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Why Getting New Business Doesn’t Have to be a Mystery with Peter Levitan

I don’t care how big or old your agency is — you want to win more new business. If I could bottle business development success — I’d be a billionaire. Honestly – getting new business for your agency is not as mysterious as we make it out to be.   There is a methodology that works. But it requires work. That’s why agencies struggle. They wrestle with being disciplined enough to do the work consistently. That’s why I knew I needed to get Peter Levitan on the Build a Better Agency podcast. Peter’s book, Buy This Book, Win More Pitches, is a brilliant read on how to get your agency noticed and pursued by clients you’d love to work with. Peter has spent his career building successful brands, digital technologies, publishing and advertising environments, and highly effective marketing programs for Fortune 500 companies. He has 30 years of experience running Saatchi & Saatchi Advertising Worldwide, his own Portland Agency, and as the CEO of two Internet start-ups. On the podcast, Peter and I talk about truly differentiating your agency, how successful agencies prospect and what you need to do right now to get your new business program in high gear. We also delve into personas and how inbound has changed the agency new business model. You’ll probably listen to this one more than once when working on getting new business. Peter’s straight to the point style and 30 years of success in the field success make for an incredible interview. To listen – you can visit the Build A Better Agency site (https://agencymanagementinstitute.com/peter-levitan/) and grab either the iTunes or Stitcher files or just listen to it from the web. If you’d rather just read the [...]

October 19th, 2015|

Increasing your New Business Odds, with Peter Levitan.

[easy-social-share buttons=”facebook,twitter,google,linkedin,mail” counters=1 counter_pos=”topm” total_counter_pos=”leftbig” style=”icon_hover”] Peter Levitan builds successful brands, digital technologies, publishing and advertising environments, and highly effective marketing programs for Fortune 500 companies. He has 30 years of experience running Saatchi & Saatchi Advertising Worldwide, his own Portland Agency, and as the CEO of two Internet start-ups.   What you’ll learn about in this episode: The major mistakes agencies make in regards to bringing on new business How to create distinction using your website and the reason most agency websites aren’t attractive to clients The ways agencies are doing sales wrong and what can be done about it Specialization vs. generalization: how to specialize and still have fun The kind of research Peter’s agency does that helps them look better than their competition Why you should stop using the term “full-service” if you want to position your agency against your competition They ways many agencies and agency owners are failing when it comes to their content   The Golden Nugget: […]

October 19th, 2015|

Increasing Client Loyalty, with Scott Monty.

[easy-social-share buttons=”facebook,twitter,google,linkedin,mail” counters=1 counter_pos=”topm” total_counter_pos=”leftbig” style=”icon_hover”] Scott is an international recognized leader in digital communications, digital transformation, social media, and marketing. He is the principal of Scott Monty Strategies where he counsels brands and agencies on strategy, executive communications, influencer management, customer experience, and digital innovations. He has extensive experience in communications and marketing agencies, including a client base of IBM Healthcare and Life Sciences, Coca-Cola, American Airlines, T-Mobile, GE Software, and more. He has also authored the widely acclaimed Week in Digital newsletter at ScottMonty.com and is the executive editor and co-host of the Sherlock Holmes website and podcast “I Hear of Sherlock Everywhere.   What you’ll learn about in this episode: What Scott learned about agency/client relationships while working at Ford The qualities in agencies that clients want to keep around The things agencies tend to do that get on clients’ nerves How Scott sells his consulting services by having a side career giving speeches Why understanding humans on a deep level is an important strategy to work on “The Week In Digital”: Scott’s weekly newsletter Scott’s great strategy for getting to the core of ideas   The Golden Nugget: […]

October 19th, 2015|

Podcast guest info

Thanks for agreeing to be on the Build A Better Agency podcast! I promise -- it will be both painless and fun.  Here's everything I think you might need to know but feel free to shoot me an email if you have additional questions. The focus of my podcast is to help agency owners do it a little better and you know something that I believe would help them do just that.  That's where I want our conversation to go. You'll be able to download a discussion guide but fair warning -- I loosely follow it. I really want our episode to sound like a conversation we'd have over a drink so when you say something interesting, I'm going to let the conversation take us in that direction.  The one absolute for me is that we will wrap up the episode with me asking you for some "next step" action items the listeners can do right away. Schedule your interview Please click the link below to select a date and time you are available for an interview. If none of these times are convenient, please let me know when you are available and we’ll coordinate. What I need from you When you click on the button above, it's going to ask you for: Name Company name Mailing address Mobile number so we can text you a couple of reminders Skype ID Your headshot A PDF or word doc of your bio Anything you'd like to promote In addition, if you have any links, videos, SlideShares or resources that you’d like included in the show notes, please provide those as well. Otherwise, as things that can be linked to are mentioned in the interview, we'll include them [...]

October 17th, 2015|

Super Secret Podcast Questions

Thank you so much for agreeing to hang out with me on my podcast, Build a Better Agency.  I know our conversation is going to be packed with practical insights and tools that agency owners can capture and apply to their businesses right away. As you know, I'm game to go where the conversation takes us.  But I do have a loose "flow" that I follow. If something you talk about has great legs -- I will definitely jump down that rabbit hole so we may not get through the entire script.  But this document will give you an idea of the kinds of things I'd like us to explore together. Build a Better Agency podcast interview flow Thanks again for being willing to spend a little of your time and share a little of your expertise with me and my fellow agency owners.  I know it's going to be amazing!

