The multiverse of New Business

Have you seen that Rick and Morty where there’s a dimension where phones sit on pizzas and order chairs for food using small humans as communication devices? No? Your loss; it’s a good one.

It also ‘proves’ that anything is possible once you accept the multiverse. Ish.

So, imagine if you will, a world in which you ONLY win new business through case studies. No pitches, no networking, no LinkedIn pitch-slapping and no trade shows (I know - what ARE you going to do with all that money I’ve just saved you!).

Now… take a look at your web site and your creds. How good are your case studies? Are they showing RESULTS (yes - people do expect your work to actually achieve something)? If your medium is visual are there more pictures than words? If your medium is words, are there any typos, extra character spaces or mis-used semicolons? If the client was delighted with your work is there a testimonial?

Case studies are GOLD.

I can tell you that ANYONE who hires an external agency IMMEDIATELY doesn’t trust them. It’s not your fault, one simply can’t help it!

Hyperbole has no place in case studies. Tell me what you achieved (first) and then break down how you did it so brilliantly. That is LITERALLY all I care about (well… apart from how much it’s going to cost me).

Play my little game, turn the spotlight on your case studies and imagine that ALL your New Business relies on them. Are you still happy with them?

New business: dumb it down

You’re probably pretty clever. You once built a business and then kept it alive during the pandemic - and it’s not like things were super-easy before that came along!

Things may have changed shape somewhat, but you are still in possession of the skills and abilities that have allowed you to do business. So, why - when you talk about what you do - do you suddenly start talking in tag-lines and fortune cookie language?

If you consider yourself/yourselves to be creative people who are good at coming up with smart ideas and then executing them, why don’t you say so? Stop over-thinking the descriptions on your outbound collateral. Referring to yourselves a “one-stop full-service creative function” 1) doesn’t really tell me what you’re good at and 2) makes you sound identical to about 100 agencies sharing the same post code.

English is a beautiful thing, but when it comes to communicating we tend to be too influenced by what we see others doing. They’re looking at you wondering if they should sound more like you at exactly the same time as you’re looking at them wondering which wording to steal for your own site.

Be honest and clear in your communications. If you’re a collection of exceptional animators, say so. Don’t open up a thesaurus and try to devise some clever ‘showy’ version (oh and PLEASE don’t tell me you’re going to bring something “alive online”).

Most people looking to bring in outside help have a problem. A new launch, a new direction, a new task handed down to them. They can’t animate/brand/promote/market/app-build/whatever themselves, which is why they’re looking at your site/creds. Recognise what you can actually do for someone and let them know. In English. Quickly.

New Business: removing the packaging

When I want crisps I think about whether I want Hula Hoops, Quavers or Monster Munch. I am entirely and only interested in the product. I am interested in the ‘results’ (i.e. stuffing my face) and I want to get to that moment ASAP.

Since writing the above paragraph I’ve done some Googling and found out that Hula Hoops are made by KP Snacks, and both Quavers and Monster Much are Walkers’ products. I did not know this previously. Nor did I care. Why? Well, because knowing who was behind the product wasn’t very important to me. I had a need, and that need could be satisfied just by getting the product.

Think about this when you decide what is the first thing people see when they land on your site or open your freshly-emailed creds.

Do a bit of role play: Who is it that hires you mostly? Let’s say it’s the Marketing Director. Ok, now imagine you are that Marketing Director. What’s your issue/problem/requirement right now? Perhaps you need a new design agency to handle the branding for a new product? So… don’t let that Marketing Director come to your creds only to find five pages about your process and your ethos and your personal backstory. Let them IMMEDIATELY see your branding work.

You provide something. What is it? What do people expect you to hand over when your work is done? START with that in all your communications.

If the Marketing Director is wondering if you guys are the right bunch to take his product to market, SHOW him how well you do that. Don’t TELL him via text narrative, SHOW him that this is your wheelhouse all day, every day.

Sorry to be so blunt, but unless you’re an agency giant and people hire you just to show off, no one really cares about you as a team or as individuals - they are interested in what you can do for them and if they are going to look back and be delighted they chose you or regret it.

Prove to them that you are the right choice by showing them QUICKLY how amazing you are, not how amazing you think you sound in words.

