The most effective new business processes turn prospects into leads by educating those prospects about how your products and services can solve their specific problems.

But when creating a proactive new business program, many teams struggle to know where to begin. We always point to these three areas to start your plan of attack: Audience, Content and Execution.

Audience

The first and most important step you should take when deciding how to begin your proactive outreach to prospects is to determine who your audience is. You need to know who your target audience is so you ask the right questions – who, why and what – to help narrow who you are marketing to.  You must clearly define who your “right to win” clients are. If your team is perfectly positioned to provide the best service possible to a prospect in your niche, that’s a right to win client, and they should be working with you.

After you create your right to win list, you can begin including additional targets you see as great fits, which are a slight reach from your perfect right to win group. Agencies will often limit themselves by “fishing in too small of a pond,” or creating lists of prospects that exclude too many winnable clients. Create a realistic and appropriately sized group of contacts to attack with your approach. A great way to start thinking about Audience is to ask the following questions:

• In what areas is the agency most profitable?
• Who are you talking to now?
• What kind of business do you walk away from?
• What brands should be clients?
• What areas are most interesting to the team? What is the team passionate about?

By asking these questions, you’ll be able to determine who your audience is in a very specific, lead-driven way.

Content

Content drives just about every aspect of what we do in our lives—professionally and personally. In new business, you need to provide content that your new, specifically targeted audience wants to consume and share online. When getting started with your content strategy, start slow and don’t overextend yourself.

We’ve found that when teams commit to too much, too soon, one of two things happens: a) they burn out quickly on the process and it becomes a chore creating unique, branded content or; b) they begin building too much around a single whitepaper/eBook. Long-form content can be beneficial to your content strategy, but be careful not to let it consume hours of labor or hinder your ability to pivot across multiple audience groups.  

When deciding what content should live on your editorial calendar, ask yourself questions like:

• Why does your agency exist? (less about what and how)
• What’s the one thing you do better than anyone else?
• What are the benefits of working with your agency?
• What type of work is outside of your scope? (this will help you drive more qualified conversations)
• What business problems do you solve for the identified prospect categories?

Content plays a key role in advancing your new business strategy, and increasing your prospects both within your targeted audience and outside of it. 

Execution

We all dream big about winning new business, but you can’t approach that dream in an ad hoc manner. You need to have a plan set in place that is consistently repeatable, with very defined goals, measurements and activities. Your plan should involve everyone in the new business process—from Sales and Marketing to Management. At Agency Squared, our goal is to always set a process in place that can be seamlessly transferred when changes to the team take place. During the execution phase, these are important questions you should ask:

• Who from the in-house team will be fulfilling each role in the sales/marketing process?
• What technologies do we currently have in place?
• How do we want to approach new prospects?
• How have we approached prospects in the past? What has worked best?
• Who has typically been the most receptive to our messaging?

A critical part of execution is how you leverage the content you’ve created, and the process your sales and marketing team uses that content to drive 1-1 sales conversations. By using your content to engage more often with prospects, you’ll see more opportunities to win clients.

Need help identifying a strategic plan of attack for winning new business? Contact us to learn more about how A2 implements successful new business processes for agencies across North America.

Many agencies and marketing services firms over the years have made the decision to outsource their new business development efforts vs. handling new business outreach in-house. In fact, this has been a very common practice with U.K. agencies– and now more U.S. agencies are following suit. Why? They’re seeing multiple benefits including time-savings, incurred costs and overall performance.

If you’re currently deciding which route your agency should take, consider the following 5 reasons why “Buying” may be more beneficial than “Building:”

#1 Expertise – when outsourcing your new business to a firm that specializes in helping agencies with business development, you are getting a proven, successful, dedicated team working for your company on a consistent basis. Business development firms have “hunters” leading their prospecting efforts; senior professionals with a proven track record of results – and who know how to effectively work a sales pipeline.

#2 Time Saving – having a new business firm handle prospect outreach can be a big time-savings opportunity for agencies – as these firms are 100% focused on prospect outreach vs. relying on in-house teams that typically execute sales in their spare time or in spurts. Working with a team of veteran new business professionals also reduces your ramp up time. For example, our team at Catapult is trained to be in-market within the first 30 days, whereas we find that agencies who train this role in-house can take up to 60-90 days, depending on the new business tools and process they currently have in place.

These firms also typically offer list-building software and technologies like marketing automation and CRM that equip them to execute hyper-targeted outreach – all which offer additional, significant time savings.

