Imagine I made a flow chart (I’m sure there’s an app somewhere but I can’t be bothered to look). Now imagine the first question (probably in a diamond - I’m not sure) asks: Is your creds deck over 15 pages long?

If “no“ is your answer, then you’re done. Congrats. Please don’t read any more of this blog and instead take your shoes off and go stand somewhere where there’s grass and fresh air. Well done.

If, however, your answer is “yes”, well… you’ve only yourself to blame.

So (getting the point surprisingly quickly for one of my blogs) your creds are far too long for the cold channel. It’s that simple.

No one cares THAT much about a company they’ve never dealt with (and probably never heard of) to set ten minutes aside to chew through 30-odd pages of creds.

So how do you do better? Good question. Thanks for asking.

One by one, look at the pages in your creds deck. Now give each one a score from 1 to 5 as far as how likely to win business from a new prospect each page is.

A nice big WELCOME page? One page down, zero scored.

MEET THE TEAM. Another page frittered away, zero scored (no one is hiring you based on your photo, and if you think it’s your personal experience winning them over, just look at all the really successful agencies made up of young, fresh talent).

I won’t do this page by page, but I’m guessing you’re probably realising that the pages scoring best are either case studies (because people will hire you because of the quality of your work and results, NOT the quirkiness of your staff photos) or testimonials (if you were good enough for Nike’s Head of Marketing, you’re good enough for anyone)

Shopping lists of services don’t win new clients, and ANYTHING banging on about methods and beliefs and ethos… seriously, ditch them now. This is New Business. Your job is just to make them go “hmm, nice work. Nice company” so that you have a foot in the door to develop a conversation.

All the stuff about the history of your building and how you have combined industry expertise of over 600 years (WHY do people still do that!) is guff to waste time yawning on about once you’re in the room with them. Don’t waste a creds page with it.

Though it’s a harsh tact, please make sure that every page of your TINY, EFFICIENT and EFFECTIVE creds deck is scoring 5/5.

Now you MIGHT just stand a chance. Yes: that’s how tough cold channel new business is!

Good luck.