About That New Business Person…

I’m a fan of constraint-driven exercises, so let me pose one for your consideration. Imagine that you could never employ a full-time dedicated new business person (let alone a team.) What changes would you need to make in your business as a result?

As with all constraint-driven exercises, your first reaction is “I couldn’t do that!” But it takes only a minute or two of creative thinking to lead you to your second reaction: “Okay, I can see how I would do that, but it wouldn’t be good.” And only a few minutes of creative thinking later you should have some inspirational ideas that lead you to think that this might actually be a good thing—if you had the courage to try these ideas.

I’m not trying to make the case for getting rid of people. I simply want to provoke you to think through what it is you’re asking your new business person (or people) to do.

New Business-Less Firms

I know lots of firms that do not employ any new business people. The commonalities of these firms tend to be:

  • Under 40 people in size
  • Specialized in a discipline, market or both
  • The specialism and dedicated marketing (either free content or paid media) drives a decent stream of inbound leads
  • The principal owner or a partner owns the function and devotes 25%-50% of their time to it
  • They’ve broken free of the Industrial Pitch Complex and are not slavishly devoted to responding to RFPs

If you gave some consideration to the constraint-driven exercise then it’s likely that most of the changes you identified are listed or implied in the bullet points above. 

What Does a New Business Person Do?

When an agency principal tells me they’re looking for a new business person, my first question is always why? What specifically are you looking for this person to do? There exist a few different profiles of the modern-day new business person. 

The Pitch Wrangler

In an undifferentiated ad agency, the new business role centers around responding to RFPs, building pitch decks and coordinating the pitch itself. There might also be a certain amount of networking and outreach to get onto those pitch lists. That’s a lot of work, making for a busy new business team. And the reality is that if you’re playing the pitch game then you’re going to have to staff up for it. But if you’ve broken free of the Industrial Pitch Complex then you will seek to staff the position differently. 

Obviously, specialist firms that have broken free of the need to pitch seek to staff the position differently. They’re most often looking for one of three types. 

The Lead Generator

Positioning + marketing + time should = inbound leads. Eventually. But it can take a while. So the most common reason I hear a specialist firm looking to hire a new business person is they need someone to drive leads. 

This is perfectly valid but it should never be at the expense of continuing to climb the ladder of lead generation over time. 

The Marketer

Whereas lead generation in a generalist firm tends to be a sales function, in a specialist firm it’s more likely to be a marketing one. As a result, specialist firms tend to be more sophisticated in their marketing—across organic and paid content as well as their tech stack. The responsibilities can quickly add up to the point where a full-time marketer is required. This can be staffed at junior or senior levels.

The Qualifier

When lead generation is moved away from sales to marketing, the characteristics of a successful salesperson change to someone a little more patient and discerning. A seller of expertise today is more like the person who will deliver that expertise in the engagement and therefore a lot of the navigating of the sale can be delegated to senior account managers and other subject matter experts. 

When the firm gets prolific at generating leads it can sometimes necessitate the need for a dedicated qualifier. This person’s job is to have the initial conversation with inbound leads to see if there is a fit suitable enough to pass on to a subject matter expert to navigate to a close. The qualifier can also have responsibility for outreach to warm leads (people engaging with the firm’s content, primarily on their website) and maybe even do a little cold outreach as well. The qualifier role is sometimes combined with the marketer or the lead generator. 

The Manager

Obviously, even specialist firms will need to hire someone to manage all of these functions once the firm gets to a certain size. The manager is the person who knits together these areas of responsibility: content creation, paid ads, qualifying, warm and cold outreach, the navigating of all opportunities to a close and all the reporting and forecasting that goes with it. At a certain size, this person becomes a more and more obvious hire.

So, Do You Need a New Business Person?

There’s no right or wrong answer to this question but it’s a question that often doesn’t get asked once the position has been filled for the first time. Doing the constraint-driven exercise of imagining your firm without a dedicated new business person might just help you think through exactly what your new business person should be doing and what other areas of responsibility might be handled differently.