Creative Agency Secrets

I am now writing longer ‘articles’ on my other blog.  www.creativeagencysecrets.com
Just posted a How to piece on early stage prospecting using Golden Questions.
let me know if you can use its ideas.

Hung out at the Salesforce Christmas event last night. ….. Entertainers at the door were probably the best thing there.

But, once inside I met a fellow Tideway Scullers member who now lives in SF and we had a great chat about when they last won the Britannia and what Hugh Williams and Rolf Munding are doing now…… never heard of him before and gave him my card but forgot to take his… think he was called Kirk…

PS why were Google giving out biros?

Just had replies from:

Lloyd Davies - Perfect Path

Marcel Cowan and Darren Shea - Cowan Group
Gary Jacobs - Fox Kalomaski

Hannah Locke - Burst Interactive / MyKindaPlace

Charlie Robertson - Red Spider

Andrew Roberts - Gravity

Gareth Thomas - BPL

Looking forward to it!

Mark McGuinness and I are hosting a breakfast event on November 22nd in central London.

It may be of interest to anyone who has to go and win new business for their agency.  Here’s the detail.

These days winning a pitch is harder than ever – more agencies, longer ‘short’ lists, time delays. You need every advantage to ensure your pitch gets the best possible chance of succeeding.

One of the factors that may contribute to success is an awareness of the personalities on the client team – so that you can play your presentation to appeal to their comfort zones and core instincts. Your pitch can also be more effective if it appeals to the values at the heart of the client’s company and brand.

Come and hear respected Business Coach Mark McGuinness, in conversation with Rebecca Caroe, talking about the Enneagram system of personality types and core values – and how this can help your team win more pitches.

Breakfast on 22nd November will be at Piccolino, Heddon Street, London W1B 4BG Arrive from 7.45 and we’ll start promptly at 8 am and be finished by 9 with networking until 9.45.

Hosted by Rebecca Caroe, the event will be a conversation during which the issues of successful business development and personality typing will be discussed – followed by your questions. To register e-mail  And we’ll send you all the info, plus Mark’s e-book An Introduction to the Enneagram to thank you for your interest.

If you can’t come but would like a free copy of Mark’s e-book please e-mail us and ask for a copy.

Please feel free to forward this invitation to any agency friends or colleagues who may be interested.

Download enneagramflyer.pdf

[the event invitation]

Mark McGuinness works with agencies to get the best out of their people. Mark is a poet and a business coach specialising in the creative industries. He is a qualified psychotherapist and holds an MA in Creative & Media Enterprises from the University of Warwick. His areas of expertise include creativity and managing and developing creative teams. He uses the Enneagram to help clients with a range business issues.
Mark’s coaching blog

Reading about another marketer’s top tips on how to provoke a response from a prospect from your first contact (also called Cold Calling).

I have generally foudn this to be really helpful in my own business development work.  I am one of hte (probably sad) people who enjoys making cold calls.  One of the reasons I like it is that I am reasonably successful. 

My cold approaches may be by phone or email or letter.  But what makes them distinctive is that I always follow up and my messaging is designed to be short and very memorable.  And occasionally cheeky(!)

• Plan the method of your approach what step follows
• Write all the collateral and script guides
• Work out a clear record keeping system (database, spreadsheet, paper trail)
• Be diligent and persistent

I will post up some of my cold letters for you to have a look at.

Well, thanks to the lovely Janice Cable, I was there.  The debate was hosted in BT’s sumptuous auditorium in their City Business Centre.  Great gig.

Three speakers followed by a formal debate. 
Take-outs from the speakers

Hugh McLeod - Social media is about meaning.
1 - Social Objects are key.  people socialise around objects, church, clothes, technology a.k.a. "sharing devices"
2 - It is cheap and easy
3 - Hyperlinks subvert hierarchies - you can bypass traditional structures.

JP Rangaswami - Enterprise software has 4 pillars

• Search
• Subscribe
• Fulfilment
• Converse

Facebook is this plus community.that’s why it works. 

Chad Wollen - Facebook is putting together all the components to make a marketplace = the Social Graph.  This social graph of value to users provides not much systematic value to advertisers.  There’s a trade-off between keeping it controlled and closed c.f. AOL until recently and opening it up and accepting that spam will happen.

Hugh - This is a ‘political bargain’ the open or closed system.  It’s a compromise

JP - we recognise that the world today does not allow monopoly rents
BT is experimenting using Facebook for knowledge management and internal communication.. it has a group of over 6000 employees online and is the third largest enterprise group.