"About us" matters

We often tell an anecdote during pitches about consulting for an agency in the medical services sector. We went into a second meeting armed with a fairly brutal critique of their “About us” page (they had asked us to do it BTW, we weren’t just being gits for no reason).

The tricky part was when they told us they’d spent two days ‘perfecting’ their current “About us” page, labouring over each and every drop of hyperbole, the intricate description of their backgrounds, their combined years of experience, their business ethos and trademarked processes… (it went on a fair while).

The problem is, no one hires you because of that stuff. Yes it’s nice to be reassured, but think about all the funky new agencies with young, spunky talent, winning work with nothing but skateboards and stunning creativity (and just how impressive/relevant do you think “we’ve got 225 years of combined experience in our team” really is?)

So (we ventured at the time, and say to you now) why not let yourselves be defined by your successes and results. Rather than “We were founded in 2012 and Dave used to work for a big agency”, why not lead with “We’re the guys behind the 75% increase in Visa’s sales last year”?

Such an “About us” can’t be denied. If I say “We’re the smartest agency in London” you could challenge it. If I however told you “We’re the agency that created the campaign that got Youngs into Waitrose”… well, feel free to challenge it, but (unless I’m a complete liar) I’ll be able to prove the statement.

An “About us” created using this approach achieves much: you get to name-drop a client you’ve worked for (establishing credibility), you get to show the kinds of results your work leads to (to get them fantasising about enjoy similar success) and you come over as smart enough to know that cunningly squeezing a case study into an “About us” page has way more value than talking about how you’re always “on time and on budget”.

It might seem picky, but we’re talking about cold channel new business. EVERY second on a call and every inch on an email or web site is critical.

Don’t waste time talking about the office dog and how quirky you are when you could be selling your brilliance to a potential customer.

Happy hunting.

Being harsh to do better

Imagine I made a flow chart (I’m sure there’s an app somewhere but I can’t be bothered to look). Now imagine the first question (probably in a diamond - I’m not sure) asks: Is your creds deck over 15 pages long?

If “no“ is your answer, then you’re done. Congrats. Please don’t read any more of this blog and instead take your shoes off and go stand somewhere where there’s grass and fresh air. Well done.

If, however, your answer is “yes”, well… you’ve only yourself to blame.

So (getting the point surprisingly quickly for one of my blogs) your creds are far too long for the cold channel. It’s that simple.

No one cares THAT much about a company they’ve never dealt with (and probably never heard of) to set ten minutes aside to chew through 30-odd pages of creds.

So how do you do better? Good question. Thanks for asking.

One by one, look at the pages in your creds deck. Now give each one a score from 1 to 5 as far as how likely to win business from a new prospect each page is.

A nice big WELCOME page? One page down, zero scored.

MEET THE TEAM. Another page frittered away, zero scored (no one is hiring you based on your photo, and if you think it’s your personal experience winning them over, just look at all the really successful agencies made up of young, fresh talent).

I won’t do this page by page, but I’m guessing you’re probably realising that the pages scoring best are either case studies (because people will hire you because of the quality of your work and results, NOT the quirkiness of your staff photos) or testimonials (if you were good enough for Nike’s Head of Marketing, you’re good enough for anyone)

Shopping lists of services don’t win new clients, and ANYTHING banging on about methods and beliefs and ethos… seriously, ditch them now. This is New Business. Your job is just to make them go “hmm, nice work. Nice company” so that you have a foot in the door to develop a conversation.

All the stuff about the history of your building and how you have combined industry expertise of over 600 years (WHY do people still do that!) is guff to waste time yawning on about once you’re in the room with them. Don’t waste a creds page with it.

Though it’s a harsh tact, please make sure that every page of your TINY, EFFICIENT and EFFECTIVE creds deck is scoring 5/5.

Now you MIGHT just stand a chance. Yes: that’s how tough cold channel new business is!

Good luck.

Flexibility in New Business

I play in a party band called Mushroom Clown. The reasons for the stupid name was 1) it needed to be something memorable, 2) it had to be something no one was going to spell incorrectly, 3) I found a cute cartoon mushroom and put a red nose on him for the logo. BOOM!

The only problem with this name is that people searching ‘Party Clown’ often end up sending me an email asking if I do balloon animals (which I do funnily enough, but only in my spare time and NEVER for money).

