In this episode, Chip talks with Jody Sutter of The Sutter Company, a frequent contributor. They discuss strategies for small agencies, emphasizing the importance of clear positioning and targeted messaging for effective business development.

They highlight the necessity for agency owners to identify their strengths and leverage them, using methods like 12-week sprints to achieve incremental progress. They also address the challenges agencies face when looking for quick revenue boosts and the significance of tapping into existing networks.

Speaker, blogger, and owner of The Sutter Company, Jody Sutter ran business development teams at large agencies like R/GA, OMD and Havas, and spent over a decade in sales for a range of creative services firms, from branding design to digital advertising. She now provides the growth strategies and tools for agency owners to win new business.

The following is a computer-generated transcript. Please listen to the audio to confirm accuracy.

Chip Griffin: Hello and welcome to another episode of Chats with Chip. I’m your host, Chip Griffin, the founder of SAGA, the Small Agency Growth Alliance. And I’m delighted to have back with me today a very regular contributor to really all of the different platforms and podcasts and videos that I’ve done over the years, Jody Sutter of the Sutter Company.

Welcome, Jody.

Jody Sutter: Thank you, Chip. It’s always nice to be back.

Chip Griffin: It is. It is great to have you. I always know we’re going to have a great conversation. I often don’t know where we’re going to head with it. You know, we just kind of start and see where it takes us. But I, I think that makes it interesting for us and hopefully interesting and useful for the listeners.

Jody Sutter: Me, too. I love a good time.

Chip Griffin: For any listeners who, for whatever reason may have been under a rock and have never heard you on any of these platforms, why don’t you just give a brief introduction of yourself?

Jody Sutter: Yeah. So I am the, the owner of the Sutter Company. It’s a new business consulting, and coaching company.

 Like you, I also focus on working with, small agencies, specifically the owners of small agencies. Those agencies that are, you know, Usually between say five and, and 35 people who, for whom business development is essential, but, but don’t have the ability to support productively a salesperson or a business development rep. And really need to, they need a system that is going to allow them to use their, their own internal personal strengths to do business development on their terms. And feel control of the revenue that they can potentially generate for their agency.

So that’s what I’ve been doing. As I said, for about 10 years, I’m a career business development professional. Before I worked for myself, I worked for other agencies, large and small running business development. And, so that’s really where I, where I focus. And like I said, I believe that every, I think any agency owner, deserves to feel like they are in control of where their revenue is coming from.

And I help to help them achieve that.

Chip Griffin: And look, owners want to feel in control of their revenue and probably a lot of other things, but the revenue is something that they can can focus on a bit more. Obviously, given your laser like focus on business development, I think it makes sense to start there. We are at the start of a new year, which means that a lot of owners have closed the books on the previous year.

They’ve looked at them, they’ve started making projections and wish lists for this year as far as what they would like to be making and how much they would like to bring in for new business. They had some time over the holidays and so maybe they’ve started cooking up some schemes in their heads, for, for how they’re going to find those prospects.

So as, as we head here into the start of 2025, let’s take a moment and just talk about where we see agency business development today. I think it’s fair to say the last couple of years have been tough for a lot of small agencies. Not all. I mean, there, there’s like anything else, there are exceptions to the rule, but, but by and large, they haven’t been gangbuster years for most small agencies.

There’s still a lot of uncertainty in the air. Economically, politically, socially, et cetera. So as you’re taking a look at this, as you’re talking with a lot of agency owners and focused on their business development activities, how are things looking for this year?

Jody Sutter: Well, I wish I had a, an awesome crystal ball to give you a direct, clear, and more accurate than not answer.

But I, so I don’t know. And I think again, it’s still, it’s still a new year. Where you are at the time of recording this, we are about to go into a new administration, here in the United States. And I think a lot of people are probably waiting to see what happens with that. AI has really been changing things and I think this is going to be the year where AI really starts to become normalized.

I, so it’s funny, I always get a little bit nervous when I ask these questions too because I think, oh, I really should, I should have my finger on the pulse of these trends. The bottom line, I think business development is one of those things that the, sort of the, the tools may change and yet the underlying philosophy or the underlying skillset rarely changes.

