The Pipeline Hiding in Your Past

Sei-Wook Kim (00:05.484) On today's episode, we're making the case that your next six months of pipeline might already be sitting in your CRM. Closed lost, ghosted, partners whose deals fell through, clients who moved on. These deals come back six months, a year, sometimes two years later, and they come back to whoever stayed on their radar. We're going to walk through where that hidden pipeline lives and how to stay visible until the timing turns. Peter Kang (00:27.054) All right, Sei-Wook. Most agencies have this instinct where they chase whoever seems to need a project right now. A lot of it is just reactive — all right, we need to find somebody who can sign very quickly. New leads often feel like progress, whereas old conversations feel like rejections, or for whatever reason, no good. But the truth is that only a small part of the market is buying at any given moment. We know this — anytime you do a big cold outbound campaign, 99%, maybe even more, of people aren't in the market to buy. So you actually have to look back and realize that the people you've already talked to are probably much warmer, and in many instances there's not much competition for them as well, even if they ghosted you or went no response. This is an important concept to bring as we think about developing the pipeline. Sei-Wook Kim (01:37.48) Yeah. Looking back, we've been ghosted and we've lost deals so many times, and these deals have come back six months, a year, many years later. There's a common thread through all the experiences we had there — we were on the radar, we were top of mind when the timing for them changed and they had to think about an agency. And if you look at our CRM, we have so many closed-but-lost deals, it's almost like a graveyard. You mark it lost, you move on, you never think about it again. But if you take a step back, that's years of conversations, years of relationships with people just sitting there in the CRM. Peter Kang (02:28.938) Yeah. So instead of a graveyard, think of it more as an opportunity. Let's dig into why agency founders — and this includes us in the past — treat it like a graveyard. Part of it is not necessarily about process or anything, but maybe it's best put as an ego problem. A lot of times these deals that we lost feel like a rejection. Losing definitely stings. To have to go back and reach out to someone who said, hey, we went with someone else, or we've gone a different direction, or we found someone that was a better fit — it feels like you're signing up for another round of rejection. The instinct is, they already rejected us, I don't want to feel that again. And so founders might be too much in their feelings about what an initial rejection could be like. Sei-Wook Kim (03:33.725) Yeah. If you think about how to break that spell — if it stings for the founder and you don't want to reach out — look externally. Could you hire a BD person or a salesperson? This is their job. You hand them this list and say, go for it. They don't have all that baggage and all the emotions attached to the deals and conversations where you lost before, because there's nothing personal to them. It's just a list of names they have to go through. If the prospect had to go in another direction, if it was a procurement thing, it wasn't personal to you. So that might be a good opportunity to have someone fresh take a look at that list. Peter Kang (04:25.959) Yeah. Or just get over it. Yeah. Sei-Wook Kim (04:28.007) Yeah, or get over it. That's the other approach — get over it and realize that there's a lot of opportunity there. Peter Kang (04:35.591) Yeah. As we dive in, the mindset shift here is that every past conversation where someone showed any kind of interest — and remember, these are people that came to you first, with interest — treat them as an asset. There's probably a timing thing that was part of the reason why they didn't go with you, or maybe they ghosted because of that. Timing can change, so always realize there may be a way back in. Just to put this in context before we go further: we've talked about the agency growth engine and its different aspects. This is really the relationship development component of it. In a prior episode we talked about the proof side of things and the importance of building out proof. This is the relationship development aspect — nurturing and turning prospects, even old prospects, into fresh leads. Sei-Wook Kim (05:37.881) Awesome. Let's dive into the groups of people in your pipeline. We've defined five pools of what we're calling latent pipeline. The first one is prospects where you lost a deal or they said not now — they deferred the engagement. These are prospects that at some point raised their hand and said, hey, we have a need, and you engaged in a conversation. You went down the process, and ultimately they may have turned you down that initial time, but it doesn't mean the potential for that relationship is dead. There are many reasons why a deal died, but thinking about it matters. Was it a budget issue? Was it a timing issue? Did they have a reorg internally? A lot of those things can change — suddenly they have budget, suddenly there's a new team member, suddenly it became the highest priority in their minds. That is an important group to target. But you could also look and say, you know what, these weren't even our ICP at all — we should never have spoken with this group, the fit wasn't right. Maybe not that group. So think about why the deal mattered and look at what could change from a situational standpoint. Peter Kang (07:09.165) Yeah. A timely note is key for them. Think about what's happening with them — is there a new hire going on? Maybe they hired a new director of marketing or a CMO. Is there a funding round that just