Agency growth isn’t the responsibility of a single team or department - it’s a shared mission spanning business development teams, marketing departments and leadership. Together, they’re tasked with identifying new opportunities and dictating long-term direction. However, with the business landscape that’s constantly evolving, agencies must find a way to balance technological adoption that helps them with their mission against the human contact that clinches the deal.
Propeller Group and Hubspot partnered to explore what’s changing for new business, what useful tools are emerging in the AI age and what ‘old school’ strategies remain sound with an event titled Fuelling Agency Growth: Through AI, Marketing & Human Connection at Drum Labs in London..
Leading new business practitioners, marketers and agency leaders came together to provide advice on how to blend human insight and experience with the efficiencies, speed and precision delivered by new tools during a packed morning of well-attended sessions.
Smarter Targeting - From Data to Decisions
The first session of the day explored the strategies and tools for highly effective outreach strategies. With growing numbers of decision-makers now involved in appointments, identifying and connecting with the relevant people is more important than ever before.
For Amanda Rosevear, General Manager at ALF, the key is to meet buyers where they’re spending time. “Think about how you prospect. Although it’s great you’ve got multiple channels on which to search for leads - Google, social media, direct marketing - you need to ensure you’re taking your message and adapting it to the format. Whether that means making an AI-friendly summary, a LinkedIn video or an owned blog.”
While technology is helping turbo-boost targeting and outreach, some traditional methods are surprisingly bouncing back, Alex Wood, Senior Growth Marketing Director at Surfe, argued that cold calling still regularly justifies its place in the mix.
“The more fragmented the buyer journey has become, the more complicated it is for agencies and new business professionals to show up in the right place at the right time. That’s why I dispute the long-held notion that cold calling is dead. While it depends on the rep, it still proves itself from a statistical standpoint. That being said - it needs to be supported by a multi-channel approach.”
While AI-powered platforms and huge datasets mean new business can rapidly scale outreach programmes, a “spray and pray” strategy is not recommended. Waldo’s Enterprise Lead Theo Leany advocated a more considered approach: “The amount of time that AI saves us means that there’s no excuse to not be personal or relevant. Instead of running to the next task, reinvest your time into going beneath the surface. For example, identifying what your client’s pain points are. Otherwise, you'll become lulled into the trap of going after everything you see, using a generic script - and this is how you lose people.”
Powering up Prospecting with AI & Automation
A deeper dive into AI explored how it can introduce efficiencies and streamline processes without agencies losing their human touch.
Typically, the notion of integrating AI into the prospecting process is associated with running email sequences and drafting copy. However, this doesn’t account for how tools can be leveraged in tandem with CRMs - as Propeller Group Growth Marketing Account Director Sydney Samuels explained.
“It’s easy to forget that regardless of how much time you spend curating a high quality dataset, it’s out of date the moment that you upload it - because people move, new hires have to be factored into the mix.
“From a data hygiene standpoint, this is where Claude and ChatGPT demonstrate their value. These are excellent at cleaning up datasets, pulling additional information and ensuring we’re creating very targeted segments for outreach purposes. Because without clean data, you’ll be hard pressed to yield the best results.”
The idea that experimenting with AI platforms can help drive efficiency was one echoed by Rosie Stano, Senior Product Consultant at Candyspace. “We built an integration with the Claude interface that focussed on our internal deal and lead data. One use case is that it can highlight when a certain amount of time has elapsed since speaking to a prospect, or identifying that you’ve only spoken to one or two people at that organisation - both valuable insights that help flag if a deal could be at risk.
“From a pipeline perspective, it speeds up your understanding. For example, it could raise that 70% of deals in a particular service area are managed by a single business development manager - something which could lead to more effective workload management.”
Richard Holland, Head of Partner Development UKI + MEA at HubSpot, urged agencies to double down on useful data.
“While it may not be as exciting as speaking to a prospect, data fuels all successful activities. This is where having no-code agents comes into play; these can work for you overnight, over the weekend, cleaning and enriching data. However, the future of work isn’t AI replacing humans. Rather, best in class agencies adopt a hybrid setup where these tools augment teams, with automation serving to make people more effective.”
Marketing Your Agency - Content, PR & Performance
Attention then turned to the need to be more findable, famous and future-ready and the modern agency marketing mix. In a landscape oversupplied with agencies, differentiation is vital. Steve Garside, Chief Growth Officer at TMW, identified how experimentation can be the difference maker and help agencies stand out in a crowded market. “For me, the most important thing is to continue to put ourselves in the shoes of our clients and buyers. This needs to be done on a regular basis, as the criteria on which they choose an agency is constantly changing. The onus is on us to make it as easy as possible for them.”
