Incredibly, the UK’s world beating creative sector contributes £13M every hour to the economy. Yet, so many creative businesses and agencies still struggle to find consistent sales and growth. How can creatives rapidly grow their business?

A lot of creative agencies are unable to find regular and steady sales. They can achieve some short-term wins but then often get distracted whilst delivering those projects, only to find at the end of the process they haven’t got any new work.

Or, they try to do all of the selling themselves but instead find they get bogged down and distracted by the day-to-day running of their business. Many agencies focus heavily on the creative side and less on the sales side. Creatives, then, have a big problem with growth.

It needn’t be like this. There is a New Way, for New Business.

As we begin a new business year are there things that your agency could be doing to finally grow in a meaningful way?

It’s a challenge for small agencies to access the breadth of specialist skills required. Arguably, the perfect skills model doesn’t exist in-house for agencies with 50 or less staff. These are the reasons The Client Key have developed A New Way, for New Business.

The new way is proven, simple, lean and cost effective. The skill set of a full team, for less than the expense of an old school sales director. So you get experience, knowledge and expert skills across each core sales function. We are specialists within the creative agency sector. The Client Key helps you ‘uber-ise’ new business in your agency. Eg, faster, better, cheaper and with results that deliver sales.

If any of this resonates with you then please do get in touch. We’ll be running Rapid Growth workshops throughout January to help small agencies thrive in 2023. We’d love to hear from you.

The post The real reasons your agency is not growing fast enough. appeared first on The Client Key.

Either here in the UK, or in International Markets.

The barriers to entry are lower than ever before and agencies can access new clients and new markets with minimal costs and time investment.

Understanding your market: Picking the right market is critical, whether it is Tech, Retail etc; there is no point trying to be in several new sectors at the same time (unless you have the size and scale to make this a reality). It is better to understand and focus on one area first. Either at home – or abroad.

Focus on the Mega Projects: There are a huge number of mega projects in the world that drive business for creative agencies. Whether it’s sporting events such as The World Cup or cultural events such as Expo 2020. The recent Commonwealth Games was a massive driver of UK creative agency work. What could your agency do to target business in these (and other) mega projects both in the UK and abroad?

Growth plan: When going into any new market or sector you will need a clear plan for growth. What are the steps you need to take to secure business? How can you do it in an effective and lean way? Most SME creative agencies do not have FTSE 100 budgets when it comes to new business. Getting bang for your buck and spending carefully is essential.

Foundation clients: Ideally, having 2-3 foundation clients can help provide a springboard into new markets or sectors. Those can usually be won from base camp – before you take the plunge and invest significant sums in travel and a new office. This is a very effective strategy that has worked for lots of our agencies.

Your network: Build your network as quickly as you can. Get to know the key players and major prospects in a specific area you may be targeting. There are lots of resources via British Embassy teams, local government and the DIT (Department for International Trade). There is a well developed infrastructure on the ground, all over the world, to help you. Tap into those services and get to know people locally.

In summary, there has never been a better time for SME’s and agencies to grow in the UK and expand abroad. The technology is now there to support you and there are less barriers to overcome. The political and economic link between many countries and the UK are a major focus on government agendas.

The UK creative sector is revered around the globe. Whether in music, arts, fashion, film, events or createtech it’s one of the things we do best.

Now is the time to take your creativity out there!

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However, fundamentally, clients do not buy you for the things you deliver. They don’t even necessarily need these things! Creative services are out there in abundance, they are everywhere. All the client has to do is reach out and pick the nearest company that comes to mind, top of their google search or whoever gets in touch with them at the right moment. There are many, many agencies all vying for the same business.

So then, how do you compete?

The reasons someone will pick you over the competition are purely down to the value you bring them and the problems you can help them solve. That’s it. All client buying decisions are based on those factors.

When you shift the conversation more towards value and specifically the true value you offer people, there is a huge shift in the power of these conversations.

