Is your sales process more Frankenstein than frankly strategic? Inspired by Johnny Cash’s song about a man who builds a Cadillac from parts stolen one piece at a time, Keith Smith chats with CEO of new business agency Incite – Alex Kirkpatrick – to find out how to streamline your sales process and have it runnin’ just like a song.
“Now the headlight was another sight
We had two on the left and one on the right
But when we pulled out the switch all three of ’em come on.”
Are you working with a Psycho-Billy Cadillac sales department? If so, you’re not alone.
It’s only natural that after a few years, a company’s sales effort might require an a-dapter kit, just like the song “One Piece at a Time” – a humorous tale about a man trying to build his own Cadillac by stealing occasional parts from the assembly factory where he worked.
In the rush to fill order books, a company might be willing to take on new business that meets a financial deadline but at the same time, places the resources of the business under unnecessary strain. So much strain that when the right piece of business does come along, the company’s departments are so stretched that they can’t do the job that they really want to do.
It’s a direct result of an uncoordinated sales strategy, or perhaps no sales strategy at all. Without a firm hand on the sales tiller, any ship can go adrift and before you know it the course correction required is drastic.
Sitting down with new business expert Alex Kirkpatrick, who runs one of the UK’s most successful new business generation agencies, Incite, it becomes clear that a company needs to focus on sales from the get-go. Working with a well-planned marketing drive, sales can literally make themselves, but working in an uncoordinated fashion, they might end up costing more than money.
Alex’s consultancy works with the most demanding of client types – marketing and advertising agencies, but his principles have been learned over the course of more than two decades and can easily be parlayed into any b2b or b2c environment.
Firstly, any new business isn’t necessarily good new business. As Alex says, there are many forms of bad new business but this number is far outweighed by the number of potentially bad clients: “Looking at long lists of data, making notes such as: ‘likely no money’, ‘would never work with us’, is a surefire way to curtail your market and destroy any chance of winning great clients from outside of your usual target suspect list.”
Alex recommends creating a client profile – an imaginary client that has all the features your company would find attractive: “from the type of person and internal culture you like working with, all the way through to the kind of product they sell and buyers they target.”
“The back end looked kinda funny too
But we put it together and when we got through
Well, that’s when we noticed that we only had one tail-fin”
Obviously, not all prospective clients have the same degree of appeal, so Alex always advises his clients to divide them up into three categories: ‘Must work with’, ‘Should work with’ and ‘Could work with,’ and typically, this list would be like a Chevvy tail fin: sharp at the top and thicker at the bottom.
When you don’t have a coordinated strategy, you can end up with ‘Frankenstein’ sales. These are sales without a framework or, as Alex sometimes finds, they are over-complicated by converging activities on social media and in different channels at different times: “If you think about the Must, Should, Could structure, then there are three established approaches to effectively target these markets: Account Based Marketing (ABM), InBound Marketing and Outbound Marketing.”
The ‘Must’ category (the thinnest) tends to be more one-to-one marketing-based. Creative and personal. However these take time and patience and could potentially take up to three years to come to fruition, depending on review anniversaries.
The ‘Should’ category can be broken down into common sectors and given the outbound marketing treatment, so sales calls and/or direct marketing using case studies of similar work or in similar sectors.
The ‘Could’ category is your widest possible audience and the right marketing treatment for this is usually inbound. However, as Alex advises, this is where the science part comes in because you know less about these prospects than you do the other ones, so you’ll need to create content tailored to very specific personas and you don’t know these people.
And while this may seem like a lot of work, don’t worry, help is at hand. In fact help might actually be in the same building as you, so it’s always worth introducing internal sales incentive programs to draw out any prospective closers working in the same company as you.
“Now gettin’ caught meant gettin’ fired
But I figured I’d have it all by the time I retired
I’d have me a car worth at least a hundred grand.”
If your plan is to use just word-of-mouth to sustain your business, think again there Red Ryder. As Alex says: “90% of agencies rely on referral new business for at least some part of their journey. Sadly for too many it is often how they start and grow and why they decline and ultimately fail.”
You will always need an ongoing new business or sales program because if you don’t, when you need it, it’s not there. If you rely on referrals all the time, you are not in control of your destiny and companies that do this “..are whatever they are referred to be,” according to Alex.
Alex suggests taking charge of your own sales destiny and to add proactive marketing campaigns that best enhance your company’s brand values: “Marketing your own brand effectively allows you to test technologies and tactics, creating cases and expertise that can be proved and sold to clients.”
“So we drove up town just to get the tags
And I headed her right on down main drag
I could hear everybody laughin’ for blocks around
But up there at the court house they didn’t laugh
‘Cause to type it up it took the whole staff
And when they got through, the title weighed sixty pounds.”
