Being in a Market of One is transformational. From better work and healthier profits, to a stronger culture and happier clients, you create a virtuous circle of business-wide impact.

But how can you quantify all that? The most direct method uses new-business performance as a handy proxy.

Work smarter not harder

Undifferentiated agencies typically treat finding new clients as a volume game. More is always better – more clients, via more meetings, more proposals and more pitches. At best it’s exhausting. At worst, it’s also ineffective.

So instead of just dialling your effort up to 11, consider the impact of adjusting performance variables other than volume. For example:

• Do you really need more meetings, or would you be better off converting more conversations into real opportunities?
• What’s the relationship between your pitch volume, pitch costs and annual revenue?
• What has more impact on your annual revenue – average deal size or the number of pitches you contest?

By understanding these inter-related dynamics, you soon recognise that volume might not be the ideal path to growth.

Once you’re seen as tangibly different, you have far greater influence on your conversion success as you progress down your sales funnel. You generate bigger numbers – and better clients – with less wasted energy, money and morale.

Define your Business Case for change

To quantify the impact of being in your own Market of One, you can experiment with our Business Case Calculator. It benchmarks your current performance against the gains you can expect once your ideal clients see you as meaningfully different.

Here’s how it works:

• Choose your currency and then enter your current annual new-business performance data, as well as your average deal size and average pitch cost
• This auto-generates your conversion rates at each stage of your ‘Current funnel’
• Your current gross annual revenue is calculated at the bottom
• Now imagine you’re in a Market of One – play with the sliders to see how your ‘New funnel’ performance is impacted by changes in conversion at each stage of your sales funnel
• Notice your new gross annual revenue figure updating with each change you make
• You can also see a before-and-after summary of your gains
• Fill in your contact details to download your Business Case in a handy shareable report.

A few pointers, in case you need them:

• Hover over each ‘?’ for more detail on that field
• Each current performance figure you enter must be smaller than the last (sorry – not even being in a Market of One can help you convert at higher than 100%)
• If your ‘Proposal’ and ‘Pitch’ stages are effectively the same, just add the same figure in each field.

Of course, like every agency, your own commercial model will have all sorts of nuances. So the Business Case Calculator is designed to give you an early-stage illustration. The aim is for you to recognise the scale of your opportunity – and see that when it comes to growth, simply pushing harder is no substitute for deep differentiation.

Note – the Business Case Calculator is currently optimised for desktop or tablet. If you’re on a mobile, landscape is your best option.