However, the first time someone approached me about this, rather than just saying “it’s crossed wires; I can’t help you” it did (BRIEFLY) flash through my mind to wonder if I had any extra-long red shoes in my wardrobe. I mean… a paying gig is a paying gig. Right?

The point is, don’t be too precious about your offering when prospecting. I don’t mean start selling ice cream if you’re a brand design agency, but don’t be SO preoccupied with selling what you think you do that you blast past someone with a genuine requirement within your abilities.

We get tasked by clients to sell their specific service (often with a tediously-trademarked name) and ONLY sell that. But if you go into a call selling cheese without having a nice chat first, you never have the chance to find out that they also like ham. If you go in selling yourself as (for instance) a design agency, they might say “no thanks” because you didn’t explain that you’re also big on strategy.

If you’d just started your prospecting by finding out a little more about the target’s needs, you could have then sold yourself as a strategy agency (that just happens to also be brilliant at animation).

Anyway, I’m obviously crossing the streams somewhat to serve my own purpose, but you get the gist: don’t be afraid to be less laser-focused when you announce what you are and what you do. Most of your customers just see you as “their agency” rather than a specific “brand” agency or “insight” agency or “whatever” agency. Don’t limit your opportunities from the off by deciding what you are; leave that to the prospect.

Happy hunting.

SKIP INTRO

I’ve said it before and (for SEO purposes) I shall say it again - I LOVE “Skip intro” as an option when using the likes of Netflix, Amazon Prime, etc.

For the people who have spent months grafting away to produce a TV show it must be a real punch in the guts - the blunt acknowledgement and acceptance that no one cares that they exist. Ouch.

But it’s also smart as hell because it’s born of the question “why are people here?”. In the case of Netflix it’s to watch a show/movie. Anyone who thinks that the vast majority are there to find out who wrote this episode of “Lucifer” is deluded (as is anyone expecting “Lucifer” to be anything other than appalling. Just saying).

Let’s now turn that around to you and your creds and/or website. “Why are people here?” Are they here to learn all about you as a person? Nah. Are they here to find out the history of your building? Nah. Are they here to check out the huge list of things you can do? Maybe, but probably not (because these days most agencies can pretty much all do the same thing).

They’re probably there because they have a specific goal and want to know if you can help them nail it. Obviously the specifics depend on what you do and who your customers tend to be, but it probably wouldn’t take long to work out the answer to that key question. And if that answer can be put front and centre on your creds/site how awesome would that be! They got to “skip intro” and get straight to what they were interested in all along.

Show them results. Show them your awesome output. Show them how the work you do will take them to where they want to be. If you force them to watch all the credits (metaphorically speaking) by the time they get to the show (if indeed they stick around that long) they’ll already be spent and might miss something juicy.

Deliver what the audience wants, not what you want them to see to make yourself feel good.

Getting ready for New Business

So let’s cut a few corners here: let’s imagine you’ve already spoken to loads of new business agencies and have come to the correct decision to employ Sponge NB. Congratulations. You are a winner.

We’re now waiting like a coiled spring. A hunched cheetah. A hungry hippo. A tortoise with its eye on a particularly tall buttercup some distance away. WE ARE READY (is what I’m trying to say).

However, you don’t want to press the big yellow “GO” button (everything here is yellow by the way; it’s all on-brand but incredibly tedious) until you have your own house in order. So rather than waste valuable invoiced time realising you don’t have half the things we need, what could you start sorting out in readiness for the AWESOME new business campaign we’re about to unleash into the cold channel?

1) Case studies. Lots of them (preferably covered in results).

We love case studies and would much rather send a few choice relevant case studies to an interested prospect than a standard creds deck. That said…

2) A standard creds deck.

Yes, I know I just said something different but variety is the spice of life so shut up and make me a nice creds deck. Don’t go overboard on fluff - no one cares what you look like (standing there all black and white with your brick wall) and no one is interested in the ‘rich’ history of your building, so stick to client-winning stuff (specifically a simple list of what you’re great at, followed by examples of you being great at them).

3) Targets.

Know thine enemy. As Sun Tzu famously suggested (or it might have been Ricardo Montalbán) if you don’t know who you’re trying to hit, how are you going to hit them. Don’t wait until we’ve got all of the above in order before knowing where you’re pointing us. Don’t just say “food” or “drink” or “big companies”. At the very least have a ‘dream list’ of the types of companies you’d like. Also, fell free to experiment with us; if you’ve never worked in, for instance, the education sector, why not let us ‘blow’ 10% of the database exploring that on your behalf.

