Ad Agency New Business: You Can’t Help Everybody

Continuing our View From the Marketer’s Eye series, this week’s marketer’s quote, in answer to the ad agency new business question, “What common mistakes do agencies make during their first meeting?”

[Agencies] try to be all things, solve everything. What agency is possibly great at everything? It would be so refreshing to hear ‘blogger outreach is not our strong point, but we are great at… and company Y would be a great one for you to talk to for blogger outreach.

This is one of those quotes that sums it up pretty well.

We’ve heard agencies say, “Once we’re in the door, we can handle whatever they need, so whatever they need, we’ll tell them we can do it and worry about it later.”

The truth is, you very well may be able to handle whatever they need, but why risk it by blindly agreeing to anything and everything, just to get the business.

It boils down to qualification and what can truly be considered a quality meeting.

If you’re already in the first meeting and a marketer’s feelings resemble the quote above, you haven’t done your due diligence up front.

Explore the fit before before that first meeting even happens and be as up front as possible about what you can and can’t do.

Your Mom probably told you , you can’t be all things to all people, and she was right.

Listen to your Mother.

Lee McKnight Jr

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.