Business development for agency owners who hate sales

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Most small agency owners started out with a mission of delivering excellent client service. Communications and creativity top the list of the attributes in many cases.

Some have come to enjoy the sales aspect of the role, while others view it as a necessary evil.

The good news is that you can still grow your agency without having to become a stereotypical salesperson.

In this webinar, Chip Griffin looks at some practical things you can implement to build your book of business even if you don’t especially like sales. He shows you how good agency biz dev is more about relationship-building and less about closing tactics.

View Transcript

The following is a computer-generated transcript. Please listen to the audio to confirm accuracy.

Hi, I’m Chip Griffin. I’m the founder of SAGA, the Small Agency Growth Alliance. And welcome to today’s webinar on business development for agency owners who hate sales. And really who among us doesn’t hate sales. I know very few agency owners. There are, there’s a handful, but very few agency owners wake up every day and say, Geez, I really want to dive into the sales process.

I just can’t wait to be out there and making calls and hitting the pavement and doing, you know, all that I can to bring in new clients. Most of us are focused more on the creative work that we’re doing and the solutions that we’re providing to clients. And we’d rather spend more of our time on that or other areas of the business than we do on growing it.

But we can’t get by without doing it. So that’s what today’s webinar is all about. And as we get into today’s webinar, I do want to go through a couple of housekeeping items here before we get started. So let’s go to my favorite housekeeping slide that I like to use. So the recording and the deck will be made available afterwards

to all attendees. The full webinar replay library is on the SAGA website. Just go to the member center to access that. If you’re not already a member, you can join for free just by going to sagaimpact.com. So I’d certainly encourage you to do that and take part in all of the community activities we have here.

Beyond the learning opportunities of the webinar, we do meetups and virtual happy hours, and there’s a Slack channel, all sorts of ways that you can for free with other agency owners. If you have questions today, please use the Q& A function in Zoom. It’s a great way to send your questions to me. I will try to cover as many as I can at the end of today’s session.

If I don’t get to your question and you’d still like to ask it, or if you’ve got any feedback, suggestions for future webinars, or really pretty much any comment you’d like to share, just email chip@smallagencygrowth. com. I would love to hear from you. If you want to tweet about today, Hashtag agency leadership.

You can also visit our Twitter account at agency leaders. And finally, the website sagaimpact.com I have already mentioned. So, last bit of housekeeping, a few upcoming webinars I’d like to tell you about. If you’re here today, you obviously have an interest in webinars on these kinds of topics.

So you might also be interested in a couple of the upcoming ones. Client retention strategies for small agencies will go into some of the steps that you can take from even before someone is your client all the way throughout their life cycle to try to keep them as long as possible and continue to service them at a high level throughout.

Obviously, that’s a key challenge for agencies and can make a big difference in profitability. And then the next one is how to onboard new agency clients. That’s a great segue from the retention question because so much of retention starts both during the business development and sales process up front, as well as in those first few weeks and months that they are on board as a client.

Let’s go ahead and we will start getting into the actual content today. I do want to walk through just quickly that the key things that we’ll be touching on over the next the probably next 35 or 40 minutes or so for the fixed presentation and then some time for questions after that. The first thing I want to do is I’m going to talk about the fact that it’s not really sales.

It is business development. There’s a reason why business development is in the title and we’ll talk about what the difference is. We’ll talk about knowing your client and how important that is to a successful business development process. We’ll talk about how you need to make excuses to have conversations.

We’ll talk about how you need to meet the expectations of potential clients in order to make sure that there is a good fit and that you develop clients that will be retained and will stick with you and will be satisfied. We’ll talk about how you need to focus on risk as part of the business development process, because that’s one of the key things that helps a client to make a decision to work with you and your agency.

And finally, we’ll talk about the fact that I believe you should never be closing. Let’s go ahead and get into the first part of this discussion. And that is that I want you to reframe how you think about all of this. You really need to understand that business development is all about relationships.

And since we’re all in the communications game, we get relationships. If you’re a PR agency, you’ve even got relations in the name of your business, of the industry that you’re in. But if you’re in marcoms or in digital or any of those kinds of things, communications is core to what we do. And the communications is all about developing relationships.

The work we do for clients is to develop the relationships that they need in order to grow their businesses or to drive their positions or their cause. We need to do the same thing on the agency side of the equation. We need to build relationships with people who might become clients themselves. With people who could refer business to us. With people who might say good things about our agency and therefore endorse the work that we’re doing and be supportive of it.

We need to be thinking about all of those different relationships that we can create. And if you start thinking about it in terms of relationships, instead of thinking about It being sales that should immediately start to increase your comfort level. I know that I hate the idea of sales. I don’t like the idea of being sold to and I don’t like the idea of selling.

And so what I’m going to talk to you about and I’m going to help teach you is that to build your agency, to grow revenue, to get new clients is not about sales. So if it’s not about sales, what is it about? The first thing is it’s about education. As part of your business development process, you are educating your target market, and we’ll talk more about that later, knowing your ideal client. You’re educating your target market, your potential customers about the challenges that you solve, about the solutions that you provide, about how you fit into their overall business picture.

It’s about educating them as to what the best practices are, and it’s about educating them about how their pain can be reduced, their performance can be increased through the work that you and your team can do. And this doesn’t have to be in the form of a capabilities presentation or something like that.

In fact, I would argue that that is generally not the right way to go about it. Good business development comes about from conversations. It’s about talking with, and importantly, and again, we’ll talk about this later, listening. It’s a skill that many of us really need to hone, because when we start talking with a prospect, when we start talking with someone who could even potentially use our business, even if they’re not quite a prospect yet, We sit there and we’re so excited to tell them about the great things that we can do, the ideas that we have, the things we’ve done for other people that maybe we’re not taking enough time to listen.

And the reason that we need to listen is because to be a good business developer in the agency space, you need to be a problem solver. And this is something that Gini Dietrich and I talked about on one of our recent agency leadership podcast episodes. There’s some new research from RSW/US, which is an outsourced business development firm for agencies.

And they looked at what agencies, how agencies see the world and how marketers see the world. And it was kind of disturbing to see just how far apart they are with marketers talking about the kinds of solutions that they’re looking for and what their pain point is. And their pain point was almost uniformly that they needed more clients, more business.

And agencies, the things that they thought the marketers were worried about were things like budgets. So they were, they were a step down. They were, they were thinking more along the tactical lines, the, you know, the basically the piece that helps them, that helps you as an agency owner, right? Your clients need to have budget in order to hire you.

And so that may be where you’re focused. But the marketer, the client, is focused on solving their own problem. And so when I’m speaking with a prospective client on behalf of an agency, I always like to ask them, you know, what are the things that keep you up at night? What are the things that you’re focused on over the next three months?

What are the things that you’re finding challenging with your team? I like to expand this conversation beyond the specific services that I’m providing as an agency because I want to understand their business. I’m never going to understand their business at the same level that they are. And that’s a mistake that we sometimes make as agencies too.

We sort of think that we can truly become an expert in a particular field. But even if we’re specializing in just one or two industries as an agency, we’re not going to have that, that same innate knowledge and instinct that people who have been in the industry for 10 or 20 or 30 years might have. We’re not going to have the same feel for the concerns that they have because they’re living it all day, every day.

And even if I’m assigned full time to a client, I still have other things that I need to do as part of my role within the agency. And my focus is on making sure that the agency client relationship is strong and that they’re perceiving that we’re delivering on that. More so than really focusing on the whole business picture for the client. But the more that we can expand our lens and be looking at those kinds of things, the more we can become a true problem solver that helps add to their bottom line, whether it’s financial or cause related or what have you. And so those are the kinds of things that we want to be looking for when we’re having business development conversations, whether it’s someone that we’ve just started talking to for the first time, or we’re much later in the quote unquote sales process.

And so all of this goes to knowing your client. And I don’t mean this in the banker’s sense where there’s a whole drive to know your client because you want to make sure that you’re not doing business with bad actors and those kinds of things. This is know your client as in know who your ideal client is.

Know the clients that you work with best, that you deliver the strongest results for, and that deliver solid profit margins for your business. And I’m always surprised when I go in and I start working with an agency owner and we start working through the client roster that there’s often a lack of definition around who those best clients are.

And you really need to understand those three components. Profitability. Performance. profitability, performance, and the fit that you have for that client. And if you, if you figure out those three things, you will be in a much better place to bring on the right kinds of business. It’s not just about the clients that generate the most revenue.

It’s not just about the clients that are easiest to sell. It’s not about the work necessarily that you like doing the most. It’s about bringing all of these different pieces together. And so you need to define your ideal client. You need to know as much as you can about them. And that’s oftentimes we think about the concept of, of niching, which is a very popular concept in the agency world.

And I, I prefer not to use the word niche. I prefer to use the word focus because niche implies that you’re in a particular industry, a particular vertical. And the reality is you just need to have a focus. It might be industry. It might be geography. It might be a set of services or an individual service.

It might be the life stage of the company. Is it a startup? Is it an established business? Is it a business that’s looking to exit? Is it a public company? A family owned company? A private company? Is it, you know, what are the different components of the clients that you work with the best, that generate the best results and the best profit, how do you figure out which ones are the ones that you’re looking for?

And it’s looking at the common traits that you have amongst your existing clients. And we’ll do a webinar discussion about this, I think next month, we will take a look at really defining, defining your ideal client and finding that focus for your agency. Because if you can target the right people, then you’re in a position where you can do the next thing that I encourage everyone to do, which is to put together a nifty 50 list and look, it can be 40.

