After you get a nibble

As we wrap up this mini-series on the most underrated agency assets, we’re going to take a slight detour away from “marketing” in the traditional sense. In the past 4 issues, we’ve talked a lot about ways to get a fish on the line, but what you do after you get a nibble is just as important.

Although I couldn’t find any agency-specific studies on this (and my little experiment certainly had flaws), the Harvard Business Review did a study on online sales that found that companies who respond to a lead within an hour are 60x more likely to have a meaningful conversation with a decision-maker than those who wait 24 hours.

I’d take twice as likely as evidence enough, but sixty times as likely? That’s certainly a number worth paying attention to.

And it makes sense. By responding first, by default, you are the “most responsive”. And the first company to respond gets to establish the anchor that any other agency the lead reaches out to will judge against.

Of course this means making sure you’re alerted as soon as new leads come in, but to respond effectively it’s great to have a repeatable process of exactly what happens next.

Evaluation & Qualification

In this early stage there isn’t typically a lot to go off of when evaluating and qualifying an inquiry, so my first evaluations are pretty broad strokes:

• Giant waiving red flags like “our last 6 developers were awful”, “we’re hoping to have a site in the next couple days and we have $500”, or “it’s like Airbnb mixed with Temu”.
• If they’re in an industry or niche you don’t serve

Most inquiries make it through this first round so long as there isn’t anything obvious that screams “this isn’t a good fit”.

Next Steps

Having a canned emails is a great way to speed up the process and avoid procrastination when a new inquiry comes in.

I have a few saved in my Gmail as templates that mean I can click a couple buttons and have a full response drafted.

1. Not a good fit (refer out)
2. Clarifying/Follow-up questions
3. Schedule a call

Thirty seconds to tweak it, and my response is already on its way.

Establishing in the anchor

Responding quickly is important, but how you respond is your only chance at a first impression.

What you choose to say becomes the checklist they’ll judge every other agency against, so it’s worth being intentional about what you say (and how you say it):

1. Prove a human read it. One specific line about their project beats a generic “thanks for reaching out”.
2. Frame your strengths. It shouldn’t be a list of your qualifications and achievements, but a couple points of how you work becomes the bar that everyone else has to clear (for example, I highlight being a single point of contact, that all the work is done in-house, and my process for quoting that ensures no surprise invoices).
3. Make the next step stupid simple. Anything more than one obvious next action you want the client to take is too many. A booking link or a single question leaves the prospect clear on what they need to do next.

That wraps up this little mini series on the 5 underrated assets. If you missed any, you can go back and read the emails that established the series, reviews, portfolio, case studies, and about page.

Curious to know if any of the tips over the past 5 weeks resonated and anything you’ve implemented — feel free to hit reply and let me know. Getting responses to the newsletter is still one of my favorite things!