I recently read an amusing article entitled 5 things I hate about new business

Although it’s written by an American ex military guy, it got me thinking about the reasons why creative marketing agencies dislike the thought of using a new business agency.

Here’s the number one reason to start off the debate – I’ll follow up with more reasons and my response to them in future blogs…..

“I went all the way to Hull to meet a 22 year old who didn’t really understand marketing, who didn’t have a decent budget and who wasn’t sure why I was there”! Ring any bells?

Poor meeting quality is probably the most commonly cited reason for not wanting to use a business development agency and is either based on personal experience or anecdotal evidence from friends or colleagues in other agencies.

We’ve all experienced meetings that are a waste of time and it’s why Alchemis focuses so heavily on ensuring that all our meetings adhere to some very strict quality criteria, agreed up front and in conjunction with our clients.

These quality criteria include the market sector, size, location and profile of any prospects we agree to target on our client’s behalf and the potential spend and need for our client’s service offer.

Our New Business Managers’ incentive scheme supports this approach by rewarding our team on quality meetings attended and not on the meetings they set.

This ensures that the focus on the phone is on engaging with decision makers and having a serious 2 way conversation about their current marketing/design/digital/research/communications challenges and priorities rather than haranguing them with ‘sales lines’ just to secure a meeting.

Following my part in the Designers Breakfast meeting last Thursday, here’s a summary of the content.

I kicked off the session with 5 top tips about how to create chemistry and demonstrate creativity and vision in a first meeting with a prospect (most of the tips are relevant to any client meeting, and frankly, I believe you should treat all client meetings as though they were a first one)

1. Develop insights, opinions and observations through market and competition based research – these insights allow you to express your opinions and more importantly, ask the client or prospect theirs

2. Prepare relevant case studies and examples of work based on your research; you can also use this research to prepare a list of questions to ask the prospect/client about their priorities and challenges

3. Walk a mile in the client or prospect’s shoes – think why they might want to work with you and also why they may not want to work with you – this allows you to pre-empt potential objections and therefore deal with them in the meeting

4. Structure the meeting by signposting how long it’s going to take, what it’s going to look like and where it’s heading (ie. let them know at the beginning of the meeting that a desired outcome could be a follow up meeting)

5. Do NOT take a PowerPoint presentation – the key objective of a first meeting is to get a second one where you can present ideas of how you can help them with their current priorities and challenges. The first meeting is about creating empathy and trust, identifying and highlighting those main areas of concern and showing relevant examples of work that have resonance with the two way conversation you have created.

Joe Ferry, SVP Global Guest Experience & Design at InterContinental Hotels Group made some very interesting additional observations to my process driven tips; namely that every client is different and should therefore be treated/dealt with differently and appropriately. Joe’s point was that people buy people who they can trust to deliver the work on time and to budget and that not all designers have fully developed their EQ.

This point was also highlighted by Tom Foulkes, Global Head of Marketing at Buro Happold, who very succinctly pointed out that some clients like smoke blown up their arse and that others don’t!

Other key observations from Joe and Tom included:

• Pay attention to detail – get the company name right for example (basic stuff but you’d be surprised……)
• Talk through your experiences outside the direct market sector that your prospect/client works in (they often like you to have a real breadth of knowledge as well as in-depth knowledge of their market)
• Tell the truth, but don’t go too far off brief
• Make your client look good by listening to the brief but challenging where you genuinely think there could be a better way
• Show them what you can do outside of your day job; in other words, show them some creative work that you’ve just come up with in down time or for a brand you’re not currently working with – show them your passion for design
• Don’t pretend to be bigger than you are, remember that people buy people and most clients don’t care if you’re 3 or 300 staff as long as they trust you to get the job done

There were loads of other interesting insights from Joe and Tom and you will be able to see/hear this session online in the Autumn – I’ll post the link.

Do you have any other do’s and don’ts?

Speaking to a client recently, the general talk took a familiar “it’s not all doom and gloom” flavour and indeed it really isn’t. The reason for this client’s optimism was a recent run of new business wins, both through Alchemis and through their own efforts.

This particular agency works in the digital arena and interestingly, The Sunday Times on 6th February reported on small businesses and highlighted that those companies able to identify and act upon a fledgling trend are able to flourish in a weak economy. As well as a Fairtrade cosmetics and a food company, the article focused on We Are Social, a social media agency based in Clerkenwell. They are in their third year and riding high, helping businesses to develop or introduce a social media strategy to aid growth.

The rise of digital marketing has created a whole new world of niche specialist companies. Unsurprisingly, digital agencies make up a substantially higher percentage of the Alchemis client base than a few years ago. From our perspective, we have seen the whole development of the industry from the “New Media” (effectively website build) agencies of the late 90s. New digital agencies are setting up every day and often entrepreneurial, talented experts have identified a niche in which to focus. As an offer, this is great for Alchemis. We love working on tight, interesting offers. We tend to glean more interest during conversations and our clients are able to build on that in the subsequent meetings.

However, we don’t just do this for digital agencies where a point of difference and resulting USP is normally fairly obvious. We are also extremely adept at developing business for more traditional PR, research, creative and integrated agencies. This makes us something of a bellwether. Our client base tends to be a strong indicator of market trends and we see starkly through our results which propositions are most effective and which markets are buying what. Clearly there are client confidentiality constraints, but we are able to utilise general trends to develop a client’s proposition and new business strategy. By understanding their experience and case studies, we are able to identify angles and issues that set each individual client apart.

This has resulted in a record breaking number wins for our clients in 2010 and the start to 2011 has been equally positive.

There is no doubt that digital offers will continue to rise, adapt and even fall by the wayside, but across the raft of marketing services, it is those agencies that are able to identify new trends and develop innovative offers or propositions early that will make hay in tough times.