It could be 60, but I like 50 because it rhymes and Hey, I’m a marketer. So I like to come up with a term that that’s memorable. And so a nifty 50 list, it’s a manageable number. It’s not, this is not building a list of thousands of people. I mean, that’s one of the things that scares a lot of you off from sales.

You start thinking in terms of, I need to build this giant list. I need to make all these calls. Like, you know, people are telling me I need to make 10 calls a day. That kind of thing. The reality is if you know, your ideal client. If you’ve figured out what your focus is, you can build a list, a nifty 50 list of folks that you really want to have deeper conversations with.

You want to build relationships with. This will be some of the people on the nifty 50 list will be it. Ideal clients, people you’d like to work with. Some will be those people who can refer business to you. Some are just people in your network that you need to either get to know better or maybe reconnect with if you’ve lost touch. They’re folks that you’re not quite sure exactly how they can help you, but you just have a gut feel that it would be good to be more connected with them. And so if you build out this list, this is the kind of list where you can have a meaningful conversation with, say, just one of them a day and over the course of a quarter, you’ll have touched base in a meaningful way with all of them.

And so, that’s the whole idea behind these lists and it’s behind my whole philosophy of business development for the agency, break things down into bite sized chunks into manageable pieces so that you’re not trying to, as folks like to say, boil the ocean. You want to be focused on the kinds of things that can show you progress every day that can, can give you that sense of accomplishment because you’re not going to be closing a sale every day.

You’re not going to be signing a new contract every day or even every week. For many of you, adding a new client once a month will mean that you are going gangbusters. So you really need to break it down into those manageable chunks because those are the kinds of activities that you’ll do, that you’ll feel good about, and will encourage you to do even more.

So how do you actually use this nifty fifty list? You have to make excuses. And I don’t mean make excuses about why you’re not doing something. I mean make an excuse for why you need to talk to somebody. You need to figure out why it is that you have an excuse to reach out and touch them to reach out and talk to them to have that conversation to further the relationship. And there’s a whole bunch of excuses you can use.

I’ve listed a dozen here on the screen so that you have some idea of some of the kinds of things that you can do that are not reaching out and saying, I’d like to talk to you about what my agency does and see if we might be a fit. Certainly you can have some of those conversations, but going back to the first piece of this conversation, I think you really ought to be focused more on building the relationship, on educating, and discovering the problems that you can solve.

Coming in hot to someone that you’ve never had a conversation with and pushing to have a conversation about your capabilities as the primary focus of that discussion, I think is a mistake. The reality is with all of the tactics that I have listed here on the screen, or at least with many of them, the first question, I mean, think about the first time that you have a conversation with someone that you don’t know, or that you’re reconnecting with.

What’s the first thing you say? Tell me a little bit about yourself. They say the same thing to you. That’s an opportunity for you to give just a little bit of your elevator pitch. You’ll share a little bit about your background. You’ll share something that maybe helps to make the connection with that individual based on what you know about them.

And yes, you will mention generally speaking, what your agency does. That may lead immediately to a conversation where someone says, Oh, tell me more about whatever it is that you’ve said that you do. It may be that that doesn’t come up until later. Maybe there’s some natural conversation back and forth, but resist the urge to turn these conversations into an immediate sales conversation. Because you’re trying to build that relationship, because that’s what will help you build the kinds of clients, the kinds of business that have longterm potential and are not merely done because you have some slick sales process that gets people in the door quickly.

But then they don’t stick around. Some of the things that are on this list are things that I have used for years and years and love. Podcast interviews are at the top of this list because I love recording podcasts. I love the conversations that I have with guests. And guess what? It’s a great way for me to reach out to people who are folks that I want to have a conversation with.

15 years of recording podcast interviews, well really 20 years of podcast interviews, before they were even called podcasts, I was doing them. I can tell you that there are maybe one or two circumstances where someone has straight up turned me down for an interview request. Yes, some have been harder to schedule than others, but the reality is most people are willing to have that kind of a conversation.

And you’ll always have pre and post show discussion beyond the recording itself. And so that’s beginning to nurture the relationship. As your show goes on, you will then have people reaching out to you. Some of these are low quality pitches to be on your show, but some of them will be new people that would be great to have within your network.

Not everything needs to be nearly as involved as that though. You can engage with folks on social media. You can just click like on their, on their LinkedIn post or retweet something on Twitter, reply to them if you’d like. Those are ways that you can continue to stay in front of people. Because part of good business development is being in the right place at the right time, right?

So you’re building the relationship, you’re educating, you’re figuring out how to solve a problem. But ultimately, folks are not looking for an agency all the time. They usually hit a point in their organization where they say, Hey, we need help on this. And that’s when you want to make sure that they’re thinking of you.

So that’s where using some of these easier touches to just stay on someone’s radar can be helpful. And social media is a fantastic way to continue to do that so that you are top of mind, or at least on the list when they’re starting to figure out how they want to solve a particular challenge using outside help.

You can put together your own events. You could do virtual happy hours or meetups for people in the industries that you serve or for communicators or marketers that are in a particular segment, right? It doesn’t have to be with the immediate goal of selling. It can just be with the idea of bringing people together, because if you’re the convener, if you’re the person who’s helping others to do well, ultimately, I believe that will come back and help you because you’ve built relationships and you’ve signaled to them that your first priority is to help them accomplish their goals.

It’s not to come in there and just collect revenue. Yes, the revenue is important. Yes, you’ll get to that piece of the conversation, but don’t start there. Another thing that I’d like to mention is Lunch Club. This is something I was introduced to by a couple of my contacts just in the last six weeks or so, and it’s a website service where originally it was started out as I understand it to bring people together to, to network over lunch.

So, basically blind dates from, for B2B people. And they’ve transitioned, obviously because of everything that’s gone on since March of, 2020 into setting up Zoom meetings and Google meets and those kinds of things. And I have to tell you, I, I jumped in just saying, Hey, you know, I love trying new technology, new ideas.

Let’s see how it works. And a few weeks in, I can tell you that the quality of the matches it has made have been tremendous. There’s no cost to it. Obviously at some point I imagine they will come up with a business model around it. And so it may, but at least as of today, as we’re recording this webinar, it is

open and free. So I would encourage you to check out Lunch Club if you’re looking for a way just to have some quality conversations with people who might be valuable to you and your network. And if nothing else will create good conversation that will stretch your mind a little bit. And that’s an important piece of business development to to expand your horizons and increase your own knowledge base.

So now we’ve gone through the idea of sort of generally what business development is. We’ve talked a little bit about creating the focus and creating the conversations. But now you’re starting to talk to people. So now what? Now what do you do? This is where you have to figure out where those expectations are.

You have to listen. You have to ask those probing questions so that you understand as much as you can about the prospect’s business and about the challenges they’re facing, their concerns. And, and what you really want to do from that listening that I’ve talked about repeatedly here is to figure out where are your paths converge.

Where is it that the challenge that your prospect has meets up with the services and solutions that you provide? Sometimes there may not be a merger. Sometimes you may be into a conversation and may realize that there isn’t that ideal fit there. You have to be willing to say, this is not a good idea.

And the reason you have to be willing to say it’s not a good idea is because if you’re the world’s best salesperson, you can close business. I mean, what is the, there’s that TV ad from a few years ago, you know, he could sell ice to an Eskimo. Don’t be that person. Don’t be that person. Selling ice to an Eskimo is not useful.

Okay. You do not want to sell something to a prospective client that they don’t really need. And I don’t care if they’ve come to you and said, I want a website, a press release, a Google ads plan or whatever. Okay. You need to make sure that it’s actually a good idea because otherwise you’ll be trading short term revenue for long term reputation damage.

Okay, so don’t do that. Find out where the paths meet because what you’re doing is actually a good fit for that client. Because it’s those expectations that are so vitally important to having clients that you can keep, to have relationships that will continue on, to have relationships that you can continue to grow.

Both substantively and hopefully from a revenue perspective. So get those expectations right here at the beginning. Make sure that whatever you’re suggesting as a solution for the prospect Is what they understand it to be. So don’t don’t allow them as we have sometimes been tended as we sometimes have a tendency to do.

I know I have. I let a client keep in mind that whatever I’m doing might help them get results faster, get results better than I really believe is possible. And I do that because I want to close the business. That’s a bad idea. You want to reset their expectation. Okay. Because you want to be in a position where three months down the line, a year down the line, they look back and they say, you did exactly what you said you would do, or you beat that expectation. Never ever put yourself in a position where during this business development process, you’ve raised those expectations so high, or you’ve more aptly allowed the client to raise their expectations that high, that there’s no way that you can meet it.

So expectations are absolutely critical to good business development. You also need to be focused on risk though, because when it comes to someone saying yes to your proposal for someone to say yes to your price, they have to focus on risk. They may not realize it, but there’s the old fashioned saying nobody was ever fired for hiring IBM.

Most of you who are listening to my voice today, watching this webinar, you’re not IBM. You’re not in a position where someone is able to just say, of course, we can use them. They are, they are the only option that we would possibly consider. Okay, we are not that. And that’s okay. That’s okay. Because being a small agency, we’re a group that can can really be creative, but we’re not ever wanting to be in the position where the client ends up being shocked.

We’re not, we don’t want to be in that position where someone feels like they are taking the risk that they’re going to take, get that shock because they’ve gone through this process and you haven’t set the expectations correctly. You haven’t created a solution that allows them to minimize their risk.