And so I will say what I’ve always said is the first thing I ask my clients to do is to be willing to look at who they serve best and the problems that they solve. And I think that that can… If you’re, if you’re really, if you’re willing to be clear about that, that does a lot for just, just, just sort of cutting through the clutter and the noise.

And then you can start using your AI tools or, your, your Apollo IO dot lists, building those lists, using technology to help to amplify that message. So, the amplification may be different. I think the idea behind the message is still the same, though. I don’t know if that, that may be a disappointing answer, but that’s what I go back to, is the basics.

Chip Griffin: No, I want to key off of a couple of things that you said there, but, you know, I think one of the key things in my mind, at least, is this notion of figuring out, you know, who you are. Who are you serving? What do you do? What are the results? I’m sure you see this. A lot of small agencies have not done a particularly good job at positioning and defining their ideal client.

And it’s a lot of just kind of, you know, fire everything at the wall and see what happens. And so I, I think that, you know, with the start of a new year, it’s always a good time to sit down and reflect and say, are we as clear as we can be? And so when you’re working with an agency owner and, and trying to help them through this process, you know, what steps do you encourage them to do in order to refine that positioning and define their ideal client, particularly if they’re one of the many small agency owners who say, well, we can really do this for anybody.

We just, you know, we know what we’re doing and we don’t want to, we don’t want to eliminate opportunities. So I really don’t want to get that granular.

Jody Sutter: I think that the first argument I would make if you were, if you were an agency owner telling me that, the first argument I would make would be to think a little critically about the time that you have and your team has to run a successful business development operation.

And if you’re saying to me that you don’t want to limit yourself, you don’t want to limit the opportunities, then you will have to work exponentially harder to reach that many more people, companies, businesses. Because, and I guess there’s two things. First, there’s the, there’s the, the scale, the quantity, if you’re, if you’re serving everyone like that tired phrase, if you’re serving everyone, you’re serving no one.

But yeah, so there’s literally everyone. How does a small agency, what kind of advertising budget or marketing budget do you need to reach everyone? Also, I find that the language that you’ve got to use in the marketplace is, is very unsticky. So the first thing that I tend to do in my process, and a lot of times I think people are a little bit surprised.

I think often the first, the first thing that people, that agencies tend to do or any business tends to do, and they start thinking about, what are we saying about ourselves? How are we positioning? Is that they look inward. And they ask us things, what are we saying about ourselves? Is this clear? What do we want to be?

Those are really important questions. I think it’s much more useful though, to start out by asking them, asking ourselves, who are we serving? What are the problems that we solve? What I’ve found often when I work with clients is that while the answer to the question of who are we, what do we do, how do we want to be perceived, while that can be a very frustrating exercise, often when I can turn the, turn the mirror onto a little reflection of the clients, of the clients that they serve, it becomes so much clearer.

It’s so much easier because there’s objectivity. And we tend to have a much more productive conversation around if it’s a, if it’s a financial services category around regulatory issues. Or if it’s a consumer product category, maybe it’s reaching Gen Z or whatever the issue is that they know their clients have, and we can start focusing on that and define the problems, then the solutions and how we, how we communicate those solutions becomes a lot easier.

It’s not foolproof. I often find that agencies still sometimes fall back on this idea of like, Ooh, but we want to serve everyone. But I have seen it work really successfully and a lot of sort of, you know, light bulbs at the top of the head that go off.

Chip Griffin: I mean, I think it is so much easier to, to sell what you’re doing if you’re clear about what it is that you do and who you, who you do it for, because your prospects hear themselves in that.

And, and ultimately, I, I mean, I think that the whole notion of being a full service agency that can do this for, you know, everybody and their brother just doesn’t make sense. Because most small agencies, most mid sized agencies only have 10, 15, 20 clients tops at any given time. And so you don’t need that many, you’re not, there’s no need to go out there and get thousands of prospects.

That’s just, it’s a waste of time and energy on your part and makes it so much more difficult to get the right fit client.

Jody Sutter: Yeah. That’s something else I’ll often ask when they talk about growing, or when they talk of – agencies, talk about, you know, building that list of hundreds of prospects. I will often try to rear at the conversation by asking, well, how many, in order to reach your growth goals for the year, how many clients do you need?

And often the answer is between 1 and 3. So why do you need a 2, 500 person or 2, 500 business, list of businesses? Let’s get a little more focus.

