How to make inbound enquiries work for you

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One of the nicest things about getting your biz dev working well is when inbound enquiries start to come to the business.

I am working with Websters , a niche chartered accountancy practice specialising in service charge accounting.  They have worked hard on a new website and blog as well as some collateral and internal management structures to support business development.

Websters aren't yet ready for the big formal launch event for the site and while it's broadly complete, we are continuing to use it and improve some of the features.  

And so I am surprised and delighted to find that people are signing up to receive their newsletter, the RSS feed and printed brochureware about the business.

Setting up the fields

When I set up the fields for the enquiry form  I originally thought that a simple Name, Email, Company name and country would suffice. 

But I was surprised by the number of folk who want to receive information about the Websters company.

This leaves them with a choice – send electronic information or print.  But for print we need a postal address.  This gave me an idea….

Rather than change the form to include postal address information, why not just research them online and phone them up. This is good becausse

  1. you can find out if they are a real person
  2. you can ask them if they prefer print or emailed information (customer chooses)
  3. you can do a bit of"digging research" into their organisation for your database
  4. you can ask them straight out if they want to have a credentials presentation or chemistry meeting
  5. you can make a fair assessment of whether they are a prospect and at what stage of the pipeline.

Hooray – i know what we'll do – a targeted phone calling session.

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Tone of voice in newsletter writing

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This week I got a couple of newsletters from organisations – both happen to be agencies one is in PR and the other is an integrated retail specialist.

HAve a read of these opening statements

Well here we are, more than halfway through the year that was sent to challenge the retail, travel and leisure sectors to their limits. And, you know what? Despite all the economic hurdles we continue to deliver great results for our clients.
In addition, we bring you news of a few new clients, expansion of our digital offering and a couple of weddings. Read on, it'll put a smile on your face!
 

compared to

Rebecca, tell me how you feel about this scenario.

You take, say, 3 or 4 months to thoroughly research a topic. You become a ninja, the world's foremost authority.

You lock yourself in your basement for another 4 months to write a comprehensive ebook. A thing of beauty. The definitive guide. A masterpiece.

And then something unexpected happens when you launch…

*Nothing.*

Will this happen to you? Click below and let me know:

and this one

Priority check-in for First Class Web Design, Fast Track SEO, Web video lounge, self service CMS.  click here
For all other websites please join the back of the Very Very Long Queue.

I bet you can guess which one I chose to read and which ones hit my delete bin.

If you are interested in tone of voice advice, check out Ben Afia of Afia.tv who is a former client.

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Social media learning curve

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From Jock McNeish over at Thinking Pharma.   Made me smile

 Social Media Learning Curve

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Shout! With Johnny Vulkan, MD Anomaly

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 Anomaly home page

What are your most recent pitch wins? [wrong first question!]
We don't tend to put ourselves onto pitches
The reason is that we are a different sort of agency.  We formed around a group of nomads from the creative industries – ad, design, tech media.  The agency is 4.5 years old
We set up because we became aware that the traditional agency model conspires not to help clients.  Ad men always see advertising as the solution; PR men see PR.  Anomaly brings the focus of creative minds on the real business issues not just a 30 second ad spot.
We prototyped the business model within TBWA\Chiat\Day  before I left but realised that to make it happen we needed to be independent.


So what IS different about the Anomaly model?
We found the creative thinkers and set out to provide the right answer.  When that's your approach you have a very different conversation with clients – it's their business that you are focusing on.  We sometimes send them away or refer onto other agencies, or tell them where we can do stuff well and collaborate with others who can do stuff better than us.
We assemble the focus of the team around what is needed.  if it's nebulous it's whoever ‘gets it’ or ‘feels it’ the most.  This makes work enjoyable, anarchic and labour intensive.

Another difference is that unlike an agency model there is a process which builds a solution – the answer can be anything and so you have to build the process.  It may be different every time.
We are big fans of starting when it's hard.  It makes you work harder and think smarter.

So, an obvious question – how are you going to grow?
Scale isn't what we want to do.  We don't want to create a command and control network.   

Is your charging model different as well?
Our version of fees is % equity as well as cash and so we own parts of client companies.  Every deal is different.  We never charge for time – it rewards the wrong behaviours.  And so we don’t keep timesheets.
Read more

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