Are you delusional?

20th April 2023 |   David Kean

Don’t rely on “hopium” – the mindset that blocks agency growth and loses deals.

I once had a boss who said, “I think we got away with that one” after just being told by the chairman of a global cereal brand our creative proposals were “the biggest load of crap ever seen”. We were fired the next day. The agency was closed down six months later with over 350 jobs lost.

Delusional thinking around your agency’s performance is dangerous. Yet this form of commercial suicide is all around us – especially in business development. It’s an ailment that global M&A and growth advisory firm, Waypoint Partners, calls “hopium”. The concept is described as, “A sales behaviour featuring unsubstantiated optimism, delusion and self-deception within the context of winning new business.”

David Kean

Chairman at Catalyst

David Kean is chairman of the specialist sales and business development group Catalyst. He has teamed up with growth advisory firm Waypoint Partners to offer Catalyst2, a sales transformation and growth accelerator programme for scaled agencies that need to grow their revenue significantly to meet growth aspirations.