You haven’t talked to them about the elements of the conversation that might raise the question of risk. So let’s look at some real world examples here. Let’s, let’s be practical. When you’re thinking about how you reduce risk for a prospective client, you want to be thinking about things like the duration of your initial project.

I’m a big believer in trying to do shorter projects at first with a new client. I like to do paid discovery type projects where you go in for a short period of time. You put together an action plan. They can then hire you to implement the action plan. They could do it themselves. They could go to another agency.

Is it a risk for you? Of course it is, but it’s an opportunity for you to get to know the client for them to reduce their risk. But by the way, when they’re reducing their risk, you’re also reducing yours. How many times have you had a client that you’ve sat there months or years later and said, God, I really wish that I didn’t have to work for these guys. They’re just, they’re not a fit. They’re asking too much. They’re difficult to work with. They’re the, the profit ratio is too low, whatever it is. By working with them on a small project. First, a bite sized project. First, it gives both sides an opportunity to begin to know each other.

It also gives you as the agency owner, as the agency leader, an opportunity to figure out how you want to package and price your projects or retainer work going forward with that client. If there’s someone who is being very demanding and asking for lots of edits over and over again, price that in to your future work.

Because if that’s how they are on that first project, that’s how they’re likely going to be. And by the way, along those same lines, Look at how they’re behaving during the prospect stage while you’re discussing with them the work that you might be able to do, the solutions you might be able to provide.

If they’re constantly canceling meetings or pushing you off on things or being slow to get back to you, all of those things are indicators of habit that are likely to follow through. So make sure that you build those into your timelines. Right? Because again, from a risk perspective, you want to make sure that you’re not putting together a timetable or a budget that’s not going to end up working because of the way that the client works with the agency. Or because what you have for expectations are misaligned.

So focus on the risk. Reduce the risk factor for the clients. They will be far more likely to say yes. Now the last big thing that I want to talk about here is my notion that you should never be closing, and that’s with all due respect. To Glengarry Glen Ross, Alec Baldwin, if you go way, way back in time to the, I guess it was the 1980s.

So many of you may not even be old enough to remember this movie. That’s fine. Hopefully you’ve heard the expression, always be closing. A lot of salespeople like to use it as a, as a phrase. And the idea is that you always need to find ways to bring in new clients to close business. So don’t just have the conversation, but actually get them to sign on the dotted line.

And I. Absolutely want you to get prospects to sign on the dotted line. I want you to continue to grow your business because that’s important. You need to have growth. Even if you sit there and say, I’m at capacity. I don’t want to grow. I don’t want to add to the team. I just want to have a nice, stable business.

You still need to be doing business development because you still need to be working to fill your pipeline because inevitably you will have some degree of churn within your existing client base. And you need to be in a position to continuously replenish it. And so the way to do that is not from a standing start when you lose business, it’s to always have those business development conversations going. But you don’t always want to be closing. And the reason why is because the whole concept of closing is that it, it’s like a, you know, when you’re at a car dealership and they’re sitting there and they’re trying to get you to sign the contract to sign the loan documents to do your trade and all of those, those tactics that you’ve probably experienced when you’re buying a car.

You don’t want to have those experiences for yourself and your clients. And you don’t want to do that because the whole concept of closing implies that you’re accelerating someone moving them into the decision that you want them to have. But this is different than selling a car, right? When you’ve bought that car, you’re, yes.

Somewhere down the road, you may be reflecting on whether you will use that dealership, but you’re not having to work with that dealership, at least not the sales team, on an ongoing basis. Here within the agency, your clients have to continue to work with you. You have to continue to work with them even after this closing process is done.

So your business development process should be designed around leading the horse to water. But just as the saying goes, you can’t force them to drink. You need to make sure that you’re continuing to guide them through the process. So I’m not encouraging you to just sit there and have idle conversations with prospective clients without trying to draw it in the direction of how you might help.

I’m not suggesting that you shouldn’t ask for business. Because just as Tip O’Neill, the former Speaker of the House in the, again, in the 1980s, I guess I’m stuck in the 80s, my age, I’m almost 50. What can I say? You know, when you’re, when you read Tip O’Neill’s autobiography, he will tell you that in his very first race for Congress, his own wife didn’t vote for him and she didn’t vote for him.

Millie didn’t vote for Tip O’Neill because he didn’t ask for her vote. Is this a true story or not? I don’t know. Politicians love to tell tall tales as we all know, but it’s a great story from that perspective, because if you don’t ask for the sale, you probably won’t get it. But there’s a difference between bringing the horse to the water, pointing to the water and suggesting that they have a drink.

And going through a process where you’re really forcing that horse into the water and, and doing everything you can to have them take a sip of water. Maybe they’re not thirsty, right? So maybe they need to wait a few hours until they’re actually thirsty. Maybe your prospective client needs to wait three, six, nine months until their business is in a position that they can either better afford you or that they’re better prepared to take advantage of the services that you provide or what have you.

Or maybe you’re a horse that doesn’t like to drink water, right? And in that case, maybe your agency isn’t the right fit for that client. And that’s fine. That’s fine. I would rather find out sooner than later that I’m not a good fit for a prospective client, so we can both go in our own directions. Maybe I can make a recommendation to them of an agency within my network or within my knowledge that, that could be a good fit.

When I ran a media monitoring business, there were plenty of things that we did as part of that business that we didn’t do as well as others. And so if someone came to us, for example, and said, all I care about is broadcast monitor, or all I care about is social monitoring. I knew that for a client who wasn’t interested in the full breadth of services, that we were not the best solution.

And so I always made sure that our sales team understood that in those cases, even though we could shoehorn a solution that would work for them, that we shouldn’t do it. We should refer that business to someone who was a better fit because that client will be happier. And that client will remember what you’ve done for them. And somewhere down the road when they have a need for a broader set of services or the specific service that your agency offers, they’re more likely to come on board because of the way they were treated there. Whereas if I bring them in, if I brought someone in to do broadcast monitoring with us, could we produce the results?

Yeah, absolutely. But they’re not going to be as satisfied as if they were working with someone who is a specialist in just that one piece. Because our specialty was in tying it together with all of the other components of media. Your agency is probably the same way. There are things that you do better than most other agencies.

There are ways that you bring things together, perhaps, that are better or different than most other agencies. Those are the clients you want, the ones who can take advantage of that uniqueness that you have. That specialty that you have. That secret sauce that you have. If you do that then you will find the business that will close more naturally.

I don’t want to say naturally, right? Because again, you can’t just sit back and let it come to you, but you do, you do have to make sure that it is, it is intended to close. It is not closing because you’ve got, you know, the world’s slickest process that you’ve got, you know, that, that closing heartstrings message that just gets the prospect over the goal line.

That’s not what you’re looking for. So, Ultimately, if you think about business development in terms of building relationships, you really walk through this whole process. You’ve educated, you figured out problems to solve, you, you’ve listened, you’ve started walking through, you know, where it is that your paths meet.

And at the end of the day, your goal is to come together agency to client. It’s effectively a marriage. And so you want to make sure that there’s been a thoughtful process that has gotten you there. You don’t want an Elvis style Las Vegas wedding that happens because you were all out one night and had too much to drink and just had a good time and said, Hey, let’s go get married.

You want to go through a process that’s more likely to be successful over time because you’ve built that relationship. You’ve nurtured it. You figured out what it is that each of you is looking to get out of it. And you’ve determined that both of you are on that same path. That’s how you build strong agency client relationships, relationships that are built to last relationships that don’t have incredibly high churn rates, relationships that have good, solid profit margins for the agency as well as outstanding results for the client. Because business development is about relationship development.

It’s not about sales. It’s not about a sales process that walks you through stages, puts you through a funnel that just that turns you into a number as a prospect. That’s not how it works. It’s relationships. If you think about it in terms of relationships, there’s no reason to be scared of it. Most of us who are in communications in one form or another, whether it’s digital or, social or PR or marcoms or all of the different things that you may be listening to this webinar today, It’s about building those relationships.

And we generally speaking have a comfort level with developing those relationships. We have interesting conversations with people that we have shared interests with, and that we believe that we can help each other. So focus on a sales process that is that, and that’s how you tie it all up with a bow.

That’s how you bring it all together. And you think about all of the different steps. So to recap the things that we talked about, It’s not a sales process. It’s about relationships. It’s about knowing who your clients are. It’s about targeting the right people, the right fits. It’s about making excuses to have good quality conversations.

It’s about meeting the expectations of those prospects so that what you’re offering is what they actually need. It’s about drawing them through the process by focusing on risk, minimizing that risk. And then presenting them with the option to work with you with the solution that works for them and works for you.

So with that, I will draw to a close the presentation portion of today’s webinar. And I will open it up to questions. There is a Q and A function here within Zoom. Let me bring it up here on my screen so I can see questions that have come in. I see a couple in here already. If you do have questions, do feel free to add them.

Here in the Q and a, and I will do my very best to answer them. , first I’m going to grab a quick sip of water cause it’s wintertime here in New Hampshire and it’s air’s a little bit dry. So throat’s a little bit parched.

Okay. Let’s see, let’s, first of all, we’ll take this questions thing off the screen because Well, you want to see me? Well, you probably don’t, but it’s what you’re going to see., okay. So questions. The first one is, this is a question that I get a lot when it comes to sales. And I’m going to paraphrase a little bit cause it’s, it’s written a little bit longer, but, the, The essential question is, , if I’m going to be doing these kinds of processes, do I need a CRM?