happened? Or maybe you hear through the grapevine, maybe through one of your tech partners, that someone is thinking about a replatform. Those are all great instances to find a moment to reach out and turn these closed-lost, not-now prospects into fresh leads. Sei-Wook Kim (07:49.198) Yeah, this is a huge bucket of opportunity. The next pool is deals and prospects that ghosted you or went quiet. You may have had a bunch of conversations, gone down the path, and they just went silent for whatever reason — and that wasn't a hard no. It wasn't like they said you're not a good fit or we didn't go with you for any particular reason. Maybe their priorities changed. Maybe the champion on the client side got busy, or maybe the project they were talking to you about got shelved and they never bothered to follow up and tell you. That leaves kind of a not-great taste in your mouth, and you may have moved on. But these are also great opportunities to reactivate. Peter Kang (08:52.599) Yeah, and honestly I have two stories here that are super relevant because how many times have I personally ghosted tons of service providers? More recently, I was trying to move some stuff out of my storage and I needed movers, but I only had this small window of time to make that happen, otherwise I had to punt it to another month. I did a lot of research, found the moving company I wanted to work with. I said, hey, can you guys do this time? They got me a quote and said, we're not available then, but we're available these times. I read their email and thought, this is not going to work, I'll have to come back to it later. In essence I just ghosted — I never responded. Their quote is sitting there, they've sent me a couple of reminders, but I'm like, I'll get to it when I get to it. And I'm sure I'll reach back out in a couple of months when I have another slot. From their side it probably feels like a ghost, but they should keep reminding me because at some point the timing is going to line up again. A more extreme case — I was trying to get my deck power washed, so I got a quote. This was two-plus years ago. I was all ready to go but for whatever reason something came up, I couldn't do it that season, and I completely forgot about it. Then a couple of years later they were going through the exercise of hitting up old contacts. I thought, yeah, I've got to do the power wash, and I booked it right away. They were able to get that business. These things happen — we do it ourselves, it's just human nature. There's no malice. A lot of these clients looking to hire agencies probably have four or five other initiatives they're juggling and this is one of them, and sometimes it just gets put on the back burner. Don't take it personally. Sei-Wook Kim (11:04.157) Yeah, that's exactly it. You're not there to relitigate what happened — like, why didn't you respond to us? You're not putting them on a guilt trip. If you want to reactivate this group, just come in fresh, share something useful to them, be top of mind, and start the conversation like nothing happened. Low pressure ask. Peter Kang (11:31.677) Yeah. I'll take the next one, number three: partners and referrals whose deal didn't pan out. Especially if you're in an ecosystem with a lot of partner collaboration — these might be agencies, investor types, or tech partners who are bringing you leads and you're bringing them leads, with a lot of that interaction going on. Sometimes early in a relationship a partner might have a referral or say, let's do a pitch together — maybe you do the branding part, they do the web part, or you do the web part and they do the paid marketing, whatever it is. Sometimes there's action, you quote, there's momentum, and then the deal dies or just stops moving. One way to take it is, all right, these guys' deal kind of sucked, it didn't work out, forget about them. That's the wrong move. These guys went out of their way to bring you in on something and it just didn't work out this time. There's definitely an opportunity later to continue to re-engage with them. Sei-Wook Kim (12:56.049) Yeah. In that instance it's so easy to forget. You may be one of many partners they have, and if you're not top of mind, on the next opportunity they'll just go with whoever they think of then. It's a track we've fallen into in the past where we've pitched on one deal and that whole thread and that relationship just totally dropped off. Peter Kang (13:21.808) Yeah. A great example here is our Barrel Holdings agency BX Studio. They do a lot of B2B marketing websites and a lot of their deal flow comes from partners. CEO Jacob and his team — Todd, who heads up a lot of the agency partnerships — do a great job of staying top of mind by sharing with these partners, hey, here's a recent launch we did that might be relevant. That kind of discipline has been great for continuing to stay top of mind with those partners. Sei-Wook Kim (13:59.823) Yeah. It's not a hard pitch to the partners — sharing the work is the touch point. You're putting it out there, staying top of mind, and hoping the next opportunity comes up. Cool. The next pool is churned and past clients. These are people you have worked with in the past who ended the engagement for various reasons — maybe a budget cut, an internal strategy change where they don't need what you provide anymore, or they brought things in-house. The key here is if their experience working with you was good, that door remains open. We talked back in episode twenty-five about the concept of engagement yield — basically, the benefit from an engagement with a client doesn't stop when the contract ends. If the client liked you and enjoyed that experience, that person could bring more referrals, more references, and more work down the line. Peter Kang (15:26.752) Yeah. In this