The problem
Most of it goes wrong quietly.
New business at most agencies runs on referrals, repeat clients, and
whoever the founder already knows. That works, right up until it
doesn’t. A retainer ends, a referral source goes quiet, and suddenly
you need work coming in from somewhere else.
The trouble with reaching companies who’ve never heard of you is
that most of it goes wrong quietly. Addresses that were never set up
correctly still send, they just stop arriving. A list that looks fine can
be full of companies you aren’t allowed to contact. Send too fast in
the first fortnight and the whole domain gets flagged. None of it shows up
as an error, it shows up as silence six weeks later, and by then
you’ve spent the reputation of a domain with your name on it.
Your market is smaller than it looks, too. The same few hundred
companies keep coming up and they talk to each other. Running one of these
is straightforward once it exists. Building one is not, and the mistakes
aren’t the sort you get to make twice.