Blog - jfdi

Out Of The Pond with Bobby Stoner @ Incubeta

Published: Wednesday 24th June 2026

We were approaching new business pitches by relying on our traditional agency playbook, standard auditing, manual competitive analysis, and pitch decks built on static data that took weeks to compile. We realised that our clients’ businesses were transforming at a speed standard pitch cycles simply couldn’t match. Prospects didn’t just want to see our past case studies, they wanted to know how we were deploying AI right now to drive efficiency and performance. It became painfully apparent that if we continued to pitch with the same slow, manual discovery processes, we were positioning ourselves as a legacy agency in a new live insights era. We needed to shift from pitching what we can do, to demonstrating live, AI-accelerated strategic thinking in real time. So we integrated proprietary frameworks and automated intelligence tools directly into our upfront pipeline and pitch processes. Instead of spending weeks scraping data, we used custom models to analyse a prospect’s entire digital footprint, identify creative performance gaps, and model predictive ROI scenarios within days. With the speed of insights we can now identify and articulate business cases quicker than our prospects are aware of them. This broke us free from the confinements of the traditional pitch…

Out Of The Pond with Ellis Hockin-Boyers @ Rowdy Studio

Published: Wednesday 17th June 2026

Business as usual in brand and design. Every year I’ve worked in agency land, the talk has always been about how we have to do things in a new and different way, that the landscape is changing, and that the way we’ve been doing it is stupid. It’s self-evident that things are changing and will need different approaches, that’s just a normally functioning market, but we need to stop treating every change like a new epoch or the set up at the start of a pitch deck. You don’t hear the architecture industry doing this! Here are my most conservative opinions in an industry full of radicals. Pitching is fine. Look, ok, a lot of it is poorly conceived and horribly executed – you can look at the archives of this very blog to find tales of some ludicrous and immoral client practices in pitching. However, on principle I don’t mind a pitch, and actually I relish the competition. If you’re selling something like design that is at least partly normative in its value, you should be expecting to sometimes have to show rather than tell. Let’s be honest, just showing case studies the way agencies sometimes do it in…

Out Of The Pond with David Griffiths @ Bravoed

Published: Wednesday 10th June 2026

There’s always a person behind a brief She’s the Ops Director. She’s also, somehow, the Head of Marketing. Nobody gave her that job. It accumulated. A founder too busy to own it, a team too stretched to pick it up, and a business moving fast enough that stopping to fix it felt like a luxury nobody could afford. She knows the content going out doesn’t reflect where the business actually is. She just doesn’t have time to stop and fix it. She’s too busy keeping it moving. We met her last week. And we’ve been meeting versions of her for months. We launched Bravoed in January 2025 with no case studies, no track record as an agency, and a market that had every reason to look straight past us. We had experience between us, decades of it, but not the kind you can point at. Not yet. So we productised: Sprint-based packages. Clear scope. Fast value. Easy to buy. We thought structure could compensate for lack of track record. It couldn’t. When we stopped pitching and started listening, the same thing kept surfacing. Not “we don’t have budget.” Not “we’re already sorted.” Something quieter. Founders repeating their own messaging in…

Out Of The Pond with Danny Roberts @ Sons of Graham

Published: Wednesday 3rd June 2026

One of the stats that stood out to us in the Barometer was that “for half of small agencies, nobody is dedicated to new business”. We were guilty of relying heavily on referrals and repeat work. Having just delivered on a long-term contract, we found ourselves in no-mans-land, with a flaky and unpredictable pipeline and a more competitive market. We were doing great creative work, but treating new business as something squeezed in around production deadlines. We realised we needed to become far more intentional about relationships, positioning and visibility. So we reshuffled internally. One of the founders stepped away from being heavily involved in day-to-day creative delivery and focused more on new business, outreach and partnerships. We refined our positioning as a strategic creative partner helping organisations communicate clearly. That shift also meant having earlier and more honest conversations with clients, focusing on longer-term partnerships and being more visible about our process and thinking. It definitely hasn’t been easy. For a small agency, moving founders away from billable creative work can feel risky, especially when pipeline already feels uncertain. The results are slower and less tangible at first, and there’s a vulnerability in putting yourself out there before you…

Out Of The Pond with Anjali Ramachandran @ Storythings

Published: Wednesday 27th May 2026

For fifteen years, Storythings has built its thinking around a simple but uncomfortable truth: your brand isn’t competing with your industry peers for attention – it’s competing with Netflix, TikTok and WhatsApp. That insight shaped everything we did, and it served us well. But insight alone doesn’t build the kind of client relationships that create lasting impact. Last year, with fresh eyes on the business, we recognised that the breadth of what we offered – while genuinely valuable – was working against the depth of partnership our clients actually needed. So we moved away from project-based work and toward sustained, embedded partnerships. We also sharpened our focus on B2B, a space where we already had proof: we’ve been working with payroll giant ADP for nearly seven years. The shift to deeper B2B partnerships gave us the idea for the messaging we’d been looking for. We’d been watching the content marketing landscape fill up with AI-generated material that all sounded the same: polished, efficient, and utterly devoid of personality. To a real human audience, it reads like communications from the undead. ‘Stay Human’used the language and imagery of zombie culture to make the case that the brands still winning attention are…

Out Of The Pond with Carla Burt @ Hue & Cry

Published: Wednesday 20th May 2026

The moment when we realised a change was needed Over the past year, we found ourselves reflecting on a question many independent agency founders eventually face. How do you continue to build an ambitious, resilient business in a market that feels increasingly pressured, without losing the independence that made it meaningful in the first place? Hue and Cry has always been proudly independent. That independence shaped our culture, our client relationships, and our pace of decision making. But as the agency matured, it became clear that independence is not static. It looks different at different stages of growth, and it needs protecting as much as it needs celebrating. The context around us was changing, and it called for a more deliberate approach. Finding a better way Rather than chasing growth for growth’s sake, we began thinking more carefully about longevity. The agency landscape has become tougher. Expectations are higher, costs more complex, and the traditional paths available to founders no longer suit everyone equally well. That shift in perspective led us to Inflectiv, a collective of category leading agencies united by a belief that independence still matters, especially at scale. Inflectiv Group exists to back the very best independent agencies…

Out Of The Pond with Catherine Frankpitt @ Strike Communications

Published: Wednesday 13th May 2026

The moment we stopped trying to justify our worth – and started proving it The first few years of running Strike, I spent much time and energy doing what most agency leaders do: crafting the pitch, honing the credentials and refining the proposition. We knew what we stood for – “communications for good”, specialising in working with charities, cultural organisations and public bodies – but when it came to winning work and holding our fees, we frequently hit the same wall. Clients completely bought into our values. But they weren’t always sure they could afford them. That was our pond – leading with outputs, the way most agencies do. Here’s what we’ll deliver, here’s the rate card for our time and expertise. Our value was framed in terms of our activity – media coverage, campaign reach, stakeholder relationships – when actually, the organisations we work with are focused on outcomes. The New Business Barometer 2026 reinforces our experience: it’s getting harder to price for profit, and harder to fill the pipeline. We made a conscious shift. We stopped selling PR and started selling proof of impact. That meant moving the conversation on from “what will you do for us?” to…

Out Of The Pond with Howard Angus @ Milestone Creative

Published: Wednesday 6th May 2026

In our new business conversations, one activity has always had more airtime than any other. Pitching. Back in 2020, when we started to experience a real change in the status quo, we declined to pitch for new business. Not because we didn’t want new clients but because we’d started to feel that the pitch process wasn’t a great way to begin a working relationship. For either us or for the client. The all-too familiar scenario…a pitch is called, the best people come together and everyone works incredibly hard for weeks. Lots of exciting, speculative thinking without real experience of the client, their people or how they tick as a team or an organisation. There’s always a beautifully produced presentation. And then you either win or, two out of three times on average, you don’t. For some, the successful teams who worked together often move back to their normal accounts or start on the next opportunity and a new team picks up the account. The client’s now working with people they haven’t met and wondering what happened. We tried something different. Now, when a potential client approaches us to pitch, we suggest starting with a small project instead. Something with a…

Out Of The Pond with Ben Preston @ Brand Genetics

Published: Friday 24th April 2026

Bursting Bubbles and Unlocking Opportunity We know it’s not a particularly calm market at the moment. Clients are under pressure, teams are leaner, and expectations are higher, particularly with AI in the mix. Alongside that, with economic and political uncertainty, plus a lot of movement on both the client and agency side with restructures, mergers, and teams shifting around, none of it is especially new in isolation. However, all of it happening at once does make it a more complicated environment to try and grow in. One of the biggest shifts we’ve seen in the last few months, is how much the competitive landscape has flattened. We’re regularly in pitches where large agencies, smaller specialists and even individual freelancers are all in the same mix. At the same time, briefs are being opened up more broadly, with clients exploring different types of partners, different approaches, and different levels of specialism. So, we find ourselves being considered within a much wider range of options. In practice, that means pitches feel less defined, and generally more crowded, than they did even a couple of years ago. Probably more so than at any point I’ve seen over the last nine years whilst at Brand…

Out Of The Pond with Alastair Poole @ Quantock

Published: Wednesday 22nd April 2026

The moment I realised we needed to change our approach came very quickly. Our previous Managing Director exited fast, with little handover, which meant there wasn’t the luxury of easing into a new way of doing new business. Overnight, responsibility landed with me to steady things, rebuild momentum, and work out what “good” even looked like in a shifting market. Initially, the instinct was to lean harder into sales: more activity, more outreach, more urgency. But it became obvious that this wasn’t what clients needed – and it wasn’t what felt right for us. Instead, we made a deliberate pivot away from a transactional, sales-led mindset towards something slower, more human, and more values-driven. Inspired by a jfdi talk, we focused on relationship building. That meant listening properly, talking less about ourselves, and being much clearer about what we stand for: trust, honesty, and long-term partnership. Rather than trying to convince clients, we aimed to earn a place in their minds by being upfront about what we’re good at, what we’re not, and where we can genuinely add value. Trust stopped being a buzzword and became the objective. A big part of grounding this new approach in reality was reconnecting…

Out Of The Pond with Pete Best @ Altair Media London

Published: Wednesday 11th March 2026

Rethinking Agency Value in a Changing Market One of the biggest shifts in agency growth over the last 12 months has been the growing pressure to prove value in a different way. Brands are not just looking for delivery. They are looking for partners who can help them navigate change, make better decisions and bring confidence at a time when the market feels more complex by the month. That underlying need is not new. What has changed is the level of scrutiny and the pace of change around it. Clear thinking, senior input and commercial perspective are no longer qualities that simply add value; they are what help clients move forward with confidence. That pressure is being driven by three things. First, mass AI adoption has changed expectations almost overnight. Second, consumer behaviour keeps moving, often faster than planning cycles can keep up with. Third, budgets are tighter, so every decision is under more scrutiny. In that environment, agencies that feel like a service become easy to replace. Agencies that feel like a partner become harder to remove. So, we changed our approach. Over the last 18 months, we have spent time tightening how we work, sharpening our value proposition…

Out Of The Pond with Jason Adams @ DRPG

Published: Friday 27th February 2026

The Theatre of Analogue We operate in an industry that’s constantly upgrading itself. New platforms. New tools. New ways to automate connection. But I’ve always believed new business is theatre. Not performance in a forced sense, theatre in the sense that people remember how you made them feel. In a world that’s increasingly digital, analogue has become disruptive. I once made a 3d printed tennis shoe that doubled as a desk top phone charger. It sounds playful, and it was, but the intention was serious. In a sea of slides and identical credentials decks, we handed over something physical. This unexpected creation broke a pattern and became memorable. For a major telecoms brand pitch, our strategy centred around the idea of ‘opening up.’ Instead of explaining that concept on a slide, we built a front door branded to the client including the frame and a step and installed it in the presentation space. The client physically walked through our thinking, and we won the business. Not just because of a prop, but because we demonstrated that we think in experiences, not presentations. When pitching to a luxury automotive brand, we encapsulated the entire proposed experience that is to be part…