There are many more things you can do to get your new business efforts flying faster, but the above is a good start. See you at the buttercup.

We're rubbish at New Business

No we’re not. It was just a clever trick to make you look. Sucker.

However, if I’d said “We’re great at New Business” you’d have simply shrugged. And the reason you’d shrug is because OF COURSE we’re going to say that. It seems that ALL agencies do are state the obvious (or at least say something so vanilla that it has no impact).

We review A LOT of agency creds and web sites. Guess what they all do:

1) Bring your brand alive online

2) Deliver on budget, on time

3) Really get under the skin of their customers

4) Have unique industry experience

5) Have a team dog who is “head of wellbeing” (or something similarly shit).

So, what have we learned?

In an attempt to seem interesting, every agency using ANY of the above are just making themselves blend into the walls with the rest of the agencies using exactly the same BS blah blah.

Why are you telling me you deliver on time? Do you think there are any agencies out there putting “sometimes we’re pretty late” on their websites? Or “Often we go over budget - Oopsie!” or “We won’t have the expertise to do that thing you ask us to do”?

We do an exercise with new clients called ‘Expected vs Remarkable’. Do you think customers expect you to be on time? Yes, of course they do. So stop broadcasting it like it’s special. You don’t put “two or three times a day we stop working to go to the toilet”. I expect you to; it’s not remarkable (now wash your hands).

If you’re lucky enough to have someone bother to read your text, make it worth their while. Don’t waste precious seconds with clichés. Instead tell them about a result you achieved or the brief you smashed. Don’t tell them “We park our cars in the spaces BETWEEN the lines”. Of course you do; you’re not children. Stop telling me things I take for granted and start telling me things that make me want to work with you.

Avoiding the new business 'pest' trap

There was a time my phone would ring and I’d be excited. Now I just stare at the number from Glasgow or +31 or UNKNOWN and wonder who I’ll be hanging up on today.

No, I haven’t have a car accident in the last two years. No, I don’t want to change my mobile phone tariff. No, I can’t answer three simple questions about my life insurance. And no, I don’t want to go to my sister’s for lunch on Sunday (that last one was my mum, but you get the idea).

The problem with this rush of cold calling sales activity is that we’re now all set up to expect the worst when answering a call from an unknown. Which is a shame, because when WE call a prospect, we’ve probably got a really good reason to be doing so. Which bring me to…

How to not be a pest

The bad rep new business agencies carry is very much a case of the bad apples spoiling those of us who consider ourselves to be Golden Delicious; companies with warehouses full of phone jockeys wearing Britney Spears headsets, churning through random numbers in the hope of accidentally finding a customer once every 1,000th call.

That’s not how you get people to respond to your call. We prefer to make smaller numbers of calls and we 1) make sure we have a REALLY good reason to call, and 2) have done some research about the company we’re calling. You can’t do that if you’re making 1,000 calls a day.

Respect your prospect and they will give you ten more seconds of attention (which is a lot). Mention the work you enjoyed that they did for X (because you researched it) and how the work you’ve just done for Y (a relevant name-drop you chose based upon your research) yielded such great results that you want to suggest something similar.

Boom.

You’re no longer a random; you know who you’re talking to and why (and you even have a suggested course of action that drives the call).

YES you’re still a pest (to a degree) but you’ll be the best-dressed pest they’ve dealt with today, and often that’s enough to get the ball rolling.

#bestdressedpest (I’m keeping that one).

Gramerly and New Business

Relax. I did it on porpoise.

BOOM. Gotcha twice there didn’t I?

Spelling matters. Seriously.

If I’m going to stare at ten almost identical agencies and try to choose one, I’m initially concerned not with which one to pick, but which ones to discard (and I’m not too fussy about how I get there).

In the past, I can remember dumping candidate agencies simply because I didn’t like the individuals, their presentation style, their hair, their choice of font… THAT’S how desperate I was to get from ten to three options.

Another REALLY easy way to get dumped is to misuse a hyphen or semicolon. Sadly for anyone presenting to me specifically, I was a journo and writer for about a decade before I moved into PR and then marketing so I was super-hot on such things. And you should be too.

