Are you tired of the constant struggle with unpredictable referrals and the endless cycle of RFPs? Imagine a world where your agency attracts a steady stream of clients, not by chance, but through a proven, systematic approach.
Welcome to our Business Development Masterclass, tailored exclusively for advertising, PR, website design, SEO, and digital agencies like yours. Here, you'll learn from a 30-year industry expert who transformed the traditional agency business development model. By the end of this Masterclass, you'll understand how to:
Our course isn't just about theory; it's a hands-on, practical guide to revamping your business development process. You'll leave with knowledge and a toolkit that you can implement immediately. Ready to revolutionize your approach and build an agency that thrives on its terms? Scroll down to see how our masterclass can be the game-changer your agency needs.
Tap into the 70% of ideal Clients searching for Agencies like yours but remain hidden behind freely available digital content. Our approach equips you to attract and captivate these prospects, converting anonymous searches into profitable partnerships. Elevate your agency’s visibility to ensure when these prospects are ready to choose, they find and select you.
Harness the science of connection: Use Propinquity to build relationships with Prospective Clients. Scientific studies have consistently declared Propinquity as the most significant predictor of relationship formation. You can leave it up to luck or let me show you how to create meaningful connections with potential ideal clients, turning them into qualified leads ready to hire your agency.
Transform your approach to content creation with my counter-intuitive Cornerstones & Cobblestones process. I'll show you how to produce engaging, high-quality content in significantly less time, freeing up your billable hours for other critical aspects of your business. The process helps your agency shine with less effort while ensuring every piece of content is impactful and cost-effective.
Let me teach you how to win Clients by being uniquely you. Personal connections are the key to business success. When you understand that clients are looking for a personal connection, not just an agency, the business development game changes completely. I'll guide you in crafting your unique business development approach to nurture relationships with key decision-makers and distinguish your agency from the competition.
I'll show you how to harness the power of digital platforms to nurture relationships at scale. You'll walk away from this class with time-efficient strategies to connect with prospects effectively, transform digital interactions into meaningful business opportunities, and maximize your agency's growth potential while still having time to do your day job.
Bid farewell to the stress, anxiety, and time suck of creating contract pricing. I'll give you my revolutionary BSGC Pricing Template, a tool that transforms how you approach pricing and negotiations. It simplifies the process of creating pricing proposals, helps you feel more confident in your negotiations, and eliminates the hassles of revising your pricing during negotiations. You'll experience a newfound ease and speed in proposal development, allowing you to focus more time on your agency's growth.
All this knowledge can be yours right now!
It's time to take action now and transform your business development program & your bottom line!
I'm extremely satisfied with Tom's Master Class. He provides excellent content and a solid structure that is very useful in developing strong new business strategies and tactics. We also appreciate his flexibility with the pace of working through the lessons. Highly recommended for marketing agencies seeking proven methods to jumpstart their new business processes.
I understand your schedule is hectic and unpredictable. That's why I let you learn at the pace that works best for you. Some participants choose a lesson and coaching session each week for eight weeks. Others prefer completing the class and coaching over two days. The combination of recorded lessons and live, virtual coaching sessions is endless. And don't worry, if you start the class and something comes up, just hit pause and let me know when you're ready to pick up where you left off.
There is no theory here.
Everything you'll learn in this class is rooted in Social, Neurological, and Psychological research.
Every strategy and tactic I teach you has been 100% tried and tested in my own Painless Prospecting program.
I will teach you the exact process I used here at Converse Digital and have been perfecting for over a decade.
I've used this program to consistently grow my agency over the last 13 years without answering RFPs, participating in competitive pitches, placing paid advertising, making cold calls, or sending cold emails to prospects.
And now I want to share it with you.
This is the ONLY business development program in the world delivered exclusively in a ONE-ON-ONE virtual environment. And you won't be learning alone.
We know you can't do this alone. You'll need a partner or at least a helper. That's why we've created the buddy system. Each registered participant can include a second participant from the same agency AT NO CHARGE! Both of you receive access to the entire course and the four hours of virtual coaching sessions with me.
Tom Martin has forgotten more about prospecting, B2B lead generation, and lead nurturing than most of us will ever know. It's equal parts science and magic, and he has both in spades. Highly recommended.
JAy Baer
Marketing and customer experience expert advising the world’s most iconic brands. NY Times Best Selling author.
This is the ULTIMATE business development MasterClass for advertising, public relations, and digital agencies that are tired of relying on referrals or invitations to "pitches" to grow the agency. And unlike other courses that only teach, in this MasterClass, I walk with you side-by-side as together, we build YOUR Painless Prospecting platform piece by piece.
That's right when you complete the class, you won't just know HOW to build a Painless Prospecting platform; you'll have already completed one that is ready to start creating leads for your agency 24/7/365.