What CRM should I use? And, , so, so let’s just, let’s sort of address the CRM question because it is one that I get a lot when it comes to sales conversations. I think I do have an article or a video that, you know, goes into more depth on this. And in fact, I know I did a video sometime last year where I reviewed some of the different actual solutions, that are out there, but let’s big picture.

When it comes to these processes, when it comes to doing relationship development, your nifty 50 list, those kinds of things, I do think some sort of tracking is necessary. You can’t just, you know, Run around and do it randomly. I think having some sort of a CRM or a Google sheet or something that helps you track your nifty 50 and your outreach conversations.

The people who have come to you inbound. I think that absolutely can be very helpful and make sure that things don’t fall through the cracks because As we’ve talked about with all of these relationship things, it, it’s about the continued nurturing of the conversation. It’s being right place, right time.

And the only way that you can do that is if you are having consistency in that outreach. I don’t think you need to be particularly fancy about this though. I don’t think that you need to use a full blown Salesforce installation with all sorts of triggers and automations and those kinds of things. It really can be pretty simple and straightforward, but it will help you to be having those conversations in a timely fashion.

And I think if you don’t have anything in place, that’s going to be very difficult to stay on track. I know some people will just do it with, in fact, I’ve got One client that just uses folders within Gmail, for follow ups, okay. I mean, that’s, it’s better than nothing. As I always say, for all of these things, the tool that you use is more valuable than anything that you don’t use, right?

So even if the, you’ve got something that’s got the ideal set of features, it doesn’t help you if you’re not using it. So look, if, if. Email folders that, you know, work for you. You know, you move people into follow up in March, follow up in May, whatever. Fine. I do like having some sort of a CRM type system in place.

I personally have used pipe drive for the last few years. Really like it. I think it does a nice job of balancing flexibility and capability with ease of use, and it’s not particularly expensive. I’ve used Copper. That’s the system that a lot of, I believe the Google sales team uses that for their work.

Certainly other people do as well. I’ve used Salesforce numerous times over the years in both large and small organizations. I don’t generally recommend Salesforce unless it’s something that you’ve been using and just really know inside and out. If that’s the case, maybe that is a good solution for you.

Again, Google Sheets. I know a lot of agencies use Google Sheets to track these things, particularly things like a nifty 50 list. So at the end of the day, find something, but don’t get too hung up on. What that solution is, because it’s really just making sure that you don’t have things falling through the cracks to make sure that you’re, you’re having those ongoing conversations.

Someone has picked up on, on the fact that I talked about podcasts. And so this question is, I’ve never done a podcast before. I’m not even sure where to start. Where should I begin? Okay. So on, on podcasts, first of all, the, they’re not nearly as difficult as They once were, and they’re not nearly as difficult as they may seem.

They’re not that daunting. I do things in, you know, frankly, probably too complicated away. I’ve got, I’ve got all sorts of fancy microphones. And since I do video too, I’ve got lights and all that kind of stuff. I’ve spent a lot of time tuning the backdrop here so that it. It works nicely as both a desk area as well as, you know, for doing videos like this, you don’t need to do all those things.

There are plenty of services out there. Zencaster, , is one that a lot of people have success with. Right now, Gini Dietrich and I use StreamYard, which is really a, it’s supposed to be a video streaming platform, but it works great for recording podcasts as well. I would encourage you try to record video with your podcasts if you can.

Even if you’re not using the video right away, it’s an additional asset to have available to you. You know, you can just use zoom. I’ve done plenty of podcasts where either I’ve been the guest or even ones where I’ve recorded where I’ve just recorded the interview right on zoom. Just hit the record button.

It’s not fancy. The audio quality is not perfect, but it’s very good. Same thing with the video quality. And so from a technical standpoint, don’t worry too much about that. The bigger hurdle is figuring out what is your podcast about? And if you’re going to use it for these business development purposes that I talked about, it’s really about figuring out who you could have conversations with that will help expand your network, expand your knowledge, and hopefully, perhaps even introduce you to prospective clients directly.

So that’s where you need to think about the question that we talked about early on in this discussion today, knowing who your client is, know who your ideal client is, have that focus. Once you know that, then you can find some sort of a theme to, to guide your show around. And so that’s where you can start, you know, working through your nifty 50 list.

To invite them for podcast conversations. Because presumably your nifty 50 list aligns pretty well with the kinds of guests that you’d be having because you really want to be zeroing in on that particular focal point or niche for whatever service it is that you’re offering the solution that you’re providing.

You also don’t want to get hung up on audience. I know a lot of folks who, you know, start their podcast and they don’t have a lot of listeners right out of the gate. And so they get frustrated and, they, as the term of art is they pod fade. Okay. You have to look at it in terms of the listeners to your podcast are the gravy.

If you’re starting it for the purposes that we’re talking about here today, if you’re starting it for those purposes, the conversation itself is the nugget, the goal, the value. And so that means that if you’re getting people to say yes, to participate in your podcast, to be interviewed, to have those conversations, it doesn’t even matter if you have no listeners at all.

Now, the odds are you will start to accumulate listeners. It may not be as fast or as large as you’d like to see it. But focus on the conversations and the value that those provide first, and then look at the listeners as gravy. You have to be willing to adapt. You have to be willing to adjust as you go over time.

You have to think about the podcast as a work in progress. You’re constantly learning. The quality of most podcasts will improve over time, both in terms of the substance of the interviews, as well as the technology, the production, all those kinds of things. And that’s fine. Don’t wait for perfection on any of those fronts.

Get started. Move ahead. See where you can take it. And then I, the last piece of advice that I would offer on podcasts is have fun with it. All the techniques that I’ve suggested today on the excuses slide elsewhere, things I’ve talked about, make sure they align with what you’re comfortable doing, what you enjoy doing.

You shouldn’t start a podcast. If you dread the idea of getting behind the microphone, if you dread the idea of having that kind of recorded conversation, asking questions, being a… you know, not a great interviewer, but at least a decent one. Okay. You need to do things from a business development perspective that you will continue to do because you like doing them.

You’re comfortable doing them. And so just like the CRM tool that you use is better than the one that you don’t, even if it doesn’t have all the right features, it’s the same thing with your BD tactics. You should be doing business development that you will do consistently. And consistency trumps almost everything else here.

I could come up with the ideal way to get a client, but if it’s not the way that you work, the way that you operate, the way that you think, it doesn’t matter. You’re not going to be successful. So find the things that you can be consistent at and do them. I would even go so far as to argue that you don’t necessarily need a whole business development plan.

I would like you to, I would like you to think through how all these different pieces come together and how you can build a coherent approach to your business development. But ultimately I would, if I had to choose between you putting together a plan or just getting started, I would say, just get started, just start doing things because a planning process that takes six or 12 months isn’t going to produce the same results as actually getting out there today and being consistent about it.

So whether it’s a podcast or something else, move forward, be consistent. All right, let’s see if, let me bring up another question here.

Okay, so this, , this question is, challenging my position that you, shouldn’t be closing. And it says, I understand what you’re saying about never be closing, but I’m concerned that if I don’t have a defined process around getting the business, that the clients will never actually sign on the dotted line.

And that that’s, in quotes, sign on the dotted line is obviously, I think what I said, when we were in that session or section. So I, I hear the concern and I know that if you, if you pay attention to a lot of other sales or business development, podcasts, webinars, if you listen to some of the other agency advisors who are out there, they will focus more on the defined stages of sales process and, and, you know, a more formal closing process and things like that.

You know, I, I’ve tried to lay out my case today for, for why I think that is the wrong approach. I do understand the concern that folks have of, of that as being not salesy enough that, that my perspective of thinking about it being as relationships and problem solving and leading the horse to water is not, is not an aggressive enough approach for an agency that’s really looking to grow.

I disagree. I, I’ve had success in most of my businesses without having that kind of a, an approach to sales. I’ve spent the last 25 years in business development, on the business side as an entrepreneur. , you know, I, I look, I, I think everybody has to do what they’re comfortable with. If you are an agency owner who just loves sales. Who, you are one of those rare ones who wakes up every morning and thinks about how can I sell more? How can I, I’m looking forward to cold calls. And by the way, a lot of you listening today are, are, are not that person, but they do exist. I have really good friends who are salespeople who thrive on making cold calls, who thrive on, you know, going through that sales process and hitting their numbers and all that.

That’s fine. My experience is that’s not most PR and marketing agency owners. And so I want you to come up with a process that you’re comfortable with, that you can execute on because it will get results. If you try to turn yourself into a cold call engine. that’s not likely to work. If you focus on building relationships and solving problems, I believe that you will meet with success.

I believe that you will close business, not because you have a closing process, but because it’s the right fit. You’ve found the right client. You’ve given them the right solution at the right time with the right risk profile. and the right price. If you do all of those things, if you put those ingredients in, I think you will have a delicious cookie.

And so that’s what I want you to have. I want you to have a process that you’re comfortable with, that you will be consistent with, that you will execute on, and that will get you the results that you’re looking for. And ultimately, I think that will help you build the agency that you want. and that you are happy with for years to come.

So I think that’s probably the best point to end today’s webinar on. I thank you all for joining. I would encourage you to go to, the Small Agency Growth website. Send me an email chip@sagaimpact.com. Ask me any questions that I didn’t get to, or that you think of after this, share your feedback.

Let me know if you think this was useful. If you agree or disagree with the approach that I’m suggesting, if you have suggestions for future topics of webinars, live shows, podcast episodes, articles, any of that kind of stuff, because my goal with SAGA is to provide as many resources to you as possible.