#3 Consistent Pipeline of Qualified Leads – many agencies do not have a strong new business “pipeline,” and we often find it’s because they don’t have an effective, repeatable new business process in place. Often times when agencies work on a RFP and do not win the piece of business, they find themselves back at square one, frantically trying to drum up qualified opportunities. Executing new business in this manner can be stressful and unresponsive.

Outsourcing to new business firms provides ease-of-mind knowing you have a proven expert with the tools and network in place to deliver consistent meetings with brands you’re uniquely positioned to win business from.

#4 Cost Savings – when looking at the fully loaded cost of hiring someone in-house to manage your new business, agencies typically find it’s much more economical to buy vs. build. Most business development firms charge a monthly fee for their services that is often less than the salary, bonus and benefits incurred by hiring a new business director.

#5 Success – the name of the game. New business development firms enjoy a strong success rate of teeing up a consistent number of qualified meetings each month– while also working alongside the agency to help them turn those leads into paying, renewable accounts. When hiring a firm, ask about their success rates, and when possible inquire about other agencies that have found success in using them.

 

>> Need help deciding if buying vs. building is best for your agency? Learn more by contacting Catapult today.

In the digital world in which we now live, marketing automation is perhaps the most important way to both streamline your operations and increase the effectiveness of your campaigns. According to HubSpot, the types of nurtured leads generated by marketing automation make 47% larger purchases than those who were not. More than that, a full 91% of marketers believe that their use of marketing automation is “very important” to the overall success of ALL of their efforts according to Marketo.

Making the decision to move to marketing automation isn’t as easy as flipping a light switch, however. It will take a great deal of time, effort and preparation to build the foundation necessary for your marketing automation efforts to thrive.

Break Up That Sales Funnel

If marketing automation is one of the best ways to guide your leads from one end of the sales funnel to the other, it stands to reason that the first step towards preparing yourself for this shift involves defining all stages of your sales funnel. What shape does initial contact with your lead take? After how long do you begin to deepen your relationship, investigating suitability? What is your value proposal to continue to nurture your lead over time? What does your follow up look like? These are all important questions that you need to answer as early in the process as possible.

Getting to Know Your Target Audience

If you don’t truly understand the people you’re marketing to, how can you ever expect to give them what they want or even speak their language? Who are these people? What problem do they have in their lives that only you can solve? What specific features of the product or service that you’re offering are going to attract their interest the most? What might get in the way of a sale? What are they worried about? What other products and services do they like to spend money on?

The answers to all of these questions will not only help you craft more compelling marketing materials, they’ll help provide a true focus for your efforts to guarantee the highest level of effectiveness at all times.

Match the Right Content to the Right Stages

Once you’ve made a list of all the various types of content that will appeal to your target audience (including blog posts, reports, how-to manuals, whitepapers, case studies and more), AND you’ve spent time creating the type of high value content you know they’re looking for, the next thing to do is make sure you’re getting the right content into the hands of the right person at that oh-so-perfect moment.

To do this, you’ll need to identify a few key things. Which of the pieces of content you’ve created will be valuable enough to your target audience that they’ll be willing to exchange their content information for it? What content is more practical and actionable in nature and, as a result, will be ideal for helping to guide them farther down the sales funnel? Most importantly, which of this content do you have and which do you have to create from scratch?

Once you answer all of these questions as they relate to not only your product or service but the unique audience you’re trying to attract, you’ll find that you’re more than prepared for the benefits that marketing automation brings to the table.

Looking to make the shift to marketing automation? AgencySquared works alongside your team to answer all of the above, making sure that you’re prepared to optimize your efforts and see results. Get a complimentary consultation.

 

Every agency sends emails in an effort to enhance client acquisition and grow their business. In reality, although the concept of sending emails to attract and retain clients seems promising, it is almost inevitable that your email may end up in the spam folder.

Why is this a growing problem?

Agencies may follow the rules on sending emails, but society has taken marketing efforts to an entirely different level. There are tons of emails sent every day, putting them all into the same category. In addition, ISP providers are continuously finding new ways to keep legitimate emails from reaching their destination because of simple mistakes agencies may make. There are ways to avoid going into the spam folder, but doing the due diligence is key.

