Much has been written about new business generation in this recession and, in the main, concluding that selling cycles are longer, budgets are tighter and client expectations are higher, so nothing new there. However, the fact remains that agencies of any size have needed and will continue to need a proactive new business strategy in order to survive and grow. It is a necessary evil and requires investment in finances and time. For many, that investment has been in a new business agency, such as Alchemis.

There is no doubt that signs have been much more positive over the past three months. For Alchemis, this has been highlighted in opportunities and wins for our clients. However, whether you feel it will be a “V”,”U” or “W” shaped recession, my advice to anyone using a new business agency is to look at all the resources available and ask yourself the question,

“Am I maximising my investment in that agency?”

At Alchemis, we understand that employing the services of a new business agency is a significant outlay, and as a result, genuinely strive to do the best job possible in order to generate an ROI as quickly as possible, and that means sharing information and ensuring a holistic new business program, based on a combination of our and your resources.

The new business agency model has always been to provide a high quality caller with dedicated time, data and a structured, purpose built database, from which, we get good results. However, this is one part of the story. You have engaged a new business agency, so you need to work with them to best achieve the desired results. This means discussing and sharing all potential areas of new business, e.g.:

1) Ex-clients and contacts
2) Internal databases or lists you may have purchased
3) Leads from a lead forwarding service

Re-engaging old clients is as important in the business development process as generating a pipeline of new contacts. The difference being that in a number of instances, the introductions are out of the way and the end goal that much closer. They just need warming up!

There is often a barrier to utilising your new business agency to do this. Common objections are:

1) “That is not what I am paying them to do. I want my new business agency to chase fresh opportunities”
2) “Why should my new business agency benefit from my data?”
3) “I have the relationship, so I should call them”
4) “It is an easy lead”
5) “If I give the lead to my new business agency, any of their clients may use it”

These are totally understandable, but we are all working towards the same objective – business generation and ROI.

It is likely you engaged with that new business agency in the first instance due to your lack of time/internal skills/systems/appetite to pick up the phone. Can you honestly say, that hand on heart, you will ensure that you will speak to all your old contacts if they don’t answer the phone on that first call? We will make sure it happens. One thing you can guarantee is that all the time you are out of the office or doing something else, your competitors will be calling them.

By allowing your new business agency access to this information, you are potentially increasing your short-term opportunities and often the most successful campaigns will have a proportion of re-engagement as well as cold activity. This collaborative approach tends to deliver. Clarity of your key prospect market is vital during an economic downturn. You certainly don’t wish to be wasting your time or money on chasing leads with little or no potential. On the cold calling side, an agency will generate a list of qualified prospects, right for you either now or in the future. At the same time, you need to re-ignite old prospects and contacts.

We can ascertain quickly:

a) If an old contact, would work with you again and if so, if and when they may have suitable work coming up. Or,
b) If they will provide no future opportunity. If that is the case, we will find out why, which is valuable information, but more importantly, move on to one who might.

If you had someone in-house, you would ensure that they did this, so why not your agency?

Maximise any internal data or resources. Data loses value in a short space of time. The benefit of providing your new business agency with this data is that it will get validated, qualified and graded very quickly, whilst your database is increased with fresh prospects from cold calling. I totally understand the security issue, but at Alchemis, our database is set up to ensure that any client data we receive can and will be used solely for that client’s campaign.

An article recently described new business as the “ultimate conquest”. It really is and more than ever, we need to work smartly, maximising all available resources. Your new business agency is a big part of that resource, so use it to the full.

We know marketing departments are under enormous pressure to deliver better sales results with tighter resources. This often results in short-term price based promotional activity, or certainly activity where ROI can be truly measured (this has typically taken a digital route). However, the pressure that they are under inevitably feeds down to the marketing agencies they employ and feedback from our clients suggests that they have needed to compromise their pre-recession pricing or working practices in order to retain business and feel that a good pricing “offer” could be beneficial in attracting new business. These often revolve around payment on results, taking on initial projects at a loss on the basis of future potential or offering free audits as a way to get a foot in the door, but how much of a hook is it for prospective new clients?

