Are you sought after?

- Hey everybody, Drew McLellan here from Agency Management Institute. This week I am coming to you from Orlando, Florida. You know, one of the things that has changed dramatically for agencies is how we find clients. Back in the good old days when I started in the business, we actually went and found our clients. Why? We weren't findable; there was no internet, there was no way for them to research an agency. And especially for a small to mid-sized agency, if we weren't local, they didn't know us and they didn't know about us. And then the internet happened, and all of a sudden, it mattered to us that we were findable, that when you search the internet, you could find us. And that worked great for a while, but you know what? There's just too much out there. And so now, even today, being findable, while that's better than not being findable, it's not enough. It's not enough for our prospects to narrow down enough of the agencies to really pick us out. So, we used to find them, and then we needed to be findable, and now today, what we have to be is we have to be sought after. And the difference is that we have to be known for something, we have to be an expert, an authority, a subject-matter expert, a thought leader, if you will. We have to stand for something and be known for something so that our prospects actually seek us out, that they say, "When I'm ready to hire an agency, that's the agency I want to hire because they understand my industry better or they understand the audience I care about better, but they understand something. They know something that most agencies don't know or don't understand. And so when I'm ready to hire somebody, that's who I'm going to find." So the question I want you to think about is, are you still out looking for clients, or are you settling for being findable, or are you being sought after? Some pretty big distinct differences and some pretty big distinct opportunities for us that we lose if we are not being sought after. See you next week!