Nurture valuable connections

If you’ve identified your audience well, and you’re being famously useful, you’ll find people who want to connect — and people you would like to connect with.

How you establish, and then maintain, those relationships is key.

Most agencies see this from a hunter’s point of view — does any of these contacts represent a sale you can run after and catch this quarter. Contacts that don’t are left to languish.

Healthy agencies have a farmer’s perspective. Now is when you begin to sow the crops, feed and tend them, so that the harvest will be plentiful in a future season.

This is the route to more sustainable, valuable new business.

It’s what enables you to be there as a wise head at the earlier stages when potential clients are still exploring their problem spaces, rather than when they’ve already defined a project and a budget and are just shopping for some hands to do it.

Being the head rather than the hands is the way to more rewarding and interesting work.

The key is that these connections should be valuable to both sides.

Valuable to the potential future client, because:

• They learn things to make them better at their job

• They get inspired and fired up about possibilities

• They broaden their perspective and experiences

• They get advice and guidance to set them up for future success

Valuable to your agency, because:

• You learn more about your potential clients, and the market

• You get broader input into, and testing of, your ideas and practices

• You develop fans who can spread the word about you

• You gain early access to future sales opportunities