Sam Sethi - Facebook is an aggregating lifestream. 
Poking someone on Facebook is a social gesture.  It’s like primates grooming each other(!)

i spoke later to Sam and he has some fantastic ideas on where some of these ‘possible futures’ may take us.  I am going to check out his APML workgroup later on…. watch this space.

There was a good debate and some useful discussion but I was mainly looking for take-outs on how businesses can use Facebook.

5 learnings
1 - open up your system and embrace the opportunity in Facebook.  Let staff use it, recognise your employment as part of their lives
2 - Trust your staff not to ‘waste’ time online in Facebook.  Get their ideas about how to use its features to further your business needs.  If BT is trying it out for internal communication and knowledge management, what can you do?
3 - Trust the Facebook privacy statements.  Most of the attendees had fully open profiles and many said they would accept a friend request from their boss (JP has an open door policy and so this is an extension of his normal way of working).  Read the privacy pages and see how detailed you can go with permissions e.g. tagging in photos - you can refuse to allow this.
4 - Look at the possibilities in the advertising.  Now they’ve opened up the opportunity for improved targeting for ad serving, it definitely is something I’m going to try out.  Graduate recruiters are now regularly checking Facebook for candidates both as ‘background’ and to see who else they know
5 - Watch for the un-sexy apps.  There are some neat ones e.g. enabling reading spreadsheets online.  Filter the bad or faddish (zombies) and find those that work for your needs. 

When you see what you think is a holding page on a website what do you think?

Take a look here

and here

Which looks like a holding page and which is just crass arrogance?  How gorgeous and famous do you need to be in this world before you don’t actually need a website at all?

Are they courageous, confident or blind?

A theme has been emerging from a couple of meetings I’ve had in the past days.  It’s a subject that appears dull but can be the strongest possible boost to growing your business.

Lead Management.
What is it?

The process by which prospective customers are attracted to your product or service, make themselves known to you and from which you move them towards a purchase.

Vital.  Consider it a chain of events that lead to a conclusion that in itself can become the start of a new chain.  Sometimes called "closed-loop" marketing.

Write down the chain as it happens in your company. 
Are there any breaks in the chain; anywhere that information can be ‘lost’, forgotten or drop down the cracks between one person and the next in the chain (technically called a hand-off).

I was talking to the Manager of a consulting firm who felt she couldn’t keep track of the pipeline and the current jobs the firm was handling.  They use ACT! as their sales tool. 

I made two suggestions
1 - keep a spreadsheet for two months of your prospects and clients fees and use the weekly team meeting to update it
[this is a near-manual work-round - but it should serve to keep a regular focus on prospects, invoicing and revenue streams.  When they’ve used it for a couple of months, I suggested creating a report from ACT! to subsitute and automate the process]
2 - tracking current client jobs.  Write a single page template summary for each job.  Keep them in a marked coloured folder on your desk, i.e. somewhere public, and hand-write updates on job stage, sub-contractors, payment terms, next action dates. Then each team member can access the file at any time and it’s readily at hand when you have a quick thought or something changes.
3 - Put a recurring diary note in to block out time each month to write your monthly report with a reminder to email the team 2 days earlier to send in their information for your report.

Oh, that was three suggestions…
I am out of the office now but will add the spreadsheet template later for anyone who wants to use it.

These are things I enjoy and so do well.  I’ve done most of them many times and can give you references, if you need.

In no particular order….

1 - Mentoring and coaching anyone with business development responsibility or who has to collaborate with biz dev to do their job better and get results

2 - Moving the whole company to an Enterprise 2.0 operation.  This is a more open relationship with its customers and prospects though using web 2.0 techniques (for yourselves not clients) and creating the open culture internally that enables outsiders to recognise the ‘personality’ of the agency - bypassing traditional outbound communication methods

3 - Facilitating an away day for a client or your senior team

4 - Improving your new business methods and, particularly, pitching

5 - Running a training session on "New business for non-new biz people"

Personally I just don’t do pod casting.  I have an i-pod and i have i-tunes but haven’t downloaded the latest version of I-tunes… but there must be some people and businesses that are ready to do this as Nick seems to be building a business in this area. 

the check list of items he puts up is useful… but hardly rocket science.  This is a good check for ANY marketing activity.

• Will anyone listen?
• Is there a payoff?
• Can we engage?
• Do we know our audience?
• Is the audience podcast-savvy?
• Do you have clear objectives?

But who are the agencies he’s rushing round seeing… digital agencies that don’t yet do pod casting…. seems like VERY FAR behind the curve.

Or maybe it’s a follow-through on my work about web 2 when I found that they don’t do it for themselves….. only for clients.