situation you want to stay in touch like a peer. It's not somebody going back to the well saying, hey, you got another project for me, you got another project for me. It should be more like, hey, we have a real relationship — what do friends do? Share what's new with each other, ask questions about what's going on in their life and at work, congratulate wins when you see them happening. Be that easy-to-rehire top-of-mind person, not somebody desperate who's always knocking on the door looking for the next thing. Sei-Wook Kim (16:11.212) Yeah. One interesting thing, especially for larger organizations — if they hired you in the past, you've gone through procurement, you're already vetted and you're in the system. Sometimes they just forget about you. Reactivating and being top of mind can get you easily back in the door again. Peter Kang (16:31.116) Yeah, absolutely. The last one — and this is something I think is super important, and why going deeper into an organization always helps — is the people themselves. When you think about latent pipeline, it's not just the company, it's the individuals within that company. You might have talked to multiple people during the initial sales process. Even if you were rejected or ghosted, you might have touched someone on the IT side, someone on the marketing side, someone on the e-comm side — multiple folks. These people don't stay with that organization forever. They end up going other places. So you always have to think about the relationship being with the person, not the logo. These champions change jobs every few years, and the new roles come with new budgets and new needs. We've seen this so many times throughout the years. Sei-Wook Kim (17:39.049) Yeah. I'll share a couple of examples. One was a head of marketing for a tea company that we worked with. We built an e-commerce site for them, that project continued, and we ended up parting ways. But that person — the head of marketing, who actually wasn't our day-to-day contact, someone we may have spoken with a few times through the engagement — ended up going to another large food services company. They had a need for a website replatform, and she remembered our experience working with us. Throughout that journey I'd reached out every three to four months just to touch base, congratulate her on a new role, stay top of mind, have a call and catch up. We ended up working for the food services company, and then she moved to another company. I think it was three or four different companies where we were able to continue that relationship with the person, not with the original client. That type of thing happens time and time again. There's another example where it's even more drastic — we worked with a client and then six years later they came back and said, hey, I remember working with you on this engagement, I have this big need, and it turned into a really significant engagement for us. You can never time these things — you never know when they'll pop up — but if you follow the people and stay top of mind, that's where opportunities appear. Peter Kang (19:11.806) Right. The practical takeaway here is track people, not just accounts. There are tools out there to get alerts whenever they change jobs, and these past champions are very likely to bring you along for that ride. Sei-Wook Kim (19:38.635) So let's get a little more specific on what staying on the radar of these people actually looks like. There are two lanes we'll go through. The first is what we'll call the direct and systematic approach. You go through your CRM — closed lost, past clients, all of that — the full list of people, on a fixed schedule. Just having that habit and discipline to do it on an ongoing basis. Typically you might do it when you realize you have no pipeline — shoot, it's reactive and you start going through your CRM trying to hit up people. No, this is more of an ongoing effort. Peter Kang (20:29.638) Yeah. Actually, a good thing comes to mind — you should do this when you feel like you have the most opportunities. When you're the busiest, when you're drowning in leads and it's hard to keep up, that's actually a great time to do this. It's counterintuitive, but trust us, because there's a long lead time to this. It's almost like you have to plant these seeds here because that surge of leads you might be experiencing now is inevitably going to ebb. So that's right when you want to strike and give yourselves the opportunity to nurture and develop some of these leads for later. Sei-Wook Kim (21:13.603) Yeah. As I mentioned, it took six years of touches to get one opportunity. There's definitely a lag between all these activities and the results. What does that look like? The default baseline is sharing something relevant — here's a launch we did, here's an audit or a result of the work, things that are helpful and useful, sharing some examples without any hard ask. It's more just to stay top of mind. And then thinking about timing — keeping on top of what's happening in their world. The company they're at got a round of funding, they hired a new CMO or someone else on the team, a conference is coming up — hey, are you going to be at this big industry conference? Whatever it is, trying to find the opportunities that feel relevant to the ongoing reach out. Peter Kang (22:25.257) Yeah. And this is where — and this is definitely a separate topic — if you have a pretty robust marketing motion where you're putting on different webinars, events, private dinners, sponsoring happy hours at conferences, all of those become a great excuse to reach out to old prospects, old past clients, whoever, and reengage them. It's like, hey, we're doing this thing, it's free, we'd love to have you come as a guest. That's where the marketing goes hand in hand with these efforts. Sei-Wook