New Business-Treat Yourself As Your Best Client

One thing we know agencies have a hard time doing is making time for a consistent new business process.

Clients must, after all, come first-which means the agency typically comes last.

With that in mind, I traded emails with an agency principal recently who, to be up front, didn’t need our help.

She very kindly answered an email I’d sent to her and described in brief their current process, which included a manageable outbound and inbound effort, coupled with ongoing networking and notable local outreach.

And one thing she said stuck with me, that she and her team always treated their own agency as their best client.

A mantra worthy of any agency.

With that in mind, and noting again that it’s hard enough to service clients, much less consistently bring in new ones, I’ve listed 3 things you can do today to increase your chances of bringing in new business, even if your current new business process isn’t consistent:

1) Review your prospect-facing assets:

When was the last time you updated your blog, social channels, site or collateral print materials? Obviously a full-on site re-do is much more than a day’s work, but there are updates you can make today.

-Do you have dated content in your news section or blog for example? If it’s more than a few months old, update it or pull it. Not good to see a blog with the latest post from a year prior.

-Do you have social buttons on your home page? I still see agencies with an updated Twitter feed, but no Twitter button on the home page.

2) Take your proposals and turn them into new business tools:

You work hard on those and often they’re loaded with the same creativity as your client work.

Since you’ve already done the work, turn that proposal into an eBook, new case studies, or an email series.

Obviously you’ll have to take out references to the prospective client and any information that can’t be shared.

But you would be surprised how easy it often is to change past proposals into a new business tool.

3) Prospect your current and past clients:

Making the time to create content, build lists or reach out is indeed tough.

But agencies often have potential opportunities within current clients or with clients that have left.

If you have a client that’s large enough to have multiple departments or brands, you have an automatic referral.

Realize it’s not always that easy-departments may be siloed or there may be potential conflicts.

But worth exploring if you haven’t.

Same with past clients.

If you had a good relationship and it’s been a while, reach back out, or if your main contact has moved to another company, which happens often, make sure you stay in touch.

While only incremental, any (or ideally all) of these steps will make for increased new business opportunities.