Our firm is very busy with client work right now. In light of the current economy, this is a good problem and I feel both fortunate and thankful. We are actively interviewing and hiring new people to address the increasing volume of activity. In this type of environment, why would we continue to aggressively sell?
The long view
It’s the nature of our business to focus on the tasks at hand, particularly on deadline-driven projects. But as an agency principal, it’s even more important to look ahead six months. Considering the daily peaks and valleys of the stock market, it’s more difficult than ever to predict the business environment past 90 days. Selling efforts need to focus on filling the pipeline three to four months out, not adding new projects that start tomorrow. If we consistently exceed the expectations of our current clients, the short-term projects seem to materialize. It’s the next series of large projects that seem to take longer to find and that is where we concentrate our business development efforts.
Reassigning resources
The other aspect of business development that is often overlooked is its value in regards to large, complex projects. While such projects are active, they absorb many resources and create significant revenue. Once the major projects have concluded, however, the internal team members must be reallocated to other projects. Since these projects don’t appear on their own, ongoing business development allows managers to identify pending activity and proactively manage the transition of the work and the team.
The invisible force
A phenomenon that is unique to the agency world is the appearance of new clients/prospects seemingly out of nowhere. If a firm continuously maintains an aggressive new business effort, these disconnected opportunities suddenly appear and are often quite lucrative. On the other hand, if business development efforts are random or only initiated when business is slow, such opportunities rarely emerge. I can’t explain why it happens, but after nearly 30 years in this industry I can assure you that it is real.
Ultimately, we all want to work for a fun, creative, healthy company. Ongoing aggressive business development, regardless of how ironic it appears during busy times, is one of the key elements of maintaining a healthy company.
Mike