To help combat this growing problem, we’ve organized 5 tips to help you avoid the spam folder, and increase overall deliverability:

1. Watch your jargon

Knowing what to say and when to say it plays an important role in how the email is viewed once it hits the sender’s box. If there are links in the email, make sure they are from reputable sites. Keep the image-to-text ratio reasonable, and make sure you use a reputable host for any images you may have in the email. Do not use risky words such as free, bonus, buy, purchase, order, prize, or use more than one exclamation point. This will keep the flags down, especially in subject lines.

2. Use Reputable URL Links

Spam filters check for the URLs you are linking to so ensuring the domain name has a good reputation is important. Avoid names that have multiple folders and 1-2 characters in their file name. For example, a domain name with www.domain.com/a/everything.html will often be picked up as spam and seen as a negative URL. In addition, keeping the complete URL in the file name, and not shortened links, will improve email delivery.

3. Certification

If you are a legitimate agency, getting certified will help you gain credibility. Also, using platforms like Return Path will guarantee your inbox is known from the major ISPs, which will help you avoid being flagged as spam.

4. Be honest

Avoid emails that come from different mailboxes. You want to be consistent to help build the credibility of your agency, and stay recognizable. When customers are familiar with your email addresses, they will take you out of the spam folder and automatically direct you to their inbox.

5. Provide relevant content to the right audience

The best way to see engagement from your email marketing, and not get pinged as spam, is to provide timely and relevant content to the right audience. First thing – make sure you’re messaging is going to the appropriate decision-makers. Successful agencies are now leveraging list building tools to help supplement their organic opt-in list. Purchasing targeted prospect lists through reputable sources (like Winmo) can immediately increase not only traffic to your site, but also disseminate your expertise to a larger group of potential buyers. It also confirms the content you’re creating is being sent to the industries and titles that you’re best fit to win business from.

Not surprising – the next step is create custom content that uniquely speaks to each of these targeted audiences. Do your research to understand the personas of each vertical and then develop compelling content around each of their pain points.

Are you not seeing the leads you need from your email marketing campaigns? You could be using email the wrong way. This powerful tool can produce results, but following best practices is key. Here are some of the top proven practices heading into 2016, and how they can help your business grow!

 1. Collect More Email Addresses

It’s time for easy math: The more email addresses you collect, the more leads you can obtain. As a marketer you should be generating fresh, new email contacts regularly. Your contacts’ email addresses may become stale over time as contacts move jobs, opt-out of your email campaigns or abandon old email addresses. As a result, there are many ways for companies to increase their email leads, simply by encouraging more customers to sign up for email messages, promoting a contest or sweepstakes online, creating newsletter-only deals, or offer a birthday club to give something away on their special day.

The most useful tool in accomplishing this is to develop an automatic CTA (call to action) which appears to all website visitors. This simple pop-up form needs to be easy to understand, quick to complete, and rewarding to use.  

2. Offer Value in Exchange for CTAs

We mentioned that a call to action should be “rewarding to use” and its important to understand the value of this tactic for both CTAs and the emails you send to your customer list. People don’t like to give away their email addresses in exchange for nothing, so offer regular rewards for viewing emails and collecting lead opportunities. A classic example is sending an email with a unique link to download a discount code for a product purchase. Without that email, the consumer doesn’t get the discount. This confirms early on the value of signing up and reading emails from your brand. It opens the door for more effective conversions down the road. Also, remember to clearly show the value offered in your email headlines!

 3. Don’t Go Too Hot – or Too Cold

How many emails do you send out to customers each week? Send out too many, and customers will block your emails or leave them to languish in the “promotion” section of the email client that no one ever visits. Send out too few, and consumers will trash your emails because they don’t even recognize them when they do show up. The middle ground is important to find here. Studies indicate that one email per week is around the best rate to avoid the pitfalls.

 4. Format for Mobile and Easy Consumption

If customers can’t read your email, they won’t. If they have to go to extra effort to read your email, they won’t. Due to more and more consumers accessing email via mobile devices, it’s vital that you optimize your messages, make them responsive for mobile devices, and make them very easy to read (avoid that dreaded newsletter format if you possibly can). Ensure that your calls to action appear early in the email, are large, invoke your logo colors, and whisk consumers away to better content.

5. Personalize and Automate

We know that these are both popular buzzwords, but they are also revolutionizing email campaigns. Personalization taps into customer data about recent purchases and viewed products to make customized recommendations and offer unique deals to past customers – results that guarantee a higher number of successful repeat sales. Automation helps save a lot of time and makes sure that customers get emails when they are supposed – right after signing up, after making purchases, when the company has important news, and so on.

