In 100% of the agency business development engagements I work on, this is almost always one of the first statements I make. And you may think that’s a harsh thing to tell an agency, but according to this year’s 2026 Agency Core Report, the agency owner probably already knows it. In this year’s report, 50% …
TL;DR Open ten agency websites in ten tabs and read them with the logos covered. Go ahead, try it. Within about three minutes you’ll lose track of which agency is which, because they all blur into the same voice, the same promises about being strategic, full-service partners who deliver results and really get to know …
TL;DR Most agency owners I talk to are a little proud of running on referrals, and they should be. Referrals from existing and past clients are still by far the biggest driver of new business for agencies, according to the 2025 State of Digital Agencies survey from SparkToro, published in early 2026. If your pipeline …
TL;DR You built a better deck. Your team out-prepared everyone. The strategy was sharper, and the thinking ran deeper, and you walked out of that conference room genuinely believing you’d nailed it. Then the email came, and you lost to an agency you know, in your bones, was not as good as you. If your …
TL;DR A few months ago, a friend who runs a small creative shop called me, half-embarrassed. “The phone just isn’t ringing the way it used to,” he said. No crisis. No lost talent or anything he could point to as the problem. The work was as good as it had ever been. The referrals had …
TL;DR Positioning problems are the great impostors of agency new business. They almost never announce themselves as positioning problems. They show up wearing other costumes, as a dry pipeline or a prospect who won’t stop pushing on price, and you spend months treating the costume while the thing underneath keeps doing damage. So if your …
TL;DR “Should we niche or stay generalist?” is the wrong question. It frames the decision around what you offer instead of how clearly prospects can choose you. The better question is whether you’re the obvious choice for anyone. You can be a generalist and distinct, or a niche player and forgettable. Generalist positioning tends to …
TL;DR Constant price pushback is rarely about your price. It’s about a missing reason to pay it. A price objection is usually a distinction objection in disguise. When buyers can’t see a difference, cost becomes the only thing left to negotiate. Pricing power doesn’t come from your rate card. It comes from being clearly worth …
TL;DR When your agency’s new business slows down, the question you ask first determines how much money you’re about to waste. Most owners ask “what should I buy to fix this?” The better question, the one that saves you a year and a small fortune, is “what’s actually broken?” If your new business has slowed …
TL;DR Deals that used to close in a month now take three. The prospect goes quiet, resurfaces, asks for another call, wants to see two more case studies, loops in another stakeholder, and the proposal that should have been approved weeks ago just keeps dgragging on. If that’s your pattern, you’re not imagining it, and …
TL;DR The call went great. They leaned in and asked smart questions. Somebody said “this is exactly what we’ve been looking for.” You sent the proposal the next day. It was tight, detailed, personalized, and priced right. And then nothing. No reply, no explanation. You followed up once, twice, three times a lady (sorry, had …
TL;DR Finishing second feels different from losing badly, and that difference is a trap. When you get outclassed, you know something was wrong. When you finish second, everyone tells you how close it was, how impressive you were, how it came down to the wire. It feels like validation. So you keep doing the same …