What we're doing for you

I’m confident in saying that Pomona Partners works harder for its talent than any agency I have been represented by. But the problem is that communicating what we do to you is difficult. The more time we spend communicating with you, the less time we spend working on your behalf. And - and I totally understand this, we’re all time poor - many of you don’t engage with the mass communication we send out, or read this blog. A quarter don’t open our update emails. 90% don’t click through.

That might make this post seem futile. But we’re committed to transparency. All we can do is put this information out there. And keep adding new ways to share information with you until we find something that works for us all.

As those of you who joined or watched the Town Hall will know, we have ambitions to expand the Pomona Partners Platform to make us the most transparent talent agency in the world. In 2026, we will expose to you every lead we’ve put you forward for, and every action we have taken on your behalf, and if you didn’t win, why.

But until we can build out all the tech for that, I’ll continue to periodically share information in forums like this and through the Town Hall meetings.

Our Activities

We spent around £60,000 on sales and marketing in 2024. We’re forecast to spend closer to £80,000 this year.

That includes monthly email campaigns to prospective bookers, and follow-up campaigns to leads that went cold (yes, we do that, those that have asked). It includes content updates to the website in pursuit of search rankings. It includes social media activity, spotlighting all our speakers in turn. It includes cold calling, emailing and social networking to build relationships with events agencies, conference organisers, and brands. It includes producing the podcast that gets us 1-2-1 with bookers and gives us a chance to hero you.

We started from nothing two years ago, and we’ve built an incredible set of relationships through these methods. This shows in where our leads come from.

Lead Sources

As I’ve said before, my previous agency experience is that 90%+ of my leads came from me, and less than 10% from the agencies I was with. In reality, it’s probably more like a 97-3 split.

Since we started detailed lead source tracking 16 months ago, Pomona has generated almost exactly 50% of the leads that we have handled for you.

Now that likely means two things:

1. We’re seeing good results from the huge amount of effort we’ve put in on your behalf
2. Most of you don’t put your leads through us

Trust Us

The second point remains a frustration. We’ve shown repeatedly that we deliver a greater uplift in fees than the 20% we take. Quite apart from the administrative overhead we take on, and the additional benefits we have secured our speakers.

That administrative overhead cannot be underestimated. We don’t yet have fully robust tracking of all our communications with prospects, and it’s not something we’re going to try to implement until we shift to our own CRM platform. But mapping currently open leads against our weekly calls, I can tell you that the leads we win generally involve at least two phone calls and three emails before we get to the contract stage.

Then there is always more back and forth to agree the contract (some people want changes, some people insist on using their own). Then securing a PO and invoicing - usually only after we have registered with the client’s procurement platform. Then (almost inevitably) chasing the invoice. And this is two years in when I think we’re GOOD at this and have already optimised the process.

How much we make

Put your leads through us and we take all this off your shoulders.

The downside is that this means we handle more leads that we don’t win. And those can be even more time consuming. Four, five, six…ten emails and calls before they often go silent and just stop responding. Or tell us they never had a budget allocated to the event.

It takes an average of 74 days for an opportunity to close. We win exactly 33%. And at an average value of £4,467.75. That means that for every lead we win, we’re making an average of £893.55. But split that over ALL the leads and we make less than £300 for each one.

That’s not a lot to cover all that time, all our investment in marketing you, and the free training and tools that we offer.

Developing your career

Those tools are a big investment. Since we launched the Talent Map in January, we’ve published 25 pieces of training content to support it. And we have loads more in the pipeline. The Talent Map is unique and it’s something I wish I had access to when I started my speaking career. I hope you’re all making good use of it. And if you’re not, I’d love to know why - how can we improve it?

What’s critical about the Talent Map is that it is your tool to grow your own career. Because for all the support we can offer, your speaking career is still your responsibility. That means it’s up to you to refine your proposition, grow your profile, and attract leads. We’ve added a new question to the onboarding process that asks what people want from an agency. If their number one thing is “more leads” then that is a huge red flag for us.

Because for all the effort we put into selling you, attracting new business is still your responsibility. We’re doing all we can to help, with the Talent Map, our training materials, and our marketing activities. But if you want more leads, you need to go and get them.

Roadmap on track

If you can sense a little concern in this post, it’s because April is the first month in 2025 where it looks like we won’t hit targets. After smashing it in Q1, enquiries slowed dramatically and as I write this, we’re at 68% of target for enquiries and an expected 84% of revenue for the month. Enquiries have slowed from you, and from our direct contacts. That suggests it is more about the market than anything else. But the picture is mixed - some people still seem to be running at full steam.

But to keep our roadmap on track, we need to get back to smashing it. So that we can deliver things like the Feedback Engine, as trailed in the Town Hall. That’s due to go live this quarter and I think you’re going to love it.

So, to finish with a call to action. Or a few.

First, more engagement is better. We want to see you using the tools and the training content, and giving us feedback.

Second, accept our limitations but also our experience. Two years in, we know what we’re doing. But we’re also operating at the limit of what we can deliver on the revenue we have. Zero profit is being taken from this business, it is all being reinvested in your success.

Three, be clear about your role and ours. Send us your leads and we will make the most of them. Don’t sit back and wait for us to deliver you business.