Out Of The Pond with Hattie Matthews @ Uncharted

Published: Wednesday 14th January 2026

Breaking Free from the Pond: Redefining New Business Beyond Hours and Pitches The moment came into sharp focus for me again when launching Uncharted last year, but its roots go back further. In 2016, when Accenture acquired Karmarama, one of the first questions they asked us was deceptively simple: “What products are you selling?” Cue slightly bemused looks. The creative agency model was to sell bespoke thinking, full creative solutions, priced on hours – but there were some learnings for us from the consultancy in terms of what we were selling and how. Fast forward to today. With pricing power declining, services becoming commoditised and AI dramatically reducing both the time and people required to deliver work, it is painfully apparent that continuing to approach new business in the same way as the past is unsustainable. What is the point in filling pipelines with pitches, giving away our sharpest thinking for free, or measuring new biz success through meetings and pitch numbers, not profitability or value created. It was clear that as a new agency we had the opportunity to do something different. When we founded Uncharted, we made a decision: we would never sell hours. Instead, we focused on…

Out Of The Pond with Richard Aldiss @ THG Studios

Published: Wednesday 7th January 2026

When growth becomes harder to unlock, it’s tempting to fall back on what feels familiar and proven rather than rethink what’s possible. Over the past 12 months, we’ve realised the more impactful response has been to innovate by doubling down on the capabilities that already set us apart; our creativity, our 200,000 sq ft studios environment, and technology. SMASH by THG Studios and the World’s first AI-driven Immersive Shoppable Catwalk are the result: Creative platforms designed to create authentic, branded IP that fuses culture, experience, and technology. That in turn, helps brands connect more meaningfully with audiences and unlock growth. SMASH by THG Studios captures the momentum of the UK’s fastest-growing sport, bringing the world’s first immersive padel court together with a YouTube original content series to create a format designed for participation, branded content and shareability. And our AI-driven, immersive, shoppable Catwalk sees us partner with Topshop, alongside PayPal and Google Cloud, to evolve the traditional fashion runway, reimagining how brands deliver immersive experiences and how audiences engage with fashion. Turning these ideas into reality hasn’t been without challenges. Building confidence to invest, both internally and externally with clients ahead of guaranteed outcomes required a significant investment in proofs of…

Out Of The Pond with Kian Bakhtiari @ THE PEOPLE

Published: Wednesday 17th December 2025

Last year, we started the process of productising our offering and making it easier for brands and agencies to access and buy our services. The hypothesis was that smaller productised offerings like workshops, programmes and monthly/quarterly services would lead to long-term retainers and would prevent the usual agency “feast or famine cycle”. However, after 12 months of trial and error, it became apparent that productising our agency services wasn’t the best strategy for us – it might work for other agencies or propositions. The primary reason was that, in general, sales of smaller products required the same level of resources and a similar sales cycle length, but for a much smaller project. We pivoted to using our new products and a range of “free” offers to deliver value, build relationships and boost inbound leads. The focus on adding value helped us become thought leaders in helping agencies and brands understand Gen-Z and diverse communities. Instead of spending our finite time, resources and energy on outreach, we focused more on helping prospects understand the world of young people. And that way, when they needed help with research, strategic direction or ideas – we would be top of mind – and they’d…

Out Of The Pond with Nick Adams @ Sense

Published: Wednesday 10th December 2025

Heart over Hustle During my time chasing the silver bullet (that game changing, transformational new business strategy), for 19 of our 20 years one component has remained consistent – identifying proven sales talent to lead the new business charge. That rare species of sales professional who’s proven to open doors, close deals, guided by impressive sales acronyms and clandestine persuasion tactics. The counter intuitive pivot Over the past year, we made a deliberately unconventional decision about our new business approach and already we think it’ll be one of the most transformative steps we’ve taken. Instead of hiring a traditional sales-driven New Business Director, we promoted someone who had spent ten years inside Sense but had zeroformal sales experience. On paper, it looked counterintuitive. In practice, it’s paving the way for a very different approach to business development. Our new Business Development Director had worked in both our UK and US offices, giving her an unusually rich and intimate understanding of our work, our culture, and the nuances of what we do best. She’d been the Account Director on some of our flagship clients so had spent years with the sleeves rolled firmly up, walking the walk. That history has brought…

Out Of The Pond with David Atkinson @ Space

Published: Wednesday 3rd December 2025

Pitches are the most costly part of running an agency, and so choosing which to focus on and which to reject is a critical decision. It’s easy to bemoan the cost of wasted work from losing agencies, and also the ideas not selected even for the winning agency. But the cost goes beyond the financial repercussions. Its also about the missed potential of that time and money, the damaged morale, and the late nights and long hours that come from dedicating agency resources into understanding of a brand, team and opportunity which you previously had little or no knowledge of. A heap of work therefore goes into understanding the best conditions for success. We’ve discovered one particular playing field that has increased value in comparison to the cost for Space. When we look at a more competitive landscape (agencies we fear, perhaps being an outlier or maverick client choice on the pitch list), it seems to galvanise us more and capitalise on our courage and resilience as an agency team. We see the extra effort come out, the ruthless focus on the aligned goals, and the consistent energy in the right direction. Our win percentage is higher in these situations, when the chance should be…

Out Of The Pond with Ben Sheppard @ Shoot To Kill Studios

Published: Wednesday 26th November 2025

When I meet people and they find out that I’m MD for a Commercial Production Company, they are always interested in how it works and the creative process, but also how difficult it must be at the moment in regards to business. It’s fun discussing the first two points, but I seem to surprise people when I acknowledge that it can be hard, but that we’ve had success in ensuring work is still coming into the business, but importantly it is work that is meaningful to us and with partners that we want to work with. Not just a “yes” to every project. However, let me take you back 12 months. To build a pipeline we were trying different tactics from outreach to intermediaries and everything in between, but we hadn’t found a way that felt natural and successful to STK. It felt like we were trying everything in the playbook. We had to cut the noise of “this is how you do it” from all parts of the new biz world. We wanted to establish a way to build a pipeline that was aligned with STK’ values and that the leadership could deliver on consistently. This was driven by…

Out Of The Pond with George Sanders @ Fox Agency

Published: Wednesday 5th November 2025

Your prospects are stupid, lazy, and selfish. This is my sales philosophy. And, yeah, as a philosophy goes, it’s unlikely to rival Socrates or Nietzsche in terms of tone or being GCSE-textbook-friendly – but I guarantee they’d have subscribed to it too. Because when you believe your prospects are stupid, lazy, and selfish, it changes your whole approach to how you engage with them. The truth is your prospects probably aren’t any of these things (some definitely are, granted). They’re hopefully smart and driven and generous. But that’s the risk – because the most intelligent people may also be time-poor, the hardest-working have the least time, and the most-generous just not having the knowledge. Where their circumstances aren’t perfect, we risk creating work for them – through a lack of clarity, concision, or value. And where we create work for them, we create friction. And, as we all know from those GCSE textbooks again, friction slows things down. So how do we avoid friction? Assume they’re stupid. Be clear, customer-centric, and jargon-free, right from the off; no acronyms, initialisms, or showy terms. Our job is to make our products and services obvious. The benefits, challenges, and consequences of missing out.…

Out Of The Pond with Jonathan Jesson @ M3.agency

Published: Wednesday 29th October 2025

In the pursuit of new business, there are lots of things we could be doing to move the needle. But that doesn’t mean we should be doing lots of things. It’s good to be busy of course, but let’s not mistake activity for progress. One of my key learnings from 25+ years in agency new business, is that focus is critical. Focus on doing a few things, really well. You’ll have no doubt built your ideal client profile and a sumptuous list of top prospects to engage. Your presence at intermediary engagements and networking functions is ubiquitous. You are alive in the commercial world, poised to react to triggers such as newly appointed Marketing Directors and M&A activity. And you can probably set your watch to the cadence of your outbound campaigns (I’m personally a huge fan of print DM). But to focus your in-house New Business team’s efforts purely on cold door-knocking is to risk limiting growth outcomes, let alone the retention of said team’s specialist sales personnel. It’s a cliché but it’s true: ‘Growth doesn’t care where it comes from’. Your sales pipeline certainly won’t thank you for its flotsam and jetsam of intro calls with cold prospects…

Out Of The Pond with Dan Gibson @ BeenThereDoneThat

Published: Wednesday 22nd October 2025

What if the problem wasn’t awareness – but the way we were trying to earn it? BeenThereDoneThat has always grown through word of mouth. Our clients refer us because we deliver. NPS backs it up. So does our track record with some of the world’s biggest brands. But the problem (you may be shocked to hear) is that word of mouth doesn’t scale. And we weren’t showing up in enough new conversations. So we reframed the brief. We asked ourselves: if we’re a network business – built on a platform of the world’s best thinkers – why not use that same model to unlock our own growth? That was the spark behind Inner Circle – a curated community of progressive client-side marketers. People who get what we do, because they’ve lived the problems we solve. Inner Circle is not about selling. It’s about serving. We give our Inner Circlers access to: Expert talks on the most pressing topics Career support, if and when it’s needed Peer connection And yes, referral opportunities – but that’s never the lead Because here’s what we’ve learned: if you lead with value, people lean in. It hasn’t always been simple. Shifting from ‘clients’ to ‘community’…

Out Of The Pond with Becky Hipkiss @ We Are Futures

Published: Wednesday 8th October 2025

At We Are Futures, we always challenge our clients with the question:“Where is your permission to play?”By that, we mean: what gives you the credibility, the authenticity, and the right to show up in a particular space? And this year, we realised we had to ask the same of ourselves. In a market where expectations are higher, impact needs to be more immediate and measurable, and relevance is constantly being redefined, it became essential to reassert what gives us our edge. For us, that’s our people, our network, and our agility. We were leaning on the strength of our heritage and case studies. But recent opportunities – including pitching for new business and repitching for some of our biggest clients – showed us that wasn’t enough. More and more, clients were asking us to make the business case for why what we do is a necessity, not a nice-to-have. It became apparent we needed to refine not just what we say, but how we show up. So, we refreshed our proposition. Not to reinvent who we are, but to better express the value we deliver in today’s landscape. We leaned into our strengths, sharpened our articulation, and made our difference…

Out Of The Pond with Andrew Smith @ A-Vision, DRPG

Published: Thursday 2nd October 2025

The Value of Expertise: Why Communications Must Be Priced on Value, Not Hours If corporate production is now within everyone’s reach, what really sets one agency apart from another? The answer isn’t the kit, or the edit suite, or the number of hours billed. It’s insight and ideas. Knowing and understanding the client spotting the message that will cut through, and shaping it into a story that makes people care – those are skills built over years, not hours. And yet, paradoxically, these are the very things our industry has been giving away for free. We load pitches with clever ideas and creative thinking, while billing clients for the tangible mechanics of production. The result? A long-standing habit of undervaluing the most important thing we bring to the table. That made sense in the old days, when cameras cost a fortune and editing was the preserve of a lucky few. Clients paid substantial fees because there simply wasn’t another option. But those barriers have all but disappeared. Today, the same technology sits in everyone’s pocket, and powerful software can be downloaded for less than the price of a Friday night takeaway. Add artificial intelligence into the mix, and the entire…

Out Of The Pond with Patrick Murphy @ MCA

Published: Thursday 2nd October 2025

Over the past year, I realised that MCA had reached an inflection point. We’d built a strong reputation and a global footprint, but I could see that continuing to grow at scale would require a different approach than the founder-driven model that had got us this far. I recognised that if we wanted to unlock the next phase of growth, I needed to bring in new partners and allow more senior leaders to step forward rather than keeping everything centred around myself. I made the decision to secure outside investment after we had devised a long term vision for the company. After plenty of meetings with different potential investors, we secured a partner in YFM Equity Partners, that gave us not only growth capital but also the governance and expertise to scale sustainably. At the same time, I am shifting my role from being the central decision-maker to enable a stronger senior leadership team so MCA could run as a platform business rather than a founder-dependent one. The challenges were numerous, but going through external investment means an incredibly rigorous due diligence process. The investor wants to interrogate everything and not leave anything unturned. That’s stressful as the amount of work for yourself…

