4 best books on pitching for new business? Let me pitch them to you!

Find the best self-tuition books on how to pitch and win new business – we review four of our favourites. Perfect Pitch: The Art of Selling Ideas and Winning NewBusiness Written by Jon Steel Published – October 2006 A professional “pitching coach” for one of the world’s largest marketing conglomerates, Jon Steel shares his secrets and […]

Pay-with-a-tweet: helpful content marketing tool

Are you a business that gives away your content free (as we do)? Want to get some reciprocal publicity from your work? Take a look at Pay with a Tweet from the creative folks at Innovative Thunder We got a free download e book from Naked Marketing Manifesto They got promoted using our twitter account Symbiosis and ‘payback’ all in […]

Infographics used for business development

Former client, Ctrl-Shift, is a strategy consultancy focusing on personal data and its use online. They realised that the landscape of personal data availability online has changed hugely in a very short time and despite hysterical outcries about Facebook privacy settings, it is an important area that both brands and consumers should be knowledgable about. […]

Brand campaign brief template improvement

Rob Lane my colleague recently wrote a first draft of a new proposal for a client brand and I was delighted that he chose to insert a new section header, “Your responsibilities”. Imagine an agency telling a prospective client – not one we’re working with already – that they had to actively participate in delivering […]

Shout! Interview with Corey Eastman of Teehan + Lax

Corey Eastman is the new business director at top user experiencer agency, Teehan + Lax.  He approached us saying “your blog is on my daily RSS feed along with other agency sales blogs.  I try to stay up to date.”  And we were so flattered, we asked if he’d like to be interviewed. Creative – what […]

Shout! The Marketing Agency Blueprint: Paul Roetzer interview

Paul Roetzer is a striking, energetic man.  We met after I’d read his first book, the Marketing Agency Blueprint which explains how he has founded a PR agency in a 21st century mould. You worked in a traditional agency – how did they view biz dev? They didn’t really have it – they were reliant […]

How to Launch a skincare brand on a small budget

The local business incubator here in Auckland is called The Icehouse.  It’s an impressive place buzzing with activity. Creative Agency Secrets was asked to prove its salt by giving some free consulting to a new organisation, DirtyMan.co.nz Perversely, it is all about keeping men clean! Avoiding costly product launches The team is a start-up and […]

5 Questions to ask a creative agency at your pitch

Interviewing the brand and being interviewed as the agency are core skills for pitching. Getting to “the close” for new business and a signature on the contract requires a clear purchase decision from a brand decision maker.  If you are pitching to a brand – prepare for these questions that they should be asking you. […]

Selling disguised as market research

Business development tricks of the trade: Have you ever tried disguising new business prospecting as ‘market research’? Finding new customers to discuss your business products and services with is difficult for many people.  Many people have a natural fear of the unknown and ‘cold calling’ strikes a death-knell in many people’s darkest fears. Let Creative […]

Name checking tool for social media sites

Awesome, lovely superb…. just finding which social media sites exist today is hard but having to chase round and research available ‘names’ on each one for a new client – time consuming. Thank heavens for the wonderful people at NameChk.com They do the grunt for you. Now all I need is to go register the […]