We love our name. It perfectly captures what we do. Rainmakers are people with “an almost uncanny ability to generate new business”. Treading carefully with clients’ brands, and with our ears to the ground we detect emerging opportunities as well as seeing signals that others miss across the business landscape. Rainmakers are curious, creative, well-informed, and squarely focused on detecting demand then matching it with the most effective supply - the very essence of entrepreneurial spirit!
When we launched, back in 1996, we immediately started changing how new business for marketing agencies was done, which reshaped best practice. Our core belief then, was that outreach to high value targets must be tailored one-to-one based on critical insights. The world has changed a lot since, but our belief in intelligence-led proactivity has never been stronger. So, while others spread new business resources thinly over multiple channels, we focus on richer and deeper, systematic engagement with each of the brands you most wish to win as new accounts. And it works.
Rainmakers do amazing things, and we play our part in helping our clients do amazing things too.
WE FOCUS BUDGETS FOR Maximum IMPACT
Events, content marketing, PR and LinkedIn are all nice to have, but will only ever provide limited access to your target audience. By concentrating resources on effective direct outreach to all of the organisations you most wish to work with, you achieve comprehensive and meaningful engagement, whilst minimising time and headspace required from your team across every other channel.
WE Plan For Success
We are well known for our strength in planning direct outreach campaigns. If you don’t capture the perfect formulation of your message for the ideal target-set, your efforts will be inefficient. Our planning evolves, adapting to technologies and the volatile commercial environment, and continues to do so, ensuring we stay ahead in all areas of best practice.
WE DETECT BUYING SIGNALS & INTENT - YOUR PROSPECTS ‘IN-PLAY’
‘Unfair advantage’ is an overused term and not always justified. Our purpose-built technology and proprietary market insights mean we can calculate the probability of relevant emerging or live briefs. We call these ‘In-Play’. It means we can predict buying intent for your services across your audience to get you out in front of the pack. It really is an unfair advantage.
WE FUEL YOUR NEW BUSINESS PIPELINE
We investigate each buyer’s challenges, shaping our outreach around how your unique approach would solve them. If appropriate, we arrange meetings and calls for you to pitch your solution. Because our outreach is researched and tailored to specific needs, opportunities resulting are higher quality than other channels generating more speculative ‘leads’.
WE’RE POWERED BY INTELLIGENCE
Our research techniques, datasets, and insight tools are collectively far in advance of other providers, and it’s this that gets us access and high value response from your new business targets. We use a suite of leading sales-enablement platforms and news sources (via our Media Monitor) and our own desk research to power our campaigns. This intelligence-led approach enables consistency and reliability.
OUR TEAMS ARE BUILT FOR YOUR BUSINESS
We assemble the ideal mix of skills and experience to enable your campaign. Each team features a senior partner and immerses itself in your culture and capabilities to make sure your campaign is executed to full potential. We're by your side, from initial meeting preparation to follow-up, then keeping the dialogue alive all the way through to conversion.
WE DELIVER A MEASURABLE MARKETING EFFECT
Our work has a strong and measurable marketing effect. We access even the hardest to reach buyers at global brands, sensitively, intelligently and as an ambassador of your brand - a seamless extension of your own new business department. We measure the degree of engagement we achieve with each target via what we term R.A.D.A.R – research, awareness, dialogue, action, results. The awareness achieved then support the effectiveness of your other marketing channels.
An entrepreneurial ethos
The basic currency of our work, for every hour of every day, is matching supply to demand. It means we ‘think’ on your behalf, just as hard as we ‘do’. And this underpins what people discover when they work with us; we are commercially driven, creative, and totally committed to our clients’ success.
"Rainmaker sees opportunities and angles that others miss, establishing dialogue and engagement with our target brands that has led to exciting new client wins. We're also impressed with how they intelligently harness our marketing content and insights to build our profile with marketing budget-holders."
“Rainmaker have proved to be an excellent new business partner, capable of delivering well qualified, high value opportunities that are completely relevant to our offering.”
“Rainmaker's consistent and intelligent outreach ensures your agency will always be front of mind when it matters”
“Rainmaker helped us build awareness and greater engagement with AB’s unique offer. Their outreach campaign has helped us enhance the strategy and structure of our business development function, optimising our use of our content and engagement platforms. Most importantly Rainmaker has provided a steady stream of new business relationships and meeting opportunities each month with the companies we want to be working with.”
