Business development strategies

I've recently been onboarding lots of new agency owners into the Self Running Agency Implementation Group, my online coaching program. And one of the things that seems to be really common amongst those members, plus lots of other coaching clients I've had over the years, is the fact that when I ask them how they get their clients, most of them tell me that they have won clients up until now through referral and word of mouth and they've been able to build their business that way. Usually the reason why a client starts working with me, and indeed why many people have joined the self Running Agency Implementation Group is because they've hit a brick wall and suddenly what worked in the past isn't working any longer. And that's where they turn to a coach to get some help. So in this episode of the Agency Accelerator Podcast, I want to talk to you about winning new business and how it's a real fatal mistake to rely on referrals and word of mouth as your major business development strategy. So let's get on with today's show. Accelerate your agency's profitable growth with tools, tips and value added interviews with your host agency owner and coach, Rob DaCosta. Business development is a big topic and of course it's all always at the top of our agendas and perhaps especially at the moment where the world is changing and figuring out its new normal and some of the routes to winning new business that worked pre Covid probably don't work so well post Covid. As I said in the introduction, a lot of the times I will start my work with clients by asking them how they get their business and they will proudly tell me that up until now they've won all their business through referral and word of mouth. But suddenly that's drying up and they're realizing that that's not the only channel that they should be using to win business. Now there's two major flaws about just relying on referrals and word of mouth. One of them is of course, that you have no control over when those opportunities come through the door. And the second issue is that you also have no control over the quality of those leads. Now this is especially true if you' clear about your niche and your ideal target customer and those are the people that you want to target. But the referrals that come in won't always sit in that core niche. So we have some quality issues and we also have timing issues that we can't just turn that on and off. Now I'm not saying that you shouldn't nurture and keep word of mouth and referrals coming in because of course, absolutely you should. And those people that refer you, you should be focusing on educating them as much as possible about exactly who your ideal target customer is. So they almost act as mini workforce, but we need to do something else. And as I said, a lot of people have hit a brick wall and they what worked before doesn't work now. And that's when they reach out to me. So we need to think about what some of the other strategies that you can use to generate new business inquiries are. And that means having a really robust marketing plan that you're constantly implementing and allocating time to so that you're communicating with your audience and having a really good business development process as well as. But you can't really do any of that unless you are really clear about your target niche. And then once you're clear about your niche, you are really clear about your ideal target customer. Now I've talked about both of these topics many times before, so I'm not going to go into too much detail, but just to say that you can cut your niche a number of ways by sector, which is the obvious thing, but also by geography and also by the problem that you solve. So some people struggle with working out what their niche is because they only look at it from a sector perspective. And you can grab the ebook that I'll put in the show notes to tell you more about niching. And similarly, once you've got clarity on your niche, you can then start to identify who your ideal target customer is. And again, I'll put a link in the show notes to my ebook on customer avatars and customer Personas, which is really important thing to do to help you understand the sort of habits and the needs and the pains and the gains of your ideal target customer so that you can start to identify the best channels to reach them. And when it comes marketing, my advice, especially to busy agency owners who might be running a small agency and they're doing a lot of the work themselves, is first of all that you need to carve some time out of your diary every single week to work on marketing. And second of all, you need to make sure you are really consistent at it. So don't do loads of things because people are saying you should do videos, you should do blogs, you should do a podcast, you should be all over social media. That's all very well, but you'd be much better off picking one or two, two of those channels and focusing on delivering content to those channels in a really consistent Manner. So, for example, there's no point posting a blog once every six months. It's just not going to do anything for you. You need to be consistent at it. So if blogging is your major form of marketing, then make sure that you have a content plan and that you have scheduling a blog at least, say, once a month, if not more frequently. And mentioning a content plan is, is a really important point because whatever content you decide you're going to produce, you never want to sit down and go, what shall I write about today? Because I guarantee you if you do that, you won't write anything. You'll find excuses not to do it. Whereas if you've got a content plan that says the blog for this month is all about winning new business, then you know that when you allocate time to work on writing that blog, you know exactly what you're going to write about, and that is half the battle. So I'd highly suggest that you create a content plan that's looking at least three months in advance from now so that you never sit down and wonder what you're going to write about. So you need to decide what your channels to market are and be really consistent at it. And those channels, in part, should be dictated by a really good understanding of who your ideal target customer is. Because you've done the workshop work on your niche and your customer avatar. And that will enable you to say, okay, these people really use LinkedIn, so that should be a key channel for me. Or these, these people really like video, so I'm going to use video, or they like Instagram or whatever it is. But my advice is do a few things really well and really consistently in order for you to get some traction. Now, your goal with all of this marketing is to bring people into your world. Now, when you've got people coming into your world and they say, hey, you look like you're interesting, you look like you're putting some really useful content out there that isn't just about selling, but actually imparting some value. You now need to move those people through three stages. So let me just quickly tell you what those three stages are. Stage one is, I've brought you into my world. You know who I am, and you're interested in what I've got to say. Stage two is I'm in your world, I'm interested in what you've got to say, and at some point in the future, I'm going to buy from you. And then stage three is, I'm in your world, I'm interested In what you've got to do, you've imparted some great value and I'm ready to buy from you. And of course those people then reach out to you and they are your most warm, ideal target prospects who you will have a really good chance of converting because you've already built some empathy and trust with them. And remember, we have to take people through that sales funnel of know like trust before anybody will buy from us. And if people have been following your value added content over a past period of time, then