Chip Griffin: It just, it doesn’t, it’s, it, it doesn’t make any sense and it’s, it’s really costly and time consuming to try to, to do that. Not, not to mention just, you know, difficult on the brain power, to, to try to focus in that way.

So, yeah, I, I do think having that, that focus as a, as a starting point is good, but okay. So now, let me, let’s assume that we’ve got an agency that, that has figured that out and so they’re like, okay, well, you know, we’ve refined our positioning for 2025. We’re going to charge ahead. I mean, for an agency that’s used to just sitting around waiting for the phone to ring or the email to come in, which we know is a lot of agencies out there, what are the first incremental steps that they should be thinking about to get this year off to a good start?

Jody Sutter: So you’ve got the positioning, which allows you to send out a strong email or a message or have a productive conversation, initial conversation with a stranger. But that’s still pretty, you know, pretty close in. How do you amplify that? So the next thing I think that I advise people to do is to then think about, okay, now that we know, now that we’ve had some kind of positioning, now we’ve, we’ve sort of taken everything that we could do.

We’ve concentrated it into this thing that is going to be the most promising for us. Now I ask my clients to go back out and let’s amplify that into a series of organized messaging themes. So you have to sort of think again about how do we, how does this message start to manifest itself? How do we, how, what are the, the variations that we can use in the marketplace so that we can have a sustained conversation?

Because as we know, our, the buying cycle is really long for agency services. Rarely is it a matter of weeks, more often a matter of months. And I’m sure you’ve had conversations where people have talked about, you know, two, three years, then the prospect finally converted.

The other thing I think that where agency agencies can fall short and I try to help get them right up on the back, back on the right path is understanding how to use their own strengths.

I’ve often find that business development is an obstacle or a burden when the agency owner, who’s typically in my situation, probably yours too, they’re the ones who typically have to drive it. So when the agency owner feels like what they need to do is so foreign to their own capabilities and strengths.

And so I take a step back and say, well, what are those strengths? And so, and I, we’ve probably talked about this before, so I apologize if I’m, if I’m repeating myself, but it would be the kind of thing if you are a, you know, if you’re an introvert and the last thing that you want to do is get out onto a keynote stage to promote your agency, then maybe let’s think about things that are a little better for introverts.

I mean, it’s a bit of a long, you know, it’s a longterm tactic, but if you’re an introvert and you’ve got some big ideas, maybe we should think about getting you writing a book. And then putting a, as an engine behind that so that the book gets out there and generates leads. And how do we support that?

 If you’re, but if you’re a speaker, maybe you’re, yeah, you’re, you’re really strong in the big ideas, big concepts. You love being in front of groups of people. You’re probably terrible at details, which is what I’ve found. Not universally true. So then let’s get you out on the keynote stages and maybe have someone else support you on those details.

 And then there are other agency owners that are actually really good on the outreach who don’t mind walking into a room full of strangers or don’t mind sending emails to people they don’t know. But they probably, they may not be the best people to write a really insightful article, or blog post.

So kind of simple, let’s get them not doing the things that they don’t like. They don’t feel like they’re good at, and let’s get them doing the things that they do feel like they’re good at.

I also like working in 12 week sprints. So rather than thinking about business development as this big monumental goal, let’s break it down into steps that we can take today, this week, this quarter.

And I find that also it starts to generate and build new habits as well as feel like you are seeing some progress.

Chip Griffin: Yeah, I love that you are talking about, leaning into what you’re already comfortable doing, what you feel like you’re good at, as opposed to saying, well, here’s the simple magic formula that you need to grow your agency, which there’s a lot of that out there.

Just follow my seven steps.

Jody Sutter: “You just have to call a hundred people a week.”

I do have, I do actually have nine steps, but so there are steps to follow, but yes, it’s, it’s, it’s gotta work for you.

Chip Griffin: Because if, if, if you hate doing it, you’re not going to do it. So you’re better off picking one or two things that, that you’re, you’re good at, you enjoy doing and you will do regularly because that’s going to work far better than something that in theory might work better, but in practice won’t because you just don’t do it.