Out Of The Pond with Barnaby Cook @ The Auspicious Group

Published: Thursday 2nd October 2025

I’ve been running agencies for 20 years (hence the grey hair) and during that time clients have slowly been moving towards engaging agencies that can deliver multiple services – and rightly so: being able to solve communications and skills problems from end to end is often preferable to working with suppliers that only offer one service line. The approach in the early days at one of my previous agencies (I co-founded Casual Films), was to just to say ‘yes’ and work out how to do it afterwards. Whilst that can work when you’re small, it doesn’t wash with enterprise clients. Clients are now more aware and more knowledgeable than ever of the skills they’re looking for, and that means agencies must be agile enough to quickly bring in (or buy in; more on that shortly) that expertise. Clients won’t wait two years for you to develop it organically. Which brings me to the way we’re doing things now. Without a doubt, my ‘pond’ was filmmaking. After my exit I considered building another film company but was worried it wouldn’t provide the opportunity for me to learn and develop professionally. Meeting Rachel Pendered, my Co-Founder at Auspicious, was what gave me…

Out Of The Pond with Sam Jones @ Joint

Published: Wednesday 20th August 2025

A while back, I decided to host my first-ever dinner party. Until then, the idea had seemed about as appealing as descaling the kettle. But something in the balance of my life had shifted. When warm lighting and audible conversation start to feel better than noisy bars (even if it means tackling a mountain of dishes) you’ve officially entered dinner-party territory. The question was: how to make it memorable? Unbeknownst to my guests, I’d spent weeks turning my living room into a themed escape room. A bossa nova guitarist strummed quietly in the corner. A sultry voiceover narrated a (wildly embellished) tale based on the building’s history. Midway through the night, the lights cut and a glowing basket descended past the window, lowered by an electric winch I’d mounted on the roof. Utterly over the top. And when someone shouted, “Sam, you need to do this as a job,” I realised in many ways I already did. Because new business is its own kind of production. Every email, every call, every touchpoint is a chance to reflect the creativity that we sell. It’s not about the old-school, Harry Wormwood sales approach of shouting louder, talking faster, pushing harder. Sales needs to…

Out Of The Pond with Toby Cosser-Hindle @ Publicis Groupe

Published: Thursday 14th August 2025

Swim In As Many As You Can My Out of the Pond moment wasn’t a single flash — it was a slow realisation that came from navigating new business across almost every type of environment. From start-up shops and mid-sized independents, through to working with intermediaries and now at the scale of Publicis Groupe — I’ve seen how growth operates at every level. Partially intentional, I wanted to see what enabled growth from start-up to enterprise and everything in between, because one day I’d have my own business, or I’d be running someone else’s and ‘how to grow a business’ was my biggest curiosity. What I’ve learned, is that there is no single “right way” to win. The real magic comes from knowing which playbook to apply — and when to rewrite it entirely. A unique perspective I’ve gained for myself, and a lens I recommend trying to focus on. In my time at smaller agencies, growth is visceral. It’s fast, gritty, personal — everyone’s in it. You learn how to hustle, how to create impact with zero resource, how to turn a pitch around in days and how to generate new new biz. But it can also be reactive…

Out Of The Pond with Richard Morris @ Whistlejacket

Published: Thursday 14th August 2025

I was looking over our conversion rate and wondering why it wasn’t quite what it used to be. It wasn’t disastrous by any means – still decent – but there was a noticeable dip over time. I couldn’t put my finger on it. The work was just as strong as ever, we were pitching to the same types of clients in the same sectors, and the team had remained consistent. So what had changed? And then I realised. Over the agency’s 10-year history, our total pitch conversion rate had averaged around 40%. In the last five years, when we pitched remotely, that figure remained broadly the same. But when we turned up to pitch in person? That figure dropped dramatically – to just 8%. What had changed at that five-year point? Well – me. I had become disabled. And right in line with that shift, our in-person performance changed. I had been present at every one of those pitches. Let me be clear: I don’t believe there’s any conscious discrimination going on. I don’t think anyone was thinking, “Whistlejacket’s work is clearly the best, and will make the biggest difference to our business, but I don’t want to work with…

Out Of The Pond with Nikki McCulloch @ Unlimited

Published: Thursday 31st July 2025

Winning New Business: Playing for Club and Country Successfully marketing a group of agencies comes with a unique set of challenges. There are four brilliant agency businesses within the UNLIMITED group, each with their own specialisms, positioning, customers and prospective customers. Talking about them collectively could very easily have been a bland average of their messaging. We needed to be able to combine those offerings, yet still be distinctive and have a strong story to tell. How to play for both club and country? Agencies can be a sea of sameness for clients, with so many good agencies capable of doing very similar things. It’s tempting to be a chameleon and try to appeal to every client, to keep lots of doors open. But anyone likely to be reading this has probably experienced the results of that approach. To grow you need to win the ‘right’ clients. So you need to be crystal clear about who you are, what your real strengths are. To stand for something. Human Understanding was ours. We have neuroscientists, behavioural scientist, data scientists, researchers and strategic planners embedded in the business, the Human Understanding Lab. Everything we do is underpinned by a deep understanding of what makes customers tick. It’s woven…

Out Of The Pond with Lucy Coughlan @ Tigerbond

Published: Wednesday 23rd July 2025

Arriving at an agency proposition is like playing a game of buzzword bingo – everyone claims to be integrated, insight-driven and creative. It can be difficult to identify a USP in such a crowded marketplace and even more difficult to nail your proposition and shout it from the rooftop! How we turned our genuine strength into a business development tool The definition of community has evolved dramatically over the past two decades. Once rooted in geography – where you lived, worked, and socialised. Now it exists on Reddit threads, in Slack groups, across social platforms, and IRL. The way we communicate with and engage these communities has had to evolve, too. Community has always been at the heart of what we do. It’s not just a service offering, it’s how we win and retain clients. It started in the heart of communities, geographically, 35 years ago and has evolved with the channels and tools we now have available to speak to groups of people with particular passions and interests. We know our stuff and we deliver. But we’ve long known we weren’t articulating or telling that story loudly enough externally, especially with more and more clients switching on to community-driven…

Out Of The Pond with Kate Howe @ MSQ

Published: Wednesday 16th July 2025

Over the last year, a key turning point came when we realised that our usual approach to pitching – focusing on our capabilities first – no longer felt as relevant in a climate where clients have started looking for something different. With challenges like AI disruption, data overload, global uncertainty and budget unpredictability, we saw that what clients really need right now is actually a partner who gets their world and can help them prove their impact internally to the CEOs, CFOs and the board. That meant we needed to shift from selling solutions to starting strategic conversations that were laser-focused on the point of need. This mindset shift, starting with their business reality and pressure points, not our pitch, has made our approach feel far more relevant, and it’s strengthened both conversion and client trust. Behind the scenes we’ve been evolving how we work, introducing digital products, incorporating AI into workflows etc but we hadn’t updated our narrative to explain this. We had the odd slide not the end-to end-story. So we’ve updated our approach. We now frame every conversation around the specific pressures they’re facing. Be it supply chain disruption, tech integration or needing to do more with…

Out Of The Pond with George Perry @ Identity

Published: Wednesday 2nd July 2025

In the last year, we noticed a recurring pattern: we were investing substantial time responding to procurement-led briefs where we had no established rapport with the client. These reactive opportunities often lacked transparency and limited our ability to influence outcomes creatively or strategically. It became clear we were spreading ourselves too thin and compromising the quality of our work. This realisation prompted us to re-evaluate our approach and define clearer criteria for what constituted the right opportunity. We decided to be more deliberate about where we focused our energy. We built a more structured pipeline strategy that combined proactive outreach, thought leadership, and deeper research into target sectors. By concentrating on fewer, higher-value prospects, we shifted from being reactive to being purpose-led. We also encouraged our teams to engage earlier in the buying cycle, creating opportunities to shape briefs and demonstrate our value as strategic partners. This opened doors in new markets and helped us reposition from a supplier to a trusted advisor. The biggest challenge was cultural. Business development teams are naturally driven to chase every lead, and saying no can feel counterintuitive, especially when targets are in play. We had to build confidence in our new process and…

Out Of The Pond with Laura Perry @ Tangerine

Published: Wednesday 25th June 2025

Tangerine has had huge success with organic growth, but as we scaled past 110 people and £8m+ in revenue, we wanted to take a new approach to new business to sustain our future ambitions. The creation of the Head of Growth role was a crucial first step in rebuilding the function from the ground up. And we’ve learned fast and adapted even faster. The biggest learning, which came pretty quickly, was not to say yes to everything. There is real power in recognising that you are not the right fit for every potential lead that comes your way, and that’s ok. It felt uncomfortable at first to say no, but pursuing relevant opportunities that aligned with our values, our purpose and with brands with a shared ambition to do great, effective work, was the right move. In order to make this change we have had to be brave and set clear boundaries and criteria to help us determine what a ‘good fit’ looks like with three key factors: Can we do a great job.Our strength lies in creative effectiveness, so our ideal client partner is one where we’re able to work together to deliver and demonstrate tangible business impact. Human…

Out Of The Pond with Jaison Mistry @ McCann Manchester

Published: Wednesday 18th June 2025

Anyone working in growth knows the drill – you’re spinning multiple plates, juggling the pipeline, supporting on live pitches, trying to grow existing clients and trying to keep the marketing tap running. It’s a constant balance between short-term hustle and the long game. But over the last year, it’s become loud and clear just how noisy it is out there. Marketers are being hit from all sides – open LinkedIn and it’s a blur of thought leadership, events, roundtables, podcasts series…all genuinely good stuff. But from our side, staying relevant and front of mind across the year is tough. So, the big question became: how do we stay visible and interesting outside of our usual events and marketing activity? That’s when we decided to go a bit old-school – physical mailers. Before Covid, physical DM was a big part of our strategy – and they worked. But when everything shifted online and offices emptied out, we parked them. Fast forward to now. Then we thought – hang on… when was the last time a client got something fun through the post? And honestly… it’s been a game-changer. People might not be in the office every day, but when something tangible…

Out Of The Pond with Lucy Mart @ PrettyGreen

Published: Wednesday 11th June 2025

Freezing Cold When I moved into my current role and took on accountability for our business development we didn’t have a great conversion rate. It wasn’t shocking by any stretch but I knew we could do better! From analysing our previous year’s new business performance, I realised that we were more likely to convert leads generated by a recommendation or from an existing relationship. This won’t be new news to anyone in bus dev and of course the insight is supported by industry data such as the jfdi New Business Barometer which consistently calls out chemistry as the key factor for clients when choosing an agency. Warmer, Warmer, Warmer In order to focus us on improving conversion we made the (some might say crazy) decision to decline any ‘cold’ new business enquiries that came into our inbox – by cold I mean a lead where no one in our agency had a connection to the brand / business / client team. And instead we only focused on developing and unlocking ‘warm’ leads through our networks. We knew that declining ‘cold’ inbound leads could negatively our pipeline – we could end up with no pitches if we weren’t careful! But we…

Out Of The Pond with Oya Mustafa @ Recipe

Published: Wednesday 28th May 2025

This year I found myself staring down a familiar challenge, but in a new context. Budgets were tightening. Projects were delayed or had disappeared completely. The opportunities in front of us weren’t aligned with who we are, or what we stand for. And despite having reshaped our position around long-term growth and values-led work, old habits crept in. The pace of the industry can trick you into thinking speed equals success. But we’ve learned that real progress comes from alignment, not acceleration. So we paused. Ripped up the plan. And doubled down on what always has set us apart: our people and our principles. The real test came when our largest client, BetMGM went to pitch. We could have jumped in. Instead, we made the bold call not to repitch. Not because we didn’t care – but because we did. We had committed to only pitching when it truly aligned. We knew the partnership we’d built. We trusted in the chemistry, the work, the team. And weeks later, they came back. That call didn’t just validate our approach. It proved that saying no, when done with purpose, can be the most powerful yes. With that clarity, we were also able…

