Better, Not Different – Why evolution is better than revolution for agency new business

In business, there is a constant temptation to reinvent.

New channels emerge. New technologies promise to transform the way we work. Competitors reposition themselves. And suddenly, doing what you have always done can feel dangerously close to standing still. It is a discussion we have with ourselves every year!

But there is an important distinction between standing still and getting better.

For a new business agency that has always built its proposition around the phone, that distinction matters.

Over the years, there have been plenty of reasons to question the model. Email became the dominant business communication tool. LinkedIn transformed professional networking. Marketing automation promised scalable outreach. More recently, AI has made it possible to research prospects, personalise messages and contact thousands of people at extraordinary speed.

It would have been easy to conclude that the answer was to change our proposition.

However, we have always taken a different view: How can we use new resources, technology, insights and tools to make our core proposition even better?

The phone works in agency new business because buying marketing services is fundamentally a human decision. Conversations and relationship building are critical.

There are two core elements of our proposition development:

1. Evolution – evolving to meet the challenges as the world changes. Alchemis has always done this, from the introduction of the Telephone Preference Service (TPS) to ensuring absolute GDPR compliance and, in the last few years, adapting to a world shift in working practices with hybrid working being the norm. New challenges constantly arise and will continue to do so. A company that doesn’t evolve to meet these challenges would not survive for over 40 years!
   
2. Advancement – using technology and AI developments to enhance what we do. There has never been so much information readily available on companies, prospects, intent to buy, aside of smart tools like AI sales coaching and instant transcription of conversations.

All of this enables us to deliver the best possible results, but at the heart of it all remains personal interaction.

Agencies in the main aren’t selling an interchangeable product. They are selling expertise, ideas, chemistry, judgement and trust. Understanding whether a prospect has a genuine need requires curiosity. It means asking questions, listening to the answers and knowing when to explore something further.

That’s difficult to replicate through an automated sequence.

There are plenty of lessons from new business reinvention

We’ve seen waves of supposed new business solutions arrive over the years.

Mass email promised scale, until inboxes became saturated and response rates declined. Marketing automation made it possible to create increasingly sophisticated sequences, but also made it easier for prospects to recognise when they were part of one.

LinkedIn automation offered another route to scale. The inevitable result was decision-makers receiving streams of remarkably similar connection requests, content and sales messages.

And now AI makes personalisation possible at an unprecedented scale. But there is a paradox here: when everyone can create personalised outreach instantly, personalisation itself becomes less differentiating.

Many new business agencies have consequently moved from one fashionable methodology to another – phone to email, email to social selling, social to automation, automation to AI.

The technology changes. The fundamental challenge doesn’t.

You still need to get the right person interested enough to have a meaningful conversation.

Evolution beats reinvention

None of this is an argument against technology. Quite the opposite.

The opportunity is to apply new technology to every part of the process where it genuinely makes the core proposition stronger.

Use better data to identify the right companies. Use intent signals to improve timing. Use AI to research prospects. Use technology to understand sectors and identify relevant triggers. Use CRM systems to capture intelligence. Use email and LinkedIn intelligently around conversations. And use better analytics to understand what is – and isn’t – working.

Then pick up the phone.

The result isn’t an old-fashioned new business model stubbornly refusing to change.

It’s a modern new business model built around something that hasn’t changed: people buy from people.

Getting better at what you’re good at

There is a tendency in business to associate innovation with doing something different.

But some of the strongest businesses innovate by relentlessly improving something they already do exceptionally well. They use new knowledge, tools and resources to make what already works better.

New business should be viewed in the same way.