Funding Signals – Activity Through January 13, 2026
Highlights xAI raised $20B (Series E) CrowdStrike, which sells the Falcon security platform, is buying SGNL, an identity-management SaaS company. CrowdStrike says the combination is meant to secure identity access for human users and AI agents across hybrid and cloud environments. The release notes financial terms weren’t disclosed, though it cites a $740M figure, and it frames the deal as an expansion of its next-gen identity security offering. Agency lens: … Get Unlimited NextBigWin Access Subscribe to become a NextBigWin Pro member and get access to all our exclusive content. Turn access and intelligence into your next big client win. Already a member? Login Subscribe to NextBigWin Pro
It’s Not About You: Winning New Business in a Crowded Agency World
(Exclusive excerpts prior to January 20 Publication, Preorder here) There are 17,000 agencies in the U.S. Or maybe 37,000. It depends on the source. Let’s put it this way: there are a lot of agencies! And winning new business is tough. With so many options available, prospects often feel overwhelmed and unsure of where to turn. Meanwhile, agencies are scrambling to differentiate themselves and emerge as the obvious choice. After all, every agency needs new business to thrive. But in a sea of thousands of firms offering help, how do you get your agency front and center of that consideration? Amid all of this competition, agencies often face three challenges that weaken their success rate: Agencies aren’t ready to be found. Agencies don’t know how to be found. Agencies don’t effectively pitch once they are found. Agencies that know how to address each of these challenges land more new business. Let’s talk about these challenges. Challenge 1: Be Ready to Be Found We’ve frequently heard agencies say, “If we can just get in the room, we’ll prove we’re the best agency for the job.” So, how do you get in the room? You can’t showcase your strength if you’re not even invited to the party. Preparing for that opportunity means investing in your agency first. Several critical readiness steps are essential for growth — steps you overlook at your own risk. The first step in this journey is to define your agency’s positioning, making it crystal clear what kind of agency you are and why you stand out. This involves two key elements: understanding your agency’s identity (your frame of reference) and articulating your distinctiveness – what makes your shop unique and appealing from a prospect’s perspective. The second step is to make sure your website is prospect-friendly, so when a prospect does discover you, they immediately see you as a potential partner. A prospect-friendly website allows visitors to find the information they’re looking for quickly and effortlessly. Of course, all of this requires time and resources — and many agencies operate on razor-thin margins with lean teams. Challenge 2: Know How to Be Found You might be the perfect agency for a prospect in need, but that opportunity vanishes if they can’t find you. That’s why it’s crucial to have a clear understanding of the marketer’s customer journey for agency services. Marketers don’t think about agencies until they must. They are focused on their business. And since they don’t think about agencies very often, most marketers also have very low unaided awareness of specific agencies. Even with agencies they may have heard of, their knowledge is limited. When we interview clients during an agency search process, we typically ask which agencies they would like us to consider. They can rarely name more than one or two agencies. Often, they will say things like “that Nike agency” or “the agency that did the Apple work.” Prospects often have little awareness of where to even begin searching for the right agency. Most clients don’t pore over Ad Age, Adweek, or Campaign from cover to cover. They might subscribe, but they don’t engage with these publications with the same frequency or depth as agency professionals do. If they reach out to their personal networks, they’ll find little help. Clients simply don’t know where to begin, so they behave much like any B2B buyer these days. They do much of their research online, and most of it before an agency even knows that the client or prospect is looking for help. What happens behind the scenes when a marketer needs to find a new agency? Typically, a middle manager is assigned the task of researching agencies and compiling a shortlist of potential candidates. Often, they start with a simple web search. A Google search for “advertising agencies” can return millions of results. Or they might turn to an AI tool to research the industry. In a market flooded with thousands of agencies, there’s a good chance your agency won’t even surface in the results of a search or AI prompt. Clearly, the odds are against any one agency. But they don’t have to be – there are steps agencies can take that will enhance their odds of being found when the right prospect is looking. The key is to develop and execute a marketing plan that elevates your agency’s brand. By making strategic and focused choices, you can balance limited resources with the most impactful marketing efforts, whether that’s submitting award applications, creating compelling content, engaging in PR, participating in trade shows, or securing speaking engagements. Marketing your agency is a critical foundation for your agency’s success! Challenge 3: Pitch Well Once You’re Found “Pitching” can take on many forms and meanings. For our purposes, we’re not focused simply on competitive opportunities. Rather, we are referring to any conversation you have as a representative of your agency that can yield new business. A conversation over coffee, an introduction at a conference, a call about something else that leads to a question about your agency. These all have the potential to lead to new business, so they can certainly be “pitches.” We’ve observed thousands of formal and informal pitches, and the unfortunate truth is that most of them end up looking the same — to us and to our clients. These pitches often fail to excite or inspire the client or prospect. Someone wins simply because a decision has to be made — but it’s frequently not the right agency, and sometimes not even the best one. And most of the agencies that make it to a presentation probably can do the work. They have the capability; that’s how they got in the room. But it’s a shame to see a good agency — the agency that has the strongest skillset to meet the prospect’s specific needs — lose the prospect by not being properly prepared for or delivering a customer-centric pitch. And, unfortunately, there’s little opportunity for an agency to learn
