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How Ogilvy Closed His Dream Clients
The sales strategies Ogilvy used to build one of the most well known agencies ever
Good Morning! If you checked your stock accounts yesterday, it wasn’t a pretty sight. Wall Street traders managed to sell off billions in just hours. And here we are, still waiting for procurement to approve that $5k deal from Q4. Anyways… let’s get into today’s newsletter. 👇️
How Ogilvy closed dream clients ✅
An email subject line hack 🔍️
Examples of successful cold emails 👀
Sales jobs & a meme 😂
How Ogilvy Closed His Dream Clients
If you don’t know David Ogilvy, it’s time to get hip.
Often referred to as "The Father of Advertising," Ogilvy is up there as one of the greatest marketers to ever live…
But before David Ogilvy was creating iconic ads for Rolls-Royce and Dove, he was a salesman trying to build an agency from scratch.
In 1948, he started the Ogilvy & Mather agency with zero clients and an ambitious dream. Today that same agency has 131 offices, employs around 17,500 people, and does nearly $6 billion in revenue every year.
Lucky for us, he wrote about how he did it in his book, Confessions of an Advertising Man.
Today, we're breaking down the strategies he used to close those dream clients (and how you can use them).
1. Start With The Dream List
On day one of starting his agency, Ogilvy did something most salespeople never do - he made a list of exactly five companies he wanted as clients:
His list was:
General Foods
Bristol-Myers
Campbell Soup Company
Lever Brothers
Shell
And guess what? He eventually landed all five.
Ogilvy called his shot and then worked backward to get there. When you know exactly who you want to work with, you can focus all your energy on winning them over.
How you can do this:
Make your dream list (be specific).
Research them obsessively.
Focus 80% of your energy on those targets.
If those clients are ‘blue chip’ like Ogilvy’s were, don’t expect to close them next week. These things take time and persistence.
You’ll understand what I mean in this next section…
2. The Shell Story: Going Above and Beyond
When Shell (the gas company) was looking for a new agency, they sent out a questionnaire (similar to an RFP) to various agencies.
Most agencies filled it out with typical responses and mailed it back. But Ogilvy saw this as an opportunity to stand out. He stayed up all night writing over-the-top, detailed responses and decided to hand deliver the questionnaire to Shell’s President in NY himself.
But the next morning, he learned that Shell's president had left the States and flown to England.
So, in classic Ogilvy fashion, he jumped on the next plane to London.
For ten days, he called the president’s London hotel to arrange a time to meet, but got no response. Ten whole days of nothing.
Just as he was about to give up, he got the call to meet for lunch with the president of Shell.
But now, Ogilvy already had lunch plans - with the Secretary of State for Scotland. Instead of canceling, he invited the Shell president to join them. (Talk about a flex.)
Three weeks later, Shell became his client.
How you can apply this today:
Go above and beyond for prospects any chance you get.
Do what your competitors aren’t willing to do.
Meet in person any time you can.
3. The Value Content & Follow-Up Strategy
When most agencies sent generic promo materials to prospects, Ogilvy took a different approach.
He created custom reports for each prospect in his direct mail campaign. Instead of pitching his agency in the content, he shared insights about the advertising industry that his prospects couldn't get anywhere else.
"I sent frequent progress reports to 600 people in every walk of life," he wrote. "This barrage of direct mail was read by the most august of advertisers." - David Ogilvy
The result? When he met with Seagram's founder Sam Bronfman, the executive quoted back two paragraphs from a 16-page letter that Ogilvy had sent him months before.
He won that account too.
How you can do this today:
Create content that your prospects can use in their job.
Constantly follow up to stay top of mind.
Which Ogilvy tactic is your favorite? |
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