Jody Sutter: That’s right. Yeah. And usually those, those agency leaders, they. Everyone intellectually understands why and how, contacting a hundred, a hundred people a week. Sorry if that just cut, that was like a little reminder. I thought I do not disturb on, but maybe that, I don’t know. Sorry about that, people. Yeah, if you’re, everyone intellectually gets that if, if you’re out, if you’re out there contacting making a hundred connections on LinkedIn a week, that that’s probably going to lead to, business development to a new business win in the end.

But if you hate doing that, then you can, you can intellectually understand it till the cows come home. You’re not going to do it. So it’s pretty useless.

Chip Griffin: Yeah. I’d like to drill down on this, the 12 week sprint concept, because I think that is particularly helpful to, to folks who, you know, they sit there and they say, well, you know, I’m trying to grow revenue 25 percent over the next year or so.

And that’s, that’s a big daunting challenge. And so breaking it down into component parts that you can accomplish in shorter periods of time. I mean, I’ve overseen development teams and it works really well for them to have these short sprints where you can accomplish specific things as opposed to building a whole app and, you know, that may take, you know, a year or two or more.

And so breaking it down into those kinds of sprints. And I think the other thing that you referenced was, you know, basically focusing on the things that you can control within that, right? We can’t control whether we actually sign the new business. So, so is that a good goal in the end? Sure. But you need to have the incremental ones, which are the inputs, the steps that we’re taking.

So, so how do you, how do you think about these 12 week sprints? Do you sit down every, every 12 weeks and create a new one? Do you sit down and map out the next four sprints? How do you work with clients on these sprints?

Jody Sutter: The way that we typically do it is we do, yeah, I, I prefer the 12 weeks over the 12 months.

However, we often, we start with, well, we, we start with the positioning. Who do we, who are we serving and what are we saying about ourselves that is going to be like a magnet to that audience? Then we also look at what are our resources that we’re going to, that we can use? Like, do we have good writers? Do we have good speakers? Do we have good organizers? Do we have a great developer? What? Because that also is going to dictate what you can do. So again, don’t want to do something that you don’t have the resources to do or aren’t willing to hire for.

The 12 week, then after we have that, we then look at like, okay, what are our priorities for the year?

We want to double revenue, which is for most agencies, probably unrealistic. But. Great. We want to double revenue.

Chip Griffin: But a very popular goal. A very popular goal.

Jody Sutter: A very popular goal.

Chip Griffin: Just pulled out of the air. I just want to, I want to double. Yeah. In 12 months.

That’s, that’s great.

Jody Sutter: All right. Right. Well, let’s start.

We got to start January 6th, 6th-ish this year in 2025. So what are we, what do we do on day one? And that really helps agencies go, oh, wow, holy cow. Okay. I got to figure this out.

So for instance, I’m working with an agency right now and it’s, we’ve got, it’s, there’s a, they’re a slightly larger agency than a lot of agencies I work with.

They’re about 30 people. And so we’ve got three different teams working on three different sprints. Only one of them is around, outreach and building lists. And by the way, it’s probably the one that I’m seeing the least progress on. But the other two, one is, is on, redeveloping their case studies and launching them back on the website because it’s hard to sell an agency’s work without strong case studies, without the good story behind it.

And the other one is on, is a sprint around updating and improving their proposal template. So those are the things that I think an agency has to realize, like, well, how are we going to double our revenue if we don’t, if we don’t have those case studies to show. If we keep going out there with inferior tools or tools that just aren’t as productive as they could be, we got to figure that out, that stuff out first.

And so that can be frustrating because then the, you go back to like, well, but we need leads today. So I try to manage that a little bit and say, okay, well, let’s take this as a step by step process. And when you have something specific, like, well, we need 12 case studies rewritten in 12 weeks. Great. What are we doing week one?

Okay. Well, week one, maybe we need to do, we need to figure out what we need to identify those case studies. We need to hire a writer. And then by the end of week two, we will have critical feedback on each case. I’m making it up. But if you break it down into these smaller steps. Now, you know what you’re doing for the week.

And it’s also easier to check the box when you ask yourself, did I get it done? And I think, this gets beyond the business development thing, but I think it’s, it’s really motivating. I know it’s motivating for me and it’s been motivating for other people. If you can look back and say, I set out to do three things this week to further this sprint.

