In 2024 we were hired for eight weeks and the map changed halfway through.
Short engagements are usually protected from strategy changes by their own brevity. This one was not. A month in, the client widened the ideal customer profile from a single market to the whole of the region, which meant a new list for every country that had just been added.
That decision is the client's to make and it is often the right one. What it does to an outbound team is worth describing, because clients rarely see the cost.
What we did
Two months across Egypt and the UAE, in fashion, electronics and consumer retail. 20 meetings booked, 16 confirmed held, 20 companies introduced, at a hold rate of 80 per cent.
Al Tayer, Apparel Group, Samsung in both markets, Casio, Raya, 2B, Corona, Attar United, Louzan Fashion, Sheta and Saif, Chic Homz, CairoCart, V Perfumes, Emirates Pride, Way Up Sports and Miral.
What widening the target costs, in days
Adding countries to a campaign is not a filter change. It is new research, new contacts, new local context and a new set of assumptions about who owns the problem in a market nobody on the team has worked yet. On a two-month engagement that is most of a fortnight, taken out of the middle.
We did it, and the meetings that followed held at four in five, which suggests the new markets were a reasonable call. But the honest accounting is that a mid-campaign expansion in a short engagement costs roughly a quarter of the engagement, and the right response is to say so at the time and agree what comes off the plan, rather than to absorb it quietly and miss a number nobody has renegotiated.
What it shows
Scope changes are normal and should be priced in days, out loud, on the day they happen. An agency that swallows them to look accommodating ends the quarter explaining a shortfall it agreed to create.