Last week I was pre-qualifying a dozen web design agencies for a client of mine. I rang or emailed them all using the contacts on their websites to have a chat and ask them for a little bit of information. I used this information to put together a report for my client recommending three for a full brief and a meeting.
Out of the 12, four never rang or emailed me back. I spoke to one other on the phone, explained carefully what information I needed. They did email me but omitted two of the three bits of information I had asked for.
That’s almost a 50% failure rate, simply through bad communication.
I can understand that being subjected to a competitive bid process like this is a bit, well, irritating. But this stage requires no more than a ten minute phone call and ten minutes writing an email. And hey, my client has real money to spend and these companies didn’t have to do any marketing or advertising to get in touch with me. I called them.
All they had to do was answer an email or return a phone call.
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{ 3 comments… read them below or add one }
Reminds me of the building job I needed last year.
Out of 5 recommended, I called them all. I had a 100% response rate – all came to measure up, all said they’d quote and all failed to send the quote. All never got called back!
I asked one of my early clients what made her choose to work with me on her web design job. She told me I was the only one who called her back! Easy enough. I actually crafted an ad campaign for my company for which the tagline was, “We’ll actually call you back!” I can’t comment on other industries, but the problem seems endemic among creative agencies.
From the other side of that, while I do work towards 100% response rate on all the pre-qualifying emails/phone calls I receive, I always looks for some way to toss in my own set of questions with the same goal in mind. The failure rate for me is probably 75% — most prospective “cold” clients just aren’t serious enough about their projects to even muster a response.
I find that really amazing. One of the biggest problems I’ve had as a designer is actually finding work and rely on referals. I do not recall ever not replying to a potential client or work request. I’m actually use that within selling myself from onwards as this sort of information is useful to know and hell I’m willing to exploit this. Thanks