And what do you know, I’ve done them and now I feel like I’ve got the wind in my back going into the next week.

Chip Griffin: Yeah, because with long sales cycles, it may take a while before you see the actual outcomes that you’re looking for. So being able to see that incremental progress, you know, makes it so much easier to stick with it. Because I’m sure you see this as well.

I work with lots of folks who, they bounce from business development tactic to business development tactic every, forget every 12 weeks, probably every 12 days. Because, you know, they, they start something and it doesn’t immediately, you know, bear fruit. And so they’re like, well, onto the next thing. Or worse, what I see sometimes is they have a tactic that does well and they’re like, okay, well, what’s the next thing that we do that’s going to do well?

Jody Sutter: That’s right.

Chip Griffin: You lean into what’s already working.

Jody Sutter: That’s right. I will often, so I will often map out in a very broad way a sort of one to three year plan. So if we decided, one of the ways I’ve done that is that we’ve, if I’m working with an agency, and we’ve decided that the agency leader or the agency owner is a really good communicator.

They’re really good at taking complex ideas and turning them to turning them into concepts that are easy to understand. They’re great in front of a crowd. They love going to talk. Fantastic. Let’s first year one, let’s get that person out there. Let’s get the minimum amount of support to start to build the list of events. To start to get a couple of keynote speeches written, and to start pitching. As you see success, year two, you can start adding things like maybe you bring in a strategist or a writer that can help to ghostwrite some of the agency leaders content. Or you bring in a marketing coordinator to do some of that detailed, you know, logistical, organization.

Maybe by year three, you’re bringing in a PR person, a publicity person, because now they’re developing a better profile. So let’s amplify that with that other expert. So, again, rather than saying, , what, we’ve got this going, how do we, how do we make a right turn or a left turn and do something totally different?

It’s more about how do we make this even better?

Chip Griffin: So a lot of what we’ve been talking about so far have been sort of, you know, long term laying the foundation, building a system that will work over time. When you have an agency owner who comes to you and says, look, 2024 was kind of rough for me. I’ve got a big client.

They’re kind of teetering. I’m a little worried. I need to do something faster. What advice do you have for folks like that who are in a little bit more of a desperation mode if you will, for, for new business?

Jody Sutter: And, and again, I’m about to, the suggestion I’m about to make is so not new and innovative, but I think the first thing you need to do if you are in that mode of if, yeah, if, if some drastic measures need to be taken and taken quickly, I think the first thing you have to do is, again, double barreled, one, rely on your network.

And I think a lot of times agencies will say, ah, we’ve exhausted our network. I have heard that a lot, but I, I rarely see it as being true. So the, the other thing and the way to kind of revive that network is if you can go back to what we were talking about earlier, which is, okay, where do we want to focus this year?

And sometimes also that does require… so if that’s an agency that’s a generalist agency, and so they, they can, they can work with everyone, which means that’s, how are they going to find that one person who can hire them? And they’re about to lose that client. So maybe 50 percent of their billing is about to walk out the door.

What you probably want to do is say, okay, well, even for a short term, even for this one initiative, let’s narrow down to a, a thing or a set of services or a problem that we know is an issue. And maybe it’s only for the next 12 months that we’re really focused on that. I mean, I like long term stuff, but again, if you need to get out there, so getting out there with a pointed message to the people who know and like you best to say, and I think also sometimes honesty can work too.

Like here’s the deal. We’re not like, well, you don’t, well, you want to be careful with your words, but to say we are, you know, we, in so many words, we, we have big ambitions. We’re up against some headwinds. You’ve known us for a long time. We ask for your help. Here’s where we want to go. We want to serve these people of these problems.

Do you have any suggestions? Are there, is there anyone to refer us to? And I think when you can ask for the, when you can combine the request for a referral with that really pointed, “but here’s what we want to do. Here’s the impact that we want to make.” Then you’re supercharging that referral. That person receiving it is going to be much more likely and interested and willing to go to their network.

 Rather than the sort of the, the desperate, please send us anyone. Do you know anyone? We’ll work with anyone.

Chip Griffin: Right. I mean, yeah. Refer me anyone. I mean, it’s one of the reasons why having such a, having strong focus positioning is so useful because it’s so much easier to get referrals. Because if I say to you, Hey Jody, I’m, you know, I’m, I’m looking for PR agencies between three and 30 people who are looking to grow, single owner, that kind of thing.

