Category: New Business

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How to Grow Business Organically

New business gets attention. It’s obvious when you win and depending on the size, it can lead to getting press coverage. But, in a lot of cases, organic growth can have a bigger impact on the agency. Organic growth is a testament to the strength of the existing client relationship and validates their satisfaction with the agency’s performance. But getting organic business can be tricky. Below is an overview of organic growth and 10 keys to acquiring organic business:

What is organic growth?

Organic growth is any business that is added to an existing account. It can come in many different forms – adding a different line of business, a new channel (e.g., website or CRM) or department (e.g., media or production). It varies in size and effort.

10 Keys to Acquiring Organic Growth

  1. Create a Strong Foundation.

It starts with a solid foundation. If you don’t have it, the chance of growth is extremely low. The team has to be delivering strong work and have a solid client relationship to grow.

2. Share Capabilities.

Make sure clients know the full breadth and depth of the agency’s offering. In a lot of cases, clients don’t realize you have experience and capabilities outside of what you do for them. You need to be proactive and weave these additional core competencies into your day-to-day discussions with clients.

3. Share Latest Agency News.

It’s human nature to want to work with companies that are trending upwards. Companies that are doing well and are growing. Make sure to share regularly your agency news, such as client wins, new and relevant case studies, and new initiatives that the client might be interested in. A couple of ways to do this is through a monthly agency email that is specifically for clients and agency leadership check-ins with the client.

4. Understand the Client’s Entire Business.

Led by the client service team, develop a strong understanding of the client’s entire business, including outside of the business that you currently work on. What are their pain points? How is their relationship with other partners? What are their future objectives? What other service lines could use more support? The key is listening to help identify the opportunity.

5. Develop an Action Plan.

Based on what you’ve learned, develop an action plan that leverages what you’ve learned. This action plan is to include what you are trying to solve, potential solution(s), resources and effort needed, and potential timing. This is the framework that sets the stage for creating a custom solution.

From an agency standpoint, it’s helpful to challenge all client leaders to do this yearly, potentially including in annual planning.

6. Go for the Ask.

Asking for new opportunities can be awkward. Timing is critical. It helps when you are coming off something positive such as a great meeting. Must convey you have a solution to one of their problems, that it won’t interfere with the work that you are currently doing for the client and ask to be able to share your thoughts.

7. Develop Solution.

Organic growth can put your reputation at risk if you don’t develop a strong solution. It’s opening the door to other team members/resources that don’t work on the business today. Team leads must be confident that these additional resources are good, would be a great fit with this client and have the ability to continue the momentum that is already established.

Once you seed the idea and the client is open to hearing more, the next step is developing the solution. The solution should be grounded in:

  • Addressing the pain point/opportunity previously discussed.
  • Knowledge of the business as you know their business better than anyone.
  • Share the efficiencies that can be gained by acquiring more business.
  • Reassure clients it won’t hurt the existing business.

8. Share Solution.

Determine when it’s appropriate to discuss the solution with the client. This could be when you’re planning for the upcoming year. Usually, it’s best to have the existing leader of the team be the key figure in the presentation, supported by the leader of the business that is trying to be added. For example, if you are trying to grow by adding internal studio production work, you would have your client leader and the production lead be the central figures in the presentation.

9. The Journey.

Hopefully, you made a solid impression. Most likely the journey to get organic growth doesn’t end here. There are probably future steps like presentations with other clients or potentially the client deciding to create a formal pitch. The key is to continue to strengthen your solution as the client gets closer to awarding you the business.

10. Seamless Onboarding.

The onboarding process should be simpler than new business since you already know so much about the client. The leader of the business that is being added (e.g., in the example above would be the production leader) is to spearhead the onboarding process. The account leader should be kept informed of progress, help establish relationships, ensure the efficiencies are taking place, and doesn’t negatively impact the existing business.

And don’t forget to celebrate the win. Although not as glamorous as a traditional new business win, a lot of work goes into organic growth and the opportunity can be the same. So it should be celebrated the same. Good luck!

If you have any questions on organic growth or need any support, please feel free to contact brianphelps10@gmail.com

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The Secret Sauce of New Business

New business is hard. It is grueling, fast-paced and most likely the odds are stacked against you. You’re going to exude a ton of effort. Depending on the size of the pitch, you are probably competing against multiple agencies, potentially the best in the business. And to make matters worse, you probably have to agree to tough terms to even be in the pitch, which could include signing off the rights to your work. It’s a harsh reality of today’s world of new business.

If you are fortunate to have clients coming directly to you in the absence of a pitch, it’s truly a great thing. Or your client roster is maxed out and don’t need more business. But for everyone else, pitching to gain new business is a necessary evil.

After competing in numerous pitches and winning several, my new business secret sauce has three components:

  • Passion: must show at every step along the journey how much you want to win. You must have max effort even on the smallest details.
  • Relationship: pitches are an artificial experience. It’s hard to build a real relationship but clients need to get a sense of what it’s like working with you – your team and the agency culture.
  • Solution: what is your unique solution that is memorable, breakthrough and addresses the main ask of the pitch.

