GB Ep 45: How I Lost Multi-Million Dollar Deals Due to This Mistake

How I Lost Multi-Million Dollar Deals Due to This Mistake

Today we’re going to talk about how not to lose multi-million dollar deals by taking advantage of strategic planning.

To give a little context, we would be on the short list for companies looking for a good agency, but for some reason we’d always lose the deal. Because I didn’t have a background in doing sales, I asked why we weren’t chosen. [01:20]
Potential clients felt we lacked salesmanship and data. [02:35]
I found out from someone in my EO forum that I should be doing strategic planning. [02:47]
I discovered that strategic planning means providing lots of data to a prospective client, bringing up aspects of their goals they may not have thought of yet, and overloading them with data to give them confidence in us. [03:00]
When you’re starting out, you do need to have an element of planning, even if selling a product instead of a service. [03:47]
I would recommend OpenStrate.gy, which provides information on consumer research, consumer media usage, ad planning, and strategy templates. [04:13]
I found the templates particularly helpful: you can take them to a designer, change the elements you want, and have it reflect your brand. [04:49]
There are resources about user testing, case studies, trends, strategy frameworks, all the stuff you would expect to learn in a marketing class. [05:27]
Once we started doing this, conversion rates started increasing. [05:44]
Make sure you revisit your strategic planning process once every quarter, and you’ll be in a much better spot to close more deals. [06:02]

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