Challenge
Poor sales performance is the major contributor to limited business growth. It’s a truism that you can’t save your way to long-term success as an agency owner. Growth is the fuel for your future and sales to new and existing clients – it is the most important lever you have.
Why do so many agencies get it wrong? What are the best agencies doing and is it only about attraction and getting on the pitch list?
Ask yourself some of these questions below:
| Question | Why It’s Important |
|---|---|
| Do you have a proactive outbound sales engine that consistently delivers the growth you need? | A proactive outbound sales engine is essential for identifying and developing new business opportunities that you don’t have today. Only 3% of your market has a developed brief for service (the pitch list). You need to have a way to appeal to, and influence, the 7.5% who understand they have a problem but haven’t taken action yet and the further 30% who can be persuaded they have that problem too when you educate them. Selling to 40% of the market is where the exponential, year on year growth is at. |
| Are you adding scaled new logo clients every quarter? | Regularly acquiring new clients is crucial for sustaining growth and expanding the business – you can’t farm what you don’t have. But so many agencies have a developed client service but very little new logo focus. |
| Is your average sale size big enough? | Increasing the average sale size helps in boosting revenue and profitability. Deal size is within your control if you can quantify the cost of the client problem to them and translate that into the value when its solved. Fitting to a client budget is not maximising the value, showing them what they should spend to gain multiple times return is where the big contracts come from. |
| How much sales cover do you have in your pipeline? | A healthy sales pipeline ensures that the business has a steady flow of potential clients and revenue. If you need £2m of delivered revenue then you need at least 3x that in the pipeline. Scrub your pipeline and see what is really there. Are there enough suitably qualified leads at various stages to hit your numbers? |
| Are you upselling enough to current clients? Could you do more? | Upselling to existing clients is a cost-effective way to increase revenue and strengthen client relationships, but it takes conscious thought and planned deliberate action to make it happen. Strategic account planning is something that is missed by agencies over and over again and means they are not aiming for what the value could be, instead accepting what the client plans to spend at best. What a waste of an opportunity! |
| Are you selling a blend of long-term retained contracts and projects or relying on shorter fixed-term projects only? | Project work is hard as it has to be constantly replaced to stand still . A mix of long-term and short-term retained or agency of record contracts provides stability and flexibility in revenue streams. You need to actively go seek these engagements to build the underlying run rate and value in your client base. |
| Do you have the right talent, suitably motivated to identify, qualify and win new business? | Having the right sales talent is crucial for driving business development and achieving growth targets. Agencies don’t tend to be great at bringing this talent on board. Some seek to shelter behind the less assertive business development label shy of admitting they want to sell things. The best agencies are not embarrassed by the need to sell, embrace the discipline, professionalise it and go active expecting to win new business. It takes certain talent to do that job with the right motivations, controls and inspection. |
Solution
Develop a repeatable and scalable sales and marketing strategy that can work with existing and new clients. Focus on building a proactive outbound sales engine, increasing average sale size, and upselling to current clients. Ensure you have the right talent and motivation within your sales team. If you haven’t hired this talent successfully before then get help from someone who has.
Why it’s essential
A strong sales and marketing strategy is crucial for driving consistent growth and profitability. It ensures that the agency can attract and retain clients, increase revenue and build a sustainable business model.
Building a successful sales engine is complex, difficult risky and time consuming, if you’re not a sales expert then you need to get help from someone who is and who can help you get it right.
Waypoint can help you
Waypoint has experienced sales experts who have built successful sales functions and have helped hire, coach and mentored sales and client services people many times driving exceptional results.
