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!

The post A New Year – A New Way for New Business appeared first on The Client Key.

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.

The post Agency Growth – Has the game changed? appeared first on The Client Key.

The Client Key has decades of experience in successfully growing agencies, production companies and creative organisations. So, in this article, we’re going to share some of our core ‘truths’ in agency new business.

We hope that you’ll find them useful and relevant to your agency!

1) Strategy is paramount

Do you have a new business plan? Where is your next client coming from? How does your sales team operate? Not having a clearly defined road map for growth will slow you down hugely. Most agencies try to do things organically without a clear process and rigorous implementation of the new business function.

2) You need rainmakers

Rainmakers are the people who consistently win you business. They genuinely know how to engage clients and do whatever it takes to get them over the line. They operate instinctively and it’s in their DNA. Sales and new business comes naturally to them, and often without any formal training – they just know how to do it. Who are the real rainmakers in your business and have you got enough of them? Do you celebrate and reward them? Does everything fall squarely on their shoulders, or do you help them share the load?

3) Your brand proposition alone will not win you business

There are many people who believe in ‘win without pitching’ via a well-defined brand proposition. Namely, that if you communicate your agency value well enough, clients will automatically choose you without a pitch. Very, very rarely is this ever true. This single thing will not win you business. Yes, it’s important to have a clear and well defined brand proposition, that clients engage with. But forget the idea that on its own this will win you work – it won’t! Very rarely do clients ever single source major pieces of business without entertaining some kind of pitch. So…

4) Get good at pitching

Pitching is not a dirty word and ‘win without pitching’ is dead. Clients are duty bound to carry out their due diligence and entertain multiple conversations before placing a significant piece of business. They might know who they want to work with but 95% of the time they still have to run a pitch. Successful pitching is an art form in itself. So, get good at it! Learn what their major success factors are before you say yes. Learning how to pitch more effectively is the one of the single most important things you can do to grow your agency.

How to pitch!

5) New Business is the only building block for success

This is what separates the great from the good. The ability to put new business and sales at the heart of your organisation. It’s not great creative work (although yes, of course, that’s vital) it’s your ability to go out and sell that creative work. When you can embed this idea, across everything you do, your agency will grow, very rapidly.

6) Your clients might be further away than you think

Creativity is in demand all over the globe. The UK creative sector is among the best in the world. Through technology it is now easier than ever before to work with international clients. Are you doing this in your agency? How can you open up new clients in different markets more effectively?

Finding new international clients

7) There is ‘A New way, for New business’

You are operating in a very crowded marketplace so your ability to stand out and differentiate is vital. The Client Key helps businesses operate a new, more effective, way for sales and new business. Gone are the days of ineffectively trying to do this solely in-house. Our model is the ‘uberfication’ of the biz dev function. Proven and effective that generates results.

Let us know what you think about our agency growth truths! We’d love to hear from you.

Rob King – The Client Key

The post The Truth about Agency Sales appeared first on The Client Key.

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.

The post Death of a Sales Director – A new way, for new business. appeared first on The Client Key.

The barrier to entry for agencies these days is low. Very low. A slick website, beautifully curated social presence, a strong creative track record (often for former employers!) and boom; you’re off. A fully bona fide ‘agency’ is in business. Form an orderly que please clients.

Many people think that just by setting up shop and simply ‘being’ an agency their business will thrive, succeed and grow. A lot of start up’s I encounter think that clients are relatively easy to engage and win. You might think that sales will happen and continue to grow organically because that’s what they’ve always done.

You also believe might think that clients truly understand what you do and how you can help them – sadly, they almost certainly don’t. To change that you need an effective pitch. You might also believe that once they do understand  they will want to give you a pitch opportunity. Reality check – they probably won’t.

Clients have more information, more knowledge, information and more power than ever before. It’s now easier for them to identify, qualify and reject you. And, yup, you guessed it, reality check – they almost certainly will. Even more scarily, they can do all of this in a few moments and in just a few clicks of a button. They won’t even bother to tell you they’re not interested. Far worse, they’ll probably just ignore you. They will have already moved on whilst you’re sat there expectantly waiting, hoping, that something might come of your fleeting encounter.

However, you’re not responsible for new biz, other people are leading the sales drive within your business, aren’t they? No, they’re probably not. They’re all too busy and overrun with other things being fired at them from all directions. We live in the information overload age, especially in agency land. Which means that sales and new business is not top of most people’s list, however talented or well-intentioned they may be.

So how do you begin to change the reality you are faced with? How do you tip the balance back in your favour. The first thing to do is implement a clear strategy for sales and execute it effectively. Being very clear about how you communicate and delivering your value so that clients realise they can’t get it from anyone else but you. We’ve covered strategy in another article ‘the only five ways to grow your agency’.

Does the world really need another creative agency? – no, possibly not.

However, if you start from a different place altogether and recognise that understanding people comes first – above all else in fact – then you’ve got a fighting chance. Because once you understand what they want, what makes them tick and more importantly, what they need, then you are beginning the client conversation from a far stronger place. Armed with this knowledge and insight you will begin to stand out and once you stand out you’ll also start to resonate with your clients. When you resonate then you will start to accumulate.

Reality check: You are not just in the creative business: you are in the people business. You are in the building relationships business. Understanding these points, and implementing a radical shift in agency thinking, are the single most important things you can do to help your business grow, differentiate and thrive.

Reality check – it works. Try it.

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