I onboarded a new client late last month, a small agency with a strong core leadership team that takes a collaborative approach and that’s supportive of each other and open to differing opinions and ideas.
This is great! Agencies like this are a pleasure to work with and I count myself lucky to be able to do so. Nevertheless, I found myself asking the CEO and two of his colleagues this question during a conversation as we were preparing for our first all-day strategy workshop with the larger leadership team:
“Who’s the ‘’decider’?”
I want nothing more than to cultivate an equal exchange of thoughts and ideas among his team during this workshop but I also know all the constructive conversation in the world is useless if we don’t reach certain conclusions that day. Nothing will get accomplished, no action will be taken, and I will have failed in my mission to help land on a new business strategy they can sustain for the long term.
I’ve come to realize that new business doesn’t work well as a democracy. It’s better when it’s a benevolent dictatorship where all ideas are heard and considered but, ultimately, one person makes the judgment call.
If you lead a democracy at your agency, this idea may feel foreign and uncomfortable. But, I’d ask yourself a couple of questions:
Where are you not seeing progress and is it because gaining consensus has proved illusive?
What’s your motive for embracing a democratic approach to decision making? Is it possible it gets you off the hook for making people unhappy who don’t agree with a decision or for shouldering the responsibility when you make the wrong decision?
Leadership is hard (it’s probably why I’ve stayed a solopreneur for so long!), but there’s a downside to democracy. Here are a few areas where a democratic approach undermines new business success:
Agency positioning
Seeking consensus on your agency’s positioning either leads to no consensus at all or a weak positioning (a classic example of a camel being a horse designed by committee).
A strong positioning statement is designed to captivate the imagination of your prospects, not please everyone on your team.
Again, to be abundantly clear, voices should be heard and opinions considered, especially dissenting ones. Just think twice about leaving it to a unanimous vote.
Instead, rely on tools and frameworks that facilitate an emotion-free discussion. For instance, one of the tools I use is a proprietary scoring system based on objective criteria like can the statement be easily verified or how easily it can be remembered and repeated by anyone in the organization. A high score indicates you’ve got something very promising; a low score tells you to go back to the drawing board.
I also recommend not starting with the final form. One of the reasons why writing a good positioning statement or elevator pitch can be so challenging is because it packs a lot of information–your ideal client and their issues, what motivates them, the kinds of results you get for them, and what sets you apart from others–into a compact form. This is a good thing! Except it’s almost impossible to be successful when you start with the final form. Instead, when I work with agencies, we break a positioning statement down into its component parts, making a series of decisions along the way, before reassembling them into its final form. It’s more like working with a Mad Lib than staring at a blank piece of paper.
New business roles and responsibilities
How many times have you said (or been told) “new business is everybody’s business.”
It’s a glib statement spoken with good intentions as a rallying cry. However, in my opinion, it’s more likely to sow confusion, leaving the team to ask themselves, “what exactly is being expected of me?”, and ironically may be interpreted as “well, if new business is everybody’s business, maybe someone else besides me will step up to the plate”.
New business responsibilities can absolutely be shared among a leadership team—in fact, I think that’s essential for most small agencies who can’t afford to hire a dedicated new business person. You’ll just have more success if you match the right people to the right job.
Agency new business requires an impressive range of skills: interpersonal, organizational, creative, strategic, technical. Even the most experienced new business professionals will rarely be in possession of all of them.
Recognize the strengths of your team and use them to your best advantage. What’s more, as the decider, lead with your own strengths. Allow your strengths to define your agency’s approach to new business and fill in the gaps where you are weak with the complementary strengths of your team.
For instance, if you’re a networking superstar but maybe not so great at the follow-through, find someone on your team who is detail-oriented and can help you keep the momentum going. They might dread the thought of networking themselves but may be highly productive working behind the scenes keeping you to task.
Making the decision whether to pitch or pass
As we all well know, competitive pitches are disruptive and expensive (in case you missed it, the 4As and the ANA just released a joint study, The Cost of the Pitch, quantifying just how expensive and disruptive pitches are—for both agencies and marketers). Agencies are wise to make a careful decision whether to pitch or pass.
This is another decision that’s best made after soliciting the opinions of your fellow leaders, especially if they’ll be the ones responsible for managing the pitch and doing the work. Your pitch will benefit if they’re fully on board and enthusiastic.
However the decision should be based on predefined criteria as much as possible. As with the positioning scoring tool, this removes some emotion from the equation in favor of a more objective question, “does this pitch meet our criteria?”
(And if your agency is still without a set of pitch criteria, download my Pitch or Pass scorecard.)
The Decider isn’t necessarily you
In general, the role of Decider will be held by the agency owner or CEO, but not always.
Big, consequential decisions that set the tone for agency business development are usually best made by the person at the top. These decisions include things like your vision for the agency, your goals for growth, what you want the agency to be known for, and the market you serve best.
This still leaves plenty of decisions that can be delegated to others. Stuff like which marketing tactics are best for reaching the agency’s growth goals, the tools and software to support your new business operation, the new business budget, and pitch management. But these all still need deciders of their own! Plus, you must also be willing to empower them to make those decisions.