About US
Experienced People Asking Smart Questions.
We love to do the thing our clients hate doing most and do it better than they ever imagined possible.
Our role is to unearth opportunities for our clients within the companies they want to work with and get them in front of the decision maker for their service .
The Manifest team are rightly recognised as the crème de la crème of agency new business lead generation and will tell your story with passion, eloquence and conviction
Our techniques are channel agnostic, disruptive and engaging. Our results astounding.
Our clients expect, and our team delivers, 100%.
Experienced
The average tenure of an account director at Manifest is five years and several have been here more than ten.
Knowledgeable
A pre-requisite for a job at Manifest is a background in either an agency or client side marketing department.
Persuasive
The power of persuasion. The dark art of making another see things your way through the use of language.
Passionate
You are passionate about your agency; we get it and you can be sure we will be as passionate as you are.
Our focus
We specialise in helping companies within the creative and marketing services industry win more new clients by arranging new business meetings for them with the decision makers for their service within the companies they want to work with.
The channels we use fall into three categories: Broadcast, Listening and Narrowcast.
Broadcast
Your PR, SEO, AdWords and social marketing, together with your reputation and networking, will drive prospects to your website. We would suggest using LeadFeeder or LeadForensics to track these website visitors. You may also want to undertake email campaigns to further drive inbound web traffic and we can help here with provision of data.
Listening
We will research the companies, brands and individuals we will be targeting for you using LinkedIn, Twitter, Instagram and Facebook, current affairs websites and news sources. Using this intelligence, we will tailor niche messages to each prospective new client to make every approach sound like the only one that matters to your agency.
Narrowcast
What is the best and most appropriate channel to use to get your proposition and the niche message we have developed noticed by the prospect we are approaching? Some companies and marketing teams are best approached by email, others are more likely to warm to a personal telephone call and others a well written letter or social approach.
LATEST NEWS
Our thoughts on the agency new business landscape and some other insights that we hope you will find interesting.
New Manifest Domain
As you may have noticed, we have changed our website domain from thisismanifest.com to manifest.team. No big reason for doing this, we just got a little bored of people calling us ‘This Is Manifest’ when we thought it was pretty obvious what we meant 🤣. We also felt that the .team TLD was the most[…]
Stalling Agency Growth
The Problem Stalling agency growth is an issue many of us encounter and can, if you are scaling for sale, become a very real concern and cause of much hand wringing. “Why is it …” we were asked the other day by a new client “that so many agencies of our type grow quite spectacularly[…]
Resist the Simplicity and Convenience of the Conference Call
Whilst reading The Globotics Upheaval by Richard Baldwin I was reminded of just how important it is for agency new business people and heads to resist the simplicity and convenience of the conference call. In chapter 9, Globotics Resolution: A More Human, More Local Future, he explores the jobs that neither telecommuters nor AI will[…]
Patience Is Key in Agency Business Development
Here is a tale all too familiar to anyone who has worked in agency business development for any length of time and one that still shocks me to the bones even today. At the back end of last summer we arranged for one of our clients to have a meeting with a major UK entertainment[…]
Polite or Bloody Annoying?
Have you heard this new business sales pitch introduction lately? “Hello Adam, this is John from Acme; how are you today?” “Er, fine thanks. Sorry, do I know you?” “No, but I thought you might be interested to hear about our …” “No I wouldn’t be, thank you, have a nice day and goodbye.” BRRRRRRRR (the[…]
Kissing frogs? Or toads …
“I’VE HAD ENOUGH OF KISSING FROGS!” The poor man wailed. “Really?” I empathised, but wanted to dig deeper “why is that?” “It just. Doesn’t. Work” he accentuated each work with a loud thump on the Costa Coffee table at which we were sitting. Startled mums with toddlers moved tables away from us. He was looking a[…]
The Agency Client Relationship
The agency client relationship typically lasts about eighteen months, that’s from initial romancing through to the inevitable breakup. The stages and approximate lengths of time are shown on the graphic wheel below. From an agency new business persons perspective it is essential to understand these phases and the opportunities (or lack of them) that they[…]
B2B Sales Stagnation
One of the main problems we hear about these days from businesses we speak with is that even after they have met with a prospect and submitted a proposal, they suddenly hit tumbleweed town. B2B sales stagnation. Calls not returned Emails unanswered Voicemails ignored “I’m sorry, she’s not available right now; can I get her[…]
Manifest is Very Different
According to someone I met the other day, Manifest is very different from most other new business agencies. “Why’s that?” I asked them, “after all, all we do is arrange really good quality new business meetings with the people you want to work with.” “EXACTLY!” She replied. “You don’t ‘undertake an agency brand positioning and proposition[…]
Tell Me Something Different
“Tell me something different” he said. So I did. I told him that we would identify perfect fit companies for his agency by using the tools the investment community uses (Crunchbase); so we could identify businesses that have received funding in the last month of more than £10m to spend in the next twelve months on[…]