What’s different, what’s the same in BD

Agency business development looks very different from a year ago. Even more so than five years ago. At least on the surface. Underneath, it’s the same animal it’s always been since I started doing this work. The tools change. The pressure changes. The expectations change. Human behavior does not. Five years from now? Sure, there will be more automation, more AI, maybe even BD robots. But the fundamentals will still decide who wins and who goes home.

So, what’s different now?

1. More noise. Less patience.

Everyone has a deck.
Everyone has a POV.
Everyone is “award-winning.”

Meanwhile, your prospect is overloaded, accountable, and out of time. Jobs are on the line. Mistakes linger. Doing nothing feels safer than doing the wrong thing.

So marketers scan fast, decide faster, and ignore anything that smells like wasted time. They skim, not read. They are allergic to fluff, jargon, and “just checking in.” They make snap judgments to save time and protect their reputations. They are looking for reasons to say no, not invitations to say yes.

Not because they are shallow. Because they are responsible.

That’s why long intros, generic POVs, and meandering decks get dismissed instantly. Not because the idea is bad, but because it didn’t earn attention fast enough.

The BD implications are simple and brutal:

• You have seconds, not minutes
• Relevance must be immediate
• Clarity beats clever
• Proof beats promise
• Empathy beats enthusiasm

If your message can’t survive a two-second skim by someone with real pressure and real downside, it’s not a message. It’s background noise.

2. AI raised the floor, not the ceiling

AI made mediocre outreach faster. That’s the problem.

When everyone can write a decent email, “decent” becomes a sea of sameness. Strategy, diagnosis, and judgment remain stubbornly human.

From the marketer’s seat, everything now sounds fine. Clean. Logical. Polished. And forgettable. AI smoothed the rough edges and quietly hollowed out conviction.

Differentiation is even more difficult. Ten agencies show up with similar language and similar thinking, so marketers default to brands they recognize, people they trust, and agencies they perceive as safer. That’s not laziness. That’s risk management.

AI can fake the polish. It cannot fake judgment. Marketers get that, even if they can’t articulate it. The result leads to more probing, more skepticism, more doubt, and greater focus on how an agency thinks under pressure rather than on capabilities, services, and pedigree.

For agencies, the takeaway is uncomfortable but liberating:
Prospects don’t want more ideas. Agencies don’t need more content. Both sides want fewer, better diagnoses and decisions.

If AI raised the floor, the only way to stand out is to climb above it. That climb allows you to own judgment, taste, strategy, tradeoffs, and the willingness to be wrong before the client is wrong in public.

If your agency “uses AI” but can’t explain how it sharpens your thinking instead of just speeding up your output, you don’t have an advantage. You have a faster path to commoditization.

3. Buyers self-educate first

By the time someone talks to you, they’ve Googled you, skimmed your site, scanned your case studies, and formed an opinion. 70+% know who they want before the pitch commences.

For marketers, first impressions and up to 80% of all impressions happen without you in the room. According to Gartner, 66% of decision-makers prefer the digital self-serve journey. Relevance, confidence, and credibility are judged privately and quickly. Charm matters less than clarity. They are not looking to be sold. They are looking to avoid regret, exceed targets, and justify ROMI.

Confusion gets punished instantly. If your cases or POV make them work for answers, they move on. No second chances.

For agencies, this changes everything. Your website is your first pitch. If it’s vague, bloated, or too clever without being clear, you’re eliminated before the call.

Positioning does the filtering. Good positioning attracts the right marketers and repels the wrong ones. If everyone leans in, you’re generic.

Claims don’t carry weight anymore. Thinking does. POVs, case framing, and visible tradeoffs matter more than logos and credentials.

Self-education means marketers now prequalify agencies in private. Agencies either guide that learning or get quietly crossed off the list.

Your content, POV, case studies, and even your founder’s LinkedIn posts are doing BD work whether you like it or not. BD efforts have to be rebalanced, more branding, less prospecting, to shape your target’s perception before you or they know they need to find a new agency.

4. Intelligence is free to everyone

Category knowledge used to signal credibility in every industry. Not so much anymore.

Company background, competitive context, spend estimates, audience insights, channel norms. All available instantly. Not just to agencies, but to marketers, junior staff, procurement, and your competitors. Intelligence that once separated the “experts” from the “amateur” is now table stakes.

That changes the game.

