Ad Agency New Business Purgatory: So Why Didn’t You Get That Meeting?

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Of all the different facets of agency new business, it’s interesting that one particular is often ignored: the reasons why, after an initially good, or great conversation, you didn’t get that initial face-to-face meeting, and end up in new business purgatory.

Ask yourself what the percentage of your new business activity falls into this category-how many conversations are out there that you haven’t followed up on in the past 3 or 4 months?

Per the title, it is a strange sort of agency new business purgatory, that specific situation where you’ve reached out initially and had, what you thought at least, was an excellent conversation bursting with the types of smart questions we talk about on this blog.

New Business Purgatory

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

That first face-to-face is the next logical step but then that prospect goes dark.

The reasons why basically boil down to two very different extremes.  Neither will be a shock but it’s still fascinating to me how many agencies find themselves in one of these situations.

Reason 1: You fall into the overly-aggressive camp.

You reach out over and over with little or no value and pester the crap out of the prospect. Desperation, thy name is (insert your agency here.).

Rudimentary advice you say?  Absolutely, but I guarantee there are many of you reading this right now that are pestering a marketer to death as we speak.

Reason 2: You fall into the too busy or disorganized to follow up camp.

Self-explanatory but neither is an excuse.

Bottom line, you’ve worked hard to put together your list of prospects.

Don’t waste that hard work lingering in new business purgatory.

As you’re reading this, open your calendar and set time to review your database notes for those conversations. Go ahead, I’ll wait here for you.

I'm the VP of Sales at RSW/US. We specialize in working with services firms to help drive and close new business-if you need help with that, email me at lee@rswus.com. What I actually do: drive sales efforts to bring ad agencies and services firms on board with RSW, create content around successful new business tactics and help drive RSW/US marketing objectives, including social media channels, blog content, webinars, video and speaking engagements. Dig it.