LBB Online: New Business Pipelines Don't Break, They Erode
Mills&Co's founder writes when the pipeline is weak, "decisions become reactive ... taking on lower-margin work, rushing deals through, and compromising on fit"
There’s a familiar pattern across agencies. When work is there to be done, delivery is strong and revenue is flowing, pipeline becomes deprioritised and a “tomorrow” problem. When work slows or projects wrap, it quickly becomes the only problem.
Pipeline doesn’t break overnight. It erodes quietly through deprioritised marketing, inconsistent outreach and an over-reliance on a handful of relationships. By the time it feels urgent, the lag between activity and revenue makes recovery harder, more expensive, and often reactive.
The uncomfortable truth: pipeline growth is not a campaign. It needs to be a joined up an operating rhythm. Pipeline feels urgent only when the consequences of inaction show up in the numbers. The fix isn’t more frantic activity when things dip. It’s building a system that runs regardless of how busy you are.
For Australian agencies, the opportunity is not just to generate more leads, but to build a more deliberate, consistent approach to profile and pipeline growth, one that works regardless of market conditions. Because when done right, there is a huge amount of opportunity to win.
