Death of a Sales Director – A new way, for new business.

Large 100+ person agencies have the luxury of talented teams to focus solely on winning new business.  

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.