So, armed with this information how exactly do you communicate that value? How can you position yourselves in the minds of your clients as the right and only solution for them?

This is where a campaign driven approach to business development comes in. When you focus on two or three key areas of expertise that you offer and are able to communicate those clearly at scale – then you will start to get noticed.

This means giving away some of your time and even more of your value. That might sound counterintuitive but it is not. Because when you start to be of use, of value and of genuine interest to people, then suddenly they want more. Crucially they’ll be prepared to pay for it. So, campaign driven business development is one of the most effective things you can do to grow as an agency.

It will help you to stand out and scale up. Rapidly.

Interested in finding out more about campaign driven agency growth? Book one of our ‘Rapid Growth’ workshops by getting in touch, we’d love to hear from you.

The post How campaign driven business development will grow your agency more effectively. appeared first on The Client Key.

You probably have many conversations with potential clients in your agency. Perhaps on a daily basis? How many of them progress to become actual fee paying clients? How many of them end up being just ‘good conversations’?

There is a process that you can take people through that is so effective it will give you a huge advantage over any of your competitors to convert conversations to fee paying clients.

By the time you’ve taken people through this method they will be ready to buy from you.

Step 1: Listen / question / respond
Arguably the most important phase of any new conversation. This is the time to listen and learn. Ensure you always ask to speak to the client once they’ve invited you to pitch. Either in person (if they will agree to it) or via a phone call.

Often neither of these will be permitted. In which case ask to send through a list of questions. If the client still refuses to answer any questions be very wary. Is this something you realistically have a chance of winning? Most likely not and you could just be making up the numbers. You can always decline the conversation or pitch.

Step 2: Challenge & interrogate
There is a place for appropriately challenging and testing thoughts or ideas. As long as you have good rapport with the client you can ask relatively direct questions back in response. This is the time to go a bit deeper with the thinking or questioning.

“If we suggested X,Y,Z, how would that feel?” Another great question to ask is, “On a scale of 1-10 where do you want to be creatively? 1 being very safe and conservative. 10 being off the scale creatively” You will always get very different responses to this question! Their answers and reactions will help shape your creative at a later stage so make sure you take the time to do this.

Step 3: Interpret & create
Once you’ve understood their thinking you can now go away and begin your creative development. This is your time to start interpreting and translating it into your ideas. Do what you do best, that’s probably why they’re interested in you.

Step 4: Question
By now you should be confident in what the client is looking for and in your ability to win the pitch. If you’re not confident at this stage, ask yourself is it time to bow out? Would your time be better off spent elsewhere?

Once a plan is beginning to formulate in your mind can you go back to the client and test the water? By checking your thinking with them you can sense check if they like it. It’s also a great way of keeping the dialogue going with them.

If they’re happy to keep chatting (which they often are) – do it! However, make sure you don’t give away the big reveal until you need to. Keep most of the big creative back for now.

Step 5: Evaluate
Ask yourself as you go, are we fulfilling the brief here? Your job as the sales lead is to become the eyes and ears of the client. Sometimes creatives will get fixated on an idea that you know is not right.

This happens quite often and it’s your job to challenge back internally. It isn’t always an easy conversation to have but trust me it’s much better than losing the pitch because you didn’t say anything. Always try to think like the client and use their success factor and objectives. Evaluate as you go and don’t be afraid to change course if you need to.

Step 6: Deliver
You’ve come up with a brilliant creative idea or proposal. Now you have to go and deliver it. Decide who is going to be in the room. Think about the personalities involved and avoid any clashes. You want your best self, or your A team delivering their A game. So choose a time that best suits you. Try to avoid the middle slot if clients are block booking. Going either first or last is usually a better bet for making an impact. This is surprisingly effective at helping win more pitches – especially if you know you’ve nailed the creative! Get in there early, dazzle them and leave everyone else looking average. It works!

You should know who will be in the room from their side and what their individual agenda is. Are they focussed on the budget or the creative? Do they want the detail or the sizzle? You should know this because you’ve asked the question. Be ready for the difficult, challenging questions – embrace them head on, don’t fear them.

