12 Initial Steps for Ad Agency New Business Directors

November 3, 2011

Photo Credit dennis.vetu

If you are charged with developing a new business program for a small to midsize ad agency, PR firm or digital shop, then this article is for you.

I’ve often found that new business development people often lack experience. They also usually have responsibilities other than new business development.

If this is your situation,  I’ve pulled together a list of brief steps to help you to get a jump-start for your new position.

1. Develop a SWOT analysis and conduct staff interviews.

SWOT is an acronym for Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats.

I recently wrote an article about creating a SWOT analysis that you may want to review as a resource to help you get started. A SWOT analysis was also a part of Steve Jobs’ 12 Rules of Success.

Conducting a SWOT analysis is a very straightforward, non-complicated process for gathering agency information quickly around 4 key categories: Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats.

A SWOT analysis also provides you with a focus for conducting internal staff interviews which will give you some helpful insights into your agency.

2. Review creative and case studies.

Most of the agencies that I work for have a samples room. We always make sure there were samples of creative work to share with prospective clients. If your agency has such a resource, spend time reviewing each piece of creative and creative campaigns.

I would suggest reviewing all of the current creative campaigns. Spend some time with the creative staff and ask them to take you through the process of how each of the campaigns were developed and the results.

Most agencies will have case studies written that you can review. If your agency lacks the case studies, now would be a good time to get these done. This would be helpful to have, even if you have to be the one who gathers the information and writes the studies.

3. Review past RFPs.

This is another way to utilize the information that has been developed for various RFPs and will help you to get up to speed about your agency quickly. From billings, agency experience, past and current clients along with staff profiles. These responses are filled with rich information and will highlight agency experience across a variety of industries and disciplines.

4. Identify and profile your agency’s top 5 competitors.

This information will come together in the development of your SWOT analysis. I would suggest learning as much as you can about your agency’s top competitors.

  • What accounts were lost to your agency’s competition and why?
  • How does the competition compare with your agency? Look at staff size, billings, client roster, category experience, location, agency networks, awards, etc.
  • What are your competitor’s weaknesses?

5. Identify and profile your agency’s best target audience.

Your target audience will become clearer as you progress through these steps. This is a vital step for new business success. Most small to midsize agencies refuse to identify who their target is because of the fear of missing a new business opportunity that won’t be reflective of your target audience. But that doesn’t have to be the case.

No agency can be everything to everybody. If you try to appeal to everyone your agency won’t appeal to anyone.

Agencies may have spent lots of money for someone to tell them who their target is but they lack the will power to publicly state it.

For your purpose as the new business director, you need to know who the target is. I wouldn’t waste time trying to build internal consensus – just go through the process and do it on your own. If you don’t, you won’t be able to successfully go beyond this step to create a new business program that has focus.

6. Identify the best positioning for your agency and create a strong point of differentiation.

Again, you don’t have to have buy-in internally for this to work. You should be able to easily create a positioning and point of differentiation having completed the earlier steps. You will waste a lot of time if you try to reach this decision collectively.

It’s important for you to conduct this step expeditiously to be able to move on to creating a new business plan. Most agencies get stuck in a rut at this step. That’s why they are in a perpetual state branding their agency and can never quite get there. But it’s new business development purgatory so just do it!

7. Create the parameters for qualifying agency prospects.

You can burn up a lot of your energy, along with the energy, good will, creative and financial resources if you aren’t focused on the right prospective clients. You are not charged with mere new business activities, but on the activities that will generate the best return on investment to get your agency the “at-bats” with qualified prospects.

There are a number of tools to assist you in evaluating potential clients and creating a set of parameters for prospects. The List, Hoovers Online and Redbooks to name a few. You can develop parameters by marketing budget, company size, location, etc.

The establishment of parameters for prospective clients will also help with new business focus and eliminate chasing after and wasting resources on the wrong prospects.

8. Set REALISTIC goals and objectives.

There’s a tendency with a lot of agencies to set unrealistic goals when they want to reach the elusive “next level.” You’ll need to be able to accurately describe what the next level looks like and create a realistic, measurable plan on how to get there. Unrealistic goals and objectives will turn into meaningless activities that carry no weight.

9. Create a simple New Business plan built around your agency’s culture and resources.

The plan doesn’t need to be beyond 2 to 3 pages. It should be a realistic plan that takes into consideration the current agency culture and resources available to implement the plan.

I would suggest creating a budget for new business. Taking into consideration both the finances and time investment that it will take to consistently implement.

