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Pitching a self-storage company was a new one for Basic/Dept’s vp of growth, Asher Wren.
Once an agency onboards a new client, it’s common for strategists to conduct market research before responding to briefs. New business leads like Wren do the same thing when preparing to pitch prospects, but often under tighter timelines and with limited information.
Wren needed to incorporate market research into a pitch presentation that would resonate with the storage prospect, but finding good information on storage unit trends was a hurdle. Tracking down reliable data is an often expensive endeavor, considering a single report from Forrester Research and its competitors costs several hundred dollars or more. Commissioning custom research is even more costly. Plus, it’s time consuming.
Wren is one of many agency new business professionals navigating a multifaceted, challenging, lonely and high-stakes role with no playbook to reference.
“New business is an island,” Simone Oppenheimer Mandel, co-founder of the agency search and growth consultancy NBZ Partner, told Adweek.
Earlier this month, the consultant and her co-founder, Rachel Segall, launched a premium subscription service for new business professionals called NBZ+. It’s one of few resources new business leads can turn to for support when times get tough, or when they need to crowdsource a quick answer to a hard question.
An accessible resource for small shops
Like Wren, many new business professionals indicated to the consultants that compiling the research necessary to present to prospects is one of their biggest pain points.
“Something that I was surprised rose to the top as a major pain point for agency new business people [was] getting research or insights quickly to help create an inspiring, engaging presentation to a prospect,” Oppenheimer Mandel said.
NBZ Partner tracked down research for Wren, including insights such as the criteria people look for when choosing self-storage options and which consumer cohorts might be looking for self-storage in the future.
While the self-storage pitch is still ongoing, gaining access to the right data helped Wren and his team approach their presentation confidently.
“We put together a really nice partnership with a research partner that can help us [provide] really quick-turn research. Three easy questions submitted by the agency, and you can get gen-pop answers,” Oppenheimer Mandel said.