If 93% of Firms Struggle with Pipelines, What’s Your Next Move?

Only 7% of ad agency and professional services leaders report their pipelines are strong and growing.

That’s from our latest business development report, (2025 RSW/US Survey Report – Rolling Into 2026) and it’s a surprising snapshot.

Now the better news:

50% of firms feel like while their pipelines are weak, they are improving.

And 57% of marketing agencies and other professional services firms feel like the second half of this year is going to outperform the first half.

I understand that “feeling” something doesn’t equate to reality, but a positive outlook is not only helpful, but essential.

Dr. McKnight is not prescribing you all sing Kumbaya together, but truly believing you can do something goes a long way.

And in this case, you need to believe you’re going to get more new business before the year is out.

Business Development Patterns

It’s worth quoting from our report on the roller coaster state of new business this year so far:

We saw similar patterns during the ’08 recession and saw similar situations occur during the pandemic.

1. Major event occurred

2. Prospects pulled back out of fear and uncertainty

3. Prospects eventually had to turn things back on and support their business

4. All was good again until the next event came around!

Our goal with this report is for you to take each category and drill down on it with your team.

All are important and getting input from each team member on initial impressions and then, potential gameplans, is a worthwhile, and necessary exercise.

One thing for certain: sales cycles and budgets are starting to get back to levels we’re used to.

Biz dev is still a process and you can’t forget that, but that’s why you need to keep that engine going.

So, the focus for the rest of this post is on the prospects/targets you’re going after.

Prospect List-Building

Building lists is one of the most time-consuming aspects of business development.

Platforms over the last several years and AI have helped make that process a lot more efficient, but, for small and mid-sized firms, those platforms are:

1. Expensive

2. And you still need a human to foster that process

This is what we do for our clients, and we’re able to test many of these platforms to help build targeted lists more efficiently.

But if you’re not working with us and budgets don’t allow for a platform ongoing, here are two suggestions to help you, are in the “low-hanging fruit” category, so you get in quicker, and we know work, because along with building lists from scratch, we include both these with every client program.

1st Level LinkedIn Contacts

We have some clients who come on board and have done a nice job utilizing their LinkedIn contacts, but I would say about 75% typically don’t, and it can be fertile ground for prospecting.

So if you haven’t, downloading those and reaching out via LinkedIn can be an effective and relatively easy way to get in, or back in the door, with prospects who are warm, or warmer.

Obviously the messaging is different and more personal, but I strongly encourage you to mine those if you haven’t been keeping up with them.

So, while you can find the below instructions online, thought I’d leave it here for ease of use.

How to download your 1st-degree LinkedIn contacts (CSV)

1. Sign in at linkedin.com on desktop.

2. Click Me → Settings & Privacy.

3. Go to Data privacy → Get a copy of your data.

4. Select Connections (or full archive).

5. Click Request archive (re-enter password if asked).

6. Wait for LinkedIn’s email (minutes to 24 hrs).

7. Download Connections.csv (or ZIP).

8. Open in Excel or Google Sheets.

One thing about these, you’ll typically get, at most, First Name, Last Name, Email Address (only if the contact has made it visible), Company, Position, LinkedIn Profile URL, and Connected On date.

So if you’re looking to engage with direct mail in some form, for example,  you’ll need to have access to a platform.

But the beauty of this method is you can message them directly on LinkedIn.

Past Clients

Again, we have clients who come on board at RSW and have done a nice job keeping up with past clients, but there are still easily 40-50% who haven’t.

And the beauty of this method is, you have several options to prospect:

1. Your main point of contact is still there, but you stopped working with the company.

This one is, for obvious reasons, the least effective, in terms of circumstances and time.

If things went badly with that client, for whatever reason, and your main point of contact is still there, it’s a no-go.

And there’s a time table for this as well, isn’t there, and that timetable is typically not finite, so you’ll have to wait for a bit before reaching back out.

However, it’s important you set an internal reminder a certain amount of months out if it makes sense and you parted on good terms.

2. Your main point of contact went to another company.

This is obviously ideal when you have a good relationship with that individual, and many agencies jump to new companies this way.

Having said, there are just as many firms, and clients of ours when they come on board, that haven’t kept up with those individuals.

Get a list together of these individuals pronto if you haven’t been keeping up with them.

3. Your main point of contact is gone completely, leaving you with the company experience

So this is, of course, less warm, but, you did the work with that company.

Chances are, there’s still someone from the team you did work with, but even if that’s not the case, you should absolutely track down who is in that position now, and craft an email and series of follow ups around the work you did and the positive outcomes.