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Chip Griffin: Hello and welcome to another episode of Chats with Chip. I’m your host, Chip Griffin, the founder of SAGA, the Small Agency Growth Alliance. And I’m delighted to have back with me today a very regular contributor to really all of the different platforms and podcasts and videos that I’ve done over the years, Jody Sutter of the Sutter Company.

Welcome, Jody.

Jody Sutter: Thank you, Chip. It’s always nice to be back.

Chip Griffin: It is. It is great to have you. I always know we’re going to have a great conversation. I often don’t know where we’re going to head with it. You know, we just kind of start and see where it takes us. But I, I think that makes it interesting for us and hopefully interesting and useful for the listeners.

Jody Sutter: Me, too. I love a good time.

Chip Griffin: For any listeners who, for whatever reason may have been under a rock and have never heard you on any of these platforms, why don’t you just give a brief introduction of yourself?

Jody Sutter: Yeah. So I am the, the owner of the Sutter Company. It’s a new business consulting, and coaching company.

 Like you, I also focus on working with, small agencies, specifically the owners of small agencies. Those agencies that are, you know, Usually between say five and, and 35 people who, for whom business development is essential, but, but don’t have the ability to support productively a salesperson or a business development rep. And really need to, they need a system that is going to allow them to use their, their own internal personal strengths to do business development on their terms. And feel control of the revenue that they can potentially generate for their agency.

So that’s what I’ve been doing. As I said, for about 10 years, I’m a career business development professional. Before I worked for myself, I worked for other agencies, large and small running business development. And, so that’s really where I, where I focus. And like I said, I believe that every, I think any agency owner, deserves to feel like they are in control of where their revenue is coming from.

And I help to help them achieve that.

Chip Griffin: And look, owners want to feel in control of their revenue and probably a lot of other things, but the revenue is something that they can can focus on a bit more. Obviously, given your laser like focus on business development, I think it makes sense to start there. We are at the start of a new year, which means that a lot of owners have closed the books on the previous year.

They’ve looked at them, they’ve started making projections and wish lists for this year as far as what they would like to be making and how much they would like to bring in for new business. They had some time over the holidays and so maybe they’ve started cooking up some schemes in their heads, for, for how they’re going to find those prospects.

So as, as we head here into the start of 2025, let’s take a moment and just talk about where we see agency business development today. I think it’s fair to say the last couple of years have been tough for a lot of small agencies. Not all. I mean, there, there’s like anything else, there are exceptions to the rule, but, but by and large, they haven’t been gangbuster years for most small agencies.

There’s still a lot of uncertainty in the air. Economically, politically, socially, et cetera. So as you’re taking a look at this, as you’re talking with a lot of agency owners and focused on their business development activities, how are things looking for this year?

Jody Sutter: Well, I wish I had a, an awesome crystal ball to give you a direct, clear, and more accurate than not answer.

But I, so I don’t know. And I think again, it’s still, it’s still a new year. Where you are at the time of recording this, we are about to go into a new administration, here in the United States. And I think a lot of people are probably waiting to see what happens with that. AI has really been changing things and I think this is going to be the year where AI really starts to become normalized.

I, so it’s funny, I always get a little bit nervous when I ask these questions too because I think, oh, I really should, I should have my finger on the pulse of these trends. The bottom line, I think business development is one of those things that the, sort of the, the tools may change and yet the underlying philosophy or the underlying skillset rarely changes.

And so I will say what I’ve always said is the first thing I ask my clients to do is to be willing to look at who they serve best and the problems that they solve. And I think that that can… If you’re, if you’re really, if you’re willing to be clear about that, that does a lot for just, just, just sort of cutting through the clutter and the noise.

And then you can start using your AI tools or, your, your Apollo I