With these core areas top of mind, below are the 10 keys to winning a pitch:

All In

This might sound pretty obvious but once you decide to enter the pitch, you have to give 100% effort if there is any chance of winning. If you continue to debate participating, then don’t bother. You won’t put the effort needed and you will lose.

Exceed Expectations at Every Stage

Pitches have several stages. The goal is to exceed client expectations at every stage. You need to leave a great indelible impression. Much too often agencies can “top out” early in the process, which pretty much dooms your chances. It’s better to be good early and awesome later. The stages to getting to winning usually goes like this:

  • Prospecting
  • Credentials
  • Written response
  • Q&A
  • Client check-in (potentially)
  • Stand up
  • Q&A
  • Follow up
  • Negotiate
  • Win & Onboard

Superior Response Team

The backbone of new business is the response team. These are team members that live, breath and sleep new business. They move fast, have a breadth of knowledge, extremely detailed oriented, include solid business writers and keep the machine on its right path. Identifying a primary team member that will oversee the pitch is also critical.

Research like Crazy

Having insights along the journey is crucial. Who are the clients? What makes them tick? What are their passion areas? Where does the brand fall compared to their competitors? The more insights you have the better as you can choose when to tap into them.

Determine Why Business is up for Review?

One component of research is to gain a great understanding of the real reason the business is up for review. You must get to the core reason, which usually falls within relationship, creative, or financials:

  • Souring of relationship with current agency
  • Previous agency perceived as too expensive
  • Struggling with the creative output
  • Client management change

Once you figure this out, you can play into it and drive home that it is actually one of your agency’s strengths.

100% focus on their Business

It’s easy to talk about yourself. It takes less time since the content is already created and some just like talking about themselves. But if you’ve made it passed the credentials stage of the pitch, clients don’t want to hear about you. They want to hear how you are going to help them.

Dynamic Pitch team

Probably the most important area is the pitch team. It makes or breaks a pitch. Having strong, qualified, knowledgeable team members who are strong presenters. One component that is overlooked sometimes is the balance of leadership and the actual team that will work on the business. The old bait and switch (having a pitch team who then never works on the business) is not viewed positively by clients. A transparent discussion should be had about every potential pitcher and discuss strengths and weaknesses to get at the strongest team.

Solution

What is the unique idea or solution, which is translated through breakthrough creative. It must be memorable, be on brand and have a clear POV. It’s good to have some variation but needs to ladder back to the primary idea or it looks like you don’t stand for anything.

Negotiate with Confidence

It’s a great sign that you have advanced to this stage. Chances are they are doing the dance with another competitor so not completely out of the woods. This is where a really good finance person is really important. You’ve spent a lot of work to get to this point. Stand confident with your proposal and negotiate to get what you think is in the best interest of your agency.

Thorough Onboarding Plan

Now the real work begins. Onboardings are awkward. They involve the incumbent agency usually and you are still getting to know the clients. Clients want to be reassured that it’s not going to be extremely painful flipping the switch to work with you. It’s usually best to acknowledge the awkwardness and dive into utilizing a proven onboarding architecture that is grounded on a proven process, speed, and thoroughness.

Lastly, try to carve out some fun. New business can lead to some of the most memorable parts of your career. And if you win, it can have a huge impact on your entire agency – from financials to agency culture. Good luck.

If you would like to know more or have any new business questions, please email: brianphelps10@gmail.com.

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Developing a Client Portfolio Strategy

All clients are important. They should be made a priority, respected and given 100% effort to help them solve their business problem(s).

Each client is different. Maybe they’re focused on consumer communications. Or B2B. Maybe they’re looking for more strategic help or creative or having a production focus. Some have smaller budgets and some larger. Some are focused on blocking and tackling deliverables and some on winning awards. Much too often a one size fits all treatment is used by agencies. The agency solution must be customized to each client’s needs. These differences should be a consideration when building and managing an agency.

Another consideration is diversification. In today’s climate, the importance of diversifying continues to grow. With the average client relationship lengths decreasing, in-house studios growing and total budgets shrinking, having a diverse client set of clients to mitigate the risk of loss is important.

One way to view diversification is by looking at the agency client roster as a portfolio, just like the stock market. We all took an introductory finance class that talked about putting stocks into four categories:

  • RISING STARS:
    High market share in a
    growth market
  • QUESTION MARKS:
    Low market share in a
    growth market
  • DOGS:
    Low market share in a
    slowing market
  • CASH COWS:
    High market share in a slowing market

The same approach can be used for analyzing your client roster: 

  • STARS: established clients that want/expect award-winning, breakthrough work. Ability to create great work to propel them upwards.
  • COWS: stable clients that have a large volume of work, potentially needing blocking/tackling support and where the ability to do breakthrough work is less common. They are a known brand and are of good size.
  • QUESTION MARKS: less established clients that with breakthrough work, could springboard their business to become well-known. 
  • DOGS:  hopefully you don’t have any of these but it could be a relationship that is trending the wrong way. Or there aren’t a lot of opportunities.

