What’s in your business development playbook?
Quite rightly, agencies invest a lot of time thinking about (and documenting) how their services are delivered, how to communicate with clients and the means by which they report results. Operationally, there are policies, processes and templates aplenty.
However, with new business, it’s a different story. Business development is rarely designed or documented with the same rigour. Execution is therefore patchy and inconsistent at best. And that leads to the big peaks and troughs in revenue (many consider these normal when they needn’t be).
If you want to flatten these out, there is only one way; give business development the same attention as any other function of the agency (if not, more). And document everything.
In my agency days, we had a playbook; our new business bible, if you like. It could be handed over to a new recruit and after a large brew, they’d know all about our approach to new business – from positioning to pitching and everything in between. (Training was more hands-on than that. But you get my drift).
The idea of a playbook remains something I recommend (and work towards) with my clients. Some will have the beginnings of one when we start out. Others will have little. Either way, the goal is to fill in the gaps.
So, what does the playbook include? Here’s my suggested contents page, with some brief notes to tell you what each section / sub-section is all about:
Positioning
What you do, who for, how and why – the foundations of your business development strategy.
Your story
How did the agency get started? How has it evolved over time? Where are you now?
Your vision, mission and values
Building on the above, why do you exist, what is your cause and how do you like to do business?
Target audience
Who are you trying to speak to? What does your ideal client look like? For most smaller agencies, the narrower the audience, the better.
Value proposition, elevator pitch and one-liner
Your ‘go to market’ messaging, focused on the problems you help address for your target audience (and / or the opportunities you help them exploit).
Overview of services and pricing
A summary of what you do. Features, benefits and pricing for each of your services. You might also include a brief overview of any methodologies or frameworks used in delivering your services (especially if they are proprietary and add weight to your proposition).
Business development and marketing activity
With a clearly defined target audience, this section explains how you build awareness and create opportunity.
Objectives
Your SMART, new business objective and how this breaks down into tactical targets, such as the required number of wins, proposals / pitches, qualifying calls and so on.
Also, include a summary of your methodology in working out the above. Or stick it in the Appendix.
Strategy overview
A brief explanation of how you are going to meet those objectives and targets (‘how’ being the keyword here), including an overview of barriers to overcome and strengths to exploit.
Team
In delivering the strategy, a summary of roles, responsibilities and reporting lines, including any external partners.
Thought leadership
Your point of view, manifesto or core belief; the central pillar that guides your content strategy, public speaking gigs, events and so on.
Collateral
The key assets that demonstrate your expertise, perspective and impact; the kind of stuff used to open doors and nurture relationships e.g. whitepapers, reports, case studies, testimonials, award wins and so on (and where these assets can be accessed).
Technology and tools
Outlining the technology used by the agency to support activity, such as your CRM, automation platforms and intelligence tools.
Execution
A summary of channels and tactics. Whilst the playbook doesn’t include detailed goals, plans and actions, it should direct people to where these can be found and any guidance on how such templates are used.
Qualifying and discovery
Covering everything the agency does in separating the prospects who fit from those who don’t and spotting the serious opportunities amongst the tire-kickers.
Qualifying and discovery process
The steps taken from pre-qualifying all the way through to on-boarding (and the goals / actions associated with each of those stages).
Questioning frameworks
Guidelines on the questions asked at each stage of the process, including examples and links to relevant templates.
Internal briefing guidelines
A summary of the information to be gathered from a prospect before briefing the internal team e.g. background, objectives, challenges, success criteria and so on.
Lead scoring and forecasting methodology
The criteria used to pre-qualify, fully qualify and weight opportunities in your pipeline.
Proposals and pitching
Outlining everything the agency does to prepare, create, send / present and follow up proposals.
Proposal and presentation guidelines
Direction on proposal / presentation structure, style and format, including links to templates and recent examples.
Pitch meeting guidelines
A checklist of things that should happen before, during and after a pitch meeting. Who is involved, when and how? This section should now include notes on delivering pitches virtually – they are here to stay, even when things get back to some kind of normal.
Pitch review process
Win or lose, the questions you ask prospects and how feedback is shared across the agency (and acted upon).
On-boarding process
Covering everything that needs to happen for a smooth handover to the delivery team.
Reporting and review
The means by which you know if things are going well. Or not.
Lead and lag key performance indicators
An overview of business development and marketing KPIs, how they’re tracked and by who.
Weekly and monthly meeting agendas
What is discussed in progress meetings, who needs to attend, how often they take place and so on.
Reward / compensation plan
An overview of any commission structures and company bonus schemes that are related to new business performance.
Appendix
Stick everything in here that is too long to go in the main document e.g. detailed methodologies, frameworks, templates and processes
This is not a static document. Some sections will be reviewed, refined and added to on a fairly regular basis. Others not so much.
This leads to the question; should you have a playbook in place before recruiting a business developer or build it out once they are on-board? There’s an argument to say a good business developer will have a lot to contribute to its creation. And you’d be absolutely right. In fact, I’d encourage it.
HOWEVER, the reason why so many business developers are out on their ear after three-months is because a lot of this isn’t already in place. I’m particularly referring to the big stuff like positioning.
The poor business developer is therefore working with a blank canvas. As well as being expected to bring in the bacon, he or she is also tasked with effectively building the new business function from scratch (which the playbook is designed to document).
That’s fine. But only if you give them the time and space to do so.
Otherwise, I’d recommend getting a large chunk of the playbook in place first. Design the function and then recruit into it accordingly. Not only will you have a much better idea of the person / people you need (experience, skills, strength / relevance of their network, etc) but you’ll also give them more of a fighting chance when they join.
That’s my playbook. What does yours look like? Have I missed anything?
Photo by Susan Yin on Unsplash