they will already know, like and trust you. It's also worth bearing in mind whatever your sales cycle is because sales cycles are never very short. So if you do a short burst of marketing, there's a very small chance you'll convert much of that into business. I did some work recently to evaluate my email lists and my Google Analytics to work out what the typical sales cycle is for someone joining, entering the DaCosta coaching world and going through that journey to the point where they're ready to buy. And I almost fell off my seat when I worked out it was 13 months. So that means it takes 13 months of nurturing before someone will buy from me. And that is why putting consistent value added content into my world is really those people follow me for 13 months and then they jump out to say, hey Rob, I'm ready to buy now. Talking about value added content, I think you should always be focusing on 80% providing value, 20% selling. And it's an important balance here because obviously if all you try to do is sell, people are going to get turned off and leave your world. But on the other hand, if all you ever do is provide value, then people are going to love that, but they're never going to be having any kind of trigger to buy from you. So getting the 8020 rule of value plus selling is really, really crucial. So that's kind of a quick snapshot of how you can put content out there, how you can build up your tribe of followers and how you can get that balance of 8020 value versus selling. Now let's talk about the point where someone's reached out to you and they are ready to meet with you. Well, you want to make sure first of all that every stage of that journey you're being consultative so that you end up having a partner partner relationship with your customer rather than very imbalanced customer supplier relationship, which is where they end up beating you up all the time, forcing you to over service or pushing you down on price. And talking of pricing, you need to make sure that when you're quoting, you're taking a value selling approach, which again is a big topic and one that I have spoken and written about before. So I'm not going to go into that in too much detail now. But at every stage of the process you want to be consultative. You also want to make sure that the more qualified someone is in your sales process, the more time you invest in them. And that means early leads that reach out to you. You need to make sure you're qualifying them before you start agreeing to meet with them or have long phone conversations with them. I see too many situations where people jump into meetings with unqualified leads. They end up spending an hour of their time kind of giving away some free consultancy or advice to that prospect to only realize that actually they're in fact find mode. They don't really have a, they don't really have a budget or they're not the right decision maker. You've just wasted quite a lot of time doing some free education for them. Now I'm not against free education. It just shouldn't be delivered by your time. It should be delivered by assets that you, for example, have on your website and people you can direct people there for some kind of education because that's a great way of nurturing your leads. But you want to invest your time, which we all know is super precious, on those hot prospects that are genuine, that have a time scale, a budget and are looking for services from someone like you. Now, you only want to agree to writing a proposal for a prospect once you have truly qualified them. And as I said, that means that they've got a budget, a project, time scales, approval, and they are an ideal target customer for you so you feel like you can do a great job for them. Only at that stage would I agree to write a proposal. Often prospects will try to wrap up a meeting by saying, oh yeah, just drop me a proposal. And of course they've no idea that that's going to create a lot of for you. And they might be just doing that out of kindness to make themselves feel less awkward so that they aren't saying, actually I don't think we're a good fit, but rather sweetening the pill. But of course that's a ton of work for you. So only agree to a meeting when they're really well qualified and only agree to writing a proposal when they're even better qualified. Now of course, everything I've outlined in the podcast so far is a really robust strategy for generating quality leads into your world. And then converting them into prospects. But of course, this type of work delivers results in the medium to long term and you may be going, well, that's fine, but my referrals have all dried up. I need some results immediately. And if that's you, then my advice would be to look at your past clients and look at other people that you have not spoken to for a while. We tend to ignore a lot of that and we tend to start focusing on new business, but we really don't want to take the sort of mobile phone mentality to winning clients, which is don't pay any attention to your existing or past clients, just focus on winning new ones. That's not a good business model. So if you need clients in the very short term, I would have a re engagement campaign with all your past clients and all your past prospects that may have not turned into work. And I would just reach out to them to say, hey, just wanted to catch up to find out how you are, let you know what we're up to, tell them a little bit about some of the types of work that you're doing and say to them, if you happen to have any work or you know of anybody else, then please let me know. And, and this is a fairly soft way of reaching out to your past customers rather than saying, hey guys, I'm desperate for work, have you got something? Which of course is going to turn a lot of people off. So if you need business in the short term, then that's one of the strategies that I would use. And then another strategy I would use would probably be using LinkedIn as an outreach platform and like making sure every single day that I am increasing my connection. So that's people in my world and you're connecting with ideal target customers and then you are reaching out to them. Now reaching out to them doesn't mean ask them to connect with you and then send them a sales email because like me, that probably drives you crazy and I go out of my way to unconnect people who do that because they're not making any effort to get to know me and I'm not going to like and trust them and therefore there's no way I'm going to buy. So if you're creating new connections, then you need to start out by reaching out to them and saying, hey, this is what I do. Here's a great piece of content I think will be valuable to you and just provide value to those people for a period of time before you start trying to upsell or offer them a free strategy call or something. So that would be my second approach to needing business in the short term. So the first one would be re engage with old clients and old prospects, and the second one would be using LinkedIn as an outreach strategy. And as I've been saying all along, you need to do that consistently every day in order to get some real results from it. Okay, so there you go. A short and sweet podcast this week, but one that hopefully has some really good actions that you can take away and ideas that you can start implementing now next. Next week in the Agency Accelerator podcast, I'm interviewing Dan Englander and he is talking about business development in a lot more detail. So it will be good to hear his views on this and his recommendations about things that you can do as well. So meanwhile, please make sure you share the podcast and as ever, I' love you to leave a review if you wouldn't mind, because that helps the algorithm get the podcast out to more people. But otherw other than that, I hope you have a fantastic Thursday and Friday and a brilliant weekend and I will see you next week.