Out Of The Pond with Steve Garside @ TMW

Published: Wednesday 21st May 2025

How a Simple Shift Changed Our Game When I joined TMW, I was super excited to get started across the full suite of capabilities we could offer. Within weeks, I found myself bouncing from an experiential opportunity on a Monday to a CRM creds on a Tuesday, with an advertising pitch on the Wednesday. It was the dream job for me, as someone who had been in the pureplay CRM space for so long. This newfound integrated toolkit I had in my arsenal really got me excited. But it soon became a real problem. Our approach was being misinterpreted, and we were being seen as jacks of all trade and master of none. Simply put, we weren’t converting enough opportunities. It only takes a few losses before you revisit the pipeline and suddenly, there’s not much there. We needed to change what we were doing. And we needed to do it fast. One Tuesday (I remember it was a Tuesday as I got out of swimming lesson duties for my girls), I stayed late. I printed every case study I could find on the server and stuck it up on the wall, and I began to categorise what work we…

Out Of The Pond with Alana Herington @ Exposure

Published: Wednesday 14th May 2025

Momentum in 2024 was strong – we were running at 100 miles per hour, and it paid off with a healthy pipeline and exciting new wins. But in that pace, we didn’t create space to reflect, embed learnings, or think about how to sustain the energy. When 2025 kicked off we wanted to make sure we reflected on the success of the previous year by resetting slightly and re-engaging the whole Exposure team with a more inclusive and consistent approach to new business. We introduced a few practical new business rituals that brought the wider Exposure team into the process. For example, we ran a session where every team member contributed two real contacts they could reach out to and two dream clients. This helped build a shared sense of ownership. We also launched a regular internal session, where the pitch-winning team shares the story behind a recent win, breaking down the approach and what we learned. It’s about building a consistent growth mindset across the agency – where new business isn’t a separate function, it’s something we all contribute to. 2025’s client delivery was (and is) busier than ever off the back of 2024’s wins. The challenge was introducing…

Out Of The Pond with Louise de Ste. Croix @ BrandOpus

Published: Wednesday 7th May 2025

We’ve always done things differently. From our founding in 2007, we introduced a retainer-based financial model that helped us build long-term strategic partnerships. Unusual at the time for a brand design agency. We also championed a return to in-person working, believing that being physically together powers collaboration, boosts creativity, and gets to better outcomes faster. It’s what makes our work more effective and more enjoyable. In 2020, we became an Employee Ownership Trust (EOT), meaning everyone at BrandOpus is a partner and invested in the agency’s success. Long-term partnerships and strategic client relationships are still at the heart of our model. But by 2023, it was clear the landscape and our clients’ needs had significantly changed. Larger agencies were getting even bigger, with many becoming part of sprawling networks. At the same time, smaller agencies were emerging at pace, and more clients were building in-house teams. We knew we had to evolve again and communicate our creative difference as an independent agency, louder and clearer. We’re doubling down on our superpower: creating meaningful, connected, and effective visual identity systems. This is where we add the most value for our clients. By focusing on where we make the biggest impact, we’ve…

Out Of The Pond with Caroline Ayling @ JAA Media

Published: Thursday 1st May 2025

Chemistry Meetings – From Proposition and Case Studies to Creative Co-Collaboration With a refreshed agency proposition and total belief in our point of difference as the media agency that backs the underdog, the biggest challenge I’ve faced over the last year has been navigating the “Chemistry Meeting”. You’ve turned around a competitive RFI (likely in a fairly short period of time that may or may not have involved a bank holiday weekend) and ticked the right boxes to make it through to the next stage, where you eagerly get to meet your potential new client. A year or so ago we were doing 80% of the talking – giving the client 10-12 mins for questions at the end of a sometimes rushed hour in the boardroom. We had creds decks full of somebody else’s successes and teams that felt on display and scripted rather than being their natural brilliant selves. The problem was, we were all hydrogen and we were starving the oxygen in the room. OK, that might be an analogy too far, but we needed to address the balance to start making the right bonds and important IRL impressions. Finding the Fizz and Spark… The first step to…

Out Of The Pond with Carl Hewitt @ Hewitt Matthews

Published: Wednesday 23rd April 2025

We noticed a trend of a few prospects going quiet after strong initial conversations. Ones we were confident we could help, and who seemed genuinely excited in the meetings. When we finally got honest feedback from a few of them, it hit me: they weren’t saying ‘no’ or stalling because they didn’t believe in the work or in us, they were saying no because buying an agency is more of a complex and often daunting process than we recognise at times. For us agencies, pitching a new website or a media retainer is routine, it’s what we do every day. But for a client, it’s often a huge decision, full of unknowns, internal pressure, and perceived risk. We’d become so used to selling our services that we were moving too fast and forgot how scary it can be to buy them, which was holding us back from winning deals. In short, our sales process didn’t empathise with the prospect well enough. So we changed the way we sell. We decided that we would be the one to ‘slow things down’. To do this, we broke down the journey into clearer and lower-risk phases, introduced smaller, fixed-scope pieces of work to…

Out Of The Pond with Emma Gunning @ BMB

Published: Wednesday 16th April 2025

There was a point last year where we were investing time and energy trying to break into new circles, land cold intros, and chase shiny new prospects – just like everyone else. The industry was in flux: clients were rethinking agency models, procurement was playing a bigger role, and even the most compelling creds decks were getting lost in crowded inboxes. 2024 was a tough new business year. Meanwhile, in the background, we had a network of people who already knew our work, enjoyed working with us, and had simply drifted out of our day-to-day. We realised we didn’t necessarily need to look further afield, we needed to look closer. We stopped obsessing over ‘new leads’ only and started reconnecting with the people we’d already built something with: former clients, colleagues, contacts from past projects, partner agencies. We dropped the sales talk and reached out as humans to check-in, catch up and listen. We also got out from behind the keyboard – more coffees, more calls, more real conversations. That human approach matters more than ever now. When someone already knows you, or at least knows of you, you don’t need to break through the noise. You skip the sales…

Out Of The Pond with Dan Pritchard @ Program Agency & Tech South West

Published: Wednesday 9th April 2025

Twin tracks, that’s always been my approach. Don’t just build an agency, forge a community. In times of change, the true strength of your network is tested. Program Agency works with innovation. That means we actually have a stake in achieving positive change through the work we do with tech brands, science parks and innovation-focused organisations across business, education and Government. And that means not just providing solutions to their problems as a service provider. It means not just being an agency amongst many competing for business. It means crafting and shaping an ecosystem where innovation can thrive. Program built Tech South West – now the fastest growing tech cluster in the UK. We have 3000 companies involved. In March, this year’s Tech South West Growth Forge launched, with AI, CleanTech and MarineTech accelerator programmes running. That’s 80 companies, working alongside our agency, and partners like Microsoft, Barclays Eagle Labs, Satellite Catapult, UWE Future Space and others. It’s high-paced, data-driven and impact-led. In March, we held our third SW of England Investment Summit in Bristol, packed with founders, fund managers, angels, and more partners. Once again, it sold out. In the coming days we launch the first in an ongoing…

Out Of The Pond with Chris Booker @ TRO

Published: Wednesday 2nd April 2025

Unlocking your key asset – people. People buy people, as the old saying goes. And there’s a huge amount of truth to it, with chemistry between both client and agency – and within pitch teams – being cited in the most recent jfdi New Business Barometer as the key factor in winning new business. But, let’s face it, too often the responsibility for developing the pipeline and delivering responses can rest on too few people’s shoulders. The new biz guy, the MD, or worse – with client service and creative teams often stretched with existing commitments – whomever so happens to have some capacity that week! In a world of increasing specialism; of people taking more active interest in their ‘personal brand’; and of the next generation of talent being hungry for training and development, we felt there was an opportunity. To get more employees integrated into the new business process, aligned with their own passions and interests. To increase the surface area of people who can prospect, at all levels. To trust people to take a little more responsibility, look beyond their usual remit and operate outside of their comfort zone, with the right support. In practice, that means…

Out Of The Pond with Sally Pritchett @ Something Big

Published: Wednesday 26th March 2025

The Golden Era When I co-founded Something Big 25 years ago new biz was easy. I was full of start-up energy and excitement. I loved meeting new prospects and prided myself on being able to win them ‘in the room’. As we grew it got more complicated. Our approach to new biz had to stretch beyond me and needed a strategy and a system that enabled us to track it. We recruited a new biz team, evolved our go to market strategy, started to track our conversions, calculate and compare our win rates, and set meaningful targets. We found our mojo and kept our foot on the pedal. That approach worked successfully for several years. The New World Then the world changed. Not a little bit or gradually over time but boom, like an alarm clock when you’re in a deep sleep. An unexpected referendum result ….a pandemic….the arrival of AI….in housing…..economic uncertainties….client budget cuts…. DEI roll backs……. procurement squeezing every penny from their supply chain……key clients being made redundant….. shifts in client relationships as they become more virtual….. what worked before does not work today. The skills and tactics we perfected are no longer as useful. The future for…

Out Of The Pond with Matt Lambert @ Dentsu Creative

Published: Wednesday 19th March 2025

“How’s the pipeline?” Three words that casually creep into conversations with my colleagues as I’m making my second/third/fourth cup of tea of the day in the DC kitchen. A common query, us growth folks have the answer down by rote. And although the pipeline had been healthy – even buoyant – this question had started to make my stomach flip. The niggle not the value of the pipeline but the number of opportunities we genuinely had a right to win. With such a diverse offering and ever-present annual targets, I was letting my head be turned by every new opportunity that presented itself, rationalising each as something we could convert. The slate was always full. Yet the conversion rate on value was impacted and the opportunity cost of the pitches we didn’t convert was high. We needed a back-to-basics moment and to properly qualify all new engagements. Heading into a new year (2024) we made a pact as a leadership team to triage every opportunity and agree a win strategy before saying yes. Straightforward stuff but only effective with a process you are religious about sticking to. We worked up our criteria for accepting a brief – a simple traffic…

Out Of The Pond with Brooke Harding @ BBL/P Group

Published: Wednesday 12th March 2025

We live in a very nice pond. I say that without any complacency. Our pond is a very hard working one, driven by extraordinary talent and a dedication to service and quality of output. One of the greatest things about it is the relationships that have been formed over many years between everyone at BBL/P and with our clients. The most rewarding part of my job is helping to create the conditions for those relationships to flourish. And back in September 2024, our pond changed significantly. Twelve years after starting the business, the founders placed 100% of the shares in the hands of a Trust to look after on behalf of all BBL/P Group employees. Being employee owned has had an impact on our approach to many things, not least to new business. There’s now an imperative for the management team to place greater emphasis on growth for the benefit of all. And there’s a strong sense from the wider team of wanting to be an integral part of that effort. Enlightened self-interest meets business development. It also drives the nature of our new business activity. A consensus in the business is that we’re looking for clients like the clients we already have…

Out Of The Pond with Debbie Little @ PRCA

Published: Wednesday 5th March 2025

Authenticity – The Hidden Superpower I’ve always believed in the power of authenticity. In fact my personal mantra for 2025 is Embrace & Authenticity. Authenticity fosters trust and connection, helps build meaningful relationships, boosts creativity and innovation and most importantly, helps personal fulfilment. At a recent Matchmaker roundtable attended by PR agency leaders that I’d hosted, we were discussing tips and insights for converting pitches. Our brilliant host provided a superb list of recommendations but one that stuck out for me personally was for agency teams to be authentic. Especially now when trust is high on client’s minds. But clients need to allow agencies the opportunity to show up as their authentic selves – whether it’s being able to hold a pitch at the agency offices so that they can see, feel and experience the agency, or ensuring that a Tissue meeting is a non-negotiable, face-to-face, element of the pitch process. Being Head of Matchmaker, the PRCA’s agency search and pitch management service, I offer guidance and support to both clients and agencies throughout the pitch process. And yes you’ve guessed it, allowing agencies to be their authentic selves is always very much on the top of the list when…

