Looking for new business development advice from a proven expert? You’ve come to the right place.
Today, we’re talking to Matt Chollet, Executive Vice President of Agency Development at Catapult New Business, a company dedicated to connecting agencies, brand, design, and innovation, digital, and social marketing firms with the perfect new business opportunities.
Every day, Matt works alongside agencies to help implement repeatable new business processes that help generate qualified conversations with sought-after prospects. Agencies often approach Matt and his team when they’re tired of waiting for word of mouth or referrals and need to drive revenue now. Utilizing marketing automation, CRM, predictive data, and bespoke content, Matt and his team look to provide a truly proactive approach to new business development.
A subsidiary of List Partners LLC., Winmo’s parent company, Catapult New Business identifies and delivers qualified new business opportunities to agencies on a consistent monthly basis. In essence, they do what some agencies can’t: prospect leads.
CNB works exclusively with marketing services firms of all kinds, but the one thing they all have in common is a desire to grow and do so with the freedom of choice.
Catapult and their team of expert advisors eat, breathe, and dream about agency new business, and clients can feel that energy. Recognized as one of the industry’s most effective agency business development firms, CNB is responsible for identifying and winning the right new business opportunities with national advertisers throughout North America.
Ultimately, Catapult is about driving results for their clients, and through our strategic new business implementations, has been able to uncover over $1 Billion+ in agency new business opportunities since 2005.
First, can you share a little bit about your role with Catapult? What are you doing on a day-to-day?
I’m the EVP of Agency Development at Catapult, which means that I work with our agencies on strategies and processes for their outbound efforts. I also partner with our agencies to examine their current front-end new business development processes and find opportunities within that process to generate more conversations with their desired prospects.
What’s your business development strategy and process?
There is a lot that goes into any business development strategy, but I think it’s important to utilize multiple communication channels in every campaign while tailoring each outreach to the individual you are contacting. Too often, I see agencies send one, very general email to a big, unsegmented email list and then give up. To avoid that, and to keep communication feeling more human and authentic, we focus on varied outreach touchpoints, including phone, email, and social media. Additionally, we customize each communication channel with a more meaningful, personalized message.
What tools are most helpful as you begin prospecting?
We use Winmo for all of our contact info and context around the new business and relationship decisions made by brand marketers and potential prospects. Additionally, we use Salesloft to better automate our efforts and LinkedIn to gain insights into past personal information that might make a difference for networking opportunities.
What integrations within Winmo are most valuable to you?
Winmo’s Salesforce integration is invaluable for our team. The ability to export thousands of emails our prospect lists into Salesforce means that we can manage the lead lifecycle more effectively.
What’s the biggest or most common mistake you see in agency business development?
It’s not the biggest mistake, but since we are here with Winmo, I almost always see too small of prospect lists. This often comes from a fear of reaching out to people that are outside your network and then has the negative impact of greatly reducing the number of prospects that you are speaking to daily. When we begin an engagement, we often build an outline of what a perfect client might look like and then rebuild those clients in Winmo to find other prospects that would be a fit for our team. Instantly it opens up opportunities to our agencies that they were unaware of previously.
What are some personal or professional habits that you believe make a great new business pro?
Consistency and organization. New business development is not something you can just pick up and do occasionally; it has to be done regularly, every day, and ideally, should be your sole focus. I’ve always found that if I put unmovable appointments in my calendar for items like prospecting, networking, referral requests, and research, I’m more likely to get all of those key tasks done more consistently.
What cliche should new business development people ignore?
If there is any one thing to ignore, I’d say ignore the little voice in your head that says you’re being too pushy by asking for a conversation. Sure, maybe there are some people in the agency world out there that are too pushy, but in my experience, agency new business people don’t push enough. If you have something of value that can really improve a brand or a CMO’s life, share that value. Don’t be afraid of being pushy if what you are doing is truly valuable.
And finally, what new business development advice would you give to your agency counterparts?
Take the time to build a repeatable process for your new business efforts and stick to it. That way, timing is never an issue and you’ll consistently build trust through valuable touchpoints all year long.