You can immediately start going through your mental Rolodex and think of some people that you might refer. Or if I say, Hey, you know, I just want to help people with their businesses. Boom. I mean, that’s, that’s really hard to come up with the right,

Jody Sutter: And by the way, just will, we’re really, really great. We’ve got a great team, we’re easy to work with and

Chip Griffin: Right.

Our team is our differentiator. Yes. Okay. You go. We treat our clients like partners. Okay. Yeah. Never heard that one before. So, you know, if you wanna differentiate, you have to differentiate in a useful way. But, but I think having that positioning and, and, and I think your other point, people have not exhausted their networks.

Yeah. ’cause I hear that all the time too. And the reality is they’ll sit there and tell me, well, but these people already know what I do. The answer is maybe, maybe not. They may not know it as specifically as you think they do.

Jody Sutter: Yes.

Chip Griffin: And you may not be top of mind. So you need to make sure that even, even people who are your best buddies, you still need to be in touch with them on a regular basis because you may not, I mean, I’ve had plenty of occasions over the course of my career where even really good friends and colleagues end up referring someone else for something that I could have done, not because they thought that was a better person, but because I wasn’t top of mind because we hadn’t talked in six months, or nine months, or a year. And so you need to, my advice anytime someone’s desperate is, just start going through your own Rolodex.

Yeah, and I’ve shown my age by saying Rolodex repeatedly here. But go through your LinkedIn profile, go through your contact list in email, and and talk to, find a reason to touch base with all of these folks. And you don’t have to come across as desperate. Look, if you say you’re looking for referrals, people know there’s at least a small level of desperation.

It may be desperation to grow, it may be desperation to fill a gap. But you don’t ask for business if you’re too busy to take on business.

Jody Sutter: Right. Right. And, you know, I will qualify a little bit about, because I think agencies do feel very comfortable showing a certain amount of vulnerability, but, and so I don’t want to, so yeah, I don’t think either of us are saying, go out there and say, ah, we really need the help.

But I remember having a conversation a long time ago with an agency search consultant. And one of the things he said was so useful is when agencies let him know that they were about to lose a client. Which meant, especially for larger agencies, when I worked with larger agencies, if, and this is in one particular case, we lost a big, cruise, cruise company.

 And we were able to fill that. So that opened a space on our roster, which meant another cruise lines could come in without feeling like they’re competing with us or another, even another hotel chain. So by going out to the marketplace and saying, this cruise line is going, is hiring someone else. We have this, we have this knowledge, we’ve got a team, we could jump right in.

You should take advantage of it. Or do you have clients who can take advantage of this? If you can get over, if you can, if you can change your mindset to feel confident about the experience that you have and what you have to offer, it’s going to, you’ve got a great reason for going out to the marketplace to let them know that you can take on new business.

Chip Griffin: And as you say, it’s all about how you frame it. And in that particular case, you know, where you’re able to frame that we no longer have a client conflict issue, but we have all of this knowledge and experience that we’d like to put to work for the right new client. And that is dealing from a position of strength as opposed to I don’t know if we’re gonna make payroll next month. So anybody want to just throw me some cash for pretty much anything?

Jody Sutter: Now, by the way, I, you know, again, this is like, if we, this is really scraping the bottom of the barrel of tactics, but if you were really in, if you’re in truly, truly desperate straits, then probably what I would do is to go to that sort of that top 5 percent of you know, buddies, people you’d do anything for, and maybe those are the people that you can be vulnerable with and say, look, I like, here’s the deal.

I, I need a favor. And, and, so I think you also have to be willing to do that, but you have to be very careful about that too, of course.

Chip Griffin: I mean, we all have people in our networks like that, or most of us do at least with that, that you, you can be that vulnerable, I think it is just being choosy about it.

I mean, I, I occasionally see people post like to LinkedIn, you know, I’m so desperate kind of things. I don’t necessarily think that, that a broadcast message like that is productive because it, it can alienate some potential prospects who might still have been viable, if you hadn’t scared them off that way.