Knowing the market no longer differentiates you. Interpreting it does. Synthesizing it does. Deciding what matters inside the noise does.

Marketers assume you’ve done the homework. They don’t reward you for it. They reward you for helping them see something they couldn’t see on their own. A constraint. A risk. A tradeoff. A missed opportunity. A wrong assumption they’ve been carrying.

Agencies that still lead with “we understand your category” sound behind. Everyone understands the category. That’s the problem.

The BD implications are uncomfortable:

• Access to information is readily available to all
• Insight without judgment is trivia
• Pattern recognition beats data accumulation
• Clarity beats comprehensiveness
• A point of view beats a download

If your value proposition relies on knowing things your prospect can find in five minutes, you don’t have a value proposition. You have to turn the “knowing” into the doing, as in what you are going to do about it.

The agencies that win are not the smartest in the room. They are the most decisive. They don’t show more intelligence. They show better thinking and fresh, creative approaches while everyone is running the same playbook based on “knowing.” Winners use new tools, speed, low cost, and ease to try new approaches, experiment with new techniques, and break the tired formulas to unlock next-level results.

5. AI eliminates the excuses that used to slow BD down

Don’t know how to write it? AI can draft it.
Don’t have design resources? AI can mock it up.
Don’t have time? AI can do in minutes what used to take hours.

Which means the old excuses don’t apply.

Speed is no longer an advantage. It’s assumed. Effort is no longer impressive. It’s invisible. Volume is no longer evidence of discipline. It’s noise.

AI removes friction from production, not from thinking. It doesn’t help you choose the right problem. It doesn’t help you say no. It doesn’t give you courage, taste, or conviction. It just exposes whether you had those things to begin with.

The competitive environment gets harsher, not easier. More agencies show up. More outreach gets sent. More decks get built. And more mediocre thinking floods the market.

That raises the bar instantly.

The real bottleneck moves upstream. From execution to judgment. From output to decision-making. From “can we do this?” to “should we do this at all?”

The BD implications are clear:

• Effort is no longer a differentiator
• Hesitation is more visible
• Generic thinking is easier to spot
• Decisiveness compounds
• Indecision gets punished

AI doesn’t level the playing field. It removes the smoke and mirrors. Once excuses disappear, agencies are judged on what they’ve always been hiding behind time, process, and activity.

What’s left is how you think when it matters most.

What hasn’t changed?

Trust still wins.
People don’t hire agencies. They hire confidence that they won’t be embarrassed internally or externally. The first priority is to make trust-building the tip of the spear.

Relationships still beat tactics.
Cold outreach works best when it doesn’t feel cold. Warmth, relevance, and timing still outperform volume and automation. IRL always makes a bigger and better impression.

Diagnosis still matters more than ideas.
Agencies still lose by rushing to solutions before demonstrating that they understand the problem. Flash without clarity, stagecraft without strategy, awards and recognition without results, miss the mark.

Consistency still beats bursts.
One heroic push a year does not build a pipeline. BD is a discipline, not a campaign, not a hobby, not an afterthought.

Differentiation is still earned, not claimed.
“Full-service,” “integrated,” and “strategic” still mean nothing. Showing how you think, decide, and prioritize still carries the day.

The uncomfortable takeaway.

When an agency says, “BD doesn’t work as it used to,” what they mean is:
“What used to work for us stopped working, and we haven’t adapted.”

Information is abundant. Tools are abundant. Speed is abundant.

Judgment is not.

The fundamentals never went out of style. They just stopped being optional.

The good news for agency owners is this: you already have most of what you need. The experience. The pattern recognition. The instincts. The scar tissue. What’s required now is the willingness to lead with them.

Success comes from combining what you know with what comes next, without hiding behind output, effort, or automation. This isn’t a reinvention. It’s a reset.

If you want, we can pressure-test your current BD approach against the new marketplace realities and see whether you have the relevance to win, or just a hope and a prayer with a CRM attached.

Happy Prospecting

I helped agencies sharpen and focus their differentiation and positioning to be more competitive in today’s marketplace. I also develop and run their prospecting program, optimizing the process and driving real growth. You can learn more about me at jheenan.com or grab time with me here: calendly.com/jheenan. If you haven’t already done so, sign up for my New Business Newsletter. If you know someone who might benefit from this post, please forward it. If you like this post, I’d appreciate a thumbs up and a comment. While you are at it, let’s connect on LinkedIn.

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