaking the rules, the fear is that you’ll be seen as “stupid.” The reality is that you’ll be seen as smart.

Key points to note:

• Remember, prospects and clients are nervous: They are worried about losing their jobs and therefore will be slow to make decisions and even slower to commit. They’ll say one thing (i.e., “We want really big, ground-breaking work.”) but, of course, end up buying something quite different. Big ideas don’t equate to big risks. Get prospects comfortable about your big ideas.

• Category experience makes clients feel safe: Regardless of what they say, clients want partners with category experience. At the outset, they may claim — and even believe — good work is more important than knowledge specific to widgets, wine or VWs. But 99% of the time, they will tap the group most familiar with business challenges, marketing challenges, metrics and vernacular unique to their category. It makes them feel like your odds (thus, their odds) of failure will be much lower. This trend has only accelerated over the recession’s past 18 months.

• Focus: Stop pitching anything with a heartbeat. Random pitching zaps agency’s win rate, wastes resources and kills agency morale. Become something meaningful to a focused group (segment) of prospects. Saturate that segment, then go to a second segment, a third, and so on. Just as you would never recommend that a client go after “everyone,” neither should you.

• It’s about the prospect, never about you: Kill your agency sales pitch. Prospects will have heard the same platitudes from your competition. Bottom line, prospects (and clients) want to know: “What do you have that will help my business?”

• Shut up and listen: Stop talking so much. Ask questions. Lots of good, smart business questions. Don’t be afraid of silence in a room.

• One core pitch team: Invite only your best presenters to the pitch, no matter who wrote the deck or who actually will work the account. Only when prospects insist on meeting their would-be team should you augment with those team members. If they can’t hold the room, dial back their role in the presentation. One weak link will bring down the entire pitch. This is about business. It is about winning. It isn’t about pleasing your colleagues. Sure, being on a pitch team provides them a short-term sense of purpose. But actually working the account will afford a longer — and more profitable — role.

• Cut the clichés: “What separates us is that we first dig in with your business.” And then, the drone continues: “fully-integrated, media-neutral, all about ideas, client service, entrepreneurial, measureable results, all under one roof, big agency experience in a small package, it's about creating a dialogue with the consumer now…’ Just stop.

• Clients buy transaction insights: Marketers only hire shops whose transaction insights can affect sales. At Mirren, we define these transaction insights as deeply held beliefs, values and attitudes about the target audience that will lead to a transaction with the brand and have NOT yet been leveraged.) Such insights directly correlate to an agency’s ability to influence consumer behaviour. If you cannot tell a prospect something new about the consumer, why should they even meet you?

• Proactive prospecting: Select the segment or category where you have the greatest perceived credibility. Where are your greatest number of recent robust case studies (no older than two years)? Then, conduct some basic research to gin up business opportunities with those prospects. Shop these insights around to every single prospect in the category. You may even target multiple segments — but do so methodically – one at a time.

• Balance your new business pipeline across all three sources: 1) Organic growth; 2) proactive prospecting; and 3) competitive pitching/reviews. Otherwise, you will always feel dysfunctionally desperate about the need to pitch every single prospect.

• Meet Weekly to review your new business plan: Out of sight, out of mind. The more regularly and consistently you review your progress, the greater your chances of executing the plan.

Source: The Mirren New Business Conference 2010