By Tracey Shirtcliff - MD Sohnar
In the current economic climate of bank struggles and consumer nervousness it’s essential that you keep your eye on the most important driver of creative success — your sales pipeline.
We often see creative companies who are brilliant at driving business for their customers but less than savvy at doing it for themselves. Creative companies tell us the best way for them to get new business is by word of mouth – and yes word of mouth is great – a true accolade that you are really good at what you do – however it relies on your clients knowing other great potential clients to recommend you too.
It’s essential not to leave new business wins and growth of your customer base to chance – you need to do for yourselves what you profess you do for your customers – great creative that drives you business – and from that it needs to be followed up, managed and supported.
So how do we know a successful creative agency?
At Sohnar we can often quickly and easily identify a successful creative business or one that we know is going to grow and succeed. 9 times out of 10 its one that has a defined sales process and someone responsible for new business. It helps if it’s not just the owner of the business – as this normally means that it’s a part time job and it most definitely is a full time job.
It’s very important to have a sales process in place, that you have mechanisms like brochures, case studies and a portfolio of great work. For starters case studies are key – and clients that will act as references – ask them and then keep them abreast of anyone who may get in contact.
You need to embrace cold calling – we know that no one (except the mad) jump up and down with excitement at doing it BUT having someone who does this and builds a data set of companies that you can target – named contacts – with a record of them and their buying habits. Knowing who to call to get on the roster – when pitches are coming up and recording this with times to call back, and budgets. We all know we need to do it but it’s all too easy to not to. You need a CRM system – something that manages all this data for the company. Great sales and new business people leave – unfortunately – so it’s essential that if they do – you hold all the key relationship information and all the follow-up times. It’s what you’ve paid them for.
As a general rule we’ve seen that only 3 out of 10 creative companies have a common place for data or a database with this type of information.
Every person responsible for new business also needs a defined sales target, this can be weekly, monthly, quarterly or yearly. From our experience a monthly target is best; as it doesn’t leave you to the last few months of the year to focus on it. But no matter the time scales any target needs to be measured, recorded and tracked. Expected sales against actual is key. As is being realistic it needs to be something that is achievable and it needs to be rewarded if the target is hit. And even better rewarded if it’s overachieved.
It’s also our belief that there is no better reward than a financial one – we encourage commissions. Transparency to see who is bringing in business and who’s not is also important.
It’s also vital to remember that sales is not an island – it needs to be run with the input of everyone in the business - if you can give your account mangers an up-sell target all the better. If someone finds business out of hours and they are a designer – reward them. Tell the business about this great person.
Recording of all new business needs to be split between current clients and completely new business so you can track it – and forecast for it. The most common reason for a creative business going bust is unfortunately the loss of a big client. Of the creative businesses that Sohnar sees, over 40% rely on one client for over 50% of their billing. That’s a huge risk to the business, your staff, and the future of your creative company.
There are lots of other important factors within the sales process that we’ve only briefly touched on, up-selling current clients, the use of CRM, and tracking targets and what these would be in a typical creative business.