10. Implement the plan.

Remember, a plan is just a plan until it is implemented. Plan your work and work your plan. This step is that simple.

Remember that consistency is a key component to success. Without consistency the plan is doomed for mediocre success or complete failure. This is also a time for evaluation and adjustments.

11. Evaluate your program monthly and create 1 page report of the measurable results.

I am against a lot of reporting on new business activities. It will bleed valuable time and energy from implementing your new business plan. Bottom line, in the end, you are going to be judged on the qualified “at-bats” you generate rather on the amount of new business activities. You can showcase lots of activities, but if those don’t turn into new business opportunities, your position will be in jeopardy.

That isn’t to say there shouldn’t be any reports on what you’re doing. I would suggest limiting the reporting to a 1 page monthly update that includes measurements against your agency’s new business goals and objectives.

12. Be prepared to make adjustments

Following the monthly evaluation of your program, you should be ready to make any necessary adjustments to your plan. Adjustments are always necessary and an important part of the process.

Additional articles that may be of interest:

1 Comment | Agency Leadership, New Business Plans, New Business Talents, New Business Tips | Tagged: , , , , , , , , | Permalink
Posted by Michael Gass

Ad Agency New Business 101: Conduct a SWOT Analysis

October 20, 2011

Photo Credit Pshegubj

A SWOT analysis is a good starting point for someone who is charged with creating new business opportunities for a small to midsize advertising agency, PR firm or digital shop.  

Part of Steve Jobs’ 12 Rules of Success: Perform SWOT analysis. As soon as you join/start a company, make a list of strengths and weaknesses of yourself and your company on a piece of paper.

This strategic planning method, when used properly, can be  a valuable tool for making decisions, setting strategy, and evaluating courses of action. You should use it as an initial step for defining your agency’s new business objectives. It is a helpful tool for reviewing your agency’s current focus and positioning.

SWOT is an acronym for Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats. Strengths and weaknesses are internal factors. Opportunities and threats are external factors. Internal factors are ones that you have control over. External factors are ones you don’t have much control over.

  • Strengths: internal characteristics of the agency that gives it an advantage over the competition. What does your agency do well? What resources are available? List your agency’s attributes: people, expertise, credentials, etc.
  • Weaknesses: internal limitations that are a liability and create a disadvantage relative to the competitor. They are things that detract an agency from its ability to obtain new business. It could be a lack of expertise or resources, location, positioning, training, etc.
  • Opportunities: the external competitive advantages that are helpful to you achieving your new business objectives.
  • Threats: external factors that are potential threats to your agency’s new business. These are challenges that are created by an unfavorable trend or development that may lead to deteriorating revenues or profits. Proactively plan for and respond to them.

Ask yourself the following questions from a new business perspective:

  • How can we leverage our strengths?
  • How can we improve upon our weaknesses?
  • How we can capitalize on our opportunities?
  • How can we minimize our threats?

The true value of the SWOT analysis is in bringing this information together, to assess the most promising opportunities, and the most crucial issues.

Before you begin, review the following 3 steps and keep them in mind to avoid the danger of it becoming a meaningless exercise.

Step 1 – Collect the Information

Conducting a SWOT exercise for your agency is a straight forward exercise. Begin the SWOT analysis by conducting an inventory of internal strengths and weaknesses within your agency.  This shouldn’t be only one person’s perspective. You will need to include others in this process. Plan to interview your agency’s key executives and possibly your entire staff. Use open-ended questions built around these four areas. Keep your SWOT short and simple with a bullet point list. The analysis should become an executive summary.

Step 2 – Prepare a Plan of Action

Unbelievably, 62% of agencies don’t have a planned new business effort.

You should review your SWOT summary with a view of creating a plan that addresses each of the four areas. It serves as a basis for the development of a new business plan that will be your guide for implementing a successful new business program.

The SWOT analysis will act as a filter for lots of information and will allow you to  better interpret and identify the primary keys for your new business plan.

Follow the KISS (keep-it-simple-stupid) method. Keep everything as simple as possible including the plan. A one page plan will easily suffice.

Step 3 – Benchmarks for Measurement

Set goals that are realistically achievable within the culture and resources of the agency.

There is a lot of truth to the old cliché, “If you can’t measure it, you can’t improve it.” Conducting a SWOT analysis will allow you to know what agency data needs to be collected to use as a benchmark for key objectives for the future.

The SWOT exercise will provide a clearer direction for new business and will allow you to easily set new business goals that stretch your agency while being realistically attainable.

