The week where 3 partner agencies all backed out of the same contract

Last Tuesday I had this huge project lined up with a design agency in Austin. We had the scope signed and a start date set. By Friday morning all three of my referral partners had dropped out because their own clients hit budget freezes. I lost about $12,000 in projected revenue over just those three days. The worst part was explaining to my own client that we had to push the timeline back by two weeks. Has anyone else had multiple partners bail at once like that or was this just a weird fluke week?

2 comments

2 Comments

the_piper18d agoProlific Poster

Wait, did you have a backup plan at all or were you just trusting the referral partners to come through? Because three agencies bailing in the same week sounds like someone dropped the ball on communication somewhere. Were any of them upfront about the budget freezes before Friday morning, or did you find out all at once? Stuff like that makes me wonder if they were having issues with their own clients for a while and just didn't tell you. Figure out what happened there before you start another batch of referrals.

evan_campbell18d ago

Honestly that's a really good point about whether they were having their own client issues. Like if three different agencies all pulled out in the same week, it's way more likely that they were all sitting on bad news for a while and just didn't say anything until they had to. Did any of them give you a heads up even a few days before, or was it literally a Friday morning bomb drop? That would tell you a lot about whether they were trying to protect the relationship or just stringing you along. I'd be curious to know if you've talked to any of them since to find out what actually happened on their end. Because if they were all struggling for a month and kept it hidden, that's a bigger red flag than just a budget freeze.