Agency New Business Consultants Give the Do's and Don'ts of Building a Strong Pipeline

New business, especially for small and midsize agencies, is slowing. The annual RSW/US survey revealed a discouraging scenario, where 58% of agency new business professionals reported having a harder time finding prospects than they did last year. Just two years ago, only 28% of respondents said they faced that challenge. And filling the pipeline likely won't get easier in the first half 2024. During a panel on Tuesday with pitch consultants at the Mirren CEO Summit, Meghan McDonnell, owner and president of Pile and Company, told Adweek, "It's still going to be a tough year. There's a lot of things happening next year that are leading to uncertainty. We're going to see some fits and starts like we did this year." A cottage industry of new business advisers has sprung up to coach agencies on how to navigate the challenging climate. Several of them spoke with Adweek about their strategy and business models. In general, new business consultants urge agencies to pare back efforts to be everything to everyone. This comes as more agencies face mounting pressure to win accounts and expand their service offerings to attract more prospects. Instead, most advisers agree agencies should hone their scopes and make their competitive advantage clearer, while scrutinizing new business teams' sales acumen and building strong relationships with prospective clients over time. “There's still this Mad Men mentality that [pitch teams] are going to come in and just bowl [prospective clients] over with their brilliance,” said Mark Duval, founder of strategic sales consultancy The Duval Partnership. Small and Midsize Agencies Find Landing New Business Increasingly Difficult 'I only want to talk to the [agency] CEO' Often called “the CMO whisperer,” Lindsey Slaby, founder of the brand consultancy Sunday Dinner, advises chief marketers on a wide variety of marketing organizational challenges, including the agency review process. Slaby hosts a private Slack channel where agency and brand leaders, as well as consultants, talk openly about industry trends and challenges. “I recommend small agencies don't ever hire new business people that are front and center,” Slaby said. “I only want to talk to the [agency] CEO [or] partner. I don't want to talk to anyone else, [because] I’m never going to have that relationship." Slaby’s Slack channel reflects that preference, too. New business professionals may not join, and Slaby prohibits channel members from approaching marketers for work. Brand leaders and executive consultants like Slaby are more willing to engage with another executive than lower-level business development leads. The trouble is, given executives’ tight bandwidth, it is unlikely most leaders can take on new business tasks that could lead to strong prospecting. Other consultancies like NBZ Partner are rolling out membership tiers designed to support agency new business teams, specifically. In NBZ Partner’s Slack channel, more than 50 new business leads across significant agencies crowdsource answers to their questions, and collectively explore career development strategies. "What NBZ Partner has done is create another layer of transparency and candor amongst new business professionals, and that is something that I don't think always existed," said Courtney Jones, vp of business development and growth director at The Martin Agency. Even when people want to refer to themselves as biz dev [or] new business, they need to embrace sales.Mark Duval, The Duval Partnership Is new biz sales? These communities exist to build and strengthen relationships—either between new business teams, or in Slaby’s channel, between agency and brand executives. Other consultants, like Duval, are pointing to pervasive issues with agency prospecting. “There's a serious, I'll use the word ‘sales malpractice,’ going on in the industry,” he said, noting that too many agencies vie for work they aren’t qualified to win. Those agencies must get clearer on their unique value proposition, he said. One way to do that is to ensure business teams cultivate a sales skill set and pay closer attention to prospects’ customer journeys. “Even when people want to refer to themselves as biz dev [or] new business, they need to embrace sales. They're salespeople. The issue is, they're not trained,” he said. Duval looks at new business strategy from a sales perspective and studies an agency’s website, thought leadership and social media presence. He even evaluates the shop’s website download speed. He often finds a disconnect between what an agency advertises and the services it actually provides. He once noticed one of his agency clients had shared posts on its social media channels about cryptocurrency, even though the agency didn’t have a cryptocurrency service offering. “All roads should lead to new business,” Duval said. Just say no This is because the more prospects an agency has in its pipeline, the more flexibility it has to turn down an opportunity that’s not the right fit, the consultant said. Keeping the new business pipeline full, though, presents a challenge for many. Duval recommends simple sales strategies that make it likelier new business teams will avoid a common pitfall: being ghosted by a prospect. “Did you get an upfront contract? Did you get that person to buy in? Did you ask permission to ask questions? Did you, as much as they, set the agenda [and] next steps? Probably not,” said Duval. Rachel Huff, president and co-founder of agency consultancy Victoire & Co., also advises agencies to get more selective. "My No. 1 piece of advice that I always give is that to win more new business and to grow your business, you have to be really smart about saying no to more opportunities," Huff said. Relationship building is crucial Jones prefers a relationship-first approach to prospecting, preferring to get to know brand side marketers ahead of time. Last year, Jones' agency won work with several large clients, including Google for Creators, LegalShield, Royal Caribbean, Santander and Hasbro, without a pitch. "When you understand who the people are behind the brand, it's harder for your friend to say no to you, or to ignore you, than it is for someone you'd never met," Jones said. The traditional pitch is no longer the best way to vet agencies, according to Pete Carter, founder and CEO of agency search consultancy Creative Haystack. Carter, who spent more than 40 years as a Procter & Gamble marketer, prefers a human-centered approach that comes down to how well marketers and advertisers get along. Why One Consultancy Launched a Premium Subscription for Agency New Business Leads Carter personally interviews a broad group of agencies, sometimes as many as 300, before working with his clients to narrowing the list down to three contenders. He does all of this before ever engaging agencies with a brief, and when he eventually presents one to an agency, it's simple. The brief explains why Carter selected the agency for consideration. The search process culminates in the brand marketers and their potential agency partners having lunch or dinner together. A cottage industry of new business advisers are advising some agencies on how to navigate the challenging role. Often, the business decision comes down to the rapport brand and agency leaders build during in-person networking. Carter is not alone in taking a more flexible approach to agency searches, though his unique process is yet another one new business teams must become familiar with, and one that forces them to wait on inbound opportunities well suited for their agency. New training on the horizon Without a single reliable guide to new business practices, agency leads must find their own way. "For them it's tough, because they don't have people necessarily within the agency who can tell them the best practices, tell them how other agencies are responding to the same opportunities that they're responding to, tell them how other agencies are cultivating leads," Huff said. This reality forces new business teams to look outside their agencies to build expertise, and to entertain a broad variety of tactics. Industry attention on new business practices is paying off, though, as experts take action to fill a dire need for reliable guidance. Just this month, Huff inked a partnership with the 4A's that will support the creation of new business training materials. "We're currently actually working on a number of different workshops, webinars and other training, all around new business for all levels within an agency organization," she said.