Every time I go to a meeting someone hands me their business card and I have to explain I just don’t do them any more.

I’d much rather connect on Linkedin or via BBM then take a card. I just don’t see the point in the digital age of the things, however expensive the stock, or how well designed they are. To me they are as redundant as the fax numbers so often printed on them alongside someone’s direct dial. At a conference you can use a scanner to take details when someone visits your stand – which saves on collating all those cards and data entering them when you get back home. Why should different rules apply outside of the exhibition centre?

Linkedin means you get a lot more than their job title anyway – you can see where they have worked, who you might mutually know and get a more developed understanding of someone than any pocket sized card. I appreciate when you get a promotion it’s great to get that new card, but if like me you own your own company hierarchy is really not important any more.

They are also expensive, and ultimately disposable. I’d rather not use paper if I can help it (indeed we have paperless offices in both London and Edinburgh; we are a green new business agency) and business cards are no exception. I’m sure one pack equates to half a tree and I don’t want that sap on my hands just so someone can have a card which details my address details when they probably already have them or we can just swap emails via our phones.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m not refusing to take your card! It’s business etiquette and I understand that – just don’t think I’m being cheap not giving you one back. I’m not, I’m just not into them.

What a month! We’ve been very busy indeed, servicing existing clients as well as kicking off new campaigns. This takes the form of a planning meeting, part of which is about absorbing as much information as possible and part of which is working out how a rock solid proposition.

Clients who come to us with a proposition in place won’t get an easy time of it either. It’s often the case that those clients take a lot longer to prepare – it is a two way street after all. A client has to adjust their thinking and forget the way other new business activity might have been approached. Getting things straight from the start we have discovered is essential for delivery, relationships and sanity!

Every time I now meet a potential client I stress how important this preparation work is. They might have pre-conceived ideas about how quickly a campaign can start and if they do I am quick to address this.

First we consider what services are we actually selling and then we consider who it is we want to sell them too

If you’re already getting business from a sector don’t then say let’s leave it to your new business partner– consider every aspect of that sector first – incoming leads come in bursts and a dedicated campaign strand will make sure an agency gets in front of decision makers who might not of heard of you, however well known in property, or gaming, or publishing you might feel you are. What we do isn’t easy – but just because of that don’t think you’ll leave the easiest targets for yourself – after all time and opportunity are other factors you are buying when you take on a new business agency.

Don’t think in verticals too much either. Think horizontally I always say – let’s nail down the proposition, agree on the market and then create the messaging. Nobody cares about pretty picture anymore apparently. That’s not entirely true but they care more about return on investment and what it is a new agency can offer them an incumbent can’t. And that’s why we always suggest looking at our client’s offer from a product point of view. It helps identify the sell as much as it does for the prospect enable them to evaluate when it is they might want to take a closer look.

Campaign planning meetings aren’t ever easy, there’s resistance, there’s arguments and unfortunately there’s often biscuits.

There’s also ambition and sometimes a little bit too much imagination. Be realistic about targets and base them and what it is you are capable of selling! If you are in a crowded market place you need a better way to stand out then great account management, creativity or lower cost. It’s 2012 and the prospect couldn’t care less – they want to know about the bottom line and how you can help them, and if you still think that’s lower cost please don’t call us.

A proposition ought to make people sit up and listen and a campaign planning session is about increasing to the max the chance of that happening and then all the tactical stuff to support the sales activity – the nice stuff if you like. The strategy stuff has got to be about much more than agreeing an offer these days. Make your prospect community as small as possible and the message as useful as it can be, otherwise you’re just standing on a rooftop shouting, and that’s for the birds.

One thing we have learnt over the past two months is that when it comes to fee there isn’t a lot of difference between ourselves and our competition.

This is the busiest time of year for new business agency new business. Potential clients are considering their options and with a new year approaching there’s a desire to grow, to win new work and to find new ways to do so.

It’s a very competitive marketplace, just as it is for our clients in their own fields. We certainly don’t ever bad mouth our rivals, but finding a point of difference is the key to standing out. Or is it?

These days the expression usp has become a bit jaded. Essentially point of difference is still important but less so than what it is an agency does to make a point of difference for potential clients. This is how we sell in our clients a lot of the time

Does that strategy qualify as a usp between us and our competitors? No, we’ve all moved away from trying to sell that way. Quality of people, well we know a lot of good salespeople inhabit our space and long may that continue, and only really good sales people can work in our industry for very long. Fee, well as I said, there’s not a lot in it.

One thing we have noticed is time allocated to accounts. It is industry standard within new business agencies to work on an account one day a week averaging out about five days a month. Maybe six. So you’re getting slightly over the equivelent of a weeks time from an in house business development manager.

Except there is a bit more to it than that; in house bdms, as we know at Icebreaker from our own firsthand experience, have RFPs, tenders, meetings, internal meetings, pitches to complete etc etc. This eats sales time and you will end up with probably about thirty five hours outbound activity a month. We know. We’ve done the maths.

Which is one of the principal selling points of new biz agencies and always has been, and that’s whether I’m selling Icebreaker or back when I used to work as sales and marketing manager at one of our longest running competitors.

However at Icebreaker we think that’s not quite enough. Because one of our three directors and a bdm work on every one of our accounts our clients end up with around fifty five hours dedicated to their sales pipeline.

We were told at a recent pitch this really does make a point of difference between us and our competition. It was nice of the potential client to point this out because we’d of not thought it was such a big deal. But of course it is. It’s a very big deal indeed.

To talk to us about how we’d spend that time working with you email us at hello@icebreaker-bd.com