We all know new business is tough, yet it remains essential to the survival and growth of any successful agency. There are various ways of going out and getting it, but Alchemis are experts in the cold calling channel to find and create genuinely new opportunities. We’ll put you in front of the right people with the right budgets – it is then over to you.

Good new business development opportunities are hard to find. One thing is for certain though – if you think going on meetings and then sitting back and waiting for those briefs to come in is what happens, then you will be disappointed. All meetings should be followed up with a good contact strategy, which is stuck to. A proportion of meetings our clients go on will result in immediate opportunities, but by their very nature, if briefs are on the table, they are likely to be competitive.

How many times have you heard “we have an agency in place”? Rather than look on this as a negative, any company with an agency in place should be viewed as an opportunity – they have work and they have a confirmed budget. The next challenge is how to ensure you get a piece of their marketing pie.

You really need to maximise any new business opportunity you get to ensure you give the process every chance of being successful. We give realistic expectations that any return on investment is likely to take as long as six to twelve months or potentially longer, depending on your discipline and offer.

However, that does not have to be the case if you are prepared to take a few risks. We have recently started working with a creative agency. In reality, they don’t have a real USP. There is just great work, strong case studies and a really positive outlook (that description fits the vast majority of our client base). We are only three months into the campaign but only last week we received confirmation that the first meeting has converted into business.

This is rare, but the story behind this win is fantastic in illustrating what can be achieved. The prospect had agencies in place. However, the client in question really used that initial meeting to dig into the prospect’s problems, ambitions and requirements. Using that understanding, they pressed the prospect to allow them to present some ideas relating to their next project (despite being told that this was tied up with the current agency). They bit the bullet and invested time (and money) in photo shoots and creative work, whilst continually speaking to the prospect. The end result was the work they produced wowed the client and they are now undertaking the project in full (and being paid).

In reality, this is not always going to be the case and we certainly wouldn’t advocate this sort of effort in every instance. We know you have active, paying clients to service. However, where the prospect potential is right, the chemistry is right and you know you could do a better job than the existing agency, it is well worth thinking about what you could do to force their hand and get a foot in the door. In a number of cases, it will be a risk worth taking.

I was at a meeting yesterday with a really interesting agency (genuinely imaginative, innovative and pioneering; they’ll know who they are if they’re reading this) and one of the most common objections for outsourcing business development to an agency like Alchemis came up.

The objection is similar to the emotional response of passing over your child to someone else (something most parents experience when their child first goes to a childminder or to school). Most of our clients are small-medium sized agencies and are owned and run by a founding partner, therefore handing over responsibility for contacting prospects and articulating their proposition on their behalf can initially prove unsettling. How can I entrust my child to another person? How will they able to put across my offer to prospects when they haven’t grown up with it? See how easily the experiences can get blurred…

The rational response to this is that someone from the outside can add great value to your business/child. We all fondly remember a teacher who made a difference to our lives by pointing us in a direction we hadn’t previously considered or opening our eyes to an author we hadn’t previously read. Run with the analogy and you’ll rationally understand that an outsider (with 23 years experience in this market) can add enormous value to your business, helping to refine your proposition to work in this current marketplace for example.

However, it’s the emotional objection that is the most difficult to overcome, which is why we always insist on our prospective clients meeting our team of New Business Managers prior to appointing us – the only way they will ever truly feel comfortable with handing over their child is by spending time with the childminder.

1. Consider what really sets your business apart from your competitors and what your competitors are doing that you’re not – be really honest, there’s no point in being defensive.

2. List all the reasons why your agency is suited to the markets that you work in and try to remember what initially attracted you to these markets.

3. Identify the specific issues that are currently facing the market sectors your clients and prospects work in and showcase how you have helped your clients tackle these challenges.

4. List all the objections you have encountered in your efforts to win new clients and develop a pre-emptive strategy to overcome these.

5. Use your intuition and empirical evidence in equal measures to help you decide how you can best evolve into the agency you have always wanted to be.