RSW/US Brings New Business Opportunities to Ad Agencies

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Guest post written by Mark Sneider, Owner/President of RSW/US.

I see Mark at a lot of major agency events each year. I always enjoy spending some time with him and his business development director, Lee McKnight. Mark and I both spoke at the Mirren New Business Conference in New York recently. I asked him to share with the readers of Fuel Lines about his company and how they help agencies create new business opportunities.

Normally we don’t like to talk about ourselves, but Michael asked that I put together a post on RSW/US and talk about who we are and why we’re a different and better outsourced lead generation firm for ad agencies, PR firms, and other marketing service organizations (which is the only place we play).

I think the first and foremost reason why we’re different is because we don’t do stuff like this.  We are a big believer in inbound marketing that complements outbound efforts and we have grown the RSW/US business by giving it away, similar to what Michael does with his business.

This is the same practice we use when we represent the 50 agencies we serve as their agency new business firm, looking like we are part of their agency.  We have a team internally that does nothing but help organize client content and find value-added content to support the sale of our agency clients.

Unlike other firms out there that do what we do, we practice what we preach.  Take a look at our site (www.rswus.com) and you’ll see.  We are all about thought leadership, giving our smart thinking and experiences away so agencies of all types and sizes can benefit.  This is the approach we use for our agency clients to help find qualified leads, set meetings, and help them move closer to close.

We are big believers in social media as a tool to not only help build RSW/US’ business, but also as a tool to use when we prospect on behalf of our client programs.

We are also big believers in positioning as an effective means of separating out one agency from another.  We often steal a page out of Tim William’s WHO/WHAT/HOW approach to develop smart and effective points of difference that we use to help better distinguish the agencies we represent from the sea of firms on the market.

We are big believers in metrics and tracking.  We have a manager of program operations on staff who does nothing but track the performance of new accounts to make sure all the metrics are lining up.  She reports to me weekly on each of our 50 programs and if there are ever issues, we are on top of them before the client is on top of us.

We are also big believers in transparency and strategy.  Not only do our seasoned New Business Directors (typically 25+ years of marketing/sales/agency experience) conference weekly with our clients, but Quarterly, we are holding team strategic meetings with clients to review the past Quarter’s activity and plan for the upcoming few months.

We are big believers in quality and clean lists.  Unlike other firms that clean lists every 100+ days or so, we clean our lists a week prior to use.  With all the movement in the industry, we find when we’re handed lists that our client purchased or subscribed to, they are never workable right out of the box.

And finally, we are huge believers in Leo Burnett’s principle of added value.  During his valediction speech to his employees he focused on the importance of maintaining the “beyond the expected” principle and said to them that as soon as the apples that sit on their reception desk are just apples for eating and not symbolic of the added value that they represent…then it is time for the agency to take his name off the door.

This is the one thing that permeates all we do.   For our clients.  For their prospects.  And for RSW/US.

Thanks Michael!  That wasn’t so bad!

About Michael Gass

Consultant | Trainer | Author | Speaker

Since 2007, he has been pioneering the use of social media, inbound and content marketing strategies specifically for agency new business.

He is the founder of Fuel Lines Business Development, LLC, a firm which provides business development training and consulting services to advertising, digital, media and PR agencies.

Comments

  1. Don Beehler says

    Enjoyed your guest post, Mark. Giving away helpful information is an excellent way to attract new business, but proper positioning, tracking performance, transparency and adding value are keys to retaining it over the long haul. Trust is at the core of any successful partnership, and it sounds as though you’ve been very effective at establishing and maintaining trust with your clients.

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