And of course, if you’re interested in working with me one on one, send me an email. I would be happy to talk to you about how that might look. So, thank you for joining today. Thank you for listening. And I look forward to seeing you at a future SAGA event very soon.

The following is a computer-generated transcript. Please listen to the audio to confirm accuracy.

Hi, I’m Chip Griffin. I’m the founder of SAGA, the Small Agency Growth Alliance. And welcome to today’s webinar on business development for agency owners who hate sales. And really who among us doesn’t hate sales. I know very few agency owners. There are, there’s a handful, but very few agency owners wake up every day and say, Geez, I really want to dive into the sales process.

I just can’t wait to be out there and making calls and hitting the pavement and doing, you know, all that I can to bring in new clients. Most of us are focused more on the creative work that we’re doing and the solutions that we’re providing to clients. And we’d rather spend more of our time on that or other areas of the business than we do on growing it.

But we can’t get by without doing it. So that’s what today’s webinar is all about. And as we get into today’s webinar, I do want to go through a couple of housekeeping items here before we get started. So let’s go to my favorite housekeeping slide that I like to use. So the recording and the deck will be made available afterwards

to all attendees. The full webinar replay library is on the SAGA website. Just go to the member center to access that. If you’re not already a member, you can join for free just by going to sagaimpact.com. So I’d certainly encourage you to do that and take part in all of the community activities we have here.

Beyond the learning opportunities of the webinar, we do meetups and virtual happy hours, and there’s a Slack channel, all sorts of ways that you can for free with other agency owners. If you have questions today, please use the Q& A function in Zoom. It’s a great way to send your questions to me. I will try to cover as many as I can at the end of today’s session.

If I don’t get to your question and you’d still like to ask it, or if you’ve got any feedback, suggestions for future webinars, or really pretty much any comment you’d like to share, just email chip@smallagencygrowth. com. I would love to hear from you. If you want to tweet about today, Hashtag agency leadership.

You can also visit our Twitter account at agency leaders. And finally, the website sagaimpact.com I have already mentioned. So, last bit of housekeeping, a few upcoming webinars I’d like to tell you about. If you’re here today, you obviously have an interest in webinars on these kinds of topics.

So you might also be interested in a couple of the upcoming ones. Client retention strategies for small agencies will go into some of the steps that you can take from even before someone is your client all the way throughout their life cycle to try to keep them as long as possible and continue to service them at a high level throughout.

Obviously, that’s a key challenge for agencies and can make a big difference in profitability. And then the next one is how to onboard new agency clients. That’s a great segue from the retention question because so much of retention starts both during the business development and sales process up front, as well as in those first few weeks and months that they are on board as a client.

Let’s go ahead and we will start getting into the actual content today. I do want to walk through just quickly that the key things that we’ll be touching on over the next the probably next 35 or 40 minutes or so for the fixed presentation and then some time for questions after that. The first thing I want to do is I’m going to talk about the fact that it’s not really sales.

It is business development. There’s a reason why business development is in the title and we’ll talk about what the difference is. We’ll talk about knowing your client and how important that is to a successful business development process. We’ll talk about how you need to make excuses to have conversations.

We’ll talk about how you need to meet the expectations of potential clients in order to make sure that there is a good fit and that you develop clients that will be retained and will stick with you and will be satisfied. We’ll talk about how you need to focus on risk as part of the business development process, because that’s one of the key things that helps a client to make a decision to work with you and your agency.

And finally, we’ll talk about the fact that I believe you should never be closing. Let’s go ahead and get into the first part of this discussion. And that is that I want you to reframe how you think about all of this. You really need to understand that business development is all about relationships.

And since we’re all in the communications game, we get relationships. If you’re a PR agency, you’ve even got relations in the name of your business, of the industry that you’re in. But if you’re in marcoms or in digital or any of those kinds of things, communications is core to what we do. And the communications is all about developing relationships.

The work we do for clients is to develop the relationships that they need in order to grow their businesses or to drive their positions or their cause. We need to do the same thing on the agency side of the equation. We need to build relationships with people who might become clients themselves. With people who could refer business to us. With people who might say good things about our agency and therefore endorse the work that we’re doing and be supportive of it.

We need to be thinking about all of those different relationships that we can create. And if you start thinking about it in terms of relationships, instead of thinking about It being sales that should immediately start to increase your comfort level. I know that I hate the idea of sales. I don’t like the idea of being sold to and I don’t like the idea of selling.

And so what I’m going to talk to you about and I’m going to help teach you is that to build your agency, to grow revenue, to get new clients is not about sales. So if it’s not about sales, what is it about? The first thing is it’s about education. As part of your business development process, you are educating your target market, and we’ll talk more about that later, knowing your ideal client. You’re educating your target market, your potential customers about the challenges that you solve, about the solutions that you provide, about how you fit into their overall business picture.

It’s about educating them as to what the best practices are, and it’s about educating them about how their pain can be reduced, their performance can be increased through the work that you and your team can do. And this doesn’t have to be in the form of a capabilities presentation or something like that.

In fact, I would argue that that is generally not the right way to go about it. Good business development comes about from conversations. It’s about talking with, and importantly, and again, we’ll talk about this later, listening. It’s a skill that many of us really need to hone, because when we start talking with a prospect, when we start talking with someone who could even potentially use our business, even if they’re not quite a prospect yet, We sit there and we’re so excited to tell them about the great things that we can do, the ideas that we have, the things we’ve done for other people that maybe we’re not taking enough time to listen.

And the reason that we need to listen is because to be a good business developer in the agency space, you need to be a problem solver. And this is something that Gini Dietrich and I talked about on one of our recent agency leadership podcast episodes. There’s some new research from RSW/US, which is an outsourced business development firm for agencies.

And they looked at what agencies, how agencies see the world and how marketers see the world. And it was kind of disturbing to see just how far apart they are with marketers talking about the kinds of solutions that they’re looking for and what their pain point is. And their pain point was almost uniformly that they needed more clients, more business.

And agencies, the things that they thought the marketers were worried about were things like budgets. So they were, they were a step down. They were, they were thinking more along the tactical lines, the, you know, the basically the piece that helps them, that helps you as an agency owner, right? Your clients need to have budget in order to hire you.

And so that may be where you’re focused. But the marketer, the client, is focused on solving their own problem. And so when I’m speaking with a prospective client on behalf of an agency, I always like to ask them, you know, what are the things that keep you up at night? What are the things that you’re focused on over the next three months?

What are the things that you’re finding challenging with your team? I like to expand this conversation beyond the specific services that I’m providing as an agency because I want to understand their business. I’m never going to understand their business at the same level that they are. And that’s a mistake that we sometimes make as agencies too.

We sort of think that we can truly become an expert in a particular field. But even if we’re specializing in just one or two industries as an agency, we’re not going to have that, that same innate knowledge and instinct that people who have been in the industry for 10 or 20 or 30 years might have. We’re not going to have the same feel for the concerns that they have because they’re living it all day, every day.

And even if I’m assigned full time to a client, I still have other things that I need to do as part of my role within the agency. And my focus is on making sure that the agency client relationship is strong and that they’re perceiving that we’re delivering on that. More so than really focusing on the whole business picture for the client. But the more that we can expand our lens and be looking at those kinds of things, the more we can become a true problem solver that helps add to their bottom line, whether it’s financial or cause related or what have you. And so those are the kinds of things that we want to be looking for when we’re having business development conversations, whether it’s someone that we’ve just started talking to for the first time, or we’re much later in the quote unquote sales process.

And so all of this goes to knowing your client. And I don’t mean this in the banker’s sense where there’s a whole drive to know your client because you want to make sure that you’re not doing business with bad actors and those kinds of things. This is know your client as in know who your ideal client is.

Know the clients that you work with best, that you deliver the strongest results for, and that deliver solid profit margins for your business. And I’m always surprised when I go in and I start working with an agency owner and we start working through the client roster that there’s often a lack of definition around who those best clients are.

And you really need to understand those three components. Profitability. Performance. profitability, performance, and the fit that you have for that client. And if you, if you figure out those three things, you will be in a much better place to bring on the right kinds of business. It’s not just about the clients that generate the most revenue.

It’s not just about the clients that are easiest to sell. It’s not about the work necessarily that you like doing the most. It’s about bringing all of these different pieces together. And so you need to define your ideal client. You need to know as much as you can about them. And that’s oftentimes we think about the concept of, of niching, which is a very popular concept in the agency world.

And I, I prefer not to use the word niche. I prefer to use the word focus because niche implies that you’re in a particular industry, a particular vertical. And the reality is you just need to have a focus. It might be industry. It might be geography. It might be a set of services or an individual service.

It might be the life stage of the company. Is it a startup? Is it an established business? Is it a business that’s looking to exit? Is it a public company? A family owned company? A private company? Is it, you know, what are the different components of the clients that you work with the best, that generate the best results and the best profit, how do you figure out which ones are the ones that you’re looking for?

And it’s looking at the common traits that you have amongst your existing clients. And we’ll do a webinar discussion about this, I think next month, we will take a look at really defining, defining your ideal client and finding that focus for your agency. Because if you can target the right people, then you’re in a position where you can do the next thing that I encourage everyone to do, which is to put together a nifty 50 list and look, it can be 40.

It could be 60, but I like 50 because it rhymes and Hey, I’m a marketer. So I like to come up with a term that that’s memorable. And so a nifty 50 list, it’s a manageable number. It’s not, this is not building a list of thousands of people. I mean, that’s one of the things that scares a lot of you off from sales.

