After two decades working across some of the world’s most respected creative agencies, from London to Sydney now Amsterdam, I’ve had a front-row seat to both brilliant business development and some costly missteps. The pattern I see most often? Companies chasing growth without a strategy to guide it.
Business development is not about saying yes to everything that looks like an opportunity. It’s about knowing what you’re building towards, and being ruthless about what serves that vision. Here are the most common mistakes I’ve seen organisations make, and how to avoid them.
1. Chasing Opportunities Without a Clear Strategy
This is the big one. I’ve watched organisations tie up months of time and significant resources pursuing a partnership or new client that, on reflection, never really aligned with where the business was headed. The excitement of a new opportunity can be intoxicating, but excitement is not a strategy.
Before you pursue any new opportunity, you need to be able to answer three questions clearly:
- Does this align with our core business objectives?
- Do we have the capability and capacity to deliver exceptional work here?
- Does this move us closer to the clients, sectors, or capabilities we’re building towards?
If you can’t answer yes to at least two of those, you’re probably not looking at an opportunity, you’re looking at a distraction.
2. Treating Every Opportunity the Same
Not all opportunities are created equal. A partnership with a brand that challenges your team creatively and opens doors to a new sector is fundamentally different from a quick-win retainer that keeps the lights on but goes nowhere. Yet many companies apply the same level of energy and resource to both.
Build a simple evaluation framework. At a minimum, assess each opportunity against its strategic value, commercial potential, and fit with your agency’s positioning. Weight those criteria based on where your business is right now. An agency in growth mode will prioritise differently from one looking to consolidate. The key is to be intentional rather than reactive.
3. Underestimating the Cost of Saying Yes
Every yes has a cost. When you say yes to the wrong brief, the wrong client, or the wrong partnership, you’re not just absorbing a financial risk, you’re depleting the energy, focus, and morale of your team. I’ve seen talented people burn out not because they were overworked, but because they were working on the wrong things.
The best business development leaders I’ve worked with are as proud of what they’ve turned down as what they’ve won. Saying no with confidence, and communicating why, is a mark of strategic maturity, not arrogance.
4. Neglecting Existing Relationships in the Pursuit of New Ones
There’s a natural bias in business development towards the thrill of landing something new. But the most sustainable growth I’ve seen agencies achieve has come from deepening existing client relationships, expanding scope, increasing trust, and becoming genuinely indispensable.
Some of the most significant revenue wins I’ve been part of didn’t come from a new business pitch; they came from a client conversation where we listened carefully, identified a gap, and brought a solution they hadn’t asked for. That’s only possible when you invest in those relationships consistently, not just when there’s something to sell.
5. Letting the Pitch Process Drive the Strategy
This one is subtle but common. When a pitch lands on the desk, there’s enormous pressure to jump straight into ‘how do we win this?’ before asking ‘should we be in this?’ The pitch process has a momentum of its own, and once you’re in it, it’s hard to step back.
Build a qualification process that happens before the pitch begins. Get senior people in the room early. Ask the uncomfortable questions. Is the budget real? Is the brief specifically winnable for us? Is the client genuinely open to the kind of work we do? A clear-eyed no at the start saves everyone a lot of pain later.
6. Failing to Define What ‘Good’ Looks Like
Business development without defined success criteria is just an activity. How do you know if your BD strategy is working? What does a great client relationship look like for your business? What metrics matter: revenue per client, margin, category penetration, award recognition, and long-term retention?
The companies that build sustainable growth are the ones that get very clear on what they’re optimising for, and revisit that regularly as the business evolves. Strategy without measurement is just a good intention.
The Bottom Line
Growth is not about volume. It’s about direction. The companies that do business development well are the ones that are honest about who they are, clear about where they’re going, and disciplined about the choices they make to get there.
Put the right filters in place. Evaluate honestly. And remember that every opportunity you pass on creates space for the one that’s genuinely right for your business.
I’d love to hear how your organisation approaches business development evaluation, what frameworks or criteria have worked for you? Drop a comment below or connect with me directly.
Ant Da Silva is a Business Director and Marketing Communications expert with over 20 years of experience leading brand and marketing initiatives for global creative agencies, including Wunderman, M&C Saatchi, Droga5, We Are Social, and Anomaly. Based in the UK, he partners with organisations globally to drive strategic growth and smarter business development.
