Most people would agree that selling is an art, referring to “the art of persuasion” or “the gift of the gab”. At Alchemis we wouldn’t dispute this. We provide our staff with the best sales coaching in the business but know they have to be made of the right stuff in the first place, which is why we only employ experienced sales people.

Selling is also a science. Since the turn of the millennium we have made over 1 million calls (setting over 14,000 quality appointments in the process) to every conceivable type of company or organisation on behalf of our clients, who in turn range from big to small, new to established and cover every conceivable marketing discipline.

Not surprisingly we have learned a thing or two about how to generate new business wins for our clients along the way. This volume of activity alone would not make us experts though, it’s through the appliance of science to the vast amount data we have at our fingertips that we have been able to really benefit our clients.

We think that a new business agency should have the combination of experience and software to ensure they arrive at the best campaign strategy and direction for clients from the start, have the diagnostic tools to identify where change is needed if a campaign’s success does fall below expectations and possess the insight to put a campaign back on track quickly.

Every New Business Agency will offer a client the chance to spend a little to win a lot. If it were really that simple it would be a no-brainer for agency owners but where there’s chance there’s risk. At Alchemis we think that 23 years spent helping marketing agencies grow through good times and bad, accumulating a vast amount of knowledge and experience along the way means we leave less to chance than our peers.

One of the key concerns raised by prospective clients is that of representation by their New Business Manager, the individual we select to work on their campaign. They are worried that business development callers will push or persuade marketing prospects to meet their clients when they don’t actually want to or don’t have a genuine need.

Our response to this is that a consultative approach to prospects is far more effective in the long term and that pushing a prospect into a meeting will almost certainly result in either a cancelled meeting or, even worse, a poor quality meeting. Thus, our offer is based on the quality of meetings that we set for our clients – this does mean however, that we don’t set that many, but in our experience marketing agencies prefer quality to quantity!

Selling is all about making it easy for people to buy; therefore you have to find out what they want to buy rather than try and shove something down their throat that they don’t want and never have any intention of buying.

At this stage in the sales cycle this need may only be implied (i.e. ‘I’m slightly concerned that my current agency isn’t always giving me value for money’) but this doubt is nearly always sufficient reason to set an appointment. We then work with our clients to help them turn this implied need into an explicit need during the meeting itself (i.e. ‘I’d like you to come back in and show me how you would improve my customer retention rates’)

So… the hard sell (aka the transactional sell) does not and never will work in any service based market. The hard sell can work in a product based call or when there is a single transaction involved but a consultative or relationship based sell is the only way in our market.

As Managing Director of Alchemis, I get to meet hundreds of owner-drivers of marketing and creative communications agencies every year and one of the questions I get asked most often is ‘What type of collateral do I need to develop to support a proactive new business campaign?’

My response is ‘Case studies, more case studies and even more case studies!’

Case studies are king in new business as they are the one piece of real evidence that you can deliver what you say you can in your positioning statement. Your philosophy, your approach and why you set the agency up in the first place might be quite interesting, but it’s not going to help you win new business. Your understanding of a prospect’s challenges and priorities and/or their target demographic and your proven ability to deliver cost effective solutions will resonate with them far more than your values.

So, your case studies should reflect all of the above elements: who your client is and what market they operate in, the problem/issue/challenge they faced, your activity and any outcomes. You may not have statistical outcomes or ROI figures so you could for example, include a testimonial from your client.

We offer advice to all our clients about developing supporting collateral and are happy to talk this through in greater detail.