We’ve seen more than a few agencies who aren’t seeing the results they were looking for with their current new business strategy. Many new business teams are stuck with an old mindset that proactive email marketing is just spam and not worth their time. When done right, email marketing can be a terrific way to maximize your ROI of time and money for new business growth.

So why is email such an important piece of your new business strategy? Email as an outreach approach has fewer barriers to implementation and is a relatively inexpensive process to begin. It’s also a great way to deliver the tangible results you’re looking for, because you can track everything and easily attribute leads to different campaigns. There is no mystery where leads come from.

The biggest obstacle to adopting a marketing automation strategy is “not having a strategy at all,” according to Marketing Automation Trends Survey.

Email marketing—specifically email automation campaigns—offers an inexpensive approach that will not only drive growth, but build your agency a sustainable prospect database from which you can always mine new opportunities. It’s the most effective way to grow your business, relative to the amount of money you spend. In fact, your ROI should skyrocket by implementing an email automation campaign. Consider these statistics:

• B2B marketers see an average 20% increase in sales opportunities from nurtured leads compared to non-nurtured leads after deploying a lead nurturing program.
• B2B marketers who install marketing automation increase their sales to pipeline contribution by 10%.
• 54% of companies using marketing automation capture intelligence for the sales team. This compares to only 25% of companies without marketing automation.

It all boils down to one simple fact: Agencies that adopt an email marketing and marketing automation strategy outperform those companies that do not.

Resist the stories about emails and email marketing. Not all email is spam you need to filter. If used properly, email can be your least expensive means to grow organically and gain new business.

Agencies that focus on nurtured lead programs with great content via email, will find themselves starting any new relationship with a client at a much warmer spot. Rather than viewing each other as “seller vs buyer,” good email nurture programs allows for a “teacher and student” relationship. We trust our teachers while we don’t necessarily trust someone selling something.

Our most successful agencies keep this in mind. They build a marketing automation program, implement a CRM and combine it all with a business intelligence platform such as Winmo. As you build out your new business strategy, don’t discount email’s importance, just because it’s a discounted rate to get it started.

In today’s marketplace, social media should be an integral part of growing your agency. Of course that’s not news to you, but in order to be successful with it you need to practice patience and stay consistent.

We’ve spoken to many agencies about how they’ve used social to push their new business efforts forward and have learned a few things along the way. When it comes to social, some platforms work much better than others, LinkedIn and Twitter being the main two that businesses use. Here are a few strategies about platforms we believe give you the most bang for your buck in your push to grow new business.

LinkedIn Referrals

AgencySquared recommends that agencies craft a LinkedIn referral engine. This process entails consistent outreach and the suspension of reluctance when it comes to leveraging LinkedIn connections. Even if you may not know them personally. We like to call them “unknowns.” Who do we mean by unknowns? If you have 1,000 connections, the number of real connections—connections that you personally know—are probably less than 20 percent of that number.But all those other connections hold tremendous value. Yes, those 80% of unknown connections can drive serious new business your way.

Don’t be shy in asking for referrals from those connections, just do all of the work for them. Here’s what I mean:

• Ask specifically for the person you would like to be introduced to
• Craft the intro/referral message for your contact to send
• Ask for a specific date of referral
• Have something timely to offer so that the date of referral is more important.

Most of those “unknown” connections that you have will have no problem forwarding your message along, because (for the most part) we’re all trying to grow our networks and increase our sphere of influence. I always try to be of help to others when/if I can, and I find most people fit into this category as well.

This referral process will help you not only learn more about your network, it will also increase your potential prospect list. More prospects, more leads, more sales.

Twitter Business Opportunities  

Twitter is another great way to grow business opportunities. While LinkedIn is about connections, Twitter is all about conversations. It’s a perfect vehicle for quick conversations you can engage in and strike up during any event. Be sure to follow people in your space (who doesn’t love being followed?) as these will be quality users whose interests align with yours.

You can search for people who tweeted about a topic of interest and follow them. I highly suggest that you do this; any conference that is of interest to you–whether you’re at the conference or not– find out the conference hashtag, and begin following every user that uses it. Most times you’ll get a follow back, and I can’t tell you how many meetings I’ve had at conferences from following someone and then them finding me in the crowd later. “Hey aren’t you the guy that just followed me?!” Boom – conversation started.

Your goal should always be looking to develop a targeted audience. A larger number of random followers may give you social media cred, but it does nothing for your new business goal. A Twitter following with a small core of highly targeted follows is twice as valuable as a large audience of random followers.

Participating in Twitter chats related to your industry is another way to prospect. Joining an ongoing conversation is a great way to develop a rapport with like-minded individuals and it is much easier to join a twitter conversation that is currently happening than jumping in mid conversation in person.

Timelines in both LinkedIn and Twitter are changing every minute, so be sure to set time aside to review new developments. I personally block off specific time on my calendar every day for Social Media prospecting. This forces me to send out at least one referral request each day and find a new twitter conversation to take part in.

Leveraging the power of social media for your business marketing can take time and energy, but in the end your efforts will be rewarded if you stay consistent. Not every platform makes sense for everyone, so do your homework, experiment, and don’t be afraid to leverage those “unknowns!”

Agencies might go about generating new business differently than large ad sales teams, but it doesn’t mean they can’t take advantage of great sales techniques through marketing automation.

On average, agency-client relationships last about 36 months, which means that at any given moment one of your competitors is about to lose one of its clients. Or you are.

It’s no surprise that experienced new business professionals capture a bigger slice of that business. If you’re looking to grow your agency through building your client portfolio, you should consider hiring a full time new business director.

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.

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.

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.

 

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 sales call 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 and sales calls with great success. Using the SPIN framework, an agency business development professional can achieve significant results. Business will not be won on the first sales call, but through multiple sales 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 sales call with a prospect is not a pitch or a presentation. It is a way to establish two-way communication.

Each sales 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.