Scoring built for agency new business: retainer budget band, a written brief, incumbent contract expiry, access to the decision maker, and what happens after the deck is sent.
Quick answer
By excitement. A brief arrives, it sounds like a brand the team would enjoy working on, and two people start building a deck before anyone has asked what the budget is or who else is pitching. Agencies are unusually vulnerable to this because pitching is enjoyable and the cost is hidden: it is paid in the evenings of the same people who are delivering for clients who already pay you.
The strongest early filter is not the number, it is whether the prospect would discuss a monthly range at all. Someone who deflects the question three times is not close to appointing anybody, whatever the brief says.
Agency business changes hands at renewal. An account with a known incumbent and a contract ending in eight weeks is a scheduled opportunity. A written brief means an internal case has already been made and someone has authority to appoint.
A call with the marketing head or founder is worth several with a coordinator collecting credentials. Willingness to grant ad account access for an audit is a stronger signal still. And after the pitch, deck opens tell you whether you are being discussed or quietly declined.
Opportunity attributes set the starting position. Behaviour, briefs shared, calls attended, access granted, decks opened, moves it. Contract expiry lifts accounts as the date approaches. Silence decays them. Every score opens to show its reasons.
| Signal on the opportunity | Why it predicts here | Effect on score |
|---|---|---|
| Budget range discussed openly | Serious about appointing | Strong lift |
| Written brief received | Internal case already made | Strong lift |
| Decision maker on the call | No relay, no distortion | Strong lift |
| Incumbent contract ends soon | The window is open | Moderate lift |
| Ad account access granted | Evaluating, not browsing | Moderate lift |
| Retainer rather than project | Annual value, not one campaign | Moderate lift |
| Credentials request, no budget | Collecting decks | Drop |
| Deck unopened for a month | Decided elsewhere | Decay |
Add four qualification fields and enforce them: budget band, incumbent and contract expiry, decision maker, engagement shape. Send decks and proposals from the record so engagement is captured. Record the referral chain rather than tagging everything as inbound. Then log why pitches were lost in categories your team would argue about, since scoring reads that material directly.
Scoring orders new business effort. It cannot tell you whether a client will be pleasant to work with, pay on time, or approve creative in under six rounds. It sees only recorded activity, and agencies keep an unusual amount of theirs in personal inboxes. It needs history, and agencies close few enough deals that this takes quarters rather than weeks. It is a prioritisation aid, and the founder's override is not a bug.
Related reading: AI CRM, lead management software, sales automation, WhatsApp CRM, use cases, all features, and pricing.
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The agency pitches everything, because saying no feels like leaving money on the table, and the team burns weekends on briefs it was never going to win.
Budget band, incumbent, decision maker access and channel fit are captured at qualification and weighted, so unwinnable pitches are visible before the deck is started.Pitch qualification
New business lives in a founder's inbox and a shared spreadsheet, so nobody else can see what is live or who owes whom a reply.
Every enquiry sits in one scored pipeline with an owner and a next action, so the team works from the same list and nothing depends on one person remembering.Shared new business pipeline
Decks go out and disappear, and follow-up becomes either nagging or silence.
Deck opens, repeat opens and forwards are recorded on the opportunity, so a proposal circulating internally is chased differently from one that was never opened.Deck engagement tracking
The best time to win an account is when its contract is ending, and nobody records when that is.
Incumbent and contract expiry sit on the account, and the score rises as the date approaches, putting the opportunity in front of someone while the window is still open.Contract expiry weighting
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