Remember, the best email campaigns take advantage of the strengths you already have; When in doubt, consider what already engages your customers and wins their loyalty. With the right timing and format, those things will work through email channels, too! For any additional questions or a look at the latest ways email marketing can help your business, visit AgencySquared.com

Keeping your business top-of-mind to current and prospective clients is a very repetitive job, but with marketing automation, much of the repetitive nature of the business can be replaced by software.

While it is true that marketing automation is extremely helpful and makes the job easier, it isn’t going to replace the need for human outreach, nor will it miraculously take the place of marketing specialists.  People will still need to generate leads and maintain prospecting lists.  Purchasing lists of contacts might seem like a great idea at the time, but simply purchasing cold lists and sending them one-size-fits-all mailings or emails, is likely not going to produce much revenue, let alone long-term revenue.  Automation will not and cannot take the place of cultivating relationships with potential clients.

Becoming too dependent on marketing automation can actually kill your business in the long run, so the key to being successful with marketing automation is to understand its purpose fully and utilize its tools in an intelligent, efficient way.  

Marketing automation was designed to streamline lead generation, lead scoring and lead nurturing across a customer’s lifecycle. It is a huge part of being able to create a repeatable process that keeps business development efforts running regardless of what’s going on within the agency.

So, how does this automation ensure that activity is constant within your business development process? Here’s a look at what you can expect from a successful marketing automation program:

• Capturing relevant data completed from online forms while compiling them into its own list
• Creating a variety of lists based upon your specified demographics and prospective profiles
• Nurturing your leads that have been to your website and have shown interest in your services or products
• Extending customer relationships and engagement throughout the cycle

Marketing automation can be highly successful if you use it properly.  Whether you are already generating quality leads and have a solid procedure in place to follow up with them, or your pipeline is currently dry, marketing automation could be helpful for you.  

It is essential to remember that automation marketing, just like any other tool you’d use for your business, is not a cure-all solution.  Additionally, you can’t implement it and forget it.  In order for the automation to be effective it needs to be maintained, monitored, and evaluated periodically to determine it’s effectiveness and if your business is getting an acceptable return on the investment.

Ready to start driving more qualified leads for your business? Contact us for a free demonstration or call us at 404-564-2429.

 

There are a few reasons why agency executives decide to dedicate their time to volunteering in an industry association. One, they want to learn more about what their peers are doing to achieve success or two, they’re simply looking to expand their network and drive a few sales on the side. Regardless of your intentions, participating in different groups within your industry can provide tremendous benefits for your business. In this post, we’ve organized the top 5 marketing and advertising associations we think are worth investing your time in.

ANA

Brief Bio: The ANA (Association of National Advertisers) provides leadership that advances marketing excellence and shapes the future of the industry. Founded in 1910, the ANA’s membership includes more than 680 companies with 10,000 brands that collectively spend over $250 billion in marketing and advertising. The ANA also includes the Business Marketing Association (BMA) and the Brand Activation Association (BAA) which operate as divisions of the ANA, and the Advertising Educational Foundation which is an ANA subsidiary.

My Take: As one of the leading associations within the advertising and marketing industry, I highly recommend getting involved if you’re an agency executive. They host a large amount of conferences throughout the year, all highly relevant to agencies and companies. Since most of the members are corporate marketing executives, it’s a great opportunity to collaborate and network with some of the leading global brands.

Event Recommendation: The ANA has an impressive list of industry events each year however my personal recommendation is the Masters of Marketing Conference, held in October, which typically brings together top brand marketers around the world.

Mirren

Brief Bio: Working closely with agency CEOs and their management teams Mirren supports agencies with consulting and training regarding best practices in new business development. Through their membership you get access to their resource center which includes their Daily Leads, On-Demand Learning and Advanced Webinars.

My Take: Although Mirren isn’t technically an ‘association’ I wanted to include them on this list because Mirren is a household name for agencies, specifically those responsible for new business. Across events, on demand training and their new Mirren Talent platform agency professionals leverage Mirren to crank up their growth by staying on top of the cutting-edge best practices.

Event Recommendation: One of the go-to annual events for those responsible in driving agency new business, Mirren Live consistently brings together an impressive group of leading agencies and search consultants each year to learn about hot topics and growth drivers for successful agencies. A newer event they’ve recently added to their calendar, the CEO Summit, is also highly recommend. Note – only agency executives are allowed to attend this one.

