One Forgotten Reason Competitors Hurt Your Chances For More Agency New Business

One Forgotten Reason Competitors Hurt Your Chances For More Agency New Business

One of the battles for us as an outsourced business development firm is the onslaught of ineffective/uninformed sales emails marketing services firms get on a daily basis from telemarketers and bots, professing to be effective agency new business generators.

I’m not talking about our legitimate competition, I’m talking about the random lead gen firms typically promising the world.

For example, a few first lines from sales emails I’ve received over the past 6 weeks:

-I can’t give up until I hear from you. Either way we slice it, we should grab 20 minutes:

-Hey Lee, I just wanted you to know that my favorite animal is the orangutan. I think it’s such a cool looking creature. Anyways-

-Noticed you were an alum of University of Kentucky with such a great mascot name. Fighting cats make great sports team, like tigers and cougars. Out here on the west coast things can be different. For example, the mascot of U.C. Santa Cruz is the Banana Slug — (true story :) Not much of a fighting contest with that creature, right?

-I just saw you here online and was emailing you to see if you could handle 50 appointments with clients of your niche this month plus a guarantee that we will close the first client for you?

First mistake with all these: they should check their database.

We’re an outsourced business development firm ourselves, a quick site or LinkedIn check would show that.

But these companies are all about spray and pray primarily.

These ineffective (or terrible) emails make my job harder to break through to agencies about our services.

Agencies get emails like this every day, often several times a day, and I know this because they tell me they’re bombarded by lead gen firms at a manic pace.

And so my company, RSW, is constantly in danger of getting lumped in with these firms, or, just as egregious, outright ignored, because there’s so much junk entering their inbox every day.

Why should you care?

Because the same thing is happening to your agency right now.

There are a lot of agencies out there doing a mediocre job of new business, sending poorly written and/or forgettable emails to that prospect you’re pursuing.

And like my examples above, it makes your job, driving agency new business, harder, because that very solid and effective email you just sent gets lumped in with 2 or 3 crappy emails your competition sent over.

So-I leave you with thoughts on what to do to fight this, and ensure a more effective new business outreach:

  • Differentiate yourself with a strong point of difference and content that speaks to your prospect’s challenges
  • Take the time to craft concise, direct and specific emails, especially as a prospect shows interest
  • Don’t just use email-use every channel in concert with each other: email, phone, social (where it makes sense) and yes, snail mail.

And you could actually flip the script on this, and look at all this junk as a positive.

Let competitors get ignored, and keep reaching out with informed, value-driven reach-outs.

It will take 6 to 8 touches, but it will ultimately pay off.

/by