Your Prospects Are Surrounded By More Competitive Noise Than Ever
RSW/US is an outsourced ad agency business development firm that works specifically with ad agencies, marketing services firms, and PR firms to find better-qualified new business opportunities and get you closer to close
Your Prospects Are Surrounded By More Competitive Noise Than Ever
Our 3 Takeaways episode, 3 Ways To Break Through To Your Oversaturated Prospects, focuses on how digitally saturated your prospects are today-how much more competitive noise surrounds them than ever before.
Agency new business, and sales generally, has always been about getting your prospect’s attention in a meaningful way.
COVID has isolated many of your prospects, and while there are, in theory, less interruptions during the workday at home, it’s caused all of us to, arguably, work harder and longer.
And for those prospects with children, it adds another layer.
So-point being, your prospects are constantly surrounded by distractions, by noise (literally and figuratively). And it doesn’t go away after the first meeting or conversation – agencies often forget this.
A stat from one of our reports:
69% Of Agencies Say It’s Tougher To Break Through To Prospects.
There are many reasons for this, besides all the noise – agency positioning that doesn’t resonate, a lack of specialization, lack of consistency in the effort, and there’s more to the list.
But back to the noise: it’s not just your competition – it’s other companies and vendors vying for their business, their daily workload, their personal lives-most agencies don’t really think about the scope of all this noise and how much of it surrounds their prospects.
And don’t think just because it’s a referral that the noise goes away.
And so from this, another stat is apropos:
53% of marketers say agencies are not sufficiently aggressive following up after a meeting.
I’m curious, does that stat surprise you? It surprised me. I understand the trepidation, I deal it with it myself, you don’t want to pester your prospects to the point they shut you down.
A real-life example of this in action – a comment an agency principal made to our owner Mark.
This principal said he got exasperated with salespeople who didn’t stay with him after a good initial interaction, going on to say “We had a good meeting and then, as always, I get slammed. The salesperson left a voicemail or two, maybe an email and then he gave up.”
Agencies absolutely do the same thing, or don’t follow up at all.
So how to combat all the noise?
Certainly, it’s with some level of thought leadership content, an SEO strategy, and/or referrals, to name a few.
But prospecting has to play a part, and you have to remember this:
Use every channel in concert with each other.
It’s one of our mantras here at RSW, working with our agency clients.
And more specifically, use those channels in uncluttered spaces.
Sure, you’re going to use email and LinkedIn-but I’ve talked previously about the efficacy of snail mail. (And yes, it’s a more strategic process as many still work from home right now.)
Another uncluttered channel is the phone.
Sure it’s still used, but agencies don’t typically have the time, the talent or the inclination to do it.
Old school-sure, but it’s being used less and less, think about how often you get actual calls, or maybe I should say, effective calls – that’s an opportunity for your agency.
So keep in mind that this competitive noise exists: stay consistent, stay patient, and follow up appropriately.