Kim (23:07.534) The next lane I'll call the ambient activity — just showing up where they are and driving background awareness. Some tactics here: when you're in a conversation with a prospect, connect with them on LinkedIn while the deal is going on, versus after it dies when you're trying to add someone and they don't accept your connection. The timing matters there, and getting connected opens up the channel where they can see your content. The same goes for your newsletter — if you have one, during that process when there's a natural moment, ask, hey, can I add you to our newsletter where we share hopefully helpful things? Again, do this while you're in the deal, not after the deal dies when you're scrambling for permission. So it's about getting the framework in place at the beginning. Peter Kang (24:13.419) Yeah. There's a story that comes to mind similar to your six-year story — this one's actually ten-plus years, which is crazy. I remember ten years ago connecting with the founder of a health tech startup. We pitched her on stuff, but ultimately she went in a different direction. I did add her on LinkedIn, and over the years she saw me posting more and more. Out of nowhere — ten years later — she reaches out by LinkedIn DM and says, hey, you pitched to me ten-plus years ago, I saw you're posting about these types of websites, and I'm now head of marketing at this much bigger health tech company and I need your help on something. That became a very valuable opportunity for one of our agencies. Ten-plus years. The ambient presence of just being connected, showing up on the feed — that can really have a payoff. Sei-Wook Kim (25:21.083) Yeah. And they could have been completely silent — no likes, no comments, no responses, just lurking. But they see it. In the back of their minds they're filing it away: yeah, Peter posted this thing, okay, cool, that's what they're up to. And then you never know when the timing changes and they need something. Peter Kang (25:43.507) Yeah. On our pre-call you mentioned something about how the ambient activity isn't just about influencing the people who are going to buy from you directly. Sei-Wook Kim (25:55.954) Yeah. The best case is when you have a cross-referral effect where you're influencing past clients or past partners and they may be asking each other — or other people might be asking them — hey, do you have a recommendation for an agency for blank? And you may be top of mind to the person making the recommendation, not the person who received the information firsthand. So there could be an effect that goes way beyond your direct network, your newsletter list, or your LinkedIn connections. Peter Kang (26:33.986) Yeah, totally. Definitely high-leverage activity. When you think about how these two lanes work together — the ambient presence is keeping things warm between the direct touches. So even when your outreach email lands, the people are already familiar. They're thinking, aren't these the guys who are launching these things or working with these kinds of clients? That makes it more likely they're going to reach back out. Sei-Wook Kim (27:05.799) Yeah. The ten-year connection thing does happen — someone is just reading your content and suddenly they reach out. But the direct connection is the next layer on top, where you're actually trying to convert and have a conversation, and they already know everything about you because they've been following you. That conversion is a lot warmer at that point. Peter Kang (27:34.79) Yeah. We always have to tie this back to positioning, because all of this really only works if what you share is genuinely relevant and the work is good. The tighter the ICP, the more it's going to land. If you've been all over the place and you're posting work about a category that's very irrelevant to some of these folks from the past, it's going to land a lot less effectively. Once again it goes back to why it's so important to have that foundation. Sei-Wook Kim (28:06.152) Yeah. There's a lot of noise out there. You get all these newsletters and if it's too general you just end up ignoring it — even if you keep getting it for years. Same with posts on LinkedIn. If it's not relevant, effective, and the work doesn't help you, you just end up ignoring it. Good point. Peter Kang (28:31.687) Cool. All right. Just to recap: five pools we talked about that you can mine for leads — closed lost, the ghosted pile, partners you didn't initially work out with, past clients, and the people, not the logos. On top of that, two lanes: the systematic direct touches and the ambient presence through your marketing activities. The long game is stay visible until their timing turns, because inevitably it will. Sei-Wook Kim (29:04.838) Yeah. So that is the homework. Open your CRM, go through everything Peter just outlined, and see where there was a fit — that is your hidden pipeline. Pick ten, then send something worth mentioning and relevant to them this month. Then go through the ambient channel — how many of those ten people are connected on LinkedIn? How many are on your newsletter? Try to fill that gap so that you're connected with those people from your CRM. Peter Kang (29:40.621) Yeah. The big takeaway here is that oftentimes you don't need more leads nearly as much as you need to go the extra mile with the opportunities you've already earned. One of the superpowers you could develop as an agency founder is to not take rejection personally. Most of the time it's about timing. Sometimes it is about fit and you need to make your positioning stronger. But at the end of the day, just understand that you need to move on, try again, and make sure that resilience is still there. So till next time, thanks for joining us, and have a good one. Sei-Wook Kim (30:27.759) Thanks.