Out Of The Pond with Jamie Matthews @ Initials CX

Published: Thursday 27th February 2025

The 45% Problem – Why Clients Withdraw Budgets and What Agencies Can Do About It When I was exposed to the latest jfdi/Opinium New Business Barometer, here’s a stat that stopped me in my tracks: 45% of lost pitches fail because the client withdraws the budget. Let that sink in. Nearly half of all pitches—where agencies invest £30k-£50k (or more) of time and resources—end up going nowhere because the client pulls the financial plug. It’s frustrating, costly, and frankly, a bit baffling. But what’s really going on behind the scenes at the client end? And more importantly, what can we, as agencies, do about it? What’s Happening Inside Client Teams? At first glance, it’s tempting to blame the economic uncertainty of 2024 or shifting business priorities. But let’s be honest – clients often know their budgets are shaky before they kick off a 4-8 week pitch process. So why proceed? Here’s what might be happening: Internal Misalignment: Marketing teams may not have secured final budget approval before launching a pitch. Finance teams or leadership might step in mid-process with a hard “no,” leaving marketers scrambling. Shifting Priorities: Throughout a pitch process, business dynamics can change. A new CEO may arrive,…

Out Of The Pond with Myreete Stanforth @ Ketchum

Published: Wednesday 19th February 2025

When was the last time you got in touch with an industry contact – not to pitch, but simply to ask what’s really going on in their world? In business development with so many deadlines, we often have our heads down focussing on the here and now. Even with the adoption of AI in the mix, we can be set in our ways and unchallenged in how we show up for prospects and clients. Lately, my most valuable insights have come from candid conversations, 121s with someone who I’m not prospecting, who has no reservation in their feedback. Asking probing questions such as: What is the future of our industry in 2-3 years? If you were running an agency, what would you be doing to ensure that you were fit for purpose in 12 months’ time? What will your future agency partners do for you? If budget wasn’t a factor, how would you partner with your agency differently? How do you find the agencies you include in your search? What do people talk about in your hallways? I challenge you to do the same – pick up the phone, ask questions, and be open to the answers. You might be…

Out Of The Pond with Daniel Marriott @ Creative Artists Agency

Published: Monday 10th February 2025

Just Enjoy The Ride: Trusting Your Pitch Process Winning isn’t everything…it’s the ONLY thing. This is often a mantra I’d recite to myself internally when I needed to dig a little deeper or find that extra gear throughout an RFP process, working at breakneck speed to hit that deadline and be ready for showtime (is it just me or does it feel like we’re all cramming 3 months’ worth of work into 2.5 weeks for every opportunity out there these days???). Yes, I love winning, yes, its ended in the odd argument and no, I’ve never taken it easy on a younger family member in any form of competition (must be hereditary as it took me about a decade to finally beat Dad in Table Tennis one school holidays – another story for another day). Everything was always happening so quickly for me – receive brief, analyse, plan of action, execute – that I couldn’t get my head above the parapet to get a better (and more strategic) perspective on my approach to RFPs. While so many of our New Business family (and I would call it a family as it’s full of quirky/cool people that each bring something different…

Out Of The Pond with Holly Maguire @ Design Bridge and Partners

Published: Thursday 6th February 2025

Enthusiasm, energy and problem solving can serve us well in the new business pond – invaluable to those leading growth and things we unlock in everyone in the agency when prospecting and pitching. But sometimes the very things that keep us afloat can pull us under – particularly when the pressures of the pipeline and pitch ratchet up and we click into ‘urgent sales mode’ – telling our story with increased ferocity and velocity. For example – we receive the brief, huddle together and agree ‘what shall we say’, ‘what do they want to hear’ and ‘what’s the pitch story’. And we time ourselves hammering through that story within the requested 45mins leaving 15 for ‘Questions’ at the end. Staring at them wide eyed and exhausted during those 15mins then using those ‘Questions’ to reinforce our expertise or to validate the hypotheses we grabbed at when we first received their brief. We are now deliberately starting from a different place with our prospecting and pitching. Because to be a good story teller you first need to be a good story listener. To stop talking about yourself and ask better questions of the person in front of you…both to understand the…

Out of the Pond with Rachelle Headland: Consultant @ jfdi

Published: Friday 24th January 2025

We can easily fall into the trap of pitching for the sake of pitching when growth targets are high and opportunities seem low, and as tech and in-house teams transform the marketing services landscape. However, this can lead to poor conversion and distracts agencies from the critical long game of building relationships with their ideal clients. The goal of proactive outreach activity is to avoid costly pitches and that means creating opportunities for meaningful interactions with clients where the agency demonstrates their value – in the way B2B businesses do best. Trying to secure meetings on the back of our best work or the depth of our particular specialism, was hard, drawn out and more likely to result in a competitive pitch as we’re essentially waiting for the client to define the brief for us. So we became much clearer – through some trial and error – on the value we add and where we fit into the new eco-system – and developed low risk ways for clients to try us out and for us to demonstrate our value quickly. We identified that our hunting ground wasn’t actually clients without in-house teams or their own martech – but with them…

Out of the Pond with Isabella Gelston: New Business Director @ McCann London

Published: Friday 24th January 2025

Precision Over Reinvention: Cracking 2024’s Pitch Challenges at McCann 2024 has been a tough year for the agency sector. While Covid-19 feels like a distant memory, its ripple effects continue to shape how brands engage with creative agencies. The pitching process, in particular, has undergone a seismic shift – evolving to meet ever-changing expectations and aiming to ignite excitement and alignment between clients and agencies. But with evolution comes challenges, and 2024 delivered a big one: the radically mixed competitor field. For agencies, pitching has always been a game of strategy and storytelling. But in 2024, the shortlist dynamics changed dramatically. On one side, we saw emerging start-ups bursting with fresh ideas and entrepreneurial energy. On the other, established global networks flexed their expansive resources and track records. The result? A playing field that, for once, felt level. Clients increasingly chose to diversify their pitch list, intentionally seeking a blend of capabilities, approaches, and perspectives to tackle their business challenges. This shift forced us to rethink our game. No longer was it enough to rely on legacy reputations or bold creativity alone. To stand out, we had to get brutally honest about our positioning. Why were clients gravitating toward such…

Out of the Pond with Jon Goulding: CEO & Founder @ Atomic London

Published: Friday 24th January 2025

I think like many creative agencies, new business in the past came from offering clients better SOLUTIONS than the one they’re getting from their incumbents. But it was clear as the industry has changed so seismically in the last few years that growth as an agency was no longer going to come from offering better solutions but being an agency that was better at solving client PROBLEMS. In new ways and in new channels. It may sound like an obvious shift but it’s much harder to actually do rather than say you want to do it. We invested significantly in new, deep capabilities in new spaces, built a new proposition focused on transforming growth for clients, not just making better work and shifted our whole new business engine to a more direct model. Of course, to really make this shift takes investment, not just small incremental change. But as an independent agency you can only do that so long as you are confident in the growth you’ll achieve in the foreseeable future. It takes time and commitment and not least a big dose of holding your nerve. We now have 4 new agency offerings that are all enjoying double digit…

Out of the Pond with Sarah Woodhouse: Co-Owner & Director @ AMBITIOUS

Published: Friday 3rd January 2025

We were managing business development and marketing efforts using excel sheets which served us well initially. However, as we approached the £2 million revenue mark, it became clear that our processes were too fragmented and not scalable and hard to draw meaningful data from. With more team members involved in business development and as a board, with a key objective focused on getting deeper insights into marketing performance and pipeline management, the limitations of Excel became a bottleneck. We needed a centralised and transparent way to align business development and marketing efforts. We transitioned to HubSpot, a CRM and marketing platform that we consolidated all our business development and marketing activities through. This shift allows us to track interactions, monitor leads, and analyse data in real-time. By embedding HubSpot into our processes, we gained a unified view of where our leads were coming from and how effectively we were converting pitches. Integrating HubSpot into our workflow wasn’t easy because it required time, training, and commitment. There were teething issues (and still are) such as adapting to the new system, getting everyone on board, and ensuring data was clean and accurate. We would often revert to old habits and embracing the change took real effort. Despite these challenges, adopting HubSpot has…

Out of the Pond with Paul Houlding: Founder & Chief Executive @ isobel

Published: Monday 16th December 2024

No matter how good we are, we can all get blown off course from time to time or get lost, muddled, disheartened even. And given the last couple of years anyone could be forgiven for any of the above. It can seem as though everything is conspiring against success no matter how talented you and your people might be. It’s hard running an agency and winning new clients is becoming harder by the minute, becoming more and more like some ridiculous lottery nightmare. At isobel we are no different. We have had our fair share of headwinds and the year before last we wobbled. Coming off the back of a good year we accepted every pitch that we were invited to do and won very little. Probably one of our worst years for pitch/win ratio. Everybody was worn out from too much pitching and deflated by not winning. So what did we do? We took a good long look at ourselves and realized that we had lost sight of who we are. We weren’t being true to ourselves. We weren’t being strong. We were pitching for anybody that seemed to have a half decent budget (and some who didn’t) regardless of…

Out of the Pond with Tom Poynter: Managing Director @ KEEL London

Published: Wednesday 4th December 2024

We are a founder-led brand agency, and new business is critical to our journey, with everyone sharing responsibility for our success. But 2023 was a hard year for Keel for converting new business. 90% of our client portfolio is global so we tend to attract international opportunities but we’re equally keen to grow our UK portfolio. Some pitches we lost in the final cut and the feedback was that it was purely a creative decision. Others were lost due to clients acquiring companies, as we were pitching, which became a distraction. And others we just lost because the client preferred another agency. A lot of these pitches were in our control to change or switch up, but some aspects were outside of our control. Notably all these opportunities were via outreach or networking as we looked to convert suspects to prospects to friends…but it was taking a lot of our scarce time and resources, and bottom line, we weren’t converting enough of them, so we had to jump out of the pond. ‘Eat, Sleep, Lead Gen, Repeat’ wasn’t working and the agency was feeling deflated with no progress. We needed to switch it up. Like most agencies, time was scarce due to our ongoing…

Out of The Pond with Jessica Gibb: CMO @ St Luke’s & Co-Chair of the IPA New Business Group

Published: Wednesday 27th November 2024

It is not new news that 2024 has been a challenging year on all fronts for New Business and that keeping agencies top of mind for clients and prospects and maintaining a strong pipeline has never been more important. But what has also been clear in 2024 is that identifying and delivering innovation in response to client (current or prospective) challenges has been key to staying ahead. One such example has been production, which has been changing dramatically over the last few years and 2024 felt like a real escalation with clients demanding a different kind of output for their brand. Production questions appearing in RFI’s and clients asking to meet heads of production during the pitch process were both clear indicators of a sea change in requirements, especially concerning cost effective production solutions. So, we relaunched “Apostle Studios’, our in-house multi-media production capability, a team of creative collaborators with a ‘let’s do this’ attitude. Whether it’s low-cost social content deployed at speed, a reactive stunt, or an interactive build, we have built a proposition to make sure our clients can deliver rich content for its consumers at any touchpoint. This also included our expanded (in 2024) branded content capability,…

Out of The Pond with Richard McHardy: Founder & Co-Founder @ McHardy Collective and BD100

Published: Thursday 21st November 2024

The past 12 months have been tough…the word ‘roller-coaster’ has been used by both brands and agencies sooooo often yet not as a throwaway comment, genuinely with good reason. Uncertainty has reigned supreme and new business has been way harder to find. Even at the best of times, there are so many things that BD people must do constantly; be active, attend events, enter awards, communicate on social media, show empathy, show authenticity…show up!…research, plan, pitch, build relationships, gather intel, etc. etc. etc., but being VISIBLE is crucial and when your clients are unsure, your agency colleagues get nervy, and you – the BD – can get very, very twitchy making it even more difficult to be your chirpy, VISIBLEself! Whilst I love small groups, have no problem speaking to strangers and make a living out of connecting the dots between people based on gutfeel and instinct, I do suffer from anxiety on stage – I also feel a good amount of Imposter Syndrome generally. But personal brand and VISIBILITYare key ingredients to overall business development success, and I reached a point in April 2024 and another in October 2024 when I had to dig deep and try some…