“Working with Rainmaker I know how well researched and executed their outreach is on our behalf. Their team work seamlessly on our events and marketing too, ensuring we make the most of every pound of investment - and they get results”
"Rainmaker helped us fine-tune our proposition in the onboarding phase, and then makes smart adjustments during outreach to ensure we get in front of more of the brands we want to work with, from Nike to Nando’s."
"We appointed Rainmaker to get us to the next stage of growth and they have consistently created and reenergised new business relationships with brands we want to work with. Our recent win with Converse, a brand we’d previously worked on a small project for, came following Rainmaker identifying that new marketers were joining and then getting us in front of them."
“Rainmaker has been totally immersed in helping us take our creative proposition directly out to brands. They’ve helped us fine-tune our message and built relationships with the brands we want to work with. They're awesome.”
“We appointed Rainmaker when we relaunched to build our profile outside our existing agency network. They helped us refine our new proposition to engage the brands we want to work with, to quickly raise awareness for our offer, and proactively adjust messaging and targeting as needed. Rainmaker delivers excellent opportunities that we have converted into new clients including Laithwaite’s Wines and Photobox.”
“Rainmaker has consistently delivered outstanding support month after month."
"Rainmaker has always been a highly proactive and transparent partner of ours, hence our long-term relationship!"
No matter how advanced the AI or personalisation, we’ve all seen that weariness descend upon our colleagues when they receive yet another machine generated emailer. The slumped shoulders and little sigh of exasperation. This approach is wasteful, harmful, and yes, lazy.
At Rainmaker we evaluate vast quantities of information to generate rich insights on emerging new business opportunities at each of our clients’ individual targets. Our ultra-tailored prospect communications succeed because we put in all of this work first.
“Our relationship with Rainmaker has been honest and open from the start; they really challenged us to leave our humility at the door and make sure we are selling ourselves loud and proud. They have helped us get a foot in the door and start conversations with the brands we want to work with – from those already on our wish list, to exciting new brands and markets. They help us to raise awareness of what makes our offer unique, so we’re front of mind when decisions are being made about new design agency partners.
Most importantly they have delivered, including a new business relationship that has led to us working on brand identity, design and campaigns across multiple brands within our new client’s portfolio.”
- Kim Van Elkan, Managing Director
What does our data from the last 12 months tell us about the best ways to proactively reach out and win new clients?
The moment is now. Let’s get busy connecting you with perfect fit new business opportunities
The right words enable us to sensitively initiate dialogue with senior marketing budget-holders – addressing their actual challenges and ambitions with critical insights and emotional intelligence.
Sticking to the plot is no bad thing, but the downsides that may slowly seep in are rigidity, complacency, ennui. Sooner or later, it’s always time for a change.
There’s something special about a Rainmaker. Treading carefully with our clients’ brands, we're in tune with the business landscape and so see things others miss.
Since it's not possible to mass-mail your buyers with something that’s engaging and relevant to all of them, targeted one-to-one outreach is needed.
We do the heavy lifting, empowering you and your senior team to cover this role for yourselves.
In a world of distractions, and shifting priorities, how do you ensure your agency is front of mind the moment a brief is ready?
Whether you're adapting to changing business environments, competitive threats, launching new services, or simply have an urgent need for replacement clients – there's a need for rapid new business results.
If new business is a priority for your agency, the team here are ready to swing into action to get you impressive results from the outset.
How do you ensure your new business plans stay on course and your agency remains on a strong, sustainable growth trajectory?
With Q4 starting this week, and just 59 working days of 2023 left, what can you now reasonably expect from your current new business resource before the year is out?
Are your fingers always crossed when it comes to bringing in new business? With Rainmaker at your side, it's no longer a case of luck.
Do your prospects possess a crystal-clear understanding of what makes your agency special and different?
From tech to logistics, from retail to hospitality, the gap between what's promised, and our experiences in reality has never been greater. So how are we bucking this trend when it comes to new business?
A taste of life at Rainmaker...
Whether you're a fresh grad or a seasoned business development professional, to kick off a discussion about a career with Rainmaker just drop us a line at: gareth.dixon@rain-maker.co.uk