You start thinking in terms of, I need to build this giant list. I need to make all these calls. Like, you know, people are telling me I need to make 10 calls a day. That kind of thing. The reality is if you know, your ideal client. If you’ve figured out what your focus is, you can build a list, a nifty 50 list of folks that you really want to have deeper conversations with.

You want to build relationships with. This will be some of the people on the nifty 50 list will be it. Ideal clients, people you’d like to work with. Some will be those people who can refer business to you. Some are just people in your network that you need to either get to know better or maybe reconnect with if you’ve lost touch. They’re folks that you’re not quite sure exactly how they can help you, but you just have a gut feel that it would be good to be more connected with them. And so if you build out this list, this is the kind of list where you can have a meaningful conversation with, say, just one of them a day and over the course of a quarter, you’ll have touched base in a meaningful way with all of them.

And so, that’s the whole idea behind these lists and it’s behind my whole philosophy of business development for the agency, break things down into bite sized chunks into manageable pieces so that you’re not trying to, as folks like to say, boil the ocean. You want to be focused on the kinds of things that can show you progress every day that can, can give you that sense of accomplishment because you’re not going to be closing a sale every day.

You’re not going to be signing a new contract every day or even every week. For many of you, adding a new client once a month will mean that you are going gangbusters. So you really need to break it down into those manageable chunks because those are the kinds of activities that you’ll do, that you’ll feel good about, and will encourage you to do even more.

So how do you actually use this nifty fifty list? You have to make excuses. And I don’t mean make excuses about why you’re not doing something. I mean make an excuse for why you need to talk to somebody. You need to figure out why it is that you have an excuse to reach out and touch them to reach out and talk to them to have that conversation to further the relationship. And there’s a whole bunch of excuses you can use.

I’ve listed a dozen here on the screen so that you have some idea of some of the kinds of things that you can do that are not reaching out and saying, I’d like to talk to you about what my agency does and see if we might be a fit. Certainly you can have some of those conversations, but going back to the first piece of this conversation, I think you really ought to be focused more on building the relationship, on educating, and discovering the problems that you can solve.

Coming in hot to someone that you’ve never had a conversation with and pushing to have a conversation about your capabilities as the primary focus of that discussion, I think is a mistake. The reality is with all of the tactics that I have listed here on the screen, or at least with many of them, the first question, I mean, think about the first time that you have a conversation with someone that you don’t know, or that you’re reconnecting with.

What’s the first thing you say? Tell me a little bit about yourself. They say the same thing to you. That’s an opportunity for you to give just a little bit of your elevator pitch. You’ll share a little bit about your background. You’ll share something that maybe helps to make the connection with that individual based on what you know about them.

And yes, you will mention generally speaking, what your agency does. That may lead immediately to a conversation where someone says, Oh, tell me more about whatever it is that you’ve said that you do. It may be that that doesn’t come up until later. Maybe there’s some natural conversation back and forth, but resist the urge to turn these conversations into an immediate sales conversation. Because you’re trying to build that relationship, because that’s what will help you build the kinds of clients, the kinds of business that have longterm potential and are not merely done because you have some slick sales process that gets people in the door quickly.

But then they don’t stick around. Some of the things that are on this list are things that I have used for years and years and love. Podcast interviews are at the top of this list because I love recording podcasts. I love the conversations that I have with guests. And guess what? It’s a great way for me to reach out to people who are folks that I want to have a conversation with.

15 years of recording podcast interviews, well really 20 years of podcast interviews, before they were even called podcasts, I was doing them. I can tell you that there are maybe one or two circumstances where someone has straight up turned me down for an interview request. Yes, some have been harder to schedule than others, but the reality is most people are willing to have that kind of a conversation.

And you’ll always have pre and post show discussion beyond the recording itself. And so that’s beginning to nurture the relationship. As your show goes on, you will then have people reaching out to you. Some of these are low quality pitches to be on your show, but some of them will be new people that would be great to have within your network.

Not everything needs to be nearly as involved as that though. You can engage with folks on social media. You can just click like on their, on their LinkedIn post or retweet something on Twitter, reply to them if you’d like. Those are ways that you can continue to stay in front of people. Because part of good business development is being in the right place at the right time, right?

So you’re building the relationship, you’re educating, you’re figuring out how to solve a problem. But ultimately, folks are not looking for an agency all the time. They usually hit a point in their organization where they say, Hey, we need help on this. And that’s when you want to make sure that they’re thinking of you.

So that’s where using some of these easier touches to just stay on someone’s radar can be helpful. And social media is a fantastic way to continue to do that so that you are top of mind, or at least on the list when they’re starting to figure out how they want to solve a particular challenge using outside help.

You can put together your own events. You could do virtual happy hours or meetups for people in the industries that you serve or for communicators or marketers that are in a particular segment, right? It doesn’t have to be with the immediate goal of selling. It can just be with the idea of bringing people together, because if you’re the convener, if you’re the person who’s helping others to do well, ultimately, I believe that will come back and help you because you’ve built relationships and you’ve signaled to them that your first priority is to help them accomplish their goals.

It’s not to come in there and just collect revenue. Yes, the revenue is important. Yes, you’ll get to that piece of the conversation, but don’t start there. Another thing that I’d like to mention is Lunch Club. This is something I was introduced to by a couple of my contacts just in the last six weeks or so, and it’s a website service where originally it was started out as I understand it to bring people together to, to network over lunch.

So, basically blind dates from, for B2B people. And they’ve transitioned, obviously because of everything that’s gone on since March of, 2020 into setting up Zoom meetings and Google meets and those kinds of things. And I have to tell you, I, I jumped in just saying, Hey, you know, I love trying new technology, new ideas.

Let’s see how it works. And a few weeks in, I can tell you that the quality of the matches it has made have been tremendous. There’s no cost to it. Obviously at some point I imagine they will come up with a business model around it. And so it may, but at least as of today, as we’re recording this webinar, it is

open and free. So I would encourage you to check out Lunch Club if you’re looking for a way just to have some quality conversations with people who might be valuable to you and your network. And if nothing else will create good conversation that will stretch your mind a little bit. And that’s an important piece of business development to to expand your horizons and increase your own knowledge base.

So now we’ve gone through the idea of sort of generally what business development is. We’ve talked a little bit about creating the focus and creating the conversations. But now you’re starting to talk to people. So now what? Now what do you do? This is where you have to figure out where those expectations are.

You have to listen. You have to ask those probing questions so that you understand as much as you can about the prospect’s business and about the challenges they’re facing, their concerns. And, and what you really want to do from that listening that I’ve talked about repeatedly here is to figure out where are your paths converge.

Where is it that the challenge that your prospect has meets up with the services and solutions that you provide? Sometimes there may not be a merger. Sometimes you may be into a conversation and may realize that there isn’t that ideal fit there. You have to be willing to say, this is not a good idea.

And the reason you have to be willing to say it’s not a good idea is because if you’re the world’s best salesperson, you can close business. I mean, what is the, there’s that TV ad from a few years ago, you know, he could sell ice to an Eskimo. Don’t be that person. Don’t be that person. Selling ice to an Eskimo is not useful.

Okay. You do not want to sell something to a prospective client that they don’t really need. And I don’t care if they’ve come to you and said, I want a website, a press release, a Google ads plan or whatever. Okay. You need to make sure that it’s actually a good idea because otherwise you’ll be trading short term revenue for long term reputation damage.

Okay, so don’t do that. Find out where the paths meet because what you’re doing is actually a good fit for that client. Because it’s those expectations that are so vitally important to having clients that you can keep, to have relationships that will continue on, to have relationships that you can continue to grow.

Both substantively and hopefully from a revenue perspective. So get those expectations right here at the beginning. Make sure that whatever you’re suggesting as a solution for the prospect Is what they understand it to be. So don’t don’t allow them as we have sometimes been tended as we sometimes have a tendency to do.

I know I have. I let a client keep in mind that whatever I’m doing might help them get results faster, get results better than I really believe is possible. And I do that because I want to close the business. That’s a bad idea. You want to reset their expectation. Okay. Because you want to be in a position where three months down the line, a year down the line, they look back and they say, you did exactly what you said you would do, or you beat that expectation. Never ever put yourself in a position where during this business development process, you’ve raised those expectations so high, or you’ve more aptly allowed the client to raise their expectations that high, that there’s no way that you can meet it.

So expectations are absolutely critical to good business development. You also need to be focused on risk though, because when it comes to someone saying yes to your proposal for someone to say yes to your price, they have to focus on risk. They may not realize it, but there’s the old fashioned saying nobody was ever fired for hiring IBM.

Most of you who are listening to my voice today, watching this webinar, you’re not IBM. You’re not in a position where someone is able to just say, of course, we can use them. They are, they are the only option that we would possibly consider. Okay, we are not that. And that’s okay. That’s okay. Because being a small agency, we’re a group that can can really be creative, but we’re not ever wanting to be in the position where the client ends up being shocked.

We’re not, we don’t want to be in that position where someone feels like they are taking the risk that they’re going to take, get that shock because they’ve gone through this process and you haven’t set the expectations correctly. You haven’t created a solution that allows them to minimize their risk.

You haven’t talked to them about the elements of the conversation that might raise the question of risk. So let’s look at some real world examples here. Let’s, let’s be practical. When you’re thinking about how you reduce risk for a prospective client, you want to be thinking about things like the duration of your initial project.

