Know your audience

B2B sales is usually very focused on moving prospective clients through a pipeline from leads to prospects to deals to accounts.

It’s very transactional, and this can lead creative agencies into a trap.

It means their sales efforts often become too focused on finding prospective clients at the point when they have prospective deals.

So, the client’s decided to launch a new product, campaign, website or whatever. Now they just need to hire an agency to do it. All the big thinking has been done by this point though, and they need implementers. What’s more they’re going to invite 5-10 agencies to pitch, as if they’re all the same and completely interchangeable.

It’s this kind of thinking that pulls agencies down the agency value ladder, providing commodified services. It drives down prices, and drives up hassle.

It’s draining for you and your team — creating the kind of sales work everyone hates. Cold calling until you strike gold. Then pitching, pitching, pitching.

There is a better way.

Focusing on audiences

Healthy creative agencies realise they have a lot in common with other creative industries — movies, music, theatre, art and so on.