Step 7: Win!
By doing all of this and following the process you will have now built a dialogue with the client throughout. By the time you walk into that room, or send it digitally via email, you will be so aligned that you are making it very easy for them to say yes.

You have framed your company, your team and you as the only people that they should be awarding this project to. It is the natural choice for them to say yes, press the big green GO button! You have made it easy for them to buy from you.

This is ultimately what effective selling is all about.

The Client Key – A New Way, for New Business.

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We tackled real world agency growth challenges and worked through them to give attendees suggestions to implement in their business. It was great to bring people together into a physical space again, something we have all missed hugely over the last 2 years!

Ending with a glass of wine and an opportunity to network with fellow attendees, the session was a massive success. We plan to keep this momentum going throughout the year with more physical workshops for agencies.

We are currently running an ongoing workshop called ‘Rapid Growth for Creative Agencies’. This is a free to attend digital workshop tailored to your business, providing you with practical tools to implement into your own agency.

Interested in finding out more? Get in contact with us, we’d love to hear from you…

#ANewWayForNewBusiness

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This presents many challenges, and opportunities, for agencies. How can creative companies gain an advantage to succeed in this changing landscape? Is there now a way for your agency to grow more effectively?

A New Way, for New Business is an approach to consistently win you new work, more effectively, at a time when clients seemingly hold much of the power.

Here are some of the key elements for you to consider at the start of 2022.

What is your Brand Value?
What do you want to be famous for and how can you stand out from the crowd in a highly competitive marketplace? Have you asked your audience what they are looking for and what problems they need solving? Then ask yourself, do you address this? What is your true value as an agency?

Have you carried out a Client Audit?
What is the profile of your current client base? It is important to understand your client, or potential clients, so you can focus on the ones that are right for you. Think about their target demographic and the solutions and services they deliver. What are the challenges they are facing right now and how might you help to address them?

How do you Engage with potential clients?
With so many routes to market and options to engage clients it is essential to find out what works best for them and your agency. Think about what marketing and social channels they use so you can understand your client more. Who are your lapsed clients and how might you go about re-engaging with them? Don’t forget to position you and your business as thought leaders and always demonstrate your expertise!

How to approach client Acquisition?
Client acquisition is perhaps the most challenging part so make sure you are prepared, rehearsed and in the right mindset. Understand both the companies and personal buying motives. Set the scene at the set of any meeting and don’t leave without getting a follow up date in the diary. And make sure you listen twice as much as you talk!

Don’t forget to Listen and Learn
Repeating a successful formula is one of the best ways to win business! Understanding where you have been successful and replicating that behaviour is essential. Also remember that sales is a team sport and you need to build, evolve and listen to your clients and your team.

The way that agencies grow their business is changing all of the time. A New Way, for New Business is a proven model for the rapid growth of creative businesses.

Get in touch to find out more and set 2022 off to the best start possible!

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We are currently in the middle of a huge evolution in the way that clients work with their creative partners and agencies. The biggest challenge of all? Engagement. How do you engage people (e.g. your clients, current and new) in this hybrid business environment? In a world where they, seemingly, have much of the power and control?

Agency new business has always been the thing that separates the good from the great. Great agencies understand that new business comes before all else, and that without it, there is no agency or indeed creativity. The merely good agencies, often pay lip service to new business and it usually plays a secondary role. Today, amidst this evolutionary period, things are no different. The great creative agencies are finding smarter, new ways to adapt in the digital, post pandemic realm.

What are the best ways you can thrive and develop meaningful relationships with new clients, that quickly convert and lead to direct business, for your agency?

Relevance: Before you even think about approaching clients (new or current) have you considered whether you are truly relevant to them? Everything you write, or deliver in any meeting, should be aligned with their needs. That takes time to consider, craft and prepare. Client meetings are immensely difficult to secure and yet many agencies always under prepare for them. Spend time thinking about your clients businesses and their needs. When you genuinely align them in the right way you will soon be pushing on an open door.