Out of The Pond with Ellie Olliff: New Business Director & Partner at BBH

Published: Friday 15th November 2024

As the agency whose reason for being is ‘When the world zigs, zag’, we realised that we weren’t always practising what we preach. In an oversaturated market when all agencies are saying similar things, creds all look very similar and chemistry meetings follow a very predictable formula, we knew we needed to stand out from the sea of sameness of our own category and break out of ‘the pond’. It’s what we tell clients to do and we needed to listen to our own advice. Recognising the massive opportunity the explosion of AI offered, we decided to create our own AI new business tool, called the Zig Index. The Zig Index is BBH’s way of formalising cliches in a category. We take all the brands in a category, run it through AI and some brilliant BBH brains and we get a snapshot of the most used colour palettes, language and stories everyone else is using. The Zig Index then generates an ad that’s willfully generic. We’ve always done all this on the walls of BBH more informally, now we’ve just strapped some supercomputers on to make it more rigorous. Perhaps slightly naively we thought this would be a really simple…

Out of The Pond with Chris Pearce: MD EMEA & US, GreenPark

Published: Wednesday 6th November 2024

The main change for us wasn’t so much a question of stop doing this, start doing that. It was more a question of stepping back and realizing that we needed to be far more coordinated and strategic in our overall approach. We’d always been fairly successful at making direct approaches to prospects, building pipeline and creating opportunities. But we weren’t as joined up as we needed to be so this year we set out our strategic goals, defined the types of clients we wanted to help solve problems for and fine tuned our offering around omnichannel search and social. Alongside introducing better orchestration of our new business efforts we’ve also increased our use of personal network content outreach. By this I mean we’ve encouraged all of our staff to regularly post useful, insightful content that previously we may only have published on our company social pages and websites. ‘Go to Network’ over ‘Go to Market’ was a phrase I kept hearing in 2023 and we took that to heart in 2024! The challenges with this approach, of course, are rooted in the usual enemies – time, aptitude, commitment to consistency! It’s also fair to say that sticking to the strategic…

Out of The Pond with Tina Fegent: Founder @ Tina Fegent Ltd

Published: Wednesday 30th October 2024

I have been fortunate over the past 18 years, with client referrals and organic growth driving my consultancy business. However, over the last 12 months of sharing my weekly #TinaTells on LinkedIn, I’ve come to realise the importance of investing time in building your personal brand. People buy from people and want to know you’re the best trusted advisor for the job. A strong brand and clear proposition reinforce that trust and hopefully then leads to new business opportunities. While there’s value in staying within your niche ‘pond’ and honing your expertise, I found that stepping outside and expanding my network was key to unlocking even greater success. I would recommend networking and attending events that will broaden your thinking or meet a different community of people. For me this could be meeting new agencies; attending subject matter events e.g. on AI or the Future of News or attending CEO talks by the Marketing Society. As always time is a challenge. When you run your own consultancy, time is money and any time spent outside your ‘pond’ is when you are not earning but believe me, it is worth it. Be selective on the events and meetings that you want…

Out of The Pond with Oli Richards: Chief Marketing Officer, Beyond Collective

Published: Tuesday 22nd October 2024

“It will come as no surprise to those involved in growing agencies that 2024 hasn’t exactly been a vintage year. And when the market is tough, we usually tell ourselves that we just need to push a bit harder, be a bit louder, or chase down that story in Campaign a bit faster. We quickly realised that the solution wasn’t simply to do more, but to think more laterally about where our growth might come from. Instead of relying purely on hope that “something” would drop in from the open market – and shouting harder into the void – we implemented a strategy aimed at tapping into our existing networks. This included getting in touch with partners at other agencies, engaging with ‘warm’ prospects, and reconnecting with lapsed clients we hadn’t spoken to in a while. Via Yonder Media and Collective Studios, we packaged up our media buying and creative production credentials and started reaching out to more targeted audiences. We also have the advantage of being part of Worldwide Partners, a global network of independent agencies, which was a natural starting point for expanding beyond the UK. As we fine-tuned our offering, our reach quickly broadened. And it worked. Over the last 12 months, this approach has driven growth…

The jfdi / Opinium New Business Barometer 2025 is now live

Published: Wednesday 16th October 2024

The one-of-a-kind industry report that gives you the numbers, you need to measure and benchmark your performance, to put you on the front-foot.

Click here to complete it to be part of it and to ensure you receive the full report early in the new year to accelerate growth 👇 jfdi / Opinium New Business Barometer Survey See the film below of the exclusive 2024 event, where we reported and unpacked the findings of last years report – want to join the exclusive event in January showcasing this years findings? Just drop us an email on mark@jfdi.uk.com

Out of the Pond With Martin Jones: AAR

Published: Thursday 10th October 2024

“In 27 years of running pitches, “which is the campaign that you wish you’d never made?” is probably the best client question to an agency that I have ever come across in the agenda for a Chemistry Meeting! What was particularly interesting about it was the fact that for all the participating agencies it was the Creative Director who answered and in every case their explanation as to why they wished they’d never made a particular campaign always concerned craft / technical factors: “We only had enough money for a 20 second ad and we needed 30 seconds”, “I wanted to shoot it in South America but we had to use a studio”, “I wanted X as the voiceover but they weren’t available” were typical examples. However, as the client pointed out after the meetings, nobody said “because it didn’t sell any product”. Whilst agencies are superb at understanding their clients’ target audiences, they are often not quite so good at understanding their own target audiences. The requirement from clients for their agencies (and their work) to demonstrate value and show a return for “shareholders” has never been as great as it is today. Agencies therefore need to bear this…

Out of the Pond with Fran Brook: Head of Growth at Ultra

Published: Wednesday 2nd October 2024

“Becoming part of the leadership team of an agency that’s still in its infancy is incredibly exciting, and there’s a real opportunity to shape the direction of the business going forward. Since joining, my focus has of course been to look at the new business process and growth mindset of the agency – that being said, there wasn’t a proper process in place, so I’ve had to do a lot of work in setting us up for success with new business basics. Though there’s a lot of work to be done in starting everything from scratch, the big benefit is that I can put in a process that feels right and works for us. Coming into an environment with fresh eyes has meant that I’ve been able to sit with my team to really take the time to assess our business values and ambitions. I’ve challenged them on how we want to grow, where we want to get to, what new business we need to get there, and importantly, why. These are the key questions you need to ask yourselves when new business opportunities come in against how they ladder up to your broader business objectives. Thus far, they’ve been…

Top Seven Takeaways from Campaign’s Year Ahead Breakfast Briefing 2024…

Published: Thursday 18th January 2024

By Rachelle Headland Last week jfdi joined the Campaign Year Ahead Breakfast Briefing in London to hear brands and agencies predict the challenges and opportunities that lie ahead, and Rachelle Headland was there to give us the low-down: As someone who’s been a Managing Director of an agency and is now a new business consultant, I was interested in how agencies can sharpen their new business propositions to meet the CMO’s expanding scope of responsibility and also how agency leaders can create vibrant workplaces to get people back to the office and liberate creative teams to create their best work. Here are my top 7 take-aways: The ‘Great Negotiation’ between bosses and employees comes to a head. Jay Young, Chief Client Officer, Talon told us that this will be the year conversations between bosses and young people around hybrid working will come to a head. The tension is largely around the fact that the cost of a ‘basic level of life’ for young people exceeds entry level salaries and so saving c.£2-4k a year on travel is a good reason not to come into the office. Talon also told us that 76% of people agree they’ll be outside more in…

The jfdi/Opinium New Business Barometer – 2023 additional findings

Published: Tuesday 29th August 2023

Exploring the Insights from the 2023 New Business Barometer: Key Takeaways for UK Agencies In a dynamic and ever-evolving industry, staying ahead of the curve is crucial for agencies seeking to thrive. The 2023 New Business Barometer, a collaborative effort between jfdi, the UK’s leading specialist new business consultancy, and Opinium, an award-winning strategic insight agency, offers a comprehensive analysis of the UK advertising and marketing landscape. The sixth annual survey, conducted among 205 new business professionals in UK agencies, sheds light on new business performance trends in 2022 and insightful projections for 2023. Diverse Agency Landscape The survey encompassed a range of agency sizes, with 16 disciplines across 205 small, medium, and large agencies within the Marketing Communications sector. Ambitious Revenue Goals Medium-sized agencies emerged as the most ambitious in terms of new business revenue targets, witnessing a significant 47% increase from 2021 to £3,143 million. In contrast, small agency targets faced a dip of 14% to £719,000, continuing a downward trend over three years. Large agencies experienced a slight 2% uptick from 2021 to £6,509 million in revenue targets. Strategic Investment in Marketing Interestingly, the study highlighted diverse investment trends in marketing across different agency…

jfdi / Opinium New Business Barometer 2022 featured in the Drum

Published: Thursday 3rd March 2022

Large agencies’ new business spend bounces back; small agencies’ success rates fall Every year, new business consultancy JFDI partners with pollsters Opinium to create their New Business Barometer report. Following the release of this year’s report, we delve into its key findings and what they say about how agencies bounced back in 2021. This year’s New Business Barometer report has been released, bringing together data on the spend, successes, and struggles of new business professionals in the UK. Produced by new business specialists JFDI in partnership with strategic insights agency Opinium, it draws on a recent questionnaire completed by 116 new business professionals. Comparing this year’s data with five previous yearly iterations, the report tells a story of how the new business role has changed over that period in response to macro and market factors, as well as in-industry (and in-agency) developments. To read the full article, CLICK HERE

How to Build an Agency Client Referral Culture

Published: Thursday 10th February 2022

How to ask for internal and external referrals from clients. 1. Why Client Referrals Asking for client referrals is one the easiest and most powerful ways to get in front of new business prospects – an effective and proven strategy for helping to build new business pipelines. The problem is, many agencies don’t exploit this opportunity or if they do, it lacks consistency. Therefore, the benefits are not fully realised. And the benefits are numerous – if everybody was to offer up say 2 potential contacts, these are potential easy wins. 2. Who to ask Who in the agency should you be asking for help in identifying clients that could make referrals? You should definitely be asking the senior management, client services and those who are generally well networked, but the truth is that everyone has potential connections that could be of value – either directly or indirectly. 3. Mindsets Overcoming negative mindsets is the key to success. These negative mindsets hold people back, and include: – It’s not my job – Fear of opening up a conversation with clients who may then turn the spotlight on the agency’s (poor) performance – It looks desperate, like I’m being a salesperson – It…

Why agencies need to pitch like pigs

Published: Wednesday 2nd June 2021

We know we win the pitches we commit to. An intention to win is simply not enough. Pitching should be all or nothing. All in or fold. One pitch at 100% rather than two pitches at 50%. Clients want to know you want their business more than the other competing agencies. Saying it doesn’t cut it. You have to mean it. And that starts with you and your pitch team committing to winning it. Everyone wants to win but what does commitment look like? You may have heard the story before. A pig and a chicken were walking by a church where a gala charity event was taking place. Getting caught up in the spirit, the pig suggested to the chicken that they each make a contribution. “Great idea!” the chicken cried. “Let’s offer them ham and eggs?” “Not so fast,” said the pig testily. “For you, that’s a contribution. For me, it’s a total commitment.” So pitching is like ham & eggs, chickens are involved but the pigs are committed. That’s why we all need to pitch like pigs One smart agency we know ensures everyone is committed to winning by using a ‘triage’ system. The senior pitch leaders, who…

How to Create Pitch-Winning Stories

Published: Sunday 9th May 2021

“I know nothing in the world that has as much power as a word. Sometimes I write one, and I look at it, until it begins to shine.” Emily Dickinson Stories can help us to connect to others at a deep, almost primeval level through the power of their emotional energy. And stories are the narrative architecture formed by words. Words captivate and influence our emotions; they have stirred nations to triumph and instil hope. Used carelessly, they cause disappointment or worse still, wreak havoc. Every relationship we build starts with an interaction, with words. For us in new business, as in all spheres of our professional life, honing our communications skills, mindful of the extraordinary power of words, is an invaluable talent to nurture. By being imaginative and playful with words and thus stories, we build our credibility, trust and powers of persuasion. Facts alone are dry, uninteresting and easily forgettable, but stories we remember. How to create a pitch-winning story. Simply put, a story is about the transformation of a character, the hero, as he or she is tested through the unfolding of a series of challenges and struggles in the endeavour to achieve a particular goal. The…