Painless Prospecting for Agencies includes over 7 1/2 hours of recorded video learning combined with 4 hours of ONE-ON-ONE LIVE INSTRUCTION, and you'll receive copies of the Propinquity Mapping and BSGC Proposal Builder Templates.
You decide how quickly or slowly you want to move through the content. That's the beauty of our one-on-one delivery — you can learn at your own pace without feeling like you're falling behind or forced to slow down to accommodate fellow participants.
To see the entire syllabus, click the + sign to expand each module into chapters and each chapter into lessons.
What is the Invisible Sale?
Today's prospective clients hide behind the anonymity of a Google Search, private social media platforms, and freely available digital content to research potential agency partners without alerting anyone to the fact they're conducting an agency search.
What Are Self-Educating Buyers?
Prospects today, have easy access to a wealth of online tools and information. This makes them much less dependent on agency search consultants and agency marketing materials to source the best agency to solve their particular marketing challenges. As a result, your prospective clients are Self-Educating, and they’re postponing face-to-face interactions or phone interactions with you until the latest possible moment in the agency selection process.
What is Top of Mind Preference?
I grew up in a Top-of-Mind-Awareness world — that was the goal because it guaranteed you'd get the call when a prospective client thought about switching agencies. But in today's Invisible Sale, Self-Educating Buyer world, TOMA isn't enough and could help your competitors get the client instead of you. To win today, you have to achieve TOMP.
Introduction to Marketing Automation
Marketing Automation is the key to building a frictionless 24/7/365, Painless Prospecting platform that discovers leads while you sleep.
The 6 Key Benefits of Marketing Automation
I'll walk you through the SIX key reasons I believe every Agency needs to invest in a good Marketing Automation platform.
Networking at Scale
According to research, the human brain can only manage an extremely limited number of concurrent relationships effectively. In this lesson, I'll show you how Marketing Automation software helps you surpass this biological limitation to network at scale effectively
Separating Buyer Intent from Interest
The biggest failure of most inbound or content marketing-driven lead generation systems is mistaking Interest for Intent. But, with a few simple hacks, and a little planning, you can automagically identify which website visitors are truly interested vs which are just here for free information or to window shop.
Sales Prospect Outreach Planning
So you have an idea for a new piece of content or maybe a product or service offering you want to sell to clients. In this lesson, I'll show you how to determine if you have a built in audience that is likely to want what you're creating or selling OR if you'll need to build a new audience for that content or product/service.
Sales Pre-Call & Networking Planning
In this lesson I'll show you how Marketing Automation software can help you filter high qualify leads from those that might just be window shopping or worse, casting a very wide net for potential agency partners. Then I'll show you how to use the same data to better prepare for trade shows, conferences, networking events, etc., to make the time and money you invest in those efforts produce a far better ROI.
Why You Need to Invest in Marketing Automation Today
In this lesson, I'll share a few final, but important, thoughts on why Marketing Automation software really is a mission-critical piece of an effective Painless Prospecting system.
What is Propinquity?
Propinquity — hard to say, harder to spell, but it literally is the silver bullet to any successful business development program. In this video, I'll introduce you to the word and the science behind it.
What Are Embassies & Outposts
All Propinquity Points fall into one of two categories — Embassies and Outposts. In this lesson, I'll explain the difference between the two and how you'll weave both into your Painless Prospecting system.
Introduction to Defining Your Propinquity Points
Building Propinquity against your most desirable prospects is the key to a successful business development program, so I'll talk in broad strokes about how you will approach defining your Propinquity Points before moving into the actual process.
What Are Propinquity Points?
Now we'll dive into the details — exactly what qualifies as a Propinquity Point?
How Do You Find Your Propinquity Points?
Now that you know what Propinquity Points are, I'll show you how to find your Propinquity Points — both known places and, more importantly, unknown places where your ideal client prospects hang out.
Using BuzzSumo to Find Your Propinquity Points
In this lesson, I'm going to walk you through a step-by-step process to use BuzzSumo to find potential Propinquity Points for your agency based on your agency's ideal target client.
Using SparkToro To Find Your Propinquity Points
In this lesson I'm going to walk you through a step-by-step process to use SparkToro to find potential Propinquity Points for your agency based on your agency's ideal target client.
What Are Cornerstones & Cobblestones
The Painless Prospecting system is powered by content... lots of content. Creating Cornerstones & Cobblestones is the solution to producing enough content without overly taxing your agency's existing resources.
What is 2nd-Click Content?
2nd-Click Content is the secret weapon of every Painless Prospecting system. It's also what allows you to Sell Greatly even if you're not the greatest salesperson.
Creating Your Initial Cornerstone Working Document
In this lesson I'll show you how to quickly and easily reverse engineer a potential Cornerstone AND potential Cobblestones using one simple WordPress hack and an equally simple Microsoft Word hack.