I’m a big believer in trying to do shorter projects at first with a new client. I like to do paid discovery type projects where you go in for a short period of time. You put together an action plan. They can then hire you to implement the action plan. They could do it themselves. They could go to another agency.

Is it a risk for you? Of course it is, but it’s an opportunity for you to get to know the client for them to reduce their risk. But by the way, when they’re reducing their risk, you’re also reducing yours. How many times have you had a client that you’ve sat there months or years later and said, God, I really wish that I didn’t have to work for these guys. They’re just, they’re not a fit. They’re asking too much. They’re difficult to work with. They’re the, the profit ratio is too low, whatever it is. By working with them on a small project. First, a bite sized project. First, it gives both sides an opportunity to begin to know each other.

It also gives you as the agency owner, as the agency leader, an opportunity to figure out how you want to package and price your projects or retainer work going forward with that client. If there’s someone who is being very demanding and asking for lots of edits over and over again, price that in to your future work.

Because if that’s how they are on that first project, that’s how they’re likely going to be. And by the way, along those same lines, Look at how they’re behaving during the prospect stage while you’re discussing with them the work that you might be able to do, the solutions you might be able to provide.

If they’re constantly canceling meetings or pushing you off on things or being slow to get back to you, all of those things are indicators of habit that are likely to follow through. So make sure that you build those into your timelines. Right? Because again, from a risk perspective, you want to make sure that you’re not putting together a timetable or a budget that’s not going to end up working because of the way that the client works with the agency. Or because what you have for expectations are misaligned.

So focus on the risk. Reduce the risk factor for the clients. They will be far more likely to say yes. Now the last big thing that I want to talk about here is my notion that you should never be closing, and that’s with all due respect. To Glengarry Glen Ross, Alec Baldwin, if you go way, way back in time to the, I guess it was the 1980s.

So many of you may not even be old enough to remember this movie. That’s fine. Hopefully you’ve heard the expression, always be closing. A lot of salespeople like to use it as a, as a phrase. And the idea is that you always need to find ways to bring in new clients to close business. So don’t just have the conversation, but actually get them to sign on the dotted line.

And I. Absolutely want you to get prospects to sign on the dotted line. I want you to continue to grow your business because that’s important. You need to have growth. Even if you sit there and say, I’m at capacity. I don’t want to grow. I don’t want to add to the team. I just want to have a nice, stable business.

You still need to be doing business development because you still need to be working to fill your pipeline because inevitably you will have some degree of churn within your existing client base. And you need to be in a position to continuously replenish it. And so the way to do that is not from a standing start when you lose business, it’s to always have those business development conversations going. But you don’t always want to be closing. And the reason why is because the whole concept of closing is that it, it’s like a, you know, when you’re at a car dealership and they’re sitting there and they’re trying to get you to sign the contract to sign the loan documents to do your trade and all of those, those tactics that you’ve probably experienced when you’re buying a car.

You don’t want to have those experiences for yourself and your clients. And you don’t want to do that because the whole concept of closing implies that you’re accelerating someone moving them into the decision that you want them to have. But this is different than selling a car, right? When you’ve bought that car, you’re, yes.

Somewhere down the road, you may be reflecting on whether you will use that dealership, but you’re not having to work with that dealership, at least not the sales team, on an ongoing basis. Here within the agency, your clients have to continue to work with you. You have to continue to work with them even after this closing process is done.

So your business development process should be designed around leading the horse to water. But just as the saying goes, you can’t force them to drink. You need to make sure that you’re continuing to guide them through the process. So I’m not encouraging you to just sit there and have idle conversations with prospective clients without trying to draw it in the direction of how you might help.

I’m not suggesting that you shouldn’t ask for business. Because just as Tip O’Neill, the former Speaker of the House in the, again, in the 1980s, I guess I’m stuck in the 80s, my age, I’m almost 50. What can I say? You know, when you’re, when you read Tip O’Neill’s autobiography, he will tell you that in his very first race for Congress, his own wife didn’t vote for him and she didn’t vote for him.

Millie didn’t vote for Tip O’Neill because he didn’t ask for her vote. Is this a true story or not? I don’t know. Politicians love to tell tall tales as we all know, but it’s a great story from that perspective, because if you don’t ask for the sale, you probably won’t get it. But there’s a difference between bringing the horse to the water, pointing to the water and suggesting that they have a drink.

And going through a process where you’re really forcing that horse into the water and, and doing everything you can to have them take a sip of water. Maybe they’re not thirsty, right? So maybe they need to wait a few hours until they’re actually thirsty. Maybe your prospective client needs to wait three, six, nine months until their business is in a position that they can either better afford you or that they’re better prepared to take advantage of the services that you provide or what have you.

Or maybe you’re a horse that doesn’t like to drink water, right? And in that case, maybe your agency isn’t the right fit for that client. And that’s fine. That’s fine. I would rather find out sooner than later that I’m not a good fit for a prospective client, so we can both go in our own directions. Maybe I can make a recommendation to them of an agency within my network or within my knowledge that, that could be a good fit.

When I ran a media monitoring business, there were plenty of things that we did as part of that business that we didn’t do as well as others. And so if someone came to us, for example, and said, all I care about is broadcast monitor, or all I care about is social monitoring. I knew that for a client who wasn’t interested in the full breadth of services, that we were not the best solution.

And so I always made sure that our sales team understood that in those cases, even though we could shoehorn a solution that would work for them, that we shouldn’t do it. We should refer that business to someone who was a better fit because that client will be happier. And that client will remember what you’ve done for them. And somewhere down the road when they have a need for a broader set of services or the specific service that your agency offers, they’re more likely to come on board because of the way they were treated there. Whereas if I bring them in, if I brought someone in to do broadcast monitoring with us, could we produce the results?

Yeah, absolutely. But they’re not going to be as satisfied as if they were working with someone who is a specialist in just that one piece. Because our specialty was in tying it together with all of the other components of media. Your agency is probably the same way. There are things that you do better than most other agencies.

There are ways that you bring things together, perhaps, that are better or different than most other agencies. Those are the clients you want, the ones who can take advantage of that uniqueness that you have. That specialty that you have. That secret sauce that you have. If you do that then you will find the business that will close more naturally.

I don’t want to say naturally, right? Because again, you can’t just sit back and let it come to you, but you do, you do have to make sure that it is, it is intended to close. It is not closing because you’ve got, you know, the world’s slickest process that you’ve got, you know, that, that closing heartstrings message that just gets the prospect over the goal line.

That’s not what you’re looking for. So, Ultimately, if you think about business development in terms of building relationships, you really walk through this whole process. You’ve educated, you figured out problems to solve, you, you’ve listened, you’ve started walking through, you know, where it is that your paths meet.

And at the end of the day, your goal is to come together agency to client. It’s effectively a marriage. And so you want to make sure that there’s been a thoughtful process that has gotten you there. You don’t want an Elvis style Las Vegas wedding that happens because you were all out one night and had too much to drink and just had a good time and said, Hey, let’s go get married.

You want to go through a process that’s more likely to be successful over time because you’ve built that relationship. You’ve nurtured it. You figured out what it is that each of you is looking to get out of it. And you’ve determined that both of you are on that same path. That’s how you build strong agency client relationships, relationships that are built to last relationships that don’t have incredibly high churn rates, relationships that have good, solid profit margins for the agency as well as outstanding results for the client. Because business development is about relationship development.

It’s not about sales. It’s not about a sales process that walks you through stages, puts you through a funnel that just that turns you into a number as a prospect. That’s not how it works. It’s relationships. If you think about it in terms of relationships, there’s no reason to be scared of it. Most of us who are in communications in one form or another, whether it’s digital or, social or PR or marcoms or all of the different things that you may be listening to this webinar today, It’s about building those relationships.

And we generally speaking have a comfort level with developing those relationships. We have interesting conversations with people that we have shared interests with, and that we believe that we can help each other. So focus on a sales process that is that, and that’s how you tie it all up with a bow.

That’s how you bring it all together. And you think about all of the different steps. So to recap the things that we talked about, It’s not a sales process. It’s about relationships. It’s about knowing who your clients are. It’s about targeting the right people, the right fits. It’s about making excuses to have good quality conversations.

It’s about meeting the expectations of those prospects so that what you’re offering is what they actually need. It’s about drawing them through the process by focusing on risk, minimizing that risk. And then presenting them with the option to work with you with the solution that works for them and works for you.

So with that, I will draw to a close the presentation portion of today’s webinar. And I will open it up to questions. There is a Q and A function here within Zoom. Let me bring it up here on my screen so I can see questions that have come in. I see a couple in here already. If you do have questions, do feel free to add them.

Here in the Q and a, and I will do my very best to answer them. , first I’m going to grab a quick sip of water cause it’s wintertime here in New Hampshire and it’s air’s a little bit dry. So throat’s a little bit parched.

Okay. Let’s see, let’s, first of all, we’ll take this questions thing off the screen because Well, you want to see me? Well, you probably don’t, but it’s what you’re going to see., okay. So questions. The first one is, this is a question that I get a lot when it comes to sales. And I’m going to paraphrase a little bit cause it’s, it’s written a little bit longer, but, the, The essential question is, , if I’m going to be doing these kinds of processes, do I need a CRM?

What CRM should I use? And, , so, so let’s just, let’s sort of address the CRM question because it is one that I get a lot when it comes to sales conversations. I think I do have an article or a video that, you know, goes into more depth on this. And in fact, I know I did a video sometime last year where I reviewed some of the different actual solutions, that are out there, but let’s big picture.