So the moral to the story is to be prepared for all new business eventualities. A company needs to be agile enough to be able to effectively react to all potential new business events – be it a cold request, a meeting follow-up, a call, an email, whatever the circumstance; your business needs a response that flatters the new business prospect.
“Make it look amazing,” said Alex. “Graphic design is so important, irrespective of whether your output is an aesthetic one, client buyers still care about design.”
You can adjust the response according to the type of lead, but don’t over-egg the omelet: “Better to get something good faster, than something amazing late,” says Alex. “Ultimately, look at your deck as a person.” Don’t drone on about your own accomplishments. Keep it tight. Keep it focused and keep it short because the prospect can always ask for more if they’re interested.
And as a CMO, it is absolutely part of your role to be contributing to the direction of your company’s new business strategy, working hand in hand with the business development or sales team: “CMOs should have a responsibility to sit at the heart of a company’s growth plan, to help develop a position, a proposition, build awareness, create cut though and increase conversation,” said Alex.
To help your company maximize its sales effectiveness, the following areas can be included as part of your bailiwick:
- Top (blogs and content), mid (case studies) and bottom funnel (products, process, proposals) content creation and promotion
- Search engine marketing
- Social outreach and management
- Events and Webinars
- Re-targeting through biddable media
- Lists and directories
- Intermediaries
- PR and speaker opps.
- Shows and expos
- CRM
- InBound platforms
- Product development
- Trends and innovations
- Compliance
When all is said and done, marketing and sales need to be as harmonious as Johnny Cash and June Carter Cash. One works so much better with the other when they both have the same intent.
Piecing sales campaigns together and being reactive, not proactive can wrong foot any company.
But when sales and marketing work hand-in-hand the effect can be stunning – as stunning as a jet black, fin-tailed 1960 Cadillac.
This time around, Q10 attempts to get inside the agile mind of Patrick Nandu – the owner of specialist new business development consultancy Booster. Patrick has successfully navigated the slings and throws of the new business economy by applying a detail-driven attention-to-detail approach to his clients’ new business pipeline development. In this interview, Patrick shares his thoughts on high altitude strategies.
What inspires you to go to work every day?
When you have your own business I believe that this should be enough inspiration – but you’ve got to enjoy it. Everything is down to you and determines whether you succeed or fail. I would never have set up BOOSTER if I didn’t feel inspired by what I do.
What has been the most pleasant surprise you found once you started Booster?
The main thing I noticed is being less stressed as I only take on the amount of clients I can handle compared to before when I had no say in that matter and just had to get on with it.
How does your ideal day at work go?
I get up early every morning, first thing is a coffee and quick look through emails, news and insights. I scan for anything pertinent that could help with the business development process. If all is okay, I’ll jump into the shower to be ready for 8.45am. Ideally I like to be finished by 6pm but sometimes I have to go on for much longer depending on what needs to be done.
What channels do you really love working in and why?
I enjoy working in a variety of channels, I couldn’t give you a specific one, as I believe you’ve got to be versatile and agile in all.
If you had one piece of advice to give someone thinking of getting into the world of new business, what would it be?
Be prepared to go that bit further than your competitors and most importantly, don’t do it if you’re not passionate about it.
What do you to do switch off from work?
I have a Private Pilots licence, so to completely switch off I try to go up at least twice a month. There’s so much to see and visit, Northern France is only a 40 minute flight away – very enjoyable particularly in the summer.
Who inspires you?
Nelson Mandela would certainly be an inspiration of mine, the sacrifices, hardship and sheer determination to achieve his goals could be applied to anything in life.
You’ve got to take a brand new prospect to lunch anywhere in the UK. Where would you go and why?
I would probably say The River Cafe in Hammersmith, serves great regional Italian food and fantastic terrace. I believe an environment can affect a situation, so somewhere relaxed, bright and of course good food helps.
What has been your proudest moment so far working at Booster?
I think the proudest moment for me was realising that I could set up my own business and acquire my own clients. It’s a tough and competitive sector to be in and I’ve managed to keep it going several years now.
Where do you want to be in ten years time?
Hopefully relocated somewhere in Italy, I love the food, fashion, culture and my partner is Italian, so a move there would be great whilst still managing a business.
If you would like to be the subject of an intense grilling of these proportions and you think you can stand up to the scrutiny, then please let us know by emailing us and submitting your details. We’ll be in touch soon.
If you have every wondered what it’s like at the sharp end of new business development for a successful agency, then look no further than The Advertist’s Q10 series. This time, grab a coffee or hot beverage of your choosing and sit back while Mr Mike Friend of Honchō takes his turn in the spotlight to give us an alternative take on how to keep the new business wheels turning, while possessing one of the cheeriest and most positive dispositions in the industry.
Take it away Mike..
What inspires you to go to work every day?
