Tuesday, May 26, 2009

Here Comes the Judge

While my blog has been primarily about business development in the digital industry I wanted to put on my political cap for a moment; or my judicial robe as the case may be here. I've been reading about President Obama's choice to replace David Souter on the Supreme Court, Sonia Sotomayor. This woman grew up in a housing project in the Bronx and since her father died when she was 9, her mother worked 2 jobs to put Sonia and her brother through school. She eventually went to Princeton, graduated summa cum laude, then on to Yale Law School and from there worked as an assistant DA in Manhattan before rising through the ranks as a judge. What a story. It's a cliche to say this is yet another example of the American dream (there, I said it anyway) in which hard work can reap many rewards. Now that I think about it, this has everything to do with business development in the digital industry.

Wednesday, May 13, 2009

From the Horse's Mouth

I attended an interesting panel discussion last night about digital marketing for CPG at the Interactive Advertising Club that featured panelists from Schering Plough, P&G, Kraft and Mars. One of the questions that was asked to the panel was what they think makes for a good sales presentation. The consensus seemed to be the following:

1. Differentiate yourself from your competitors

2. Understand their business of the marketer you're meeting with and the problems they're looking to solve

3. Show them results

I've discussed topic before on my blog and it's also part of an ongoing focus within Firstborn but thought it very helpful hearing these thoughts from the type of people we're hoping to work with.

Thursday, May 7, 2009

Outsourcing Sales

We’ve never outsource business development at Firstborn. As a creative digital agency, the types of projects we work on and the technologies we use are constantly evolving. In fact we’re a different company than we were even a year ago. Whoever sells for us needs to be inside our 4 walls in order to have his or her finger on the pulse of the shop to understand the nuances of how our projects are conceived and built. I’m not a techie by any stretch of the imagination but I know enough to be able to speak to our process and methods.

We’re also a very team-centric company without any silos; designers and developers work side by side from the start of an assignment. That culture of collaboration needs to be reflected by whoever sells on our behalf since that’s a key part of who we are. Speaking of collaboration, while my assistant and I are the only dedicated business development people at Firstborn, everyone from our senior staff and our team of producers contributes to getting work.

Sure hiring an inside person is an investment in salary and benefits as opposed to an outside solution but if they bring in one sizable project, they’ve already paid for themselves. Maybe it works for large agencies but we’re a boutique-sized firm and as such we don’t see the need to ever outsource business development just as we don’t use freelance designers and developers for the most part. The quality of our work has to remain high level and that applies to the sales process as well.

Monday, May 4, 2009

Pitch during the Pitch

I've discussed in the past about how a pitch meeting can very often be a gauge of the type of relationship you'll have with a prospective client. Last week we had a meeting with some people at a research foundation that does some incredible work in making the world a better place. The CEO of the company gave us an overview of the foundation and I have to say it was one of the most compelling presentations I've seen. Not only did he have such incredible stories to tell us but the way he told the stories was remarkable. Talk about interactive presentations, he even had us go around the room and read flash cards which described some of their work in various disciples so we were all involved. I can image how well he does in fund raising meetings. This made us want to work with this client even more, not only from a monetary perspective but from having the opportunity of being a part of the telling of their wonderful stories.