Aggressive sales pitches. Desperate sales pitches. ‘Try hard’ sales pitches. Over the past 20 years at AAR Partners, I have seen many forms of these types of pitches as an agency search consultant… but AAR’s (CMO) clients see hundreds of these emails pop up in their inboxes every week to the tune of about 1,000 per month!  In fact, I had a bet with a past client that he gets close to 1,000 unsolicited agency emails per month.  One month later to the day he emailed me saying, “You win.  936!”  Needless to say, that is an awful lot of cold emails. 

It is understandable why agencies send them… being a new business professional is far from an easy role. Follow-up calls, email cadences, and your prospect playbook is the bread and butter of what you do so you must keep driving awareness and visibility, right?

Wrong.  You certainly need to share quality content in order to build relationships. But when it comes to “content pollution,” lazy sales emails do more harm than good. I’ve had one CMO tell me she doesn’t even read her LinkedIn inbox anymore… it’s so full of spam. 

This is disheartening for new business pros but there are three quick tips on how to stand out in a sea of bad prospecting.

3 Tips for Standing Out in a Sea of Bad Pitches

1. Be Creative & Do Your Homework

Remember, you are pitching to a creative person. Marketers love things that stand out… questions that make them think twice or even feel uncomfortable… and info that hits their pain points on the head. It’s literally what they spend their lives trying to master! So take a tip from their playbook and approach the conversation creatively. 

To do this, you will need to do your homework instead of sending your scripted mass email. Take a look at the brand’s marketing. What do you see that you can improve? Test their newsletter forms… sign up for their email campaigns… study their website… read their content… follow their social media. Where can your agency help them grow? 

And that’s just surface-level stuff. Use Winmo to take it a step further:

• See what their ad spend looks like. 
• Read WinmoEdge to see if they’re adding to their marketing team. 
• Check out which agencies they’re currently working with, and who they’ve worked within the past- how do you fit into the mix? 
• Check out the decision-maker’s personality traits. 

Go into the conversation educated so you can address the things that are hurting them the most. In fact, I used Crystal Personality Insights to get the inside scoop on how to reach out to a particular CMO before reaching out to him and he responded within hours because I followed the tips provided on how he likes to receive emails!

Having this knowledge will allow you to craft an introduction that doesn’t merely say “we’re an award-winning agency…” they don’t care. Everyone is an ‘award-winning agency.’ What they want to hear is how you are going to solve their problems with as little headache as possible. Showing that you did their homework will surely impress them. 

2. Drop the Script 

If you read anything I mentioned above, then you understand this means you need to throw the copy and pasted emails and phone call scripts out. Sure, keep them for training purposes and new hires getting started. But real success is going to come from real relationships. And you just can’t create those with a one-size-fits all approach. 

Instead, create an SOP that trains your new business team on how to do research on clients before reaching out. Give them a list of items they need to be searching for. Provide guidance on how to identify marketer pain points and windows of opportunity. And the pain points aren’t always the obvious ones… The CMO of Arby’s once told me that his biggest pain point was keeping clean bathrooms!  That’s far from a marketing issue but shows how it’s not always a marketing issue that needs to be solved. 

And don’t forget to look out for brands triggering a need for marketing help. Here are some of the top triggers to be looking out for:

• New CMO hires and CMO shifts
• Budget and spend increases
• New product launches
• Marketing team expansion – even hiring junior team members means they’re looking to grow 
• Executive vacancies
• Dated agency relationships
• Big events – anniversaries; openings
• New technology investments 
• Venture capital investments and brand mergers 

Train your team to keep up with these events and take full advantage of the tools your agency is already paying for.

3. Know When To Stop

Lastly, don’t get to the point that you’re pissing off the prospect. I know follow-ups work. I’m not here to tell you to stop being diligent. But it’s not about “following up” – huh?!  Nope.  It’s about building a relationship. It takes time and it takes effort and it takes a lot of care.  Share helpful news, insights, information… anything that can help make their job easier.  But don’t just “follow up!”  Most of all, be patient.  It’s about planting seeds.

Standing out is half the battle. You’re competing in a sea of thousands of Marcom agencies. Take the extra step… I promise, hardly anyone else is. It may take longer to craft your outreach, but it will return tenfold. 

And remember, always, to pitch with a passion.