If you run a digital marketing agency or hell, if you even work in a sales-dependent business you’ve heard it. You’ve sat in that meeting, probably via Zoom, and heard those two dreaded words: “Junk enquiries.”
Recently, I had a client drop those exact words on us. Our team had been running a high-performing Search Engine Marketing (SEM) campaign for months, delivering a steady flow of high-intent traffic and leads. Yet, when their internal team couldn’t convert those enquiries into appointments or paid procedures, the blame train had one destination: our marketing spend.
And I have to be honest, the professional veneer cracked. You see, the frustrating part isn’t the accusation itself; it’s the wilful, almost aggressive refusal to look at the one place where the problem actually sits: their internal sales process.
The Great Divide: Fishmongers and Chefs
Let’s get this out in the open using a very simple analogy.
Imagine you are a chef who needs the best ingredients. You drive down to the wet market, and the fishmonger (that’s us, the agency) presents a wide selection of the freshest, highest-quality fish caught that morning. It’s exactly what you asked for. You buy it, you take it back to your kitchen, and you proceed to burn it, over-salt it, and ultimately serve a dish that’s inedible.
What do you do? Do you go back to the fishmonger the next day and demand a full refund, declaring that the fish was “junk” and that their entire selection is useless?
Of course not! That would be utterly ridiculous, right?
But that, in essence, is what happens in the digital marketing world every single day.
Our job as an SEM agency is to be a master Fishmonger. We leverage data, psychology, and algorithms to generate high-quality, relevant leads. We deliver customers who are actively searching for your service, who have raised their hand, and who have expressed genuine interest. That is measurable, quantifiable success.
The client’s job is to be the Conversion Chef. Their internal team is responsible for the rapid follow-up, the skillful qualification, the empathetic pitch, and the administrative process that turns a simple enquiry into a paid contract.
When a client fails to convert, their reflex is to say, “You are embarking on the wrong tree.” (Yes, that was the exact, slightly awkward, phrase used.) What they’re really saying is, “I am defending my internal team, and I am not willing to look for the root cause.” They’re protecting the chef while destroying the fishmonger’s reputation. That’s where the professional anger sets in.
Contractual Certainty vs. Emotional Response
Now, let’s inject a dose of necessary professionalism and business reality into this.
We operate under a clear service contract. Like many agencies, our agreement explicitly addresses two things that protect us from this kind of emotional fallout: cancellation notice and refund policy.
First, if a client genuinely decides our services are no longer a fit, we require a clear written notice period (in our case, one month for SEM services). This is fair business practice. It allows us to wind down campaigns, manage ad spend budgets, and fulfill any remaining obligations.
Second, and most importantly, we maintain a strict no-refund policy. This isn’t about being greedy; it’s about valuing the work already completed. We delivered the clicks, the impressions, the hours of campaign optimization, and the high-quality leads. To ask for a full refund is to retroactively devalue months of legitimate, successful service delivery simply because they failed to close the loop on their end. Our contracts often protect us with clauses that state the full contract fee remains due in the event of client termination—a vital layer of protection against frivolous blame.
The Solution: Stop Blaming, Start Auditing
If you’re a business owner reading this, or if you’re an agency looking to pre-empt this frustrating conversation, here’s how we need to approach conversion problems: collaborative auditing.
When our client called the leads “junk,” my immediate response was to offer a solution: “Let us help you audit the sales funnel. Give us screenshots of how quickly you follow up. Let us listen to the call recordings. Let’s identify where the lead is dying.”
The refusal to provide that insight is the clearest indication that the problem is internal. A team that truly wants to fix a problem will open their books; a team that wants to deflect blame will build walls.
We all need to remember this fundamental rule of the digital economy:
- Marketing Success (Agency’s Job): Proven by qualified lead volume, cost-per-lead (CPL), and search intent.
- Sales Success (Client’s Job): Proven by conversion rate (Lead-to-Appointment) and close rate (Appointment-to-Procedure).
If your CPL is good and your lead volume is high, the marketing is working. If the conversions are low, the problem is your process. As agency professionals, we must continue to hold this line, enforce our contracts, and redirect the conversation back to where the real work—and the real opportunity—lies: inside the client’s four walls.
Let’s be the experts, let’s be the problem-solvers, but for the sake of our industry, let’s stop taking the blame for a cold kitchen.