Cut through: Perhaps one of the biggest challenges of all right now. Many clients are not in the office, e.g. no phones, and therefore contacting them, getting access or any kind of ‘facetime’ (these days, digital facetime) is harder than ever. That tips the balance massively in their favour, not the agency. The Client Key are using new technology to get you access to clients and land those highly relevant messages that start the all-important first conversations. Find a way to cut through the noise and get in front of clients. If this is a challenge, ask us to help you!

A structured process: Don’t get stressed, get a plan! New business & sales really doesn’t need to be hugely difficult or challenging. Most agencies are standing on a mountain of value – they just need someone to help them unlock it. In order to do this effectively devise a clear strategy and campaign plan for growth. We can help unlock your assets and value so that clients are quickly ready to buy from you.

Client Clarity: Ask any agency who they want to work with and the answer will usually be one of the ‘FAANG’ companies. Facebook, Apple, Amazon, Netflix or Google. Sound familiar? Clearly we’d all like to be working with these companies, perhaps you already are? But how about going after the ones under the radar? The global behemoths that most people have never heard of. These are the kinds of clients that we love – and there are lots of them out there! Know who you want to work with and, more importantly, why. If you start with a direct relevance to the client from the outset your first engagements will be far more effective.

Rainmakers – To bring all of this together you need people who intuitively know how to do all of this! The points we’ve shared are second nature to them and this is how they operate all day long. If you don’t have natural born rainmakers in your team, find some externally!

The old agency model for growth has changed. Previously, companies looked to the Sales Director or Client Services Director and largely, left them to it. That is a risky and ineffective plan for agencies not to grow. Why try to deliver such a critical function in-house when you don’t have the skills or team to do it?

There is a new way, for new business. A service that brings in expert specialist knowledge with the proven skills to grow your agency. The game has changed and it’s now time to embrace new and innovative ways of growing your creative business.

If you have any questions or want to discuss any of the points covered, get in touch, we’d love to hear from you.

Rob King, Founder

The Client Key – A new way, for new business.

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A lot has changed in the last decade and agencies are struggling to find the leads they need. GDPR has complicated data leads. While in-bound marketing has become a behemoth task now including social, emails, podcasts, youtube and influencer content strategies.

There are many options for those who haven’t got time, or contacts, to run email campaigns nor the budget to hire a full time marketing lead. To help you out, here are some (but not all!) of the ways we carry out lead gen for our clients.

Traditional formats still work – well!

At The Client Key we undertake lead gen holistically. Creating pipelines for your business which are managed in our CRM, tailoring activity to leads. Before that, you have to feed the pipeline. You need to find and harvest the data of your dream clients and do this in the thousands, not the hundreds.

You then have to call and email every single one. This is often outsourced (we can do it for you) because it’s so labour intensive and the hit rate is low, but trust us, it works. A recent client had 1,500 emails sent to new leads which resulted in 80 responses, 10 enquiries and 6 jobs. Calculate that by an average project value of £10k and it starts to make sense. We are fee earners for you!

Utilise software and tools

We utilise the best marketing and lead gen tools. There are plenty out there, it’s just the case of choosing the right one for you. Our tools find the data, create campaigns, personalise contact and feed our CRM. If you’re starting from scratch think about mail merge, CRM software or monitoring software like lead forensics.

Get your shop window looking its best

If you’re driving outbound traffic to your platform without a great website, clear messaging and fantastic case studies then you’re wasting your time. Your leads will always look to validate your credentials. At the very least update your website, but look at the big players in the market, they have curated IG feeds, live streams, email campaigns and passion projects. It’s all about content – content validates credentials!

Pay for ads

Simple. Get yourself to the top of google by paying for it. Rightly or wrongly, these days… you are, what google says you are.