Want better answers? Ask better questions

Published: Friday 1st January 2021

The truth is, most of us are pretty poor at asking questions. We can all do it, of course; we can all ask ‘What’s your name?’ without thinking too much. But once we move up the questioning hierarchy we need to do just that – think. Asking a good question isn’t something we just do and by ‘good’ I mean a question that delivers useful answers. Formulating questions of this kind is a skill that allows us to extract extra value, and therefore learning, during our conversations with clients, teams, mentors, groups – in fact just about everybody. Honing our questioning skills means that we can probe deeper and understand better our prospects’ nuanced thinking and needs. So, how do we ask better questions? The 5 Ws A friend of mine, a journalist at Bloomberg TV, regularly conducts interviews with the global titans of the financial world. When I asked him what he thought made these encounters so successful, even with strait-laced business leaders whom I assumed were pretty tough to crack, he spoke about the importance of doing his prep, of adopting an easy going conversational style (making interviewees feel at ease) and deploying well rehearsed questioning techniques. Chief…

How to Lead and Grow your Clients

Published: Friday 20th November 2020

The most effective path to growth is through client development. Now more than ever, keeping and growing the clients you have is essential for sustainable growth. Your agency is at least 5 times more likely to win new business from your existing clients than new clients. And yet, most agencies fail to approach this significant area of potential growth with the same rigour and vigour as a new client opportunity. Moreover, it’s not a choice – given the first 6-12 months of any new client revenue will be offset against the cost of winning it, you will only achieve profitable growth if you can successfully grow your new business wins into established, long-term, growing clients. So given its importance, here are some tips if you want to engage your Client Leaders / Account Directors in growing your Agency’s existing clients: 1 Help them recognise the importance of New Business to the Agency. Tell them if they have any aspirations to lead an agency one day, they will need to be able to grow one! It is definitely in their interest to develop these skills. 2 You need to give your client teams insights into the New Business marketplace so they…

Post Pitch Feedback

Published: Monday 4th May 2020

Some do it, some don’t, but every Agency should. It can be sensitive to manage and communicate, it can be painful, but post pitch feedback is the medicine that can help an Agency heal following the emotional pain of discovering that you have lost a pitch. In short, it can make you better. And isn’t that what we all want, to improve our performance both as individuals and as a team? After all, pitching presents us with a unique opportunity to showcase just what we’ve got – our thinking, our powers of persuasion, our creativity, our ability to connect at a deep emotional and intellectual level with the client. Pitching allows us to grow professionally, and demonstrate that we can win. Win a lot – and certainly far more often than we lose. If we don’t have the driving ambition to win, well maybe we’re in the wrong job. Pitching devours resource, time and money, so when we lose, we need to recoup some of that loss if not in financial terms, in some other less immediately tangible way. That way has to be by applying the lessons we’ve learnt from our losing experience when we next enter the fray.…

The Law of Reciprocity

Published: Tuesday 25th February 2020

In Robert Cialdini’s highly acclaimed best seller, “Influence: The Psychology Of Persuasion”, he identifies reciprocity as one of six principles for getting others to say “yes”. And getting others to say “yes” is a pivotal new business skill. Stephen Covey describes the Law Of Reciprocity in his book “The Seven Habits Of Highly Successful People” and likens it to an “Emotional Bank Account”. It is just that. As humans, hardwired within us at a deep emotional level, is the idea that one good act deserves another. It can be described as a value exchange, and as such comes with the expectation that something of value will be given in return. Reciprocity is a powerful new business tool, and now more than ever. Not only does it yield results, it’s actually rather a pleasant way to do business. Let’s take networking, which you may be born to or which may instead fill you with dread. If you feel that the sole objective of entering a room largely comprised of strangers, is to exit with a client brief as demanded by your agency chief, you’re hardly going to enjoy the situation and are most likely to be met with disappointment. Look at…

Gain an Advantage in New Business

Published: Thursday 10th October 2019

We all know that New Business and Marketing is a tough job. The role has expanded exponentially over the past few years, competition is fierce, clients and procurement teams have become more demanding. And the result is ever-increasing pressure on resource and time. So where do you start and how do you deploy your time, resource and energy? How do you position your agency to win more business, more often? The answer is to gain clarity around your goals and apply a strategic framework that allows you to create the right kind of valuable pipeline opportunities. Needless to say, it’s a road well travelled by the most successful new business winning agencies. So here’s the outline approach: Start with the Agency Business Plan Work together with senior management on the detail of the agency business plan. Their growth targets and strategy (including new services, products, skills and expertise) will define yours. Make sure to agree your new business and marketing budget for the year. Work alongside agency management It’s important that you update senior management throughout the year (they’ll be coming to you, so don’t worry, it’ll happen). Signal any areas that will require investment (both financial and importantly, their…

The Pitch Holy Trinity

Published: Thursday 26th September 2019

Pitch PerfectHow to be a pitch-winning leader The holy trinityPerfect timing. I’ve recently emerged from a roller coaster pitch ride, ready to impart a snapshot of my learning. As a seasoned pitch veteran, what my experience has taught me is this: there is a holy trinity of successful pitch skills, namely leadership, talent and process. Along the way, I’ve found that some things remain the same, yet each client, brand and agency team presents a series of unique and exciting challenges. The holy trinity is, however, a constant. ProcessWhat remains the same? To a large degree, this is the process itself. We’re talking about nailing the schedule of events, the all-important ‘to-do’ list. It ranges from knowing and analysing the brief well enough to recite it in your sleep, to timetabling deadlines for all the deliverables- and sticking to them. For some, this is a learning curve, but once you’ve successfully navigated the curve, next time up, the journey should be smoother. TalentTalent – intellectual and creative, is embedded in an agency’s DNA. The fine art of pitching demands that this collective talent is applied to what is often a business issue not encountered before, and that insights are gleaned…

So you walk into a room full of strangers. What next?

Published: Saturday 27th April 2019

It seems to me that you’re either born to network or you have to work at it – for many of us it’s the latter. There’s nothing particularly exciting or easy about walking into a crowded room full of strangers, with sole intent of striking up a conversation, keeping it flowing and leaving it at the right moment. But, as we all know, relationships drive business and New Business Directors need to thrive in a networking environment. Knowing how to build a network of valuable contacts is pretty essential to the job. So here are some tips on how to approach it, make the most of it, and even enjoy it. What is successful networking? For us in new business, it’s largely about developing professional relationships which could ultimately lead to referrals and new business opportunities. But shift the perspective a little and there is arguably a more enjoyable and valuable way to meet and nurture your connections. Fulfilling your role as an integral part of a network has one central goal: helping others in the room. The mantra playing in your head could usefully be expressed as “How can I help you?” with little regard for your personal agenda.…

Listen Without Prejudice

Published: Saturday 2nd February 2019

Easy to say, hard to do. Good listening requires us to put aside our prejudices and preconceptions until we have collected all the information we need to respond. But in the background, our inner voice speaks to us and demands that we respond in various guises, be it the ‘expert’, (I need to say something very clever right now), the ‘competitor’, (I need to show that I am ‘better, smarter’), the ‘judge’ (judging not only the other person, but ourselves), or the ‘dreamer’ (spinning far out of orbit with ideas). All of this stops us from listening. Listening is a multi-sensory activity, not restricted to sounds and language but embracing body language and silence too. The key here is the ability to play in the space between listening and responding to what you hear. Learning to control or master these instincts and motivations is so very hard to do. But if you achieve it, if you improve your listening skills, the benefits are substantial. Not least in your interactions with new business prospects, clients, and colleagues. Great leaders have many outstanding qualities and one of these is undoubtedly being a good listener. Interested in learning more about listening better? Then…

WHY WE NEED TO TALK ABOUT PROSPECTING

Published: Friday 1st February 2019

It’s the issue that weighs heavily on the mind of everyone working in new business – how to ensure that you’re able to deliver a continuous flow of new business opportunities. The health of your new business pipeline is paramount, and knowing how to create, fill and manage a pipeline is arguably the New Business Director’s most valuable skill. Which is why we need to talk about prospecting. Given the pressure on delivering new business revenue targets, agencies often direct much of their effort on short-term tactical opportunities, for instance taking advantage of those key events that trigger account reviews: client moves and new marketing appointments, changing brand/market dynamics, M&As, statutory reviews and so on. In order to succeed, agencies need to work hard to ensure that they’re well positioned and ready to compete. The problem is, too much focus on today could leave your agency exposed in the future. The pipeline may run dry. You need a new business insurance policy that safeguards your pipeline longer term. To achieve this, it’s important to take a broader view, and plan your prospecting strategies to deliver for the short, medium and long-term, mindful of the 70/20/10 rule (respectively) designed to…

A different way to sell to your clients

Published: Monday 17th September 2018

Sales. What a dirty word. No one likes to be thought of as a salesman, yet “selling”: the persuading-the-client-to-hire-us-rather-than-our-competitor (who is probably equally talented) is what we all have to do, in the constant battle between our wits and the client’s money, in order to thrive and grow. Only if you try to adopt the honed tactics of, say, car salesmen, you will fail, because what they are selling and consequently how they have to sell it, is sufficiently different from our services to mean that an entirely different approach is needed. Fortunately, if you sell your services properly, it doesn’t feel like “selling” at all – to you or to your client. Where there are similarities between us and our automotive friends however, is that clients are becoming increasingly demanding, technology is changing the shape of the market constantly, and competition is hotting up. So if you want to be one of life’s winners in this commercial world, you had better master the right sales approach, quickly. The starting point is to really, truly understand what makes clients buy and what turns them away. Whilst theoretically this is something agencies understand better than almost anyone else, in practice too…

Published: Friday 20th July 2018

The truth is, most of us are pretty poor at asking questions. We can all do it, of course; we can all ask ‘What’s your name?’ without thinking too much. But once we move up the questioning hierarchy we need to do just that – think. Asking a good question isn’t something we just do and by ‘good’ I mean a question that delivers useful answers. Formulating questions of this kind is a skill that allows us to extract extra value, and therefore learning, during our conversations with clients, teams, mentors, groups – in fact just about everybody. For those of us in new business, honing our questioning skills means that we can probe deeper and understand better our prospects’ nuanced thinking and needs. So, how do we ask better questions? The 5 Ws A friend of mine, a journalist at Bloomberg TV, regularly conducts interviews with the global titans of the financial world. When I asked him what he thought made these encounters so successful, even with strait-laced business leaders whom I assumed were pretty tough to crack, he spoke about the importance of doing his prep, of adopting an easy going conversational style (making interviewees feel at ease)…

Writing a New Business Plan Made Easy

Published: Monday 9th July 2018

We all know that New Business and Marketing is a tough job. The role has expanded exponentially over the past few years, competition is fierce, clients and procurement teams have become more demanding. And the result is ever-increasing pressure on resource and time. So where do you start and how do you deploy your time, resource and energy? How do you position your agency to win more business, more often?The answer is to gain clarity around your goals and apply a strategic framework that allows you to create the right kind of valuable pipeline opportunities. Needless to say, it’s a road well travelled by the most successful new business winning agencies. So here’s the outline approach: Start with the Agency Business PlanWork together with senior management on the detail of the agency business plan. Their growth targets and strategy (including new services, products, skills and expertise) will define yours. Make sure to agree your new business and marketing budget for the year.Work alongside agency managementIt’s important that you update senior management throughout the year (they’ll be coming to you, so don’t worry, it’ll happen). Signal any areas that will require investment (both financial and importantly, their time). Audit your new…

How To Grow Your Existing Clients

Published: Tuesday 1st May 2018

Your agency is at least 5 times more likely to win new business from your existing clients than new clients. And yet, most agencies fail to approach this significant area of potential growth with the same rigour and vigour as a new client opportunity. Moreover, it’s not a choice – given the first 6-12 months of any new client revenue will be offset against the cost of winning it, you will only achieve profitable growth if you can successfully grow your new business wins into established, long-term, growing clients. So given its importance, here are some tips for New Business people who want to engage their Client Leaders /Account Directors in growing their Agency’s existing clients: 1. Help them recognise the importance of New Business to the Agency. Tell them if they have any aspirations to lead an agency one day, they will need to be able to grow one! It is definitely in their interest to develop these skills. 2. You need to give your client teams insights into the New Business market place so they understand what the Agency is up against 3. It’s important to share your New Business plan with the agency and to make clear…

