3 Ideas for Generating New Business – Pt 1

New business is the lifeblood of any sales operation and development of this should represent a significant part of your day or week. You should never take it as a given that your existing clients will be there in perpetuity.

But finding it is not always as easy as scanning the phone book and picking up the phone. It requires a somewhat tactical approach. Over the next few days, I’m going to explore 3 ideas for generating new business.

The first of these 3 strategies is looking at creating smaller value opportunities with greater volume.

Create Smaller Value Opportunities

One of the realities of media is that not every business can afford to use yours. Regardless of what medium it is that you sell, your price point will exclude some advertisers.

But another reality is that a whole lot of small spends can also add up to a larger number, one that might just fill the hole in your budget. So why not look at creating opportunities of smaller value to address these needs and sell them to multiple advertisers? Then it becomes a volume game.

To give you an example, back in my newspaper sales days, we commanded a fairly premium rate to advertise in our Entertainment section, but to the detriment of many small clubs and venues that had limited capacity and even more limited budgets.

Rather than ignore them as an opportunity, we reserved a full page within the section, styled it as a venue guide and broke it up into modules. Within this kind of hybrid classified / display area, we then sold off the modules to the smaller venues at a considerably cheaper rate, creating new business revenue.

By having a lower entry point, it can also create a consistent revenue base – the smaller venues returned each week to promote something new.

So how can you break up your medium into smaller opportunities?

It starts by understanding the needs of the smaller clients – what do they need to sell, what they measure as success and then setting a price point accordingly.

Setting the price point needs to be balanced with your targets as well – it may be as easy as looking at your minimum yield and breaking it down, or alternatively, working out your run rate to budget and then costing it out.

Try it out and see how you go.

Next week, I am going to look at mining clients that are “associated” with your current base to find new opportunities.