Read part one if you missed it!

So here I am 10 years later – a New Business Manager – a role like no other. This essentially is outsourced sales, so agreed we are “selling” our clients, but it’s no double-glazing sell. This role is all about intelligent questioning – helping the prospects on the other end of the phone understand that they could get something out of a relationship with your agency. Pushy sales equal zero opportunities – that’s the way the cookie crumbles in this game.

I work on behalf of 5 clients, ranging from design and digital to consumer research, and full service marketing communications, and in short, I generate new business leads and arrange qualified new business meetings for my clients. Meetings that will, with work from both sides, result in winning new business.

The difference in this kind of sell is the softness of the approach, the intelligence behind knowing where your client could fit, and the questions to ask to ensure a meeting would result in an opportunity.

Now I’m sure I could set a meeting for the sake of setting a meeting, but what would I get for that aside from an unhappy client, and dressing down from my senior management? Not even a bag of lemons my friend, not even a bag of lemons.

So in short, by all means drink in the acidic wrath of the “Confessions of a New Business Executive” article. But bear in mind, the majority of New Business agencies out there are professional, honest, and well worth their clients’ investment.

Maximise your new business appointments with our top 10 new business presentation tips to ensure you make the most of any opportunities

1. Prepare, practise and perfect!
2. Start by considering the following:
   • What are your objectives?
   • What conclusions do you want the presentation to draw/come to?
   • What recommendations do you want your client/prospect to take on board?
   • What are the next steps?
   • What does your client/prospect want from the presentation?
   • What is the desired outcome?
   • If you don’t know any or all of these, then ask!
3. Once you have established all of the above, develop a clear structure that will help you answer the questions, possibly in order of priority. Your structure must follow the core principles of beginning, middle and end! Sounds obvious I know, but you’d be amazed at how many presentations I’ve seen during my 30 plus years in business that don’t adhere to these basic principles! What tends to be missing in my experience is a clear opening, including scene setting and signposting and a clear summary and conclusion (which, by the way, are two different things!!).
4. Research and develop your content to ensure that it delivers against the objectives and fits into your structure. Brain dump all your content before applying the MUST, SHOULD, COULD rule to determine what to include in the physical presentation and what to include in the leave behind.
5. You’re now ready to prepare both documents, bearing in mind they need to fulfil different objectives (for example, the actual presentation must be short and sweet and contain lots of white space, whereas your leave behind can contain all manner of company information, back up data, additional case studies etc). It is also important at this stage to decide how you’re going to present – slides, boards, props etc.
6. Always find out what the physical environment is going to be like a few days prior to the presentation: How big is the room? What’s the layout like? What technical facilities do they have?
7. Research your audience: Who’s going to be there and why? What’s the pecking order? Who are the key influencers? A top tip is to speak to the main decision maker prior to the presentation and either pick their brains on a topic or ask their advice and check out that your proposed solution is going in the right direction.
8. Select the right team based on your content and not on their availability – if the presentation is important enough to do then it’s important enough for the right people to be there. Ensure that everyone plays an equal role and that everyone knows the roles they’re supposed to play.
9. Practice, rehearse and practice again – I recommend you ask an independent observer to sit in on the early practice runs as they can point out the obvious (wood for trees!).
10. Get an independent specialist to get post presentation feedback, both positive and negative, whether you’ve won or lost.

Anyone with any other tips?

Also have a look at our Top 10 Tips for Generating New Business.

There was a feature in Campaign’s Media section on 13th November which exactly mirrors our own experience of the market during 2009, particularly in recent months.

Cormac Loughran and Euan Hudghton, the new biz head honchos of Mediaedge:cia and PHD respectively are musing about the unprecedented number of new business opportunities that have come about as a result of the economic downturn (Cormac states that almost 10% of the market is at pitch).

And it’s not just the media planning/buying discipline that’s seeing this trend – it’s across the board. The logic to this is simple but obvious; in a tough economic environment all brand owners need to achieve the maximum value from their marketing budgets. They want fresh ideas and a streamlined service and they know that there will be plenty of agencies falling over themselves for the opportunity to prove they can deliver this.

Agencies that have rested on their laurels by relying on incumbent accounts may find themselves in a very precarious position going into next year while those with a coherent new business strategy will be reaping the rewards – and this is the message we’ve been sending out all year.