The New New Business: Being Inspired by Hustle Culture with Caroline Sparkes
Caroline is a founding partner of the Outskirt Collective and head of marketing for Freeman EMEA. She works alongside leaders to identify and convert growth opportunities. Caroline is in the BD100 Hall of Fame and has 20 years’ of international business development & marketing experience with agencies including Huge, Lowe, Critical Mass, Dare, ustwo, Momentum and GPJ. She was formerly marketing and communications chair of BIMA - the British Interactive Media Association and board member of both Omniwomen and the IPG women's leadership network.
LBB> What was your first sale or new business win? (Was it a big or small job? How difficult or scary was it? What do you remember about how you felt? What lessons did you learn?)
Caroline> I learnt my new business skills in traditional advertising agencies in the 2000s - at a time when pitches were all-in and the pitch theatre was akin to a modern punch-drunk production. My first significant new business win was a huge holding company pitch for Nokia whilst I was at Lowe / IPG - it was a gargantuan effort with a multitude of agencies and brilliant minds collaborating together during a dark winter in Helsinki. I learnt so much from that process - how to juggle priorities, how to deal with big agency personalities and crucially how to keep everything on track and on brief. I remember when I got the call that we’d won that I literally couldn’t breathe - I was so thrilled and elated.
LBB> What was the best piece of advice you got early on?
Caroline> That thoughtful and persuasive writing can often swing a decision. (nod to Steve Harrison here)
LBB> And the worst?
Caroline> Being sent into one of my first client meetings, I was told “tits and teeth” as preparation for presenting work… (it was the 1990s, thank goodness the world has changed).
LBB> How has the business of ‘selling’ in the creative industry changed since you started?
Caroline> Selling has become much more collaborative and a voice has now been given to the people who have put the work together. Many moons ago, it used to be that either the ‘suits’ (account people / senior management) or the new business people were sent off to ‘sell’ the work or do the pitch. I remember being told “don’t come back until you sell it”.
Thankfully the industry has moved on and the most successful companies / agencies now give space for talent to shine and to showcase their thinking and creative work - and to showcase the people and culture of the agency. What that does mean however is that the role of new business has evolved, new business people need to champion the client internally, understand what they will buy and crucially ensure the presenting team is set up for success.
LBB> Can anyone be taught to sell or do new business or do you think it suits a certain kind of personality?
Caroline> Selling and New Business needs slightly different things.
Selling is now everyone’s role - the creative industry is a service industry and we are here to service our clients, to sell them strategy, thinking, creative work, experiences that will help move their business forward. Ensuring that your teams understand that and how they are contributing to client success is often enough for them to be able to ‘sell’. Its about having honest conversations with clients and anyone and everyone in our business should be taught this as a fundamental.
New Business requires some additional skills. Commercial savvy, business strategy and persuasive writing are crucial skills. Resilience and empathy as part of people's personality is difficult to teach (although they can be enhanced). There is definitely a traditional new business ‘personality’ but I do think its time to shake up the discipline and be inspired by the hustle culture of the younger generation.
LBB> What are your thoughts about the process of pitching that the industry largely runs on? (e.g. How can it be improved - or does it need to be done away with completely? Should businesses be paid to pitch? What are your thoughts about businesses completely refusing to engage in pitching? How can businesses perform well without ‘giving ideas away for free?)
Caroline> I’m going to say something controversial about this. I actually think that the traditional pitch process is being encouraged and sustained by the large holding companies' new business departments. They have been structured and trained around the traditional pitch (Creds, RFI, RFP, Chemistry, Pitch) and in my experience there’s not much wiggle room for them to deviate from this, to be innovative or proactive. It's a system that reassures senior agency leaders that there is a pipeline of business coming in. What this means is that you have an enormous amount of smaller specialist agencies investing an extraordinary amount of resources in a process which can potentially wipe out their margins. Its not a fair fight. The smaller agencies need to be much more selective and focused when it comes to pitching and ensure that they have a chance of winning.
Clients however do need a system that provides them with enough insight and information that they are making the right decision and mitigating risk. Moving agency or choosing a new agency is a huge deal and the marketplace for agencies has evolved hugely.
I therefore believe there is room for a more bespoke way of pitching - one where agencies can have ongoing honest conversations with prospective clients about how they can help with their business challenges and suggest how they might collaborate together to see if they are the right fit, whether that is a pitch process or something completely different like a client/agency retreat.
LBB> How do you go about tailoring your selling approach according to the kind of person or business you’re approaching?
Caroline> People buy people. Doing due diligence on the person you are approaching is key. Understand their personality, priorities, challenges. Understand if they are big picture or detail oriented. Figure out their universe and how you can be part of that.
LBB> New business and sales can often mean hearing ‘no’ a lot and quite a bit of rejection - how do you keep motivated?
Caroline> I’ve always been motivated by building teams and culture - ultimately a new business win means that new people, personalities and dynamics will be introduced into the business and this is the best motivation for doing what we do. Seeing people get their first job, bringing brilliant diverse talent into the agency, getting to watch a team evolve and thrive.
LBB> The advertising and marketing industry often blurs the line between personal and professional friendships and relationships… does this make selling easier or more difficult and delicate?
Caroline> Selling is ultimately about relationships, whether old ones or new ones.
LBB> In your view, what's the key to closing a deal?
Caroline> Having a clear view of what the client is going to buy… getting them to sign off on something. Being useful and showing value. Also once you have closed the deal, get out of the room - don’t unsell it!
How important is cultural understanding when it comes to selling internationally? (And if you have particular experience on this front, what advice do you have?)
Cultural understanding is important both domestically and internationally - In the modern world, I think this goes beyond country borders. Understanding an individual client’s cultural context and personal preferences as well as an organisation's internal culture and geographical culture all play into how new business is approached. We are operating in a world where companies are bigger than countries.
LBB> How is technology and new platforms (from platforms like Salesforce and Hubspot to video calls to social media) changing sales and new business?
Caroline> Technology has changed the methods and tactics of sales and new business. It's now much easier to get an understanding of individual clients (by good old fashioned social media trawling or deploying AI applications like Crystal Knows). It's also much easier to track new business with platforms like Hubspot. I’m not a fan of the virtual pitch, but video calls have made the world a lot smaller and more people can be meaningfully involved in the process.
However, these are just tools. They are not a substitute for human relationships and a cup of coffee and a chat in person.
There’s a lot of training for a lot of parts of the industry, but what’s your thoughts about the training and skills development when it comes to selling and new business?
I think there is some brilliant training out there (shout out to Agency Hackers for their series) for new business. I think just going on a training course however isn’t a silver bullet - the whole agency/company needs to have a growth mindset. That is something that takes real effort and time.
LBB> What’s your advice for anyone who’s not necessarily come up as a salesperson who’s now expected to sell or win new business as part of their role?
Caroline> Be authentic to you and find a way to sell that feels comfortable for you. It's not about learning how to be a salesman, it's about finding a way that you can connect with clients and start to form relationships. Someone I know who wasn’t a traditional salesperson was tasked with ‘networking and selling’ as part of his role - instead of trying to work the room at conferences and industry events, he devised an amazing project called #100coffees - which allowed him to meet new contacts but authentically on his terms - over a cup of coffee, one on one with phones off. And it worked. Brilliant.
