Blog - jfdi

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…

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