So it is, it’s a balancing act. You know, I, I think that, you know, the, the key thing is if you are in one of the best case scenarios, lay the foundation for the future, build systems and processes that are repeatable that can help you succeed over time. But if you have to do something quickly, then tap into your existing network first and foremost, because it’s a whole lot easier to deal with people who already know at least a little bit about you as opposed to making new connections, because those are always going to take much longer to bear fruit.

Jody Sutter: Yeah. It’s, I think also the quick wins. It’s, it’s really tough because as you were saying, business development in our category in the agency business is, it’s a, it’s a longer cycle. And this is sort of also going into the operations, agency operations, which is not necessarily my core area of expertise, but if you are looking for a longterm successful new business strategy, it potentially means, going through some months of discomfort in order to reap the benefit of that focused strategy.

And again, easy for me to say because I don’t have to worry about helping you, the Mrs. Agency owner with managing your account management team. So I want to acknowledge that, yeah, there are other, there are many, many other things that have to come into play there. But sometimes the, the fear of going through some short term discomfort for a long term gain is, can be just too hard for agency owners to deal with and I sometimes I wish that they were more willing to think about that.

Chip Griffin: Yeah. And that’s a great point because I think all too often agencies do look at new business in isolation. And so they come up with plans for growing the business from a revenue standpoint, but they don’t think about what it means operationally.

And so I often will sit with clients and they’ll say, okay, well, you know, I want to add, you know, 50 percent revenue this year. And so the first thing I do is say, okay, well, map out when that revenue comes in, because most of the time when they say that, they’re like, Oh, that’s just, you know, that’s just three more clients, but that’s assuming they all start on January 1, which of course we know doesn’t happen.

Jody Sutter: Yes.

Chip Griffin: And so, so I say, okay, well map out, you know, when these new clients are going to come in so we can see what the revenue impact is. And then after we do that, I say, okay. Well now talk to your operations teams and make sure that they can handle the onboarding of this.

Jody Sutter: Yes,

Chip Griffin: because I, I often see cases where someone is very good at, at business development.

I’ve seen agencies that really do keep signing people up on a regular basis.

Jody Sutter: Yeah.

Chip Griffin: But they also churn very quickly. Because they’re not onboarded well, they’re not getting a good experience because they’re, the team is being asked to produce too much, too fast. And so you really do need to make sure that there is a nice synergy between the business development and the operation side of the equation.

Jody Sutter: That’s right. Yeah. I think, I don’t know if I’ve got a sort of a magic ratio, but I think it’s, I think it’s pretty common knowledge that the more you can retain and grow existing clients, it’s much easier to do that than go out and looking for new clients. And of course you want that balance. You want an influx of new, of new clients keeping that pool rich, but, you also don’t want to neglect the fact that you’ve got people who have already put their trust in you. Try to deepen that trust and hopefully generate more revenue and more value for them.

Chip Griffin: Absolutely. So if someone is interested in, in learning more about how they can build these effective systems and processes and work on sprints and those kinds of things, how can they learn more about you and how they might be able to work with you?

Jody Sutter: Sure. I would welcome anyone to email me at Jody, and that’s Jody with a Y [email protected]. , you can also find me on LinkedIn, at Jody Sutter. I think whatever the URL is linkedin.com/jodysutter, I got to snag an easy url. And, I also want to let people know that right now I am in the process of evolving and launching a new program called the Agency New Business Accelerator.

And I am in the process of looking for five pilot clients. I am offering them 50 percent off the, what will be, I think the normal cost. So they get a great big discount if they’re willing to learn and experiment with me. And so just email me and I’m happy to tell you more about that. And once I cap it at five, that’s, you know, that’ll be it.

And hopefully we’ll learn over the first cohort and then move on to, to the next round.

Chip Griffin: We’ll include appropriate links and all of that in the show notes so that if you’re listening to this in your car or on the treadmill or something, you don’t need to stop and write it down. You can just click on the show notes and get access to all of that information there.

So Jody, as always, it has been a pleasure having you, on the show. I’m looking forward already to the next time we’ll get to have a conversation about something business development related, or maybe just agency, or maybe just for the fun of it. I mean, you just never know. Exactly. Again, my guest today has been Jody Sutter of the Sutter Company.

Thanks for joining me.

Jody Sutter: Thank you, Chip.