The Best Approach to Outbound Prospecting for a Small Agency Owner

Photo by Dan Cristian Pădureț on Unsplash

Earlier this year I led a masterclass for a group of about 25 agency leaders building and sustaining an outbound prospecting strategy*. A big question on the minds of many who attended was how to find enough time to put toward prospecting to even make an impact.  I offer no silver bullets as an answer, but I did share a framework that helped them look at the problem in a different way. Maybe it will help you too. 

The fact is, most agency leaders who are not full-time business development people will grapple with the question of what an “effective” outreach strategy means for them. I think the answer hinges on two things:

1. The volume or scale of outreach your agency can reasonably sustain

2. The quality of your messages–that is, how personal you can afford to be versus how impersonal you’re willing to be

We can plot it on a matrix like this:

Let’s just go ahead and eliminate the lower left hand corner. Few would argue that sending impersonal messages at a low volume is an effective approach. But what about the other three quadrants?

IMPERSONAL AND HIGH VOLUME

For a lot of the agencies I talk to, there’s a belief that if only they could reach more prospects, their pipeline problems would be solved. Sales is a numbers game after all but sustaining a high volume of outreach is unrealistic for most small agencies. 

One option is to outsource prospecting to a third party lead generation firm. As you know from the dozens of emails you get in your inbox every day,  there are plenty of them out there, most of them are not good (“...if I could add 10-20 high ticket client calls every month, to your sales pipeline, would this be of interest?...”). However there are a small handful that are very good and in some cases I advise my clients to talk to them. 

However, these lead gen firms are going to be the most successful for agencies that:

• Have a large addressable market of people and companies that would be impossible to cover on its own

• Solve a specific problem that causes acute discomfort on the part of your ideal prospects and can show results your clients enjoy 

Agencies that take a generalist approach will struggle more to see a return for their investment of hiring a lead gen firm, no matter how creative their work or how many awards they've won. 

Plus, playing in this upper left hand quadrant, you sacrifice a certain amount of personal connection if only because the person who is sending out those messages isn't you. For agencies that meet the two conditions above, that might be OK; volume may be more important. 

But what if you want a more personal approach without sacrificing volume? You have choices, if they’re within your reach. 

PERSONAL AND HIGH VOLUME

The best way to achieve a balance between a personal approach at volume is by hiring a business development lead or even a sales team. 

As full-time employees, they become immersed in an agency’s culture and can be excellent ambassadors for your agency, attracting right-fit prospects. If they’re good at their job, they interact with the rest of the agency team to understand the value of the work being done for clients, and to translate that into a strong story that demonstrates value to prospects. 

And you can establish new business standards and protocols (or task them to do it) so that everyone is expressing the same general message and using the same tools and protocols.

Outreach must be made a priority, though, if you’re going for volume. I’ve seen a lot of business development people get sucked into responding to RFPs and building pitch decks while proactive outreach gets neglected. 

And of course, you also must have the financial means to hire qualified and talented people and be in a position to manage them effectively. For very small agencies, around 25 people or less, hiring a full-time biz dev person, much less a team, is out of their reach.

PERSONAL AND LOW VOLUME

This brings us to the lower right quadrant–a personalized approach to prospecting new clients but at low volume. My hunch is that this is where most of you fall. Fortunately, you still have choices.

The first thing to consider: is outbound prospecting even the best business development tactic for your agency?

While you’ll probably always want to include some outbound prospecting in your business development plan, there are other methods for generating leads, from content marketing to strategic partnerships. My approach when working with small agencies is to build a New Business Ecosystem™ of tools and tactics that are right for them based on a number of considerations, including the strengths of the agency owner or leadership team who are likely not business development experts. Once you start with a core strategy based on your strengths, you can build around them, adding complementary tactics that support your core strategy in the same way that the components of a well-balanced natural ecosystem interact and foster growth.

WHY A PERSONAL, LOW-VOLUME APPROACH WORKS

And if outbound prospecting is in fact a great option for you, then you still have choices for how to set up an effective outbound strategy.

Embrace your role – Don’t get hung up on the fact that you’re doing sales as the owner of your firm. Instead, look at it as making connections with equal peers and offering answers that alleviate problems and help them do their job better. I know, easier said than done, but all the courage and discipline in the world mean little without the right mindset.

Be clear on your value – A strong, well-defined, high-value message is going to serve you well. Ironically, this is just as important in a low volume/highly personal approach as it is in a high volume/less personal approach. Especially if you only have a limited amount of time to devote to outbound prospecting, this will help you make the most of it because you won’t waste precious time searching around for the “hook” or trying to spin gold out the usually dry, straw-like stuff of agency speak (messages like “clients value us for our work ethic”, if they aren’t ignored, will just get you clients that expect you to work harder for less).

Be clear on your audience – Inextricably linked to a high-value message is a client-focused message, your effort will be more efficient if you define your ideal client based on a specific market and/or business imperatives. 

Here’s a good example that came out of a New Business Ecosystem workshop I did with a small agency earlier this year. Their ideal client is a:

A small B2B software or technology start-up often with a visionary leader at the top and a small or no internal marketing team. The business is in the midst of rapid growth which must be sustained in order to meet an aggressive goal like an IPO, acquisition, or category dominance in a short period of time. 

Here’s a weak description (full disclosure, written by me but inspired by many I have seen):

A marketing leader who values creativity; a collaborative partner who is willing to make brave decisions to promote their brand. A good communicator that allows us to work with autonomy and shields us from internal client politics.

Have a strategy for each step of your buyer’s journey – just like any buyer’s journey, your prospects are moving from a state of unawareness of you and your agency to a moment when they know they want to hire you. There are steps along the way and at each one, the needs and expectations of your prospects change. Being sensitive to this and having a strategy for anticipating and responding to these needs will help you yield the most from the precious time you invest.

*I’ll definitely be offering this masterclass again so if you’d like to learn more about it and sign up for notifications about scheduling and early discounts, just click here.