The good news is, there is REALLY no excuse for spelling anything incorrectly these days. If your software of choice isn’t already highlighting and underlining each and every questionable choice, you need to change your processes.

Often these days we’re writing directly into a secondary piece of software (as we speak I’m typing into Squarespace rather than a piece of word processing software).

However, you might find you’re often tripped over when going direct to browser, in which case you should get yourself Grammarly (which brilliantly I just spelled incorrectly and it stepped in, proving my point!)

Fat fast fingers (or a lack of education) WILL ensure you misspell words. It happens. It’s not the end of the world, but PLEASE don’t give me a good reason to remove you from the candidate pile; we could have been great together (and it’s all your fault “we” didn’t happen).

Hoppy haunting.

Three ways to get more from your Business Development agency

New Business is tough. The only reason Sponge NB exists is because YOU don’t want to make cold calls (we totally get it BTW - they suck). No one wants your cold call, especially when you’re the fifth ‘random’ to call out of the blue this week (maybe even today).

However, employing a new business agency is a proven way to keep your outreach at the levels required to bring in new business, and - as lovely as your existing clients are - new clients are the route to marginal growth that ultimately piles up and has a meaningful impact on your y-o-y growth plans.

So, here are three ways to get the most from your new biz agency:

1) Let them describe you to the outside world in the way that works for them, not just the way you like to be described.

Many agencies have a very specific idea of how they MUST be perceived in the outside world, and will instruct us to ONLY describe them in this way. It doesn’t help. We like to call your prospects and try to engage with them in a non-salesy way, letting the conversation flow in a more casual and natural way, exposing and exploring opportunities as they reveal themselves. If we’re preoccupied with making sure we get out key phrases and agency descriptions by your instruction it just gets in the way of progress. You’ve taken the leap of faith to pay us for our expertise, so now let us show it off a little.

2) Follow your agency’s instructions, especially when it comes to the ammo they need.

I’m mostly referring to creds here. If your new business expert asks for a tidy 8-page creds deck showing off a specific selection of case studies, trust them and do just that. If you return with a 20-pager because “we felt it was important to also show X and Y and Z and…” then you’ve taken the direction of an expert in the field (i.e. us) and gone against our best advice.

3) Don’t get hung up on numbers.

Successful new business IS (to a degree) about volume and tenacity, but that doesn’t mean there’s a direct and specific correlation between activity and results; there’s much more to it than that. So, if we made 70 calls on Wednesday and booked two meetings, don’t think that we get one meeting for every 35 calls we make (and therefore “can you make 90 calls a day to up the odds?”). On Thursday day we might book a meeting on the third call of the day. That doesn’t mean that on Thursdays we should ONLY make three calls.

Asking how many calls we made this week/month/year will waste valuable time as we compile meaningless reports for you - and just dump a lot of irrelevant data in your lap. Instead, chose your agency, and then TRUST them to do everything it takes to deliver the results they know will keep you a happy customer for years to come.

Happy hunting.

New business: the power of planning

You know you’re going to be hungry again at some point don’t you? So what have you put in place to deal with this? Got some bread in the freezer… a tin of soup in the cupboard… a frozen lasagne waiting to be bombarded with microwaves? Of course you have, because well… you knew you’d need it.

And what’s the other option?

Wait until you’re starving and then think about getting dressed, lumbering down to the bus stop and crawling to Sainsbury’s? No of course not (unless you’re a student or a recently-divorced man). Why would you (knowing full well you’ll need food at some point) wait until the moment of that need before addressing it - especially knowing you can’t just solve it the moment you’re hungry?

And, I’m sure you guessed, this is my metaphor for new business.

You know you 1) will want growth for your company, and/or 2) can’t relying on your biggest client to stick around forever, so why are you waiting until it’s a problem before taking steps to address it? If you start some cold channel outreach now, you’re doing it without the need for immediate results, and with enough time to let the process run unhindered by pressure.

Waiting until you need a new client before looking for a new client is crazy. We often hear “we don’t need any new clients, so don’t need to do any new business” and - at that moment in time - that’s probably true. But things change, and there is NO COMPANY on the planet who hasn’t lost a client. If your set up is robust enough to lose a client or two and carry on regardless, excellent - happy days. If, however, you know just one client leaving puts you in a pickle, don’t want until then to do something about it.

New business: Short works.

Everyone who receives your calls and sees your email is grumpy.

