The untapped opportunity of the ‘talent crisis’ on new business
There are around 30K agencies in the UK. They all seem to be recruiting right now. And they all seem to be struggling. This is not an article exploring the causes and solutions to this so-called ‘talent-crisis’ (for some of that, go here, here, and here).
Instead, I want to look at the potential impact on your business development efforts. And why your difficulties in recruiting ‘delivery’ people might actually present an opportunity.
This was born out of a recent conversation with an agency owner experiencing their own mini-talent crisis. Their delivery team is already stretched, barely able to manage the workload from current clients. So adding to this with a shiny new client or two is almost unthinkable at the moment.
‘So, we’re going to put business development activity on hold for a while’, he said.
‘You’re going to do what?’ I replied.
By the tone of my voice, he knew immediately that I thought this was a terrible idea.
You might well be in the same boat. You’re busy with existing client work and unable to service new clients. So, why would you continue building your pipeline? Surely pausing business development activity for a few months, and then picking it back up when your resourcing issues are fixed, is the obvious solution, right?
Wrong.
Here are some reasons why…
1) You’ve built momentum with your business development and marketing plan. This wasn’t easy. It took time to put the plan together. It took even longer to build the necessary processes and habits to execute it consistently. It was a hard-won battle. Putting a pause on activity and then starting back up again later in the year sounds easy. But it’s not; once the momentum of a project is lost, it’s really difficult to regain it. And what’s your marketing executive going to do during that period. Find another job, I imagine.
2) If you put a hold on business development and marketing activity now, you might not experience any negative effects immediately. BUT it will absolutely come back to bite you in the behind 6 – 12 months from now. The activity you invest in today creates opportunities for the future. Think ahead six months from now and visualise an empty-looking pipeline – that should be the only motivation you need to keep the business development tap on.
3) The typical sales cycle – from initial interest to starting work – is about three months (longer for some). So even if you get lucky and contact a prospect tomorrow who is ‘in the market’, you may well find your resourcing issues are fixed, at least in part, by the time they are a paying client.
4) You never know when a current client will decide to leave you. A strong pipeline – plentiful with qualified, on-profile opportunities – is an insurance policy against the unexpected.
5) A strong pipeline provides you with the luxury of choice; the choice to discard prospects that don’t fit and progress the opportunities that do. When your pipeline is sparse, that choice is removed. So, you end up taking on a project that isn’t quite aligned with your core expertise. Or you say ‘yes’ to the client you know is going to be a pain in the &*@#.
To repeat, a strong pipeline = choice.
6) If you need to, you can put prospective clients in a holding pattern. In talking this through with a client recently, he used the analogy of airplanes stacked up ready for landing. If somebody really wants to work with you – because they value your expertise and experience over that of others – they’ll be happy to wait in a holding pattern for a month or two. But with one caveat – you must be upfront about this by managing their expectations early in the sales process and by keeping them regularly informed whilst they are in the ‘stack’.
Could you lose opportunities adopting this approach? Probably. But that’s better than rushing to onboard a new client where your limited capacity means you deliver a poor client experience and sub-standard work, not to mention the damage to your team’s morale and wellbeing.
Your current resourcing issues are a problem, no doubt about it. But, from a new business perspective, can they be reframed as an opportunity?
An opportunity to be laser-focused on the work you should be going for.
An opportunity to finesse your skills (and confidence) in saying ‘no’.
And an opportunity to replace bad-fitting clients with better ones (however you choose to define ‘better’).
But you can only take advantage of these opportunities if you reject – what might look like – the obvious answer to a squeeze on resource: turning the tap off for a while.
Because when you do that, you start placing limits on your ability to choose who you work with. Maybe not today but almost certainly in the future.
And that’s the crux. When evaluating how things are going on the new business front, the question is not ‘how are things looking now?‘ but ‘how are things likely to look in 6 – 12 months?‘
With this in mind, I can’t think of many scenarios where you would make the conscious decision to put business development activity on hold, your current talent shortage / crisis included.
Sometimes of course it is forced upon you. Your marketing manager leaves abruptly, for example. Inevitably, that will result in a slowdown in activity. But, ideally, not a complete stop.
This is where a ‘new business is everyone’s business’ approach pays dividends. With responsibility for business development and marketing shared across the agency, you reduce the risk that activity will ever come to a standstill.
Because where new business is concerned, it should always be business as usual.