Discovery. You never know what you are going to find out there. I love walking into a business for the first time and exploring their world. I love finding out the little pieces of the puzzle, the depth of the problem and then sitting with my team looking at this maze to find the solution. It reminds me of The Wire! Ha. McNaulty and the team thinking, how are we going to crack this?
What has been the most pleasant surprise you found once you started working at Honchō?
Coming in from a large London agency, it’s been awesome to be part of a smaller team of 25 who are able to move and adapt with much more agility. Zero red-tape.
How does your ideal day at work go?
I’m not one of those “I’m up at 6am, gym, seize the day types I see on LinkedIn”. In fact I would say my routine was a lot more focused on knowing myself, knowing when I am on a hot streak and then trying to maximise it. I am lucky that my agency, Honchō, embraces flexible working to free me up to do this. For example, Monday morning before 10am I am complete rubbish, but Friday afternoon or Sunday night I often feel the most productive. I believe this has been the biggest change in the world’s working habits, and for those of us in Business development, we have to adapt to this. Customers want to look at your solutions in a time that suits them, rather than to ‘book a call at this time.’
What channels do you really love working in and why?
I am heading up our Automotive division for Honchō and I love it, the rate of change and the new technology for the future completely blows me away. The prospect of autonomous fleets and solar especially, future cities, the list goes on.
If you had one piece of advice to give someone thinking of getting into the world of new business, what would it be?
You have to actually like, or better love sales and want to be in it. A lot of people fall into it, hate it and don’t succeed and that’s because they never had the love for it. Don’t put up with a sales career, instead go do something you care about. As Jim Carey said, “it’s better to fail doing something you actually do love, rather than failing at something you never cared about.”
What do you do to switch off from work?
I play basketball twice a week in two different teams in the North west, and I adore the game. I completely switch off from anything: no thoughts, just movement. Its meditation for me.
Who inspires you?
Greta and all the young people protesting about Climate Breakdown; they are fighting for the future of our planet. When I was that young, we were fighting for someone with an ID to buy us some cider.
You’ve got to take a brand new prospect to lunch anywhere in the UK. Where would you go and why?
Love this question and a big part of me wants to say Nandos, ha. But, no maybe a tandem skydive, followed by a few beers. Forget the food. Let’s do something that makes us feel alive.
What has been your proudest moment so far working at Honchō?
Our rebrand to Honchō. It takes massive guts to rip up a very successful agency brand in iThinkMedia after 10 years of trading and start again. That’s what Chris Ailey, our owner did.
Where do you want to be in ten years time?
Retired, having built a legacy business division of Honchō Automotive.
If you would like to be the subject of an intense grilling of these proportions and you think you can stand up to the scrutiny, then please let us know by emailing us and submitting your details. We’ll be in touch soon.
In all of the confusion of what the role of the CMO is, we seem to have forgotten the one thing marketing is supposed to do; shift boxes.
There’s a lot of navel-gazing being done in the marketing industry about what exactly IS a CMO?
Just when we all thought we had a firm grasp of the new, digitally-enhanced, omnichannel lead marketing role, the powers that be decide to switch it all around again like some crazy 1970’s kids TV quiz show.
Now we hear that giant consumer brand owners like Coca-Cola, Unilever and Mars are redefining the role of a Chief Marketing Officer, to include oversight of content and messaging. And that’s just one example. Coca-Cola scrapped its global CMO role late last year and Johnson & Johnson’s first-ever global CMO Alison Lewis departed last month, as the company retired the position.
In a world dominated by TV, CMOs were necessary for fine-tuning a message through certain media channels, but the role has become less top-down, more flat, involving content distributions that touch upon a variety of different departments in any organization. The role today is more empowered for analytics and feedback.
So I’d like to propose another responsibility that seems to have been neglected in recent times; sales.
As a CMO, how often do you listen to the feedback from the sales channel and if you do, does it ever influence the campaigns?
The old role of Sales & Marketing Director was designed to have a balance of, well, sales and marketing. But can a sales & marketing director, sit with, under or alongside a CMO? I doubt there are many companies that can afford that kind of bandwidth, so most will just settle for a CMO at the top because it sounds better.
Even Unilever admits that they are suffering from fatigue when it comes to the marketer’s description of ‘Brand Purpose’ and it all seems – to under-informed people like me – that marketing is talking itself into a tailspin – Green-washing, purpose-washing, cause-washing, woke-washing et al.
Marketing has gotten a bit too up itself and that’s where brand experts like Martin Galton, Greg Jordan and Tim Hollins come in. These three chaps form The Beehive, which they stress in not an advertising agency but more of a creative hive. They’ve just begun publishing a book called ‘How to avoid brand bullshit’, which gives lead marketers and CMOs nuggets of advice that they may have forgotten in all the rush to be liked or socially correct.