This is harsh (and certainly not always true) but it’s a good way to picture your target as you forget yourself and write your magnum opus (where a basic intro email would have been fine!).

Don’t imagine your prospects are looking forward to reading your huge sales email; know deep in your heart that they are already hovering over the DELETE icon and that you need to say something fast before the finger drops.

Don’t try to make friends. Don’t hope they had a nice weekend (and definitely don’t ‘trust’ the weather where they are is pleasant).

SHORT EMAILS WORK.

Say hello, and then IMMEDIATELY tell them why you matter. “We’ve just increased CLIENT X’s sell through by 200%” is a strong opening that’s hard to miss or ignore. “Our work on CLIENT Z has just helped them get listed on AO” also hits the mark AND the prospect has read the entire sentence before even knowing they were reading.

Tell them something you’ve achieved, and then tell them how much you think you can achieve for them.

People aren’t interested in strangers, but they are interested in strangers walking towards them holding out hands full of cash while shouting “FREE CASH!”… so try to convey that in your emails.

It’s not about manipulating greed, it’s about saying something that serves the target more than it serves you. Show off QUICKLY and then focus the spotlight onto the recipient and explain what that means for them in a realistic, understated but impressive way.

If they get through your entire email before they’ve even raised a coffee to their lips, you’re already the best email they’ve received today.

A New Business Call To Action

I am about to tell you to do something that (if you look back at my previous posts) I have failed to do. Let’s both learn from this and never not do it again. I am, of course, talking about having a solid call to action (a CTA if you will) on everything you do.

Luring someone into reading a blog post is tricky enough; the last thing you want to do once you’ve managed to capture an audience is waste it by letting it look you over and then shuffle off without paying the price.

Mostly at Sponge post blogs to prove that we’re super-smart people who will win you new business and make new customers knock on your door. We don’t, however, tell you what to do once you’ve read a post. In our situation (and my lame excuse for not using a CTA) I like to think it’s pretty obvious to any smart cookies that the next action we’re hoping for from you is to get in touch and say “sign me up; I’d like some of THAT action big boy.”

However, I should probably make it easier with some kind of hyperlink or email address or TicTok video of me twerking (or whatever it is the kids do these days on MySpace).

The point is, don’t do the hard bits (specifically, writing a blog and getting someone to read it) and then forget to have a commercial trail of breadcrumbs for your visitor to follow. It might be a simple “Contact us” button, or a contact form, or just an email link to open up dialogue… just do something.

That said, please email me NOW on matt@spongenb.com or call on 07768 905464 or follow me on Twitter or connect to me on LinkedIn or like me on facebook or rate my dinner on Instagram. And if you want to see me twerking, here’s my OnlyFans link: www.[REMOVED FOR LEGAL REASONS].

5 Ways to improve New Business cold calls

1) Master your first 15 seconds.

It’s all about tone, and strong tone comes from confidence. Don’t read a script; find a sweet spot somewhere between how you would talk naturally to a friend and something with a more purposeful edge. You don’t want to sound SO natural that you don’t sound like you care or mean business, but you also don’t want to trigger a negative and defensive “SALES CALL ALERT!” response.

2) Smile when you talk.

Yeah, sounds silly, but - again - it’s all about tone, and if you sound bright and engaging, people will come along with you. Lift your head up (stand up if you need to as you call) and approach the 50th call of the day with the same energy as the first.

3) Research (but JUST enough).

You don’t want to spend ten minutes researching a call, only to hit a dead number or a voicemail. You do, however, need to know who you’re calling and why, so do JUST enough research to (when they finally answer) name-drop a client they’ve served or reference a piece of work they’ve been involved in.

4) Open your list and get your head down.

Blitz it. Don’t trudge through your list. Know who you are going to hit and get on with it. No other tasks should be addressed while you’re in calling mode. Turn off emails. Turn off Skype. It’s unlikely something SO URGENT is going to happen in the next hour that you can’t dedicate yourself to the task at hand. Which brings us to…

5) Set a target (and reward yourself with a tiny treat at the end)

Cold calling is brutal. Select your next 30 targets, get to the task, and then reward yourself with something. A coffee. A 5 min ‘staring out the window’ break. Just something to help you mentally stick to the task until it’s complete. Don’t find an excuse to walk away mid-task.

Good luck out there.