Creating Your First Onsite Cobblestone
In this lesson, I'll show you how I use an easy filtering process to quickly craft a brand new, strategically focused blog post for my own website that requires minimal new content creation time.
Creating Your First Offsite Cobblestone
In this lesson, I'll show you how to quickly determine what kind of content you need to craft a guest post for a non-owned blog or website, and then just as quickly and easily find and filter that content out of your initial working doc to create a guest post any Propinquity Point will love to publish.
Creating Your First Cornerstone
In this lesson I'll walk you through creating your first draft of a Cornerstone by recombining existing content and determining where you have content holes that will require new content to fill them.
What is Social Reconnaissance?
Social Recon is essential for anyone that wishes to Sell Greatly. I'll introduce you to the concept and, in the following lessons walk you through how to conduct your own Social Recon.
What Are Conversational Catalysts?
The best conversationalists in the world are masters at starting and keeping conversations going. Conversational Catalysts are the secret sauce to turning anyone into a great conversationalist.
A Real-World Example of a Social Recon Dossier
In this lesson, I'll show you a real-world Social Recon dossier to demonstrate just how much you can learn about a person using only publicly available data.
How To Use Social Recon Intelligence in Sales Prospecting
So you have a ton of information about a person, but how does that help you become a better salesperson or create conversations that convert to clients? I'll show you in this lesson.
How Conduct Your Own Social Reconnaissance
Now that you understand Social Recon and how to use the resulting intelligence, I'm going to show you how to conduct your own social reconnaissance using your existing resources. So let's get stalking.
Why You Need a CRM to Store Your Social Recon Intel
Finally, Dunbar's Number is the greatest enemy to anyone hoping to leverage the power of Social Recon to network at scale. In this lesson, I'll explain how you can use a CRM to help you overcome that obstacle.
Turning Conversations Into Clients
To Sell Greatly is to focus on relationships instead of transactions. And the heart of that approach is having better conversations that properly managed, more reliably convert to new clients.
The Aikido Qualification Process
Selling to a Self-Educated Buyer is different. Because they've accumulated a treasure trove of information BEFORE they've ever reached out to you, it's imperative that you perform a little Aikido Triage to ensure you don't inadvertently put your foot in your mouth during the selling process.
Introduction to Selling Greatly
What do I mean when I say, Sell Greatly? In this lesson, I'll explain in more detail and then take you through the 5P's that make up the Sell Greatly approach.
The 5P's: Proximity
The first P: Proximity is the first step in any relationship-building process.
The 5P's: Preparation
The second P: Preparation is the most overlooked step in almost every selling process. If you fail to prepare, then prepare to fail.
The 5P's: Presence
The third P: Presence is the most important P, in my opinion, because it's what sets you apart from virtually every other business development executive on the planet.
The 5P's: Patience
The fourth P: Patience is the quickest way to make every client engagement you win more profitable.
The 5P's: Preference
The fifth P: Preference is not just a goal you hope to achieve, it's absolutely essential lest your prospect's awareness of you lead to your biggest competitor picking up the client you should have won.
What is a Social Agent?
Social Agents might just become the most valuable client that never hires your agency. In this lesson, I'll show you why.
An Introduction to Cold Calling With Content
If you hate cold calling as much as I do, then you'll love the idea of cold calling with content.
The Key Challenges to Cold Calling With Content
Like any proactive outreach, there are hurdles you'll need to overcome. I'll show you how in this lesson.
Creating an Efficient & Repeatable Content Creation Process
Just like the rest of the Painless Prospecting process, cold calling with content requires a lot of content. In this lesson, I'll show you a couple of simple, efficient ways to ensure you're always armed and ready with just the right piece of content when you need it.
Helping Your Social Agents Cold Call on Your Behalf
In this lesson, I'll introduce you to two nifty business development hacks that are brilliant in their simplicity and ability to help your Social Agents sell your services to their contacts with little to no effort from you.
Introduction to Networking & Nurturing with Email
A good email nurturing program is the key to networking at scale. I'll explain what I mean and give you a quick overview of the remaining email lessons.
How To Format Newsletters to Discover Hidden Buying Signals
Newsletters are a great way to stay in touch with leads. But most agencies are overlooking newsletters' ability to help you begin segmenting your leads into smaller, more well defined niche's to improve your ability to convert them to new clients.
The Primary Email Nurturing Templates Every Biz Dev Person Needs
In this lesson, I'll give you my most used email nurturing templates and show you how to use them to network at scale quickly.
Using Mini-Campaigns to Spark Sales Conversations
I'm not a big believer in "pray and spray" email marketing where you're sending a broad message or offer to an even broader email list. Instead, Mini-Campaigns featuring highly personalized messaging sent to homogenous groups of hand selected client prospects are the future of agency email business development efforts.
