Agency New Business Enquiries: How to Scope a Loose Brief Before You Send a Proposal

BOTrento Team24 October 20269 min read

Why loose briefs are an agency problem, not a client problem

Clients rarely know how to write a brief. They know they have a problem: leads are weak, the brand looks dated, a launch is coming. Your job in the first reply is to turn that problem into something you can price.

Three things usually go wrong:

• The reply is slow. The buyer is often talking to other agencies too, and the one that asks sensible questions first tends to shape the brief.
• The reply is a pitch. A credentials deck answers a question nobody asked.
• The proposal is written on guesses. You assume one scope, the client reads another, and the price looks either too high or suspiciously low.

The general speed side is covered in our answer on how to reply to sales enquiries faster. Here we focus on what is specific to agencies: scoping creative and marketing work.

Step by step: from first email to a decision

1. Give the enquiry an owner. One named person, today. Shared inboxes are where agency enquiries go to wait.
2. Sort it quickly. Is it a real project, a price check, a request for free ideas (spec work) or a supplier tender? Each deserves a different reply.
3. Reply the same day with questions, not a pitch. Acknowledge the problem in their words, say what you need to give a useful price, and offer a short call.
4. Hold a short scoping call if the answers justify it. Send a written summary of what you heard within a few hours and ask them to confirm it.
5. Decide: proposal or paid discovery. The next sections explain how.
6. Send the proposal with stated assumptions and exclusions, and agree a date for the decision.
7. Follow up on that date. Silence after a proposal is the most common leak. See how to stop forgetting quote follow-ups.

Six scoping questions that work for most agency briefs

You do not need a long questionnaire. Six questions cover most of what changes your price and your decision to bid.

1. What is the business goal? Not ‘a new site’, but what should be different once the work is done.
2. What has been tried already? Previous agencies, campaigns or rebrands show what did not work and who has opinions.
3. What is the budget range or ceiling? Ask plainly. If they cannot say, offer a few rough ranges and ask which feels closest.
4. Who decides, and who else is involved? Marketing manager, finance, founder, a board. Proposals fail at the person you never met.
5. What is the deadline, and what drives it? A real launch date is different from ‘as soon as possible’.
6. What do you already have? Brand guidelines, content, analytics access, and someone to supply approvals and assets.

The answers double as lead qualification. A client with a clear goal, a named decision-maker and a budget range is a different lead from one with none of the three. Record the answers in your CRM (Pipedrive, HubSpot or even a shared sheet) so the next person sees them.

When to propose a paid discovery step

A free proposal makes sense when the scope is clear enough that you could defend your price. A paid discovery step makes sense when it is not. Consider it when:

• the goal is clear but the route is not, for example a rebrand where nobody has agreed what is wrong with the current brand;
• several stakeholders disagree and the brief is really an internal negotiation;
• the work depends on research, an audit or data you have not seen;
• the client expects detailed creative concepts or a strategy before any commitment.

Keep discovery small and fixed-price, with a defined output: a written brief, a short audit, a recommended scope with options, or a workshop and summary. Say that the result belongs to the client. Offer to credit the fee against the main project only if you genuinely will.

It also acts as a filter. A buyer who will not pay for a few days of your thinking is unlikely to value a long retainer.

Template: scoping questions with a discovery option

Adapt the wording to your own voice, and have a person check the draft before it goes out.

Subject: Your enquiry – a few questions before we quote

Hi [Name],

Thanks for getting in touch about [project in their words]. It sounds like the main aim is [goal as you understood it] – please correct me if I have that wrong.

So that I can give you a useful price rather than a guess, could you tell me:

1. What should be different for the business once this is done?
2. What has been tried so far?
3. Do you have a budget range in mind?
4. Who else will be involved in the decision?
5. Is there a date this has to be ready for?
6. What do you already have (brand guidelines, content, analytics access)?

A short call may be quicker – I can do [a couple of time slots].

If it turns out the brief needs more shaping, we can also do a short, fixed-fee discovery phase that ends with a written scope and options you can take to your team.

Best,
[Your name]

For proposal structure, the related article on turning vague B2B services requests into signed proposals goes deeper, and IT services enquiries shows a similar scoping logic for another service business.

A short daily check for the agency owner

• Which enquiries arrived and have no named owner?
• Which have had a first reply but no answers to the scoping questions for a few working days?
• Which proposals have a follow-up date today, or overdue?
• Which promises did someone make in an email (‘I'll send examples by Friday’)?
• Which calls this week still need a written summary sent back?

Busy periods follow the same rhythm. The event agency article on peak season shows how a quick, checked reply wins jobs, and the logic carries over to campaign launches. See also our page for B2B services.

How BOTrento supports this process

BOTrento Chief of Staff is a managed process for enquiries, quotes and follow-ups. It watches enquiries and quotes in your mailbox and in the data you upload, and each working morning it shows a Today 1+3 overview in the app and by email, so you see what needs attention first.

It prepares draft replies, proposals and follow-ups in four languages (CS, EN, DE, FR) and picks up promises such as ‘I'll get back to you by Friday’, then reminds you. Nothing is sent without a person approving it; BOTrento sends nothing itself. It does not replace your CRM or accounting, and it does not read attachments, so it works from the text of the email.

Mailboxes connect via IMAP. Gmail, Google Workspace and Microsoft 365 currently work by forwarding or import, and CRM or spreadsheet data can be uploaded as CSV or XLSX. AI is included in the plan with a monthly usage limit, and your own API key is optional (see the API key help). Plans are on the pricing page, and you can see the flow in the process demo or read what BOTrento is.

On privacy: data is stored on servers in Germany (EU), and the text needed for a task is processed by the model provider through its API. For a practical checklist, see whether an AI sales tool is GDPR-compliant, and speak to a lawyer about specific cases.

You can start the 14-day free trial on your own data, with no card and no API key of your own. The 14 days begin with your first successful data upload, and you have 7 days to prepare. Afterwards you keep 30 days of read-only access and export. We make no guarantee of results, which is why you try it on your own data first.