A couple of their mantras are particularly relevant here: “Dog food is for Dog Owners – make sure you really know who you want to talk to and why,” is one example and “If your category doesn’t make sense to ordinary folk, it’s crap; no matter how smart you are,” is another.
Sometimes with marketing the more you think about it, the harder it gets. So do the simple things first.
Most of the time, the simple things involve analysing the sales channel; looking at what makes the product sell and what will make it sell better.
Great marketing involves listening to the sales feedback and adjusting the pitch, tone or proposition accordingly.
Take a case in point from the masters of long distance selling – Canon. There sits a company with a highly extended sales channel, involving a myriad of different vendors and third parties. Among its most successful vendors is Creative Systems which provides best-of-breed imaging products and service solutions to businesses.
Matt Wingham, a director of the business also takes responsibility for heading up the sales. Has done for years and he’s well known in the industry for plain speaking, no-nonsense client communications; it’s what makes him special. He recalls Canon presenting him with a product called the Image Press – a fancy piece of kit, pitched at print shops and high volume users for books and brochures. “It was a great product but it was competing against a Xerox product that was less than half the price, consequently, sales were almost non-existent,” he said.
“We went back to Canon and told them that if they sold the system without all the ‘added-value’ accessories, cut the price and aimed it at advertising agencies and high quality studios instead, it will sell. So they did. And it did; it flew off the shelves.”
I’m not advocating for all CMOs to start interfering in the sales channel but it’s important to remember that the folks in the field are often the best form of a marketing antenna you can get.
Without that valuable, free feedback, most CMOs will be forced into making assumptions or to cherry-pick data to fit the narrative, but the best, most assured way of staying a CMO is by making sure that your product sells.
Keith can often be found making trouble on LinkedIn (https://www.linkedin.com/in/ukkeithjsmith/ )
Business Development. It’s a job description that appears to have multiple definitions.
Back in the 70s and 80s even into the 90s, a sales job title conjured up images of smooth-talking jack-the-lads who could charm people into buying things they didn’t want; those who “had the gift of the gab”.
In the last decade, UK sales positions have been rebranded to make them more palatable to the more sensitive souls in the business world. A quick peruse of LinkedIn’s job board will reveal some interesting non-sales-sounding sales positions.
The Business Development job title is often used as a synonym for sales but the role of business development can sometimes have a perplexing number of applications.
Business development is a skill that blends creativity, new business sales, client development, brand marketing and account management. The weighting of each discipline can vary, depending on a number of factors, an obvious one being whether it is a board level or middle management-level responsibility (see diagram).
The responsibilities of the role encompass new and existing business. In general, business development executives have the ability to create new outreach strategies and ideas, and execute on them. At the same time they can work with a company’s existing client base’s marketing team to recommend and implement successful new strategies and plans to help develop brands and increase the individual worth of each client to the agency.
A business development director will tend to have a lot more responsibility for the direction of a new business campaign and plans for client strategies, while business development managers tend to look after the implementation and execution of them. Referring to the diagram, the ‘Business Development’ circle can move vertically and horizontally within an organization, depending on the strategy.
This is why many companies prefer to outsource the role to business development agencies and consultants. Finding people with the right mix of talents can be time-consuming, costly and – let’s be honest here – there isn’t always a permanent need for it; like accountants or managing directors because it’s not always a fixed, definitive job description. So the role is often an interim or semi-permanent position. Business development agencies have the ability to work at the board strategic level or at the coal-face, implementing and executing strategies that have already been agreed upon.
Where many companies fall short in the outsourcing route is by not taking the counsel of these seasoned business developers. Bringing them in at the very start of the process allows them to guide the plan, make recommendations and suggest ideas that they believe are achievable.
A good business development agency or consultant will insist upon a consultation and ‘warming up’ process before the strategy launches. This time is best used laying out plans, agreeing milestones and making sure that all the required resources are ready. Therefore, the marketing and brand teams need sufficient heads up, as well as the sales and leadership teams. If client development is included in the brief, then introductions will need to be made, to avoid confusion.
Once the blueprint is agreed, it is simply a case of letting the business developer loose and carefully managing the roll-out of the plan.
From this, we can see that the role of business development can encompass many different skills and influence multiple departments of a company. It is a highly creative role (from a business knowledge perspective) and it can also require fundamental sales techniques. Above all, whether it is an in-house role or outsourced, a good business developer can become an integral synapse between important nerves of your organization, allowing insight and intelligence to feed and help grow your company.
Article co-authored by Keith Smith, MD of The Advertist and Jon Cunningham, CEO of Prospeus. Prospeus provides advice, consultancy, coaching and training to help agencies develop effective business development, lead generation + cold calling strategies.
Our MD, Keith Smith was featured in marketing magazine RockstarCMO, discussing missed opportunities. Nothing to do with his failed music career but opportunities missed by CMOs who refuse to listen to cold approaches.
The full article can be found here