3 Tips To Organize Your New Business Plan – 3 Takeaways Ep. 78

Our RSW agency new business summer road trip series started a few weeks ago-a different RSW team member creating blogs and videos talking about different new business plan issues and offering up ideas on how to best address them. 

And we’re gonna get into it right now. 

Welcome to “3 Takeaways”, your agency new business video series where we focus on one new business category and give you three takeaways to help improve your new business program. 

I mentioned our road trip content series, we also created a Summer Road Trip physical map, similar to the old-school fold-out maps. 

If you don’t know what that is, then. . . I feel very old. 

But if you’re an agency principal watching this, you’re probably getting one-watch your mail-old school. 

That map is intended to help you organize your own road trip into the world of new business. 

And on the way, you’re going to see those ever–present road signs, right. 

That’s what your first takeaway is all about, and it’s this:

Don’t get stuck in the Agency New Business Roundabout.  

If the person tasked with new business is an agency principal, client work is always the #1 priority, new business will take a back seat. 

If the agency hired a new business director, most last an average of 18 months. 

And you’ll start to feel like Clark Griswold driving in London-yeah-never sure exactly what the plan is to enter and exit the roundabout, and feeling like you’re just going in circles with no plan. 

So we’ve already got several posts you can access with those links, to help you start that plan. 

But we have 2 more takeaways and they’re important, here’s your second: 

Technology Is Your Friend, But Don’t Let It Overwhelm You. 

Just like, in an actual road trip, you may have an old school map as backup in the glove compartment, but you’re using Google Maps, or Waze-whatever your preferred app is.

And there are a lot of those apps, right? 

Just like there’s a lot of tech and platforms you can use to drive new business. 

And it’s all shiny and cool, but what do you really need, especially to start the trip? 

You really need a CRM and an email platform that tracks activity.

That’s what you really need out of the gate. 

Once you have those two things, you can start to research, and add other platforms/software that make sense and you will actually use. 

Don’t get buried with, or spend a ton of money on, all kinds of tech you’ll never use, at least not at first. 

And your third takeaway is-

Zig When They Zag. 

If you’re on the road, you don’t want to go the same way everyone else is going if there’s a better route less traveled. 

So with new business, for example: you know your competition is most likely predominantly prospecting, if at all, with emails and on LinkedIn. 

They are probably not picking up the phone to reach out to prospects. 

They are probably not using any form of direct mail. 

They are probably not creating a lot of content. 

The first two you don’t know for a fact, but people generally don’t like to pick up the phone, for example. 

Email and LinkedIn are great prospecting tools, but relying on them solely will not get you to your brand new client destination on this road trip. 

Find a way to stand out-mix up your platforms and use each of them in concert with each other. 

That way, you’re not hitting your prospects too often with any one platform or method, and you have a better chance of actually breaking through. 

Thanks for watching 3 Takeaways-lots of new business content our site at rswus.com, just hit the resources drop down.