How to Generate New Business

"My main reason for adopting literature as a profession was that, as the author is never seen by his clients, he need not dress respectably." -George Bernard Shaw

Can a creative comment on the task of an account manager? A major area of interest to me, as a young creative in the ad world, is the sourcing of new business and the true reason that new clients are won.

At MCAD, I was taught that new clients are won at ad agencies because of a good mixture of great work and excellent pitching schools of the Chief Creative Officer, Executive Account Manager and so on. In the past agencies won clients through well placed compliments and extensive friendships; but, things were thought to have changes with small, new agencies becoming agency of record on large brands.

When working at Campbell Mithun, H&R Block dropped us for DDB Chicago based solely on a strong relationship between the heads of DDB and the newly appointed head of H&R Block. This isn't an isolated event, so are things still the same or is it simply different client to client and agency to agency?

I think it's less black and white than that. It seems strong relationships, developed by the account managers, only get you so far, it's the creatives that have to deliver to finally win over the account. It seems the agencies that are winning are those where there is a strong relationship between the creatives and the account managers.