The leadership team is tired of feast-and-famine RFQs. Someone says it's time to hire an agency. A few decks arrive. They all promise more attention, more content, maybe a new website. What they rarely ask is whether a request that already comes in actually gets a reply, or whether anyone agrees who you're for.
We understand the impulse. When word of mouth starts to wobble, "get some marketing" feels like the grown-up move. The risk is buying activity on top of a path that already leaks. More visitors on a confusing first screen, or more forms that nobody owns, just makes the leak faster.
The cheaper test is to fix three simple things first. If those already work, an agency has something solid to build on. If they don't, you'll know what to fix before you spend.
Three suggestions
1. Test one enquiry, end to end, to first response
Send a realistic RFQ through your own website, or ask someone outside the company to send one, with a drawing attached. Time what happens until a useful first reply goes out. Note who owned it, where it sat, and what the buyer was told.
It's a way of seeing the path as a buyer sees it, before you pay anyone to put more people onto it.
Do this next week: Send one test request. Don't warn the person who usually answers. Write down what happened until a real reply arrived, then fix the first break you found.
2. Pick one buyer group, and one useful thing to say to them
Agencies often get asked to "do marketing" for everyone you might ever serve. That's how the message gets bland. Choose one group you actually want more RFQs from this quarter. Then agree one thing worth saying to them: a problem you solve, a type of part you know well, a reason they already hear from customers.
If you can't say that in a few sentences, you're not ready to brief a campaign. You're still deciding who it's for.
Do this next week: Write one short paragraph: the buyer group, the problem, and the reason to come to you. Share it with sales. If they wouldn't say it on a call, rewrite it.
3. Hold a monthly 30-minute review, with one owner and one measure
Not a dashboard meeting. Thirty minutes, the same person responsible every month, and one number you actually look at: test-enquiry reply time, or RFQs from that one buyer group, or quotes that got a follow-up. Pick one. Change it only when it stops teaching you anything.
The point is that someone can tell you, without a long report, what happened and what you'll try next.
Do this next week: Put a 30-minute review on the calendar for the next three months. Name the owner and the one measure in the invite.
How you'll know it worked
After a month, you should be able to say, in one sentence, who you were trying to reach, what you said, and what happened to the last test enquiry. If you can't, you're not ready to brief an agency. If you can, you'll brief a much better one.
A question for your peers
If you hired an agency tomorrow, would they be adding to a path that already works, or pouring more people into one you haven't tested?