I wanted a four-foot long sign of our logo, big and bright, so that when you get off the elevator, our logo is the first thing you see.
So I went to Google, did a search, submitted the specs to five websites, and gave a budget of $1,000.
Exactly one of the five people I wrote, wrote me back. Well actually that’s not true: I got autoresponders from two. So that stat breaks down as follows:
-
two firms ignored me
-
two firms sent me an autoresponder and never followed up
-
one firm sent me back an actual quote, and left their number to call back
Guess who I bought from? The one who gave me a quote!
I think about this, only because I am 100% sure that if I talked to the other four sales teams, they would insist “Yes, we have auto-responders. Yes, we follow up real quick.”
I would challenge you – or maybe, challenge you to challenge your agency – to audit the competition and have a hard conversation about what those competitors are doing that you are not. Be prepared to have an open conversation around self-improvement.