As a new business professional, success lies in taking action, doing more than presiding, and empowering others around you to work as effective teams. Each week is an opportunity to make progress and build lasting relationships with prospects, clients, and partners while finding transformative business opportunities for your clients.
This insightful webinar lead by the Managing Director of Huge, Matt Weiss, explains the journey to success within the new business space is not one that comes free of many challenges both professionally and mentally. There is a reason that only 21% of New Business Directors last with a company for three or more years.
After watching the webinar, I have learned that if you seek to pursue a long, impactful and successful career in agency new business, you should direct your focus towards these four tactics:
- Find the center of the organization- Within any large organization, there are all kinds of people at all different levels, and each of them has a different agenda. Your job in business development is to find the center of your prospects organizations. Why? Because the center is what drives direction.There are two types of centers to identify, one being the leadership center and the other being the cultural center. At the center of leadership, you will be able to clearly identify the organization’s vision and overall mission. At the center of culture, you will be able to understand the atmosphere and the people who make up the organization as a whole.If you find these two elements before pitching to a company, you will be able to appeal to the decision makers and their agendas, in which they are actually trying to accomplish, whether they verbally mentioned it to you or not.
- Develop true grit- New business is one of the most difficult and grueling positions to hold within the agency sphere. Typically, the teams aren’t large, and they are a cost center for the company. The expectations are high, and the pressure is on at all times. You will have many moments in which you feel you can’t get the job done.In those moments, you must think of people like John Wayne or Clint Eastwood in just about every movie they’ve ever been in. No matter who they were playing, they demonstrated the ability to get the job done, regardless of the odds. In those moments where you feel overwhelmed, remember to breath, prioritize and know confidently that you will get through the day.Also keep in mind that new business is a long-distance race, not a sprint. Those who try to sprint through it will burn out in a few months, and those who treat it like a long distance race see substantial success and build stamina along the way.
- Stop selling, start helping- The first deadly sin of new business is selling. Your instincts naturally compel you to sell your agency’s services because, well, it’s your job! But the truth is everyone HATES sales. Think about the last time you visited a car dealership. If your experiences have been anything like mine, you were immediately swarmed by salespeople, and the one you landed with was extra pushy. So pushy that you left because you were incredibly uncomfortable.Your sales tactics shouldn’t repel your prospects, but rather, attract them and add tremendous value to them. So change your mindset from selling to helping. Change your pitch to show how your agency will help the company grow, transform their offerings, master a skill set they don’t have, solve a problem, or even beat the competition. How does working with you solve their problems? Agencies who can answer this question, without selling the answer, win.
- Make the pitch process fun- The decision makers you are meeting with at the pitch have day jobs, and they are attending the pitch as their night job. To them, while the pitch is necessary, it’s also taking time from other, more pressing matters. What they are not expecting from you is a fun experience. So make one. Keep it light, make everyone in the room feel good about themselves, bring your culture with you, and most importantly, add value. At the end of the day, people work with those who they want to be around.New business is a tough business. Our job is to be coaches and help our teams and clients be as good as they can possibly be. There is no way to avoid the blood, sweat, and tears that come with the profession. However, if you start each of your prospecting efforts by identifying both the of the organization’s leadership and cultural centers, have grit, offer continuous value, and make the pitch process fun for your audiences, you will have a long and fulfilling existence career-wise.
If your agency lacks the bandwidth, resources, or knowledge that is required for a sustainable new business process, Catapult can help. Having generated over $1 billion in new business opportunities for our clients, we provide you with the proper training, tools, and resources that deliver revenue growth. Give us a call today for more information.