4A’s

Brief Bio: Founded in 1917, the 4A’s is the national trade association representing the advertising agency business in the United States. As a management-oriented association, the 4A’s offers its members the broadest possible services, expertise and information regarding the advertising agency business. Its membership produces approximately 80 percent of the total advertising volume placed by agencies nationwide. Although virtually all of the large, multinational agencies are members of the 4A’s, more than 60 percent of our membership bills less than $10 million per year.

My Take: In my opinion, the 4A’s is the ‘mother organization’ of agencies, and is a great fit for agencies of all types and sizes. They offer valuable training, conferences, and best practices in how to drive agency sales, profits and develop new business.

Event Recommendation: In addition to national events such as the Transformation Conference, they also offer Regional Forums for small to mid-size agency principals to discuss business issues and challenges that they all face.

Marketing Research Association

Brief Bio: Founded in 1957 and based in Washington, the Marketing Research Association is the leading and largest U.S. association of the opinion and marketing research profession, which delivers insights and strategies to help guide the decisions of companies providing products and services to consumers and businesses.

My Take: The MRA – still a common moniker, despite the different connotations of that acronym these days – has a bit more wide-reaching content designed for easy consumption. You’ll find videos and case studies on particular trends, as well as frequent editorials on the latest marketing news. But underneath this sort of aggregation is a solid foundation of research and marketing communities available to those who take the next step. Membership is divided in multiple levels, but again the focus is primarily on research and data as opposed to more social aspects of marketing.

IAB

Brief Bio: IAB serves as digital media’s biggest tent, comprised of more than 650 leading media and technology companies that are responsible for selling, delivering, and optimizing digital advertising or marketing campaigns. Working with its member companies, IAB develops technical standards and best practices and fields critical research on interactive advertising, while educating brands, agencies, and the wider business community on the importance of digital marketing.

My Take: Like the MRA, the IAB is a polished and news-friendly association that covers a broad number of topics across the marketing and advertising space. They provide many tools and classes for free without requiring membership or certification which is always a plus. This includes fee calculators, ad viewability guides, and much more. Certification is divided into several different specialties and levels of expertise, allow you to customize your training based on your position and goals.

Event recommendation: Like others, IAB has a large list of trainings, webinars and conferences. My preferences would by the IAB MIXX, typically held later in the year in NY.

 

 

With the rise of social media, it’s easy to assume that email marketing is going the way of the dodo. However, nothing could be further from the truth. The fact is that people still use and rely on email for many things, so it continues to be a valuable and effective way to reach out to them. Email campaigns are inexpensive, so the ROI is often considerable. The trick, however, is handling them properly and having specific objectives in mind. Pick up a few helpful tips to build email campaigns that help your business grow.

Know How to Write Effective Emails

Before considering anything else, make sure you know how to create effective emails. First, the headline must be attention-grabbing, or it will get lost in the shuffle. Use A/B testing to see which subject headlines work well and which fall flat. Include plenty of graphics and links in your email to keep readers engaged, and send them at the right time of day. Finally, always include at least one strong call-to-action in your emails so readers know how to proceed.

Remind People of Your Brand

In today’s fast-paced digital world, it’s easier than ever for brands to get lost in the shuffle. Email marketing is an effective way to keep a brand top of mind. As long as the messages are low-key, they can remind consumers about a brand and prompt them to turn to the brand when they need a product or service. Birthday messages, holiday greetings and company newsletters are great examples of gentle reminders that you can send.

Build Lasting Relationships

Through effective email marketing, you can take a single purchase and turn it into a lasting relationship. Reaching out regularly through email shows consumers that they matter. After a customer establishes an account–even if they don’t buy anything–a welcome email is a great way to forge a bond. Later, reorder emails and “we miss you” emails can help sustain the relationship, increasing the odds of additional conversions.

Establish Authority

Email marketing also allows brands to establish and demonstrate their authority. Occasionally sending useful, informative messages is an excellent way to reach out without being abrasive or intrusive. Things like product showcases that include special tips or instructions and industry news help to spark conversation. When they’re well-written, they may even be shared, expanding the reach of your marketing even further.

Learn More About Your Prospects

Finally, email marketing gives brands an opportunity to learn more about their prospects, existing customers and leads. Through special technology, it’s possible to see how people react to emails and to track how they proceed from there. This provides valuable insight into how a consumer’s mind works and can enhance the marketing process in a big way.