For instance, a lot of agencies will say, “we want to double the size of our agency over the next year.”  Your SWOT analysis provides the kind of information that helps determine if that goal is attainable.  It may be more realistic to state the objective as: “We want to increase the agency’s new business by 25% over the next three years.”  

You want to set goals that are realistic given the agency’s strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats.

Additional articles that may be of interest:

6 Comments | Best Practices, New Business Plans, New Business Tactics, New Business Tips | Tagged: , , , , | Permalink
Posted by Michael Gass

The number one reason ad agencies new business plans fail

July 20, 2011

Photo Credit DigitalNative

Why new business plans tend to fail and what you can do about it.

For ad agencies that have a new business plan, the majority fall short in its implementation. The reason? According to a poll conducted by Mirren Business Development , when asked “What is the primary reason new business plans fail?”, 57% responded that it was a lack of discipline/accountability followed a lack of team commitment – 21%.

Here are 20 tips to overcome the lack of discipline/accountability and team commitment assuring success implementing a new business plan for your agency: 

  1. Set goals that are realistically achievable within the culture and resources of the agency.
  2. You’ll need to convert your strategic plan into a game plan that includes Milestone Dates, To Do List, Resources, Assignments, etc.
  3. One person who is responsible. Have a new business director/manager who is held accountable for its execution. If “everyone” is responsible for your agency’s new business, in actuality no one is. But that doesn’t mean that others, particularly agency principals aren’t involved in the process.
  4.  Top management must be intimately involved in the process. No one in the agency feels the pressure to succeed more than the agency principals. Like it or not, they are the face of the agency. Their involvement is important for new business and they shouldn’t shy away from this responsibility.
  5. Determine what is needed to achieve your priorities: People, funding, equipment, space, training/development, etc.
  6. Get organized: Use a program such as Basecamp, an excellent, inexpensive online project management tool to help in the implementation process.
  7. Make assignments: clear communications with those who must help with implementation of the various projects is a must. Who is doing what and when. Make sure they know their assignment, due dates and be prepared to prod, poke and push for completion
  8. Look for ways to simplify your internal processes. From RFP responses, to new business reporting … always invoke the K.I.S.S. principle.
  9. It may also be wise to outsource some services when possible. For some agencies outsourcing certain aspects of their new business program to services such as Catapult New Business orRSW is the best option. I know of a large full service agency,with their own PR department, that chooses to outsource PR for the agency to keep it consistent.
  10. I say it often, you can’t improve it if you can’t measure it. Be sure to have measurements in place, but again, keep them simple.
  11. I would suggest developing a 1 page monthly new business report on activities and results.
  12. Be prepared to make changes. This is not an exercise in perfection –  Plans give you a road map to our goals, but you have to be ready to make adjustments, based on your experience in execution. Every plan will have obstacles. Don’t abandon your strategy at the first obstacle, create “work-arounds”, solutions, even temporary ones that will allow you to keep the process moving. Don’t let anything stop implementation.
  13. Create rituals for new business. If you are responsible for new business, you know how easy it is to get side-tracked within the agency environment. I would encourage you  to simply set up a routine in the morning that you do as soon as you wake up. This works so well because what you do early in the day often sets the context for your day. A bad start usually leads to a bad day.
  14. Consistency is a key component to ad agency new business. Remember that consistency is more important than perfection.
  15. Do the things that you dislike the most first and get them out-of-the-way. It provides me with an incentive to get to the tasks that I enjoy the most.
  16. Stay focused on the process. I’ve learned to maintain a consistency through the ups and downs by paying attention to the processes that I’ve created for new business. This makes me less prone to distractions and knee-jerk reactions. I know that if I consistently work the new business program that I have in place the results will come.
  17. Use simple reminders. I use reminders, either on a sticky-note, my computer DeskTop, pop-up alerts, to keep me on course throughout the day. I know what I want to achieve by the end of the day and I use a variety of tools to help keep me keep me on track.
  18. Celebrate successes. New business is tough. Especially in this economy. Life in the trenches for new business is nonstop hard work and often goes unnoticed. For the well-being of your new business team, it is important to stop, take the time to celebrate each new business victory.
  19. Resolve to stay the course. New business efforts are highly relational and take time to come to fruition.
  20. Incorporate “lessons learned” from accessing your accomplishments into the next year plan.

Additional articles that may be of interest:

5 Comments | New Business Plans, New Business Tips, Time Management | Tagged: , , , , , | Permalink
Posted by Michael Gass