Using Automated CTA Emails to Grow Subscriber Counts
The days of adding everyone to your newsletter list, even if they didn't explicitly opt-in to that list are or should be over. In this lesson, I'll show you how to ethically ask anyone that provides an email address to you to subscribe to your newsletter.
Advanced Email Techniques: Behavioral Email Segmentation
What if the goal of an email campaign WASN'T conversion? Instead, what if it was to uncover hidden buying signals that you can use to more effectively target and market to unqualified leads in your agency's database?
Final Thoughts on Email Networking & Nurturing Best Practices
I'll close with a few final thoughts that I think every agency needs to understand if they want to network at scale with email.
The BSGC Pricing Proposal Tool
One of the biggest challenges in the business development process is pricing. Sometimes you're lucky, and the prospective client comes to you with a set budget and a well-defined scope of needs. But far too often, and especially if you're pitching a project, that simply isn't the case. Either because the client cannot accurately determine the services, they require and/or they can't or won't disclose a budget. In either case, I've developed a powerful, simple solution — the BSGC Pricing Proposal template. This incredibly powerful Google Sheet is the ultimate self-education tool. With it, you can quickly and easily guide a prospect through multiple scope/pricing options based on various service offering combinations or different levels of the same core set of service offerings.
This masterclass is Incredible! Tom gives you everything you need to start your own campaigns while he's walking you step-by-step through the Painless Prospecting Platform building process. And unlike other online learning programs, he's not just teaching you to build the airplane; he's helping you build it as the class proceeds. So you leave the course with a fully functioning business development program.
And I'm in love with the BSGC Pricing tool. I closed the first THREE prospects I presented proposals to using the template. I'm still blown away. Honestly, that one lesson and template is worth the entire price of the Master Class. And that's why the price of this Master Class is nominal compared to the value you'll receive.
Lindsey Huettner
Owner, The it Crowd Agency
Perfect for Self-Starters Who Still Want Access to The Instructor To Ask A Few Questions
Secure Payment.
The perfect option for agency networks or Mastermind groups: An 8-Week Instructor Lead Program.
requires a Minimum of 10 agencies.
.
Secure Payment.
The BEST VALUE
includes 4-hours of one-on-one instructor sessions
per person based on a two-person agency team completing Master Class
Secure Payment.
I have spent almost 25 years creating agency business development programs for leading advertising agencies and my own agencies, generating millions of dollars in new billables.
I've also had the great pleasure of speaking and teaching at numerous agency network conferences, including AMI, MCAN, and PRSA, and I've spoken at Build a Better Agency, BOLO, Inbound, Content Marketing World, MarketingProfs B2B Conference, and numerous others.
And along the way, I've been on a personal crusade to rid the advertising world of RFPs and agency pitches as a primary business development process. So help me help you by giving me a chance to show you how you, too, can Painlessly Prospect for new clients.
I am constantly looking for resources that will bring practical, time tested ideas and strategies to my agency owners. I can always count on Tom to deliver. His Painless Prospecting methodology has served my agencies well and they continue to get value from Tom’s years of experience and insight!
Drew McLellan // CEO, Agency Management Institute
Tom is a refreshing, comfortable, and professional teacher that has consistently delivered more than expected when he's spoken at TAAN. His knowledge of the ad business and insights into driving business development have been invaluable to the members of TAAN. I highly recommend you take this class.
Peter Gerritsen // President at TAAN Worldwide
Whenever you want it to. That's the beauty of our one-on-one delivery. Each MasterClass is scheduled by you based on how fast or slow you wish to move through the course.
Once you've successfully completed the enrollment process, we'll email you to schedule your one-on-one sessions.
For GROUP classes, once the class is full, we'll email everyone with date/time options. Whichever date/time option receives the most votes becomes the official office hour date/time for that cohort.
For GROUP classes, we will record all office hour sessions and make those recordings available to all registered participants.
Each Agency can designate up to TWO agency employees to participate in the MasterClass. Each employee will need an official Agency email address. The second Agency participant will be manually added before the launch of the MasterClass.
You work at your own pace. This class schedule is 100% customized to your hectic schedule, not ours.
Yes, all MasterClass participants receive email support during and for the first 90 days post-class completion. Participants are asked group questions instead of sending individual emails. I also ask that you allow up to 24 hours for responses. Any participant who abuses the email support option will be warned, and if the behavior continues, we will remove that feature from their account.
If you're ready to begin producing a steady stream of STRATEGICALLY qualified client prospects, enroll today to ensure your 2024 is your best year ever!
You are fully protected by our 100% Satisfaction-Guarantee. If you don't feel like Tom taught you a better way to prospect for new clients, just let us know and we'll send you a prompt refund.