HOW TO SUCCEED AT THE MOST DANGEROUS JOB AT AN AGENCY

Published: Thursday 1st March 2018

An article published in Adweek was headlined ‘What’s the Most Dangerous Job at an Agency?’ This question of course piqued my interest. So, fingers on buzzers. Let’s have your answer. The most dangerous job at an agency is … New Business Director. So it’s simultaneously the most dangerous job whilst arguably one of the most valuable. After all, the successful growth of the agency is largely dependent on the ability of the New Business Director to win new business. Why is it dangerous? Partly attributable to the nature of the role which is nothing if not accountable. Sometimes due to lack of clarity around the scope of the work and responsibilities. For some it seems that the bar is set unrealistically high by senior management and failing to live up to expectations means that ‘life expectancy’ can be short. Managing multiple demands was always part of the job spec – from generating, qualifying and nurturing leads to managing the pitch process; owning RFI/RFPs to creating agency collateral; capitalizing on and creating PR opportunities to managing prospect meetings– as the universe expands, so does the remit of new business – and there’s more. Rapid advances in technology have witnessed a re-engineering…

Growing Pains – Getting your agency through the adolescent years

Published: Monday 8th January 2018

Article on Marketing Communication News – Published on January 4th, 2018 The early years for any agency are tough. Everyone knows that. However, what is less recognised is that the really hard times often come when an agency has broken through to the medium-sized point. JFDI’s 2017 New Business Barometer survey of nearly 100 agencies highlighted this issue: once you reach the 50 to 150 people stage, life does not suddenly become much easier. In reality these “adolescent” years are often even tougher than the childhood days. Get through it – keep on growing – and you can come out the other side as a large agency. Here, you benefit from efficiencies of scale, an established reputation, bigger marketing budgets, and life does often become easier. So, the question is how to make it through that tough phase of between 50 to 150 people. What should those agencies be doing to make it more likely they emerge successfully to the other side, and what should the smaller agencies be preparing to do so that their adolescent years are as trouble-free as possible? The Problems of Youth The challenges small agencies face are well known, but no less real for that. For…

TAKE PART IN OUR NEW BUSINESS SURVEY

Published: Monday 3rd July 2017

We’d like to ask for a few minutes of your time to take part in our survey: The 2017 New Business Barometer. Our partner, Opinium Research, is conducting the survey on our behalf. The Barometer’s been created as a valuable benchmarking tool for everyone working in new business, with the aim of providing insights and trends into new business resourcing, performance (including number of pitches undertaken during the year and conversion rates), remuneration incentives and challenges to winning new business both now and in the future. Your chance to gain complimentary access to one of our webinars: ‘How To Win Your Dream Client’ or ‘Post Pitch Feedback’. We appreciate how busy you are and have kept the survey short. We’ll be sharing the results with you later on this year. Once you’ve completed the survey please email phoebe@jfdi.uk.com with your choice of webinar and she’ll send you the link. To take part, please click here Many thanks in advance for your co-operation, The JFDI team

HOW TO LOVE THE WORD AND WIN NEW BUSINESS: JOIN OUR TWO PART WEBINAR ON 15TH AND 22ND JUNE

Published: Wednesday 3rd May 2017

THE 2017 NEW BUSINESS BAROMETER: COMPLETE OUR SURVEY

Published: Friday 7th April 2017

We’re now conducting the second round of research for our New Business Barometer and would very much appreciate your input to our survey. The aim is to provide a valuable ongoing benchmarking tool for the New Business community: insights into agency new business resourcing, new business planning and performance, incentives, opportunities and challenges both now and in the future. We hope the findings will be of interest not only to those of you directly engaged in and responsible for new business delivery, but also to senior agency management. Our partner, Opinium Research, is conducting the survey on our behalf. They will be gathering the results which we’ll be sharing and debating with you later this year. We hope you’ll get involved to add value to our findings, so please contact phoebe@jfdi.uk.com and she’ll send you the link. Thanks in advance for your support.

WHAT DO A SUCCESSFUL PRIME MINISTER AND GREAT PITCH LEADER SHARE IN COMMON?

Published: Thursday 30th March 2017

They earn respect from the masses:You don’t have to vote for your pitch leader but if you did, one who earned the respect of the team would win hands down. Pitch teams rightly expect each member of the squad to give their all, so a popular leader who can inspire, motivate and keep morale high, will make the team more successful across the piece. They can take tough (sometimes unpopular) decisions:“Are we likely to be working this weekend?” Since time began, the question most often asked and the inevitable response most feared by pitch teams. The truth is if you’re asking the question, you probably already know the answer. A good pitch leader can make the tough and sometimes unpopular decisions in the interests of winning the pitch – not just about how long and hard a team has to work, but whether the creative work is on-brief, who will be in the pitch, whether to spend £15,000 on research – and everything in between. They are expert in their field, but able to grasp new areas quickly:Whilst typical pitch leaders have years of expertise working on client business, it’s rare that they’ve encountered the very same challenge as defined…

WHATS ON YOUR MIND? INSIGHTS FROM OUR NEW BUSINESS SURVEY

Published: Tuesday 6th December 2016

2016 has been some kind of year. What kind of year, the choice of adjective, is down to you – so please insert as appropriate. So, how was it for you and your agency? As you write your 2017 new business plan (it’s December so I’m not jumping the gun, right?) what lessons are you drawing upon to shape the year ahead? What will success look like? Whichever way you look at it, it’s pretty much certain that 2017 will be no less challenging than 2016. What are those challenges likely to be? Our inaugural New Business Barometer, a survey conducted amongst 112 New Business Directors between February and September 2016, may provide some clues. Let’s start with an insight from that survey. Women working in new business are twice as likely not to have an incentive scheme in place compared to their male counterparts (42% versus 21% respectively). Given that gender equality continues to be right up there on the social agenda – both in terms of pay and smashing the glass ceiling – this is surprising. And particularly so given that new business is essentially a sales role where incentives are the norm not the exception: 67% of…

WHY AD AGENCIES NEED TO WORK WITH PROCUREMENT

Published: Sunday 13th November 2016

WHY AD AGENCIES NEED TO WORK WITH PROCUREMENT Our New Business Barometer highlighted Procurement as a key challenge for agencies seeking to win new business. Here, Tina Fegent, an industry-leading Procurement Consultant, argues that engaging with Procurement early, developing a good working relationship and building trust, is a strategy all agencies are well advised to pursue. Often an agency person’s view of Procurement is based on agency hearsay and not always on fact, and that is why I started my JFDI presentation with a quote from the astronaut John Glenn ” “As I hurtled through space there was only one thought in my mind – that every part of the capsule was supplied by the lowest bidder”. Yes, procurement is there to manage the costs and all the commercial and regulatory elements of a client:agency (supplier) arrangement. But the role is varied and Procurement is a key partner that agencies have to engage with, as soon as they can, whether it be at the start of a new pitch process or when a new buyer starts in the client organization – and is therefore new to buying marketing. We can pull together the agency long and short list for a…

HOW TO GAIN AN UNFAIR ADVANTAGE IN PLANNING NEW BUSINESS

Published: Thursday 15th September 2016

HOW TO GAIN AN UNFAIR ADVANTAGE IN NEW BUSINESSWe all know that New Business and Marketing is a tough job. The role has expanded exponentially over the past few years, competition is fierce, clients and procurement teams have become more demanding. And the result is ever-increasing pressure on resource and time.So where do you start and how do you deploy your time, resource and energy? How do you position your agency to win more business, more often?The answer is to gain clarity around your goals and apply a strategic framework that allows you to create the right kind of valuable pipeline opportunities. Needless to say, it’s a road well travelled by the most successful new business winning agencies. So here’s the outline approach: Start with the Agency Business PlanWork together with senior management on the detail of the agency business plan. Their growth targets and strategy (including new services, products, skills and expertise) will define yours. Make sure to agree your new business and marketing budget for the year.Work alongside agency managementIt’s important that you update senior management throughout the year (they’ll be coming to you, so don’t worry, it’ll happen). Signal any areas that will require investment (both financial…

AGENCY MARKETING: A LOAD OF OLD TOSH?

Published: Monday 8th August 2016

We all know why and how marketing is changing. We have these conversations with our clients every day. The key question is – are we practising what we preach when we market our own Agencies? Given the growing importance of marketing-led prospecting to fuel our new business pipelines, we need to be sure that we’re doing everything we can to grow and leverage our Agency brands. So we’re taking ‘How Brands Grow’, arguably the most important contemporary marketing book, and will be exploring its impact and implications on the way we conduct Agency Marketing. That’s the plan for our next Early Worm Club on Thursday 22nd September. We’ve asked Paul Arnold to review the book and then run an interactive session – to see which of its key principles apply to marketing strategies that drive Agency growth. HOW BRANDS GROW: SEVEN SIMPLE RULES FOR MARKETING 1) Reach – Continuously reach ALL buyers of your category with both broad reach communications and physical distribution. 2) Make it easy – Ensure the brand is made as easy to buy as possible. 3) Get noticed – Be salient. Be distinctive. Use emotions. 4) Build brand memory assets – We ignore things that…

HOW TO MANAGE AGENCY NEW BUSINESS AND MARKETING

Published: Tuesday 7th June 2016

NEW BUSINESS SKILLS DAY: THURSDAY 3RD NOVEMBER 2016 Are you a master juggler? Chances are if you’re reading this, it’s a safe bet that you are. Throw five balls at a New Business Director, and on a good day we’ll keep them all in motion, on a bad day? Well, we all have those. Too many balls, not enough hands, system overload – sound familiar? So, where to start and get a handle on everything? The impulse can be to leap right into the centre of the action, careering around between the conflicting demands of short-term necessity (I need to get some meetings in now) and longer term Agency brand building and prospecting. And then there’s the collateral, the website refresh, content creation, social platforms, awards strategy – roll up for the juggling masterclass. The good news is that it is possible to manage the seemingly impossible and hit (exceed) your new business targets. Successful agencies do it. What it requires is a cool head, clear thinking and a strategic approach, that starts with one simple question: what’s your goal? Your goal is, of course, to deliver Agency growth, so before you commit to anything at all, you need to…

How To Grow Your Existing Clients – And why its so important

Published: Friday 22nd April 2016

WE NEED YOUR VALUED INPUT TO THE JFDI NEW BUSINESS SURVEY

Published: Friday 5th February 2016

JFDI has worked with some 350 agencies helping them to win more new business. We’ve witnessed many changes in the new business and marketing role over the years, and would like to learn more about your experiences. How does your agency structure the role, what are your challenges, how are you incentivized and how do you see the future? Opinium Research, an independent insights agency, is conducting this survey on our behalf. Over the following months, Opinium will be gathering the survey results and producing a report. With your support, we aim to collect comprehensive data that we’ll share with you later in the year. We’ll also be hosting an event – giving us all the opportunity to discuss and debate the findings, and the implications for the future. To take part, please click on the link below. https://www.opiniumresearch.com/R.aspx?a=7764&as=cO5d39V1r3 If you have any questions or would like more information, contact: camilla@jfdi.uk.com. Thanks, and we look forward to receiving and sharing your insights.

WE NEED TO TALK ABOUT PROSPECTING

Published: Monday 1st February 2016

When do we feel most loved and valued by Agency Management? I’d say when we have a burgeoning new business pipeline, when those opportunities just keep rolling in. And then we need to convert them, of course, but that’s predicated on the strength of the pipeline. No pipeline, no pitches. Fact. Which is why we need to talk about prospecting. We’ve identified 13 prospecting strategies, which fall into the short, medium and longer term – when you’re creating a pipeline, it’s important to frame expectations. If you’re embarking upon a longer-term strategy, say agency marketing, be prepared for a long haul. The road from initiating contact to conversion is a road well travelled, and often takes upwards of 2 years. That said, we know the market is driven by churn – there are key events both client and agency side that trigger reviews. So the smart agency makes sure it’s well positioned to take advantage of these unforeseen opportunities. Our advice is to balance your strategies between short, medium and longer term, because let’s face it, when the pressure is on, you need to deliver the briefs. Which is why having short-term opportunities in play is important. The bedrock of…

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