Over the last 12 months, we realised that the way businesses buy marketing services had changed quite significantly. Prospects were doing far more research before ever speaking to an agency – using AI tools, search, LinkedIn, reviews and their own networks to build a shortlist long before they entered a traditional sales process.

At the same time, we recognised that we had been fishing in too small a pond. Too much of our new business activity relied on manual outreach, individual relationships and a relatively limited pool of prospects. If we wanted to grow, we needed to increase the size of that pond without simply asking our limited sales team to do more and more manually.

That led us to rethink both our marketing and sales approach. We became much more focused on being visible and credible earlier in the buyer journey, while also using HubSpot to automate more of the sales process helping us manage larger prospect audiences, nurture contacts more consistently, automate appropriate follow-up and make better use of the data we already had.

The change wasn’t about replacing relationships with automation. It was about using automation to create more opportunities for meaningful human conversations staying front of mind and making sure the sales team spent their time where it could have the greatest impact.

This is work that we do for our clients all the time, we were just slow to implement it into our own sales strategy!

The sequences allowed us to automate structured follow-up and outreach while still keeping the communication personal, which means we can stay in touch with far more prospects without every interaction needing to be managed manually. And the AI features allow us to better understand where people are in the buying journey and where our sales team should focus their time.

At the same time, we became much more focused on being visible earlier in that journey through content, events, LinkedIn and thought leadership, recognising that many prospects are forming opinions about us long before they ever speak to the sales team.

In effect, we increased the size of the pond we were fishing in, while also becoming much better at identifying which opportunities were worth pursuing. The result has been a more scalable and consistent approach to new business, without losing the human relationships that are still at the heart of good sales.

The biggest challenge has been learning how to scale without becoming impersonal. Automation makes it possible to reach and nurture a much larger audience, but it only works if the data, messaging and timing are right.

By staying visible over a longer period of time. From really early on we have actually seen leads come through as a direct result of this approach.

It has also meant the sales team can focus more of their time on the prospects who are showing genuine interest, rather than spending so much time on repetitive outreach.

My recommendation would be not to be afraid of changing something that is already working reasonably well. Sometimes the biggest barrier is the assumption that because a process has worked in the past, it is still the best way to do it.

Start small, test the change and look at what the data is telling you. We looked at how prospects responded and then refined the approach rather than trying to redesign everything overnight.

Be prepared to experiment. Not everything will work perfectly first time, but if you keep testing and learning, you can find a way to unlock more growth.