When it comes to these processes, when it comes to doing relationship development, your nifty 50 list, those kinds of things, I do think some sort of tracking is necessary. You can’t just, you know, Run around and do it randomly. I think having some sort of a CRM or a Google sheet or something that helps you track your nifty 50 and your outreach conversations.

The people who have come to you inbound. I think that absolutely can be very helpful and make sure that things don’t fall through the cracks because As we’ve talked about with all of these relationship things, it, it’s about the continued nurturing of the conversation. It’s being right place, right time.

And the only way that you can do that is if you are having consistency in that outreach. I don’t think you need to be particularly fancy about this though. I don’t think that you need to use a full blown Salesforce installation with all sorts of triggers and automations and those kinds of things. It really can be pretty simple and straightforward, but it will help you to be having those conversations in a timely fashion.

And I think if you don’t have anything in place, that’s going to be very difficult to stay on track. I know some people will just do it with, in fact, I’ve got One client that just uses folders within Gmail, for follow ups, okay. I mean, that’s, it’s better than nothing. As I always say, for all of these things, the tool that you use is more valuable than anything that you don’t use, right?

So even if the, you’ve got something that’s got the ideal set of features, it doesn’t help you if you’re not using it. So look, if, if. Email folders that, you know, work for you. You know, you move people into follow up in March, follow up in May, whatever. Fine. I do like having some sort of a CRM type system in place.

I personally have used pipe drive for the last few years. Really like it. I think it does a nice job of balancing flexibility and capability with ease of use, and it’s not particularly expensive. I’ve used Copper. That’s the system that a lot of, I believe the Google sales team uses that for their work.

Certainly other people do as well. I’ve used Salesforce numerous times over the years in both large and small organizations. I don’t generally recommend Salesforce unless it’s something that you’ve been using and just really know inside and out. If that’s the case, maybe that is a good solution for you.

Again, Google Sheets. I know a lot of agencies use Google Sheets to track these things, particularly things like a nifty 50 list. So at the end of the day, find something, but don’t get too hung up on. What that solution is, because it’s really just making sure that you don’t have things falling through the cracks to make sure that you’re, you’re having those ongoing conversations.

Someone has picked up on, on the fact that I talked about podcasts. And so this question is, I’ve never done a podcast before. I’m not even sure where to start. Where should I begin? Okay. So on, on podcasts, first of all, the, they’re not nearly as difficult as They once were, and they’re not nearly as difficult as they may seem.

They’re not that daunting. I do things in, you know, frankly, probably too complicated away. I’ve got, I’ve got all sorts of fancy microphones. And since I do video too, I’ve got lights and all that kind of stuff. I’ve spent a lot of time tuning the backdrop here so that it. It works nicely as both a desk area as well as, you know, for doing videos like this, you don’t need to do all those things.

There are plenty of services out there. Zencaster, , is one that a lot of people have success with. Right now, Gini Dietrich and I use StreamYard, which is really a, it’s supposed to be a video streaming platform, but it works great for recording podcasts as well. I would encourage you try to record video with your podcasts if you can.

Even if you’re not using the video right away, it’s an additional asset to have available to you. You know, you can just use zoom. I’ve done plenty of podcasts where either I’ve been the guest or even ones where I’ve recorded where I’ve just recorded the interview right on zoom. Just hit the record button.

It’s not fancy. The audio quality is not perfect, but it’s very good. Same thing with the video quality. And so from a technical standpoint, don’t worry too much about that. The bigger hurdle is figuring out what is your podcast about? And if you’re going to use it for these business development purposes that I talked about, it’s really about figuring out who you could have conversations with that will help expand your network, expand your knowledge, and hopefully, perhaps even introduce you to prospective clients directly.

So that’s where you need to think about the question that we talked about early on in this discussion today, knowing who your client is, know who your ideal client is, have that focus. Once you know that, then you can find some sort of a theme to, to guide your show around. And so that’s where you can start, you know, working through your nifty 50 list.

To invite them for podcast conversations. Because presumably your nifty 50 list aligns pretty well with the kinds of guests that you’d be having because you really want to be zeroing in on that particular focal point or niche for whatever service it is that you’re offering the solution that you’re providing.

You also don’t want to get hung up on audience. I know a lot of folks who, you know, start their podcast and they don’t have a lot of listeners right out of the gate. And so they get frustrated and, they, as the term of art is they pod fade. Okay. You have to look at it in terms of the listeners to your podcast are the gravy.

If you’re starting it for the purposes that we’re talking about here today, if you’re starting it for those purposes, the conversation itself is the nugget, the goal, the value. And so that means that if you’re getting people to say yes, to participate in your podcast, to be interviewed, to have those conversations, it doesn’t even matter if you have no listeners at all.

Now, the odds are you will start to accumulate listeners. It may not be as fast or as large as you’d like to see it. But focus on the conversations and the value that those provide first, and then look at the listeners as gravy. You have to be willing to adapt. You have to be willing to adjust as you go over time.

You have to think about the podcast as a work in progress. You’re constantly learning. The quality of most podcasts will improve over time, both in terms of the substance of the interviews, as well as the technology, the production, all those kinds of things. And that’s fine. Don’t wait for perfection on any of those fronts.

Get started. Move ahead. See where you can take it. And then I, the last piece of advice that I would offer on podcasts is have fun with it. All the techniques that I’ve suggested today on the excuses slide elsewhere, things I’ve talked about, make sure they align with what you’re comfortable doing, what you enjoy doing.

You shouldn’t start a podcast. If you dread the idea of getting behind the microphone, if you dread the idea of having that kind of recorded conversation, asking questions, being a… you know, not a great interviewer, but at least a decent one. Okay. You need to do things from a business development perspective that you will continue to do because you like doing them.

You’re comfortable doing them. And so just like the CRM tool that you use is better than the one that you don’t, even if it doesn’t have all the right features, it’s the same thing with your BD tactics. You should be doing business development that you will do consistently. And consistency trumps almost everything else here.

I could come up with the ideal way to get a client, but if it’s not the way that you work, the way that you operate, the way that you think, it doesn’t matter. You’re not going to be successful. So find the things that you can be consistent at and do them. I would even go so far as to argue that you don’t necessarily need a whole business development plan.

I would like you to, I would like you to think through how all these different pieces come together and how you can build a coherent approach to your business development. But ultimately I would, if I had to choose between you putting together a plan or just getting started, I would say, just get started, just start doing things because a planning process that takes six or 12 months isn’t going to produce the same results as actually getting out there today and being consistent about it.

So whether it’s a podcast or something else, move forward, be consistent. All right, let’s see if, let me bring up another question here.

Okay, so this, , this question is, challenging my position that you, shouldn’t be closing. And it says, I understand what you’re saying about never be closing, but I’m concerned that if I don’t have a defined process around getting the business, that the clients will never actually sign on the dotted line.

And that that’s, in quotes, sign on the dotted line is obviously, I think what I said, when we were in that session or section. So I, I hear the concern and I know that if you, if you pay attention to a lot of other sales or business development, podcasts, webinars, if you listen to some of the other agency advisors who are out there, they will focus more on the defined stages of sales process and, and, you know, a more formal closing process and things like that.

You know, I, I’ve tried to lay out my case today for, for why I think that is the wrong approach. I do understand the concern that folks have of, of that as being not salesy enough that, that my perspective of thinking about it being as relationships and problem solving and leading the horse to water is not, is not an aggressive enough approach for an agency that’s really looking to grow.

I disagree. I, I’ve had success in most of my businesses without having that kind of a, an approach to sales. I’ve spent the last 25 years in business development, on the business side as an entrepreneur. , you know, I, I look, I, I think everybody has to do what they’re comfortable with. If you are an agency owner who just loves sales. Who, you are one of those rare ones who wakes up every morning and thinks about how can I sell more? How can I, I’m looking forward to cold calls. And by the way, a lot of you listening today are, are, are not that person, but they do exist. I have really good friends who are salespeople who thrive on making cold calls, who thrive on, you know, going through that sales process and hitting their numbers and all that.

That’s fine. My experience is that’s not most PR and marketing agency owners. And so I want you to come up with a process that you’re comfortable with, that you can execute on because it will get results. If you try to turn yourself into a cold call engine. that’s not likely to work. If you focus on building relationships and solving problems, I believe that you will meet with success.

I believe that you will close business, not because you have a closing process, but because it’s the right fit. You’ve found the right client. You’ve given them the right solution at the right time with the right risk profile. and the right price. If you do all of those things, if you put those ingredients in, I think you will have a delicious cookie.

And so that’s what I want you to have. I want you to have a process that you’re comfortable with, that you will be consistent with, that you will execute on, and that will get you the results that you’re looking for. And ultimately, I think that will help you build the agency that you want. and that you are happy with for years to come.

So I think that’s probably the best point to end today’s webinar on. I thank you all for joining. I would encourage you to go to, the Small Agency Growth website. Send me an email chip@sagaimpact.com. Ask me any questions that I didn’t get to, or that you think of after this, share your feedback.

Let me know if you think this was useful. If you agree or disagree with the approach that I’m suggesting, if you have suggestions for future topics of webinars, live shows, podcast episodes, articles, any of that kind of stuff, because my goal with SAGA is to provide as many resources to you as possible.

And of course, if you’re interested in working with me one on one, send me an email. I would be happy to talk to you about how that might look. So, thank you for joining today. Thank you for listening. And I look forward to seeing you at a future SAGA event very soon.

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