Lead with lapsed clients

This is something we are always repeating. It’s easier to go back to old leads than to create new ones. Have you had someone you’ve been courting for 12/24/36 months? Are there clients who worked with you but have gone off the radar? These are your low hanging fruit. Get back in touch, send them some of your new content and keep pushing.

There are many other ways we develop and nurture leads. If you’d like to hear more about how we can manage your new business pipeline, then please do get in touch, we’d love to hear from you.

Rob & Amy – The Client Key

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Are you now too busy working ‘in the business’, instead of ‘on the business’ to fix it?

Would your agency benefit from our new business development audit and bespoke action plan? We’re looking for three creative businesses to trial this new programme at a one-off-cost of £950+ VAT.

Our audit and action plan will help you if your agency has slow and sluggish growth. If the pandemic has affected your sales pipeline or you feel you have an unclear vision of what you want to build or focussed strategy for new business, then this programme is for you.

How it works

We conduct a workshop with up to three of you organisation’s leaders. We will analyse your current performance, your goals, pain points and different ways of engaging your client base. Lead by Rob King, our founder and director with 20+ years new business experience and Amy, our project director with 10 years in marketing and agencies.

After the workshop, we’ll deliver you a customised easy to action plan and strategy, with a follow-up session for discussion to help ensure the programme is successful.

The sessions will be conducted in May and June and will be awarded on a first come, first served basis. We will be running a waiting list beyond the initial three agencies who successfully apply.

If you’re interested in finding out more or would like to sign up to a session, please send us your details here

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How does this translate in smaller agencies of 20-70 people? Can one person be a solution for delivering this large agency model for small creative businesses? Or is it simply too much for one person to deliver effectively?

New business for small agencies has long been a problem. You’re a creative so it doesn’t come naturally or isn’t your first priority. So you hire a sales person – the new business director. Very often this doesn’t work out. Perhaps they’re not what they’d promised and you waste 12-18 months on a misguided strategy, failed pitches and weak leads. Not to mention the £80K+ salary. Or, they’re everything you wanted for 2-3 years, then they move on. Because guess what? They’re great at their job and the big agencies will pay them double.

This is a very common problem in small to mid-sized creative agencies. Something we encounter on a weekly basis at The Client Key. Why? Because we believe agencies under 70 people don’t need full time, old school, new business directors. They need a new, more effective, hybrid sales model. A new way, for new business.

The successful large agency new business model is led by a team of individuals each with their own skillset and specialism. A new business team in an agency of 100 people will roughly break down into the following core strengths and skills:

Business Acumen: 40%
20 year+ director level professional
Proven ability

Creativity: 10%
Strategy development
Marketing & communications skills

Lead generation: 25%
Lead generation
Pipeline management

Sales: 25%
Sales negotiation & closing
Proposal generation

In other words, a mixture of grownups, creatives and doers as well as superstar sales people. People who will always get the job done.

Small agency new business usually fails because there isn’t one person who embodies this broad spectrum of talents. They’re a unicorn hire. Agencies hire senior new business directors, only to find out they can’t deliver on the creativity or rigorous sales processes required. Junior new business execs don’t always have enough experience and client understanding. Alternatively, Managing Directors, or founders, try to do their own new business but often don’t have time for real consistency or with enough regularity.

It’s a challenge for small agencies to access the breadth of specialist skills required. Arguably, the hybrid skills model doesn’t exist for agencies with 50 or less staff. These are the reasons The Client Key have developed A New Way, for New Business.

The new way is proven, simple, lean and cost effective. The skill set of a full team, for less than the expense of an old school sales director. So you get experience, knowledge and expert skills across each core sales function. We are specialists within the creative agency sector. The Client Key helps you ‘uber-ise’ new business in your agency. Eg, faster, better, cheaper and with results that deliver sales.

If any of this resonates with you then please do get in touch. We’ll be running digital workshops throughout January to help small agencies thrive in 2021. We’d love to hear from you.

Rob & Amy – The Client Key

A New Way, for New Business.

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