Searching For New Business

Mar 16, 2009 by Mark Maier

The old adage that the best place to look for new business is with your existing clients remains true but what about prospecting for new business?  Now is a great to brush up your prospecting skills or develop an advertising program for some of the business you haven't been able to reach with traditional media buys, campaigns, or promotions.  MediaPost listed "Six Steps To New Business Success" recently and although it is written for advertising agencies, isn't that what we are to some extent.  The point is that you can change the wording in this article and it is relevant for TV, Radio, or Interactive....

"By taking a proactive approach to cultivating prospect relationships, you can simplify the new business process and spend your time and resources focusing on high-value opportunities that showcase your agency's strengths.

Here are six steps designed to help identify and reach the right prospects:

1. Analysis: The first step is to define your agency's unique value proposition. What are the agency's key values, attributes and competencies, and what work best supports it. The key is not to rely on broad characteristics like "full-service", "really creative and strategic" or "our clients love us" -- but to distill a value proposition that is clearly differentiated and speaks to your sweet spot.

2. Targeting: The second step is to develop prospect evaluation criteria and prioritize target prospects. What types of clients will be most receptive to your agency's unique value proposition, relevant experience, capabilities and culture? It may help to create prospect segments by category to maximize your efforts -- so if you think a specific brand would be a good potential client, you may want to consider other brands in the same category.

3. Positioning: The third step is to customize positioning language for each target prospect segment. What are the key communication components that will demonstrate credibility, relevance and support in introductory communications? The goal is to clearly and simply state why your agency has unique value to add to a prospect's business.

4. Communication: The fourth step is to make introductory communications with your target prospects. What's the best way to cut through the clutter and create dialogue? Sometimes a simple formality like sending an introductory letter will increase receptivity to follow up calls and facilitate referrals compared to a cold call. When you connect with your target prospect try to reinforce your agency's unique value proposition, articulate potential value-add opportunities and begin higher-level strategic discussion.

5. Qualification: The fifth step is to trigger interest in discussing how your agency can deliver value to the prospect's business. What industry or marketing challenges may resonate with target prospect segments to solidify your value proposition? Your unique value proposition should be able to serve as a platform to say, "If we can show you how we could do X would you seriously consider a proposal to work together?" This will establish the basis for a senior-level meeting to learn about the prospect's objectives, challenges and metrics.

6. Engagement: Finally, the sixth step is to engage with the prospect in a meeting or call to begin to dimensionalize the agency experience. What are the prospect's objectives and challenges, gaps to close or levels of impact to achieve? Leverage the information garnered to develop insights into overcoming challenges and present your proposal/pitch to add value to their business. "

At LPG we use In-Store Surveys as part of our Customer Marketing Profile (CMP), the tool we use to manage relationships with new and existing clients.  The article gives you a great starting point, but not a tool to make it happen and that is where the CMP comes into play.  By asking the right questions during the process and gathering enough information, you will find the solutions to add the value to their business.

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