Ditching email marketing for a purely online or social media approach is a mistake. It may not be hip or trendy, but email marketing is still one of the best ways to grow a business–as long as it’s performed correctly.

Just because someone is a skilled marketing professional does not mean that he or she knows how to sell.

New business development professionals at ad agencies very often, it turns out, get little to no training on how to effectively complete large, complex sales. Yet using some proven techniques and a little pre-call planning, business development reps can greatly improve their success on calls with prospects.

This article explores how mastering a few basic techniques will develop the right approach to effectively establish a relationship that moves a sale forward.

Mastering the SPIN

Neil Rackham developed a new approach to the selling process in 1988. Rackham’s company Huthwaite, Inc. assessed more than 35,000 sales calls for products and services. Rackham identified the techniques most frequently used by successful sales professionals.

These observations disproved a number of popular myths about the selling process, such as objection handling, which Rackham argued could actually hurt the chances of selling. In turn, Rackham established a new sales model – SPIN selling.

SPIN selling focuses on four core sets of questions:

• Situation Questions, which focus on finding background details that help form a better understanding of the prospect’s situation
• Problem Questions, which allow you to unearth the problems a prospect has that your product can solve
• Implication Questions, which gets a prospect discussing the ramifications if the problem is not resolved
• Need-Payoff Questions, which address how your product can help address the implications raised

Today, sales professionals around the world incorporate the SPIN selling model into their sales process with great success. Using the SPIN framework, an agency business development professional can achieve significant results. Business will not be won on the first call, but through multiple calls that establish a relationship and lay a foundation. Each call will have its own objectives and outcomes aimed at moving the sales forward.

Stage 1: Opening

The purpose of an effective opening is to gain the prospect’s agreement for you to ask questions. You are seeking permission to begin a relationship and gain a deeper understanding of the prospect and his or her business needs.

In the Opening stage, there’s no need for benefits statements. In smaller sales and brief calls of 10 minutes or less, an opening benefits statement may help engage the prospect’s interest. But in longer B2B calls, there is no link between success and an opening benefits statement.

It’s tempting at this stage to share everything that’s great about your agency and jump right to a solution. But research shows that successful sellers don’t talk about themselves until late in the call. If you start talking about yourself or your services too soon, you allow the prospect to start asking the questions and take control of the call.

That said, it is important to communicate who you are, why you’re making the call and establishing a basis for asking questions, but it’s not about giving a large number of details about your agency or services.

This opening needs to be brief, 30 seconds at most.

Stage 2: Investigating

The Investigating stage is the most important stage in complex sales.

The core objective is to uncover a need the prospect has. Before that conversation occurs, however, you need to do pre-call planning homework.

Look at your prospect’s industry, company and at the prospect himself or herself. What are the potential weaknesses or opportunities that you can identify?

Make a list of each of your agency’s capabilities that can improve upon the prospect’s weaknesses or take better advantage of an opportunity you’ve identified.

Frame several questions for each of these weaknesses or opportunities.

Your focus in the investigating stage should be to ask these types of questions that lead the prospect into explicitly identifying a need that you are uniquely positioned to solve.

How will you know when that need is expressed? It’s a matter of keying in on any statement a prospect makes that expresses a concern or want that can be satisfied by your agency.

Once you’ve identified a problem or dissatisfaction, ask key questions about where the issue arises, when, how often, and to whom. Explore what happens if or when the problem arises.

By asking thought provoking and relevant questions, you add considerable value to the relationship. Prospects say that asking questions about specific problems increases their respect for sellers.

Stage 3: Demonstrating Capability

Once you have a firm grasp on the needs and the ramifications of those needs, it’s time to turn to your agency. There are three main ways to describe your agency’s capabilities and the solutions you can provide.

• Features. Using this approach, you detail facts about your services; such as how large your social media team is or what awards the agency has won.
• Advantages. This approach focuses on how a capability can be used to help a prospect. For example, “Using our [capability] we can engage with your audience on social media quickly, typically with an average response time of four hours or less.”
• Benefits. This method describes how a feature or advantage meets an explicit need expressed by the prospect. “We can give you the real-time responses you said you want on Facebook 24 hours a day.”

Of the three, focusing on benefits is the most persuasive way to secure business. Why? Because in doing so, you are connecting the dots for the prospect. You are drawing the line between your services and the need the prospect confided in you.

