The New Business Dingo

Jason Fried and David Heinemeier Hansson, authors of REWORK, write: "The original pitch idea is such a small part of business that it's almost negligible. The real question is how you execute."

How you execute your business is critical to new business.

Think about it: How successful will your new business machine be if you have an account management team that continually fails to meet client expectations? If they're missing deadlines, promising one thing and delivering another, dealing with situations poorly, or communicating …

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At Catapult New Busness we're always interested perspectives from agencies. The following post is by Robyn Freye of Geary Interactive and provides some solid insight above and beyond Sales 101 to consider when formulating your new business outreach program.

As marketing strategies and tactics have evolved and budgets have diminished, chief marketing officers have grown increasingly accountable for their digital budgets. There aren't any …

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I just got off my third call of the day where an agency principle stated that they’ve stopped all of their new business prospecting for the year because of the holidays. I beg your pardon?

Catapult’s clients and account teams know firsthand that this is one of the best periods of the year to be prospecting –

“What’s that? Oh you need to spend the remainder of …

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I finished a call last night with one of our most successful clients, and during the call the CEO asked a very interesting question,
“Why are we seeing more success with Catapult than your average client? We appear to be exceeding the norm curve.”

Now, of course I’m thrilled to be asked the question, and my initial response was to suggest that the higher levels of success are due to a highly defined offer and positioning to the target audience, ongoing planning, and the …

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Can analyzing the numbers really help with proactive ad agency new business?  You bet.

At the Mirren New Business Conference this year I spoke on the topic “How to get prospects on the phone when no one is answering”, which essentially outlined the seven steps for agencies to build a proactive, metrics based new business strategy, rather than the ad-hoc cold-call based approach many continue to employ.

At the core of this …

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You wouldn’t ask a Jackaroo* to provide legal advice, so why do agencies continue to force fit account managers into new business roles rather than hire trained professionals?

It’s no secret that most people fear that black box on their desk when it comes to using it as a new business tool, especially ad agency account people who’ve been tasked with the role of new business due to their recent decline in …

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Typically the first step for any new business person looking to embark on a new target category begins with the development of a prospect list or group of companies and brands.

The accuracy of this data may be the make or break of your efforts, so do the research and test the data from any supplier or source before incorporating into your new business CRM application.

There are a variety of great information resources, both free and subscriptions based that can help you build-out a …

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I’m often asked by agency CEO’s, CMO’s and New Business Directors, “What benefit will I see by outsourcing our business development to a third party”?

The simple answer, efficacy and accountability.

All too often the focus of a new business director is on items other than the procurement of new business, be it client services on previously won business, RFP responses or any number of things. It’s also a rare occurrence to meet a new business director that is a true hunter, someone that …

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We’ve all heard of the “4 Ps of Marketing:” Product, Price, Placement and Promotion (and I would also add Positioning to this mix). Barry Lawence of BrandCottage would like to suggest that there are “7 Ps of Social Media Relations.” I think that these can be applied to ad agency new business, so I’ve edited them to be a little more relevant.

7 P’s of Social …

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