The value of PR as part of the mix was championed by Karen Forbes, Chief Growth Officer at Coolr, who argued that this is vital for putting your agency on the map. “PR is a crucial touchpoint - and agencies should be looking beyond publicising new hires or project wins.”
She said that it was an opportunity to amplify the voices of key spokespeople - which should extend beyond the senior leadership team and showcase the agency’s next-gen voices. “And your point of view can be the catalyst to standing out in a sea of sameness. Look at your LinkedIn feed: what makes you stop on a particular post, video or piece of content. Without that unique perspective, you will quickly become lost in this genericism.”
Katie Mitchell, Managing Director at Seen Studios, argued for proper resourcing and a focus on integration to make the marketing mix truly effective. “Coherence and consistency is paramount. With so many avenues through which to speak to prospects and existing clients, you need to work out what’s right for your agency. Otherwise, it can look confusing if you don’t know what you’re trying to say.
“Moreover, the responsibility for this doesn’t land on a single individual’s shoulders. You can’t expect a junior executive to manage everything from budget allocation to the CRM. This is a collaborative process.”
Steve Garside added, “In terms of your marketing mix - don’t be afraid to throw stuff at the wall, at least at the beginning. After a year of testing, learning, failing and hopefully succeeding, you’ll be left with a model that you can start elevating up the levels.” Meanwhile, Stephen Kenwright, Non-Executive Director, Consultant and Founder of Rise at Seven, argued the importance of broadening your horizons. “Once you’ve developed your message, you need to get it out there consistently. Everything is an inbox. Not just emails - the LinkedIn feed, InMail, Instagram. You’ve got to grind It doesn’t matter what your channel mix is; what matters is showing up at the opportune moment.
The emergence of large language models (LLMs) and AI is a new factor impacting how buyers find and learn about agencies, and some are already receiving traffic from ChatGPT. Stephen offered some reassuring advice in this department. “It may sound a bit surprising - but things aren’t actually changing things that much. The same way you would get different responses from a traditional search engine if you were in the North or South, the likes of ChatGPT and Gemini will provide multiple answers from various sources. These are just another interface that agencies must contend with - ones which are fuelled by PR.”
The Human Touch - Building Connections that Win
The event closed with a discussion on why the human factor remains supremely important in converting new business and maintaining the agency-client relationship over the long haul.
Pitch advice came from Oystercatchers’ Associate Client Director Annie Mallin. “Don’t underestimate the importance of rehearsing your pitches. It can be tempting to fill the room with your senior leadership team and big hitters - but clients can tell if these individuals rarely work together. There needs to be a sense of cohesion. Tech and tools might help win a pitch, but the human connection is vital to sustaining it.”
For Emma Hillary, Growth Director and Consultant at Verity Relationship Intelligence, data’s importance shouldn’t overshadow the role that business development teams play. “Data creates a honeymoon period. Clients are excited to get to the execution stage, there’s lots of optimism and their satisfaction rating is very high. But six months down the line, things can start to dip. Small things can start to go wrong - and if you’ve not invested in developing that relationship, it can become toxic.
“The agency needs to set an example and expectations from day one. That’s why, from a team perspective, you need to be investing in your people. Every manager, every executive - everyone needs to have brilliant relationship skills. It may not be an immediate focus given that we’re living in an increasingly transactional world - but it’s crucial.”
And no matter how hard you try, some relationships won’t work out. Evelyn Oluwole, Senior Sales Director at Oystercatchers, offered some consolation. “You have to be fine with this - but also appreciate that no isn’t always the end of the story. Take time to pause and evaluate whether there could be an opportunity further down the line. That’s part of the new business journey - nurturing and building relationships over time.”
Final Thoughts
With so much noise to contend with, it’s natural that business development teams look at today’s market with a mixture of excitement and nerves. But as evidenced by our panels, there is much room for optimism. We have entered into a new age - one where the best practitioners combine innovative tools and a delicate touch to fuel their stellar trajectory.
Are you looking for an experienced partner to help drive agency growth? Want to discuss how technology can augment your business development efforts? Get in touch at newbiz@propellergroup.com - we’d love to talk about how Propeller Group can break you out of the sea of sameness.