August 13th, 2015|

2015 Salary survey results tell an interesting story

Business trends including changes in salaries and benefits can make or break an agency’s profitability from one year to the next. That’s why we conduct a comprehensive annual salary and benefits survey and we’ve just wrapped up our 2015 edition (you can buy the 40-page final report here). The results are quite insightful.   First a few facts about the respondents: 1,537 respondents Agency size ranged from 1 employee to over 150 employees All regions of the US and Canada were represented although there were not enough Canadian responses for statistical validity Salary Observations: Most salaries either held steady or rose in the 2015 results. One area that that saw its salary range decline or at best, hold steady was the CEOs salary. As agency salaries increase and the ability to increase billable rates or project pricing has not – it appears as though some CEOs are robbing from themselves to increase the pay of their key employees. The media department also took a hit in some cases. This may suggest that as agencies buy less traditional media (it seems like agencies are either specializing in this or hiring it out more and more) they are trimming some of their more expensive employees and keeping those middle-income team members. Copywriters and content writers also saw a healthy increase in salaries, ranging from 5-10%. Interestingly art directors and graphic designers did not see that same kind of increase; in fact in most categories they stayed steady with their 2014 salaries. The most significant increases came in the digital departments, with programmers leading the way. The average increase in this department was 10+% over the 2014 salaries. Benefits Observations: Clearly, agencies value their employees and try very [...]

June 18th, 2015|

Sidebar – Workshops

Money Matters for Agency Owners [su_button url="https://agencymanagementinstitute.com/advertising-agency-training/owner-workshops/financial-firepower/" style="flat" background="#FF8C00" color="#333333" radius="0" icon="icon: key" icon_color="#ffffff"]Register TODAY[/su_button] December 8 & 9, 2015 Orlando/Disney Property Fill the Pipeline (Yours and Your Clients') [su_button url="https://agencymanagementinstitute.com/advertising-agency-training/owner-workshops/smart-seo-lead-gen-bootcamp/" style="flat" background="#FF8C00" color="#333333" radius="0" icon="icon: key" icon_color="#ffffff"]Register TODAY[/su_button] January 20 & 21, 2016 Orlando/Disney Property AE Bootcamp [su_button url="https://agencymanagementinstitute.com/advertising-agency-training/advertising-agency-staff-training/ae-bootcamp/" style="flat" background="#FF8C00" color="#333333" radius="0" icon="icon: key" icon_color="#ffffff"]Register TODAY[/su_button] September 22 & 23, 2015 Chicago, IL

November 13th, 2014|

Research 2014

When an agency targets a new business prospect, they invest a lot of time trying to learn about them. But usually all they can gather is demographic data on the business and its CMO – location, age, education, income, industry, past spending etc. After awhile, they all become a blur of sameness when in reality, they’re anything but. We decided to go a different route and developed research that would tell us more about marketing decision makers and their behaviors, challenges and beliefs about agencies. We worked with Audience Audit, a research provider that specializes in attitudinal segmentation and Luth Research who provided the respondent panels. Together, we created a series of carefully crafted questions designed to give us better insight into what drives a marketing decision maker to hire, fire, recommend or ignore an agency. The results were fascinating — despite the many similarities in terms of industry, maturity, company size or annual revenue, we found dramatically different opinions about what it means to work with an agency. We discovered that there are three distinct attitudinal—based personas that we named Looking for Love, Playing the Field and Single and Satisfied. Please feel free to use the infographic (download high res version) with proper attribution. You can download our 13-page report that details each of the personas and what matters to them by filling in your email address below. Email *

October 14th, 2014|

BOLO 2014

Thanks for your time at BOLO 2014.  Whether you attended our session or we met you during one of the breaks, we're looking forward to sharing the findings and insights of our research with you. You can download the AMI2014ResearchReport. You can sign up for our post BOLO webinar on Wednesday, November 19th (1 pm eastern) here.

October 6th, 2014|

As seen in…

We're very grateful that many other publications seek us out to comment on various aspects of the agency business. Here's a sampling of our recent articles in some of them. 2022 Mediapost.com- Want to Develop Your Agency? Establish Your Unique Expertise ChiefExecutive.net- Hoping to Grow Your Agency? Support Account Executives’ Growth Goals With Existing Customers. SalesandMarketing.com- 3 Ways to Hone Your Agency’s Niche SpinSucks.com- Joining a Mastermind Group Could Be the Best Career Decision You Make in 2022 Entrepreneur.com- The 5 Stages of Business Development in Client Services CEOWorld.biz- How to Be a Better Company Leader in a Post-Pandemic World Forbes.com- 4 Steps To Shift Your Agency's Mindset And Promote Business Development Forbes.com- Agency Partnership Agreements: Addressing the Good, the Bad, and the Ugly Mediapost.com- 3 Things You Need to Include in Your Partnership Agreement Mediapost.com- Can't Find Time for Creativity? Here's What to Do. Entrepreneur.com- 5 Mistakes to Avoid When Buying an Ad Agency Forbes.com- Avoid These Four Mistakes When Selling Your Agency To An Internal Buyer MarketingProfs.com- Prioritizing DEI Can Help Marketing Agencies’ Bottom Lines 2021 Forbes.com- Want To Make Your Agency Stronger? Embrace Uncertainty. Entrepreneur.com- Don’t Let Doubts Absorb Your Organization -- Use Them to Grow as a Leader Mediapost.com- Understanding Your Culture Could Be the Key to Your Branding Forbes.com- Subscriptions Aren’t Just For Consumers — Here’s How B2B Companies Can Use Them Forbes.com- Agency Owners Should Leverage These Client Trends To Solidify Their Services SpinSucks.com- How to Use Emotional Theory to Create a Cultlike Brand Following Mediapost.com- Ready or Not, It’s Time to Create a Vaccine Policy for Your Agency Mediapost.com- Advertising's Hybrid Future: Why Outsourcing Is Here to Stay TalentCulture.com- HR in a Post-Pandemic World: Where Are We Headed? Entrepreneur.com- When Was [...]

September 28th, 2014|

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