Mining For Gold Inside Your Own Agency
I worked at an agency that cracked a code most firms still struggle with. They had created this unique role - Client Experience & Strategy - a kind of Swiss Army knife blending account management, sales, and hands-on delivery.
The role itself didn’t really matter, it’s what it solved: the hidden breakdown in how information flows within an agency.
Most agencies already have the insights they need to drive more leads. Your practitioners are spotting emerging trends before the rest of the market. Your sales team knows exactly what’s resonating with prospects. And your marketers know how to package it all into a story that sells.
But that knowledge? It’s stuck in silos.
Unlocking it doesn’t require hiring a new role - it requires asking the right people the right questions.
So, who should you be asking? And what exactly do you need to know?
Practitioners
The people who are actually doing the work are the best resource for what’s going on in your discipline. Good practitioners have their ear to the ground on latest trends and ideas.
Typically, you don’t need to ask these people to do the research - they’re already doing it. But you do need to coax the information out of them. They’re a trove of key insights that potential customers will gush over, but their default is not to share it with their business-minded peers. In some cases that’s because they don’t want to commercialize their passion, but more frequently it’s because they don’t realize the things they’re learning organically are so valuable in the new business process.
Questions to ask them:
What new tools or processes are you starting to see and use?
Who are the influencers you’re following? What type of content do they share?
What questions are clients asking you?
Sales
If practitioners are the expert in the discipline (e.g. design), the business development person is the expert in the positioning. Whether it’s an industry vertical positioning or horizontal positioning, they should have their finger on the pulse of the market. In some industries, marketing should inform sales because they’re on the frontlines, but in a relationship-oriented industry like ours, sales needs to inform marketing.
Questions to ask them:
What’s resonating in new business conversations?
What were the most attended sessions at the recent conference?
Are there economic or industry trends that our clients are thinking about?
Marketing
For most firms, marketing are the experts in messaging and internal capabilities. Their role is to help practitioners and salespeople tell the story of the firm in the most powerful way possible - and amplify that message through a suite of tools. They need to ingest information from delivery and sales teams and reconfigure it into reusable content for all.
Questions to ask them:
Which digital assets are generating the most interest?
How can we be telling our story in a more compelling way?
What other tools can we be using to amplify our story to more prospects?
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One interesting note - in a smaller shop, one or two people might represent all of these roles. Rather than simplifying things, it may make them harder. Those people are always more loyal to one area of responsibility than the other. So ask these questions of your team to fill in the blanks of your lead gen strategy - but be prepared to ask them in front of the mirror too.
