Imagine that you are a desirable advertising agency client. The desirable (to me) client = has a decent budget; respects marketing and what my agency could do for them; has a famous name and are nice people (If I got three out of four of these attributes I was usually happy. My client Nike got all four.)
Now imagine how many incoming sales messages a client like this gets every month from the aspiring advertising agency universe? I’m talking about direct sales messages.
To find out, I asked Lee McKnight, Vice President Sales at RSW/US. RSW/US has consistently provided a research-oriented perspective on the advertising agency business development marketplace.
Marketers Are Inundated – The Insane Math
Inundated is the best word I can use to describe the life of an average prospective marketing communications client. Here are a couple of stats from Lee:
The desirable client gets from 5 to 15 advertising agency emails per month.
Incoming telephone calls average 2 to 5 a month. Phone contacts are lower because, according to Lee, “Most agencies are afraid to pick up the phone, even when they have a new business director, the tendency is to rely on LinkedIn and email.”
So, you are Ms. Client trying to get her 10 hour day moving along – it is not hard to imagine that you might get 20 (or more) incoming advertising agency sales messages a month.
But, but there is more. This client also gets vendor and media contacts. Yikes.
The of-course question is: How can you get a prospect’s attention and then interest in hearing what you have to say?
Breaking Through The Clutter
Here are my top seven clutter busters:
- Make sure you have something to offer the prospect. This might sound like it does not need to be said. But, too often agencies just roll the dice without any forethought about why the client might ever be interested. “HI HI, we are here” is not an effective sales pitch.
- Create sales personas for the client types you want to reach and entice. Who are they / what do they need / what are there pain points / what do they look like / what might be job issues?
- Have a sales plan that includes an account-based marketing schedule and a sales messaging progression.
- Create a set of insights that must be read. Figure out more than one platform for your thinking. Get efficient. Amplify your messaging. That uber desirable advertising agency client – the ones you want – need to learn about how to grow their sales. Help them.
- Attack specific categories so you can use and reuse ‘expert-oriented’ sales messages that can be easily tailored to multiple clients. Why recreate the wheel for every client? But, do not be too universal – you want to speak directly to that prospect.
- Learn how to do warm vs. cold sales calls. Read this: Advertising Agency Business Development and Cold Calling.
- Think hard about how to look and sound different. How can you and your insights and messages and outbound tools be unignorable? You know, how can you break through the clutter? Sameness does not work.
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This article first appeared in www.peterlevitan.com
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