NewBusinessRx - How to win the race for new business during a challenging 2024

Prosper Group's Business Development Program

Why the ability to win new business is so important.

As the owner of a marketing communications firm, you know first-hand that agency life can sometimes be a roller coaster. Simply put…stuff happens.

At some point, virtually every agency will experience a downturn in new business success, lose a major account that must be replaced ASAP or be in the financial doldrums of stagnating revenue (which soon puts the squeeze on profitability).

If an agency is unable to regularly win quality new accounts, organic growth will likely not be enough to sustain the firm over time. No matter how talented you are, most clients will eventually leave for greener pastures. Unavoidable increases in salaries and overhead will start to outpace revenue growth.

Winning new business isn’t just important financially. It’s also vitally important emotionally. Every pitch of any significance consumes hundreds if not thousands of hours of your people’s time, talent, energy, passion…and their pride. With such an intensive “investment” pitch after pitch, not winning eats away at these emotions.

Being able to consistently win new business is the key to a stronger future. Winning attracts, motivates and retains the top talent you need to be great. It’s fundamental to staying competitive. However, many agencies have never institutionalized how to win…or forgotten how.

If you’re not winning, growing and meeting your goals, Prosper Group can help.

Helping agencies drive more leads and win more business. Or… how to pitch less and win more.

We’ve found that many marketing communications agencies would benefit from a more organized and systematic approach to their business development efforts. These firms lack an effective process and accountability to facilitate new business success and long-term growth.

Based on our experience in both running agencies and consulting with agency owners, we’ve identified five fundamental reasons behind the lack of new business success:

1.  Many agencies’ value propositions aren’t distinctive. They revolve too much around what they do (which is a commodity). Instead, these agencies need to differentiate themselves more clearly based on:

• Their mission or statement of noble purpose (why the agency matters)

• What they know (which is unique to them and strategically valuable to prospects).

• Proprietary processes, methodologies and other intellectual property which give the prospect confidence that you know their industry/business in a deep and profound way leading to consistently better results than your competitors can deliver.

2. Even well-positioned agencies often don’t support the marketing component of business development. They don’t work diligently from a strategically focused marketing plan with consistent, value-added pursuit of the right type of prospects for their firms.

3. Further, even for agencies which are well-positioned and follow a plan, their new business process can be inconsistent from pitch-to-pitch and leader-to-leader. They haven’t analyzed and developed a best-of-breed new business process.

4. Agencies that do all of the above well often don’t develop and deliver new business presentations which are compelling enough to result in a win.

5. Finally, agencies can frequently fall behind on adding new services as the communications landscape keeps changing (for example - data).

There’s a better way.

Introducing

It’s both the diagnosis and prescription for improving your agency’s new business health.

We have decades of experience in founding, managing and growing our own agencies as well as consulting to global-scale communications firms. Our Partners and Senior Counselors have led more than 300 winning pitches including for many of the biggest and best-known accounts in the country…frequently in competition against much larger agencies.

We believe there’s a formula for business development which, if followed carefully and executed aggressively, will significantly improve an agency’s new business batting average. This process is based on what we’ve learned to be the eight crucial “drivers” for generating more leads and winning new accounts. It can help you to better stimulate organic growth from existing clients too.

We’ve also learned from our collective mistakes…so you don’t have to repeat them!

What we’ll do to help you win more often.

Our team will conduct an in-depth, 360-degree assessment of the eight drivers of business development success noted above. In order to thoroughly diagnose the problem and prescribe our recommendations, we will:

• Assess a wide range of your business development materials.

• Assess your website and its SEO.

• Interview your agency leadership, staff, current and former clients and, as appropriate, prospects you didn’t win.

• Request that you reenact a recent new business presentation for our critique.

• Evaluate your current efforts to generate organic growth from existing clients.

To provide quantitative assessments in key areas, we will apply proprietary diagnostic tools including your Brand Proposition Impact Score and other measurements that support our analysis and the development of a winning program for your agency.

Timing: 4-6 weeks (depending on the comprehensiveness of the materials you provide and access to your team).

Our experts can also provide tailored, individual training.

To help enhance your agency’s business development efforts and team, we also offer workshop modules (1-3 hours each) for:

1. Networking in the New Normal.

2. Developing a more distinctive Brand Proposition.

3. Creating a system for developing more engaging and insight-rich presentations (including pitch strategy, research, new formats, presenting via video and more).

4. Pitching to win (how to cast your presentation team and how they can each present more effectively and credibly).

5. Treating clients as prospects (how to increase organic growth from existing clients).

NewBusinessRx will provide the formula, diagnostic tools, customized prescription and training for making your agency’s business development program healthier today and stronger for years to come.

Prosper Group is here to help you win.

Prosper Group exists to help the owners of independent marketing communications agencies achieve their ambitions and maximize the value of their life’s work.

Our team of former agency owners and leaders will help you reach and then maintain the high level of new business health that’s vital to your agency’s future. If you’re feeling the chronic pain of watching your competitors win instead of you, shouldn’t we talk soon?