No doubt, agencies need to adapt to their clients’ changing circumstances. Agencies that put the client first may experience more short-term pain but could potentially reap the rewards during and post this recession. With brands demanding more for their money, a well thought through and executed price or results based proposition may well help attract new business, but if positioned in the wrong way, could devalue the quality of your offer, people and brand. Stick to what you are good at. Many agencies see themselves as multi-faceted, but most still tend to have core strengths, be it in sector or discipline. There will always be a temptation to say “yes” to a client interested in a discipline outside of your agency’s core expertise. Whether you are trying to get a foot in the door through new business calling or at the point of working with a client, learning or developing a new skill at the expense of the client will almost certainly backfire and potentially damage your brand.

On both these points, your new business agency is key and needs to be properly briefed, with absolute clarity. The key is to work with your new business agency to identify your core proposition. Sounds obvious, but we want to be sending you in to meet people, where you can demonstrate knowledge, experience and discipline expertise, which is more likely to lead to business conversions.

Work with your agency to identify the prospects you would be prepared to make a price/working practice/free audit based offer to. You may find it is only a proportion of your target audience. This is something your new business agency should be able to help you with. If, during a conversation, it is a clear a prospect would not provide substantial, ongoing potential, why compromise for a one off project? Finally, and most importantly, agree how any offer will be conveyed. A good offer, put in the right way will come across as powerful and value added and can be dynamite for generating interest over the phone versus other agency approaches, but in the wrong way, there will be a danger of it devaluing your company and people. On all of this, your new business agency should be delivering meaningful feedback on any offer or proposition in order to hone your business development strategy and drive your company through the recession.

To agency owners, how are you responding to marketing departments putting pressure on you to deliver results?

To marketing decision makers, how are your agencies responding to your requests for measurable ROI?

I read an interesting article in Marketing Week on 3^rd December referring to the latest Marketing Trends Survey by the Chartered Institute of Marketing. Specifically this feature concerns the investment that brand owners need to make (both in terms of their time when it comes to training and their money relating to technology) in order to meet their customer relationship management goals.

Keeping on top of CRM is no picnic: you might be a huge multinational with an entire department dedicated to tracking the ever-changing habits and needs of your customer base or a small agency relying on a package like ACT, but the quality of the data you get out will only ever be as good as the quality of data that gets captured in the first place – and this takes a lot of time and effort. It’s a bit like painting the Forth Bridge, although even that has an ending in sight now.

Let’s relate this issue to small to medium size agencies: you’ve got finite resources so it’s not always practical to have a data research team. Sure, you can buy data from numerous providers; but how often have you opened your data package expectantly, only to feel somewhat underwhelmed when you start using it? It’s a bit like an excitable child opening a present at Christmas only to find that the box contains an old Sega Master System rather than the latest Playstation 3.

Then there’s the whole issue of how to get your data working for you, as opposed to you working for it. There are plenty of contact management systems out there but if you don’t have the expertise to fully utilise them it’s fairly likely that you’ll be missing opportunities and therefore potentially losing money.

One of the key contributions to our own success as a company (and obviously this has come off the back of delivering results for our clients) has been the continued investment, maintenance and development of our CRM database. As a tool it is invaluable in helping to identify genuine opportunities for our clients and helping to win new business for ourselves.

Let’s be realistic – on any sizeable database you will never achieve 100% accuracy. There will always be a certain proportion of the information that has changed and not yet been recaptured. But if you have a whole group of business development professionals collectively updating the system from the information they are gathering with each call they make (somewhere in the region of 1000 calls each day between them) and this information is specifically focussed on gleaning new business opportunities above anything else, you soon start to separate the wheat from the chaff. Of course, it helps to have a tip-top system built specifically for your requirements – but if you’ve got it, why not flaunt it?

What are your views on the opportunity cost of CRM?