So to develop a client portfolio strategy:

  1. For each client, determine which bucket they fit into. Be transparent/realistic.
  2. Once done, look at how diversified your offering is as across the total agency. 
  3. Determine where there are gaps (in general, it’s good to have a few in each of the main three categories).

This strategy can help you manage your resources and agency effort, as well as when tied in with your new business strategy, help identify areas of growth.

So, what does your agency’s client portfolio look like? 

For more marketing thoughts, please see my blog at: brianphelpsconsulting.com/passion

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10 Keys to Successfully Onboard Client Business

New business is truly a roller coaster. The ups and downs. The uncertainty. With it comes competing against the best of the best. The need for game planning. The endless determination to be victorious. It’s the lifeblood of our business. Without it, your business will not thrive. Not much is sweeter than getting the call that the hard work you invested, paid off.

And then once you win, you have that moment of:

Oh crap, now we have to bring to life what we just pitched…and quickly. 

I’ve been fortunate to be on the winning side of several pitches and had this moment, both large and small accounts. Two things are constant – they are a lot of work and each one is different. But they are so worth it as it helps growth and brings new opportunities to the organization.

Thorough, fast and smooth.

I define successful transitions as those that are thorough, fast, and relatively smooth. Clients are satisfied with the experience and it serves as helping build confidence in your ability to manage their business. Internally they don’t cause a ton of disruption to the organization. Based on my experience, here are the 10 keys to onboarding a new client:

1.  “It’s not personal. It’s business.”

As they say in the movie You’ve Got Mail (20+ years old already, wow!…), it’s not personal. It’s business. But it’s really hard to put emotions to the side during transitions. Jobs are directly impacted. Questions abound wondering what the losing company could have done differently.

If you just lost the business, you are most likely frustrated, mad and fluctuating between the 7 stages of grief. Remember the decision was not personal.

If you just won the business, be empathetic and not judgmental. If you are in the business long enough like me, you’ll be on both sides. Not to mention you probably need some level of support from them to help ensure a smooth transition. 

2. Onboarding foundation.

It’s key to have an overall approach to onboarding business. What is your organization’s overall onboarding process, who is involved, what agency templates are used? It should not be dependent on a specific type of business. It serves as the foundation and can be used in pitches and then needs to be customized to the specific pitch you are working on.

3. Strategize on how to win.

As you progress through the new business process and get closer to the decision, you should be thinking about what it’ll take to onboard the business. Carve out time to take in what you’ve learned through the new business journey and customize the plan to the client’s needs. What are the expectations on timing, on resources, on the process, to what stays constant from the previous agency? Start with the end in mind. And work backward on the steps to get there. I recommend collaborative whiteboard sessions to map it all out. 

4. Establish a core team.

Establish a diverse team that will lead this account and reflective of the groups that will be on the client business such as account, creative, media, strategy leadership roles. This is a team that has experience doing transitions and have been in some way a part of the pitch. These team members need to be hardworking and dedicated. They need to be empowered to make broad decisions across the entire business and comfortable having transparent/direct conversations.

5. Establish a support team.

This is representative of who the core team will be regularly interfacing with to move the account forward. This includes Human Resources, Finance, Project Management, office logistics lead, etc. They are helpful, understand the urgency and importance and able to move quickly.

6. Prioritization.

Break down everything that needs to be done into digestible pieces. Attempting to tackle everything at once can feel extremely overwhelming. Identify what projects are immediate/must-haves, nice to have, and lastly a category of in a perfect world. Put your best and fastest resources on the immediate needs. Do the same for the new positions. 

7. Talent is key.

The pressure to hire talent quickly is a given. It’s easy to give in and fill the holes. Don’t do it. I’ve hired a couple times due to pressure and it has never worked out. It’s better to explain the situation and why it is taking longer versus filling it with the wrong person. “Cross interviewing” is recommended where team members from other groups interview the candidate as well. For example, if it’s an account opening, have the creative and strategy team members represented in the interview. When hiring, don’t forget about the team members that helped you get there and see if they would be a good match for the new positions. It’s a great way to acknowledge existing internal resources. 

8. Hot huddles.

No one wants more meetings but I recommend daily huddles with the core team and a couple times a week with the support team. They are 15 minutes max so you need to go fast and are in the morning to start the day. Document the discussion to include: 

    – Client understanding 

    – Timing 

    – Process

    – Key Projects

    – Resources 

    – Logistics 

9. Progress tracker.

Keep an ongoing tracker that documents the progress being made on a daily/weekly basis. This will help show clients the hard work being implemented and what is remaining. It can also be used to communicate with the broader agency to help energize the collective team.

10. Have fun.

Remember that winning business is a good thing. It’s hard to see the forest through the trees but your hard work and dedication are positively impacting others. Carve out moments along the onboarding journey to thank team members and show appreciation.  

 If you or your business are going through a transition and need guidance or have questions, feel free to reach out to brianphelpsconsulting.com. 

Good luck!

Wikipedia contributors. (2019, June 26). You’ve Got Mail. In Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia. Retrieved 14:17, July 4, 2019, from https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=You%27ve_Got_Mail&oldid=903559829

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