Steve and how he came to help agencies win more clients.

Steve is the anti-salesman. Almost everything that comes with being salesy leads to negative outcomes and Steve is a huge fan of using simple things like “questions” and crazy techniques like “listening” to get where we need to be in a sale. Too often, agency new business is hampered by arbitrary KPIs and targets which lead to adversarial, aggressive sales techniques. What works in high-pressure ad sales simply doesn’t work for the sort of relationship-building involved in agency growth campaigns.

Steve’s background was originally retail, having sulked out of college while studying for three A-levels that he hated. After a little travel (living in Tenerife and Australia), he ended up learning to sell badly at the IoD, guided by silly targets and under-pressure sales managers. Having learned to sell badly (and getting quite good at it), the route to selling effectively was pretty clear (just do the opposite and be less of a twerp to people). Agency-land beckoned, via one of the “stack-'em-high-but-sell-it-expensively” new business agencies that had emerged like a flock of hungry seagulls from the late-90s/early 2000s agency formation boom. In this analogy, the agencies are the hapless fish. Steve tolerated his employer for a couple of years before setting up Sponge NB in 2004. It wasn’t all bad at that previous employer - he met some really good people.

Outside of work, Steve does a range of things that he won’t bore you with. Same as how he doesn’t talk about experiential agencies to a mate in the pub*.

*Yeah he does.

Here are Steve's answers to a few of our interview questions:

What qualities are required to do this job?
I use the word “tenacity” a lot and it applies to every part of working at Sponge NB – the calls, the research, and making sure everything we do moves the needle for our clients.

What are your greatest strengths?
I have ideas – not occasionally, but every day. I can’t remember a day when we weren’t able to find better ways of doing things here. It’s part of why I still love it after more than 17 years.

What are your greatest weaknesses?
My desk can get messy!