Waiting to introduce your solution is more effective. By waiting for the prospect to express a specific need you can meet, you can tailor the capability message to address that particular issue.

Stage 4: Obtaining Commitment

Ask most people what makes a good sales person and they will sale it’s about closing the deal. In large, complex sales this is not true. Asking questions is.

In small sales you often get a commitment to buy or not buy on the first call. In complex sales it’s different. Fewer than 10 percent of calls result in a sale or no-sale. If this is the case, how can you define success?

In most complex sales it’s about advancing. This means taking deliberate movements forward with commitments that get closer to the sale.

What constitutes an advance for an ad agency new business call? It depends certainly on the business and your agency, but typical examples of successful advances are:

• Agreement to meet in person at their office or yours
• Agreement to schedule a time to review relevant case studies or thought leadership that the prospect has identified to be of interest
• Introductions to other relevant decision-makers at the company that were identified on the call

If the outcome of the call does not reach an agreement on an action that moves the engagement forward, it’s a continuation. The call is unsuccessful, no matter how nice the other party was. Building rapport is not an advance.

You can prepare to avoid a call ending in just a continuation. It begins by understanding what kind of advances will be used to decide if the call was successful.

This planning requires you to set realistic call objectives that move the sale forward. You then need to select the advance that involves the highest realistic action you think you can achieve. Make this your primary call objective.

Top sellers will plan out these advances and ask questions during the Investigation stage that lead the prospect in the direction of the primary objective.

Conclusion

In agency new business, your first call with a prospect is not a pitch or a presentation. It is a way to establish two-way communication.

Each call requires pre-call planning that identifies objectives that moves the sale forward. To accomplish this, you have to strategically uncover the prospect’s needs by asking the right questions at the right times. You can’t expect the prospect to come right out and state their challenges.

With a little planning and practice, you will see better outcomes from your calls. Prospects will come to trust you more and to rely on you and your agency as a problem-solving expert. 

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Author Bio

Christian Banach is an advertising agency new business consultant and sales director at Catapult New Business. You can connect with him on LinkedIn and Twitter.

Are you ready to make a new sales script that will increase your successful lead generation, improve sales numbers, and increase your brand recognition? Here are several keys to a great sales script in any circumstance, from telemarketing to complex cold call selling.

Talk in Specifics

If you aren’t being specific, you are wasting time. This can make some scripts more difficult to write, but the extra effort will be rewarded by hard-won attention. This rule applies to nearly every line. Don’t ask how their day is going, ask how this day of the week is going. Don’t ask them if they want to save money, ask if they want to save 30% of their monthly fees using your new system…and so on. This helps provide actionable data and keeps the lead’s focus on your words.

Never Waste Time

This ties closely to the first point: There’s no room on a sales script for unnecessary words. So don’t try to ingratiate people by spending time with pleasant nothings. You are wasting a decision maker’s time, and they will rightly hang up on you for that. Instead, be professional and get straight to the point. A brief introductory phase is important, but don’t wallow there.

Hook and Net

Every good script needs a hook – a line that dives right into what you are trying to sell and why it’s important. Usually this focuses on the money people can save or new features they can use – however, it’s important that it actually hooks the listener. “Do you want to save more on your monthly mortgage payment?” is a nice line, but falters when the customer says “No.” Make your intro interesting and provocative – with a good reason to listen for more.

Use Questions Wisely

You have a limited number of questions before even the most patient lead will hang up on you. Use them well. Important goals for questions include:

• Finding out who has the power to make decisions
• How the offering can be adapted to this particular lead
• What budget range/package works best for the lead
• Which competitors the lead is considering
• What problems the lead has with your offering

Use Different Data for Different People

A good script should include a reference to data and research backing up your points and the reasons to consider your product/service. However, a single research point or set of data is limiting – what if it doesn’t apply to a lead, or a lead doesn’t understand it? Include several data references as options in your script, so that it can be tailored to the questions and concerns of individual leads.

Allow for Adaptation

This is one of the most important and most difficult features of a good sales script; There needs to be room to go off script. This applies not only to conversations but also to the sales contract and purchase deals being made. Adapt the sales script for the consumer you are speaking to and explain the product benefits to which they can relate. Cold callers need to adapt on the fly to meet the needs of the lead, no matter what.

Once you realize your script is successful, you now have a prospective customer engaged in a conversation with you, and from there you can determine if they are a good lead for you and your company.