Your best clients assume you’re too busy.

A client had worked with one of the biggest companies in the world for seven years.

About one project a year. Great relationship. Great work. And in seven years, they’d never asked for more. Every project was the client showing up and blessing them with another year-making revenue infusion.

When I asked why they never asked for more, the answer was something like: “If they wanted us to work on more, they’d ask us.”

That’s almost never how it works.

Clients assume you’re busy. They see your other work, they know you’re in demand, and they don’t want to impose. Unless you tell them otherwise, they assume you’re maxed out.

So it becomes a strange game. The agency needs work but doesn’t want to bother the client, and client doesn’t want to overload the busy agency. Both sides are making an assumption and nobody wants to make the first move. It’s a high school dance.

So the plan was almost embarrassingly simple: tell them. “We’ve grown, we have more capacity, and we’d love to do more with you.”

That’s it. No campaign, no pitch deck.

I learned this earlier in my career. Way back when I was at Metalab, a single enterprise client started with one small project, then asked for a couple of developers, then a few more. Eventually that one account covered a huge share of our costs. The work we were publicly known for was a fraction of our revenue.

The other thing to remember: what’s a huge project for you is a rounding error for a company that size. You aren’t asking for a big favour. You’re offering to solve problems they already have.

The easiest new business you’ll ever win is from a client who already likes working with you.

You just have to ask.