FAQ
These are plain answers to the questions agency founders ask most about building a sales process, running discovery calls and following up.
Agency Sales Playbook groups 45 questions into 7 topics. Each answer starts with the direct answer, then adds a supporting fact. Where a specific number depends on your agency, the answer says how to find it rather than guessing.
Last updated: · Published by Tim Kilroy
An agency sales process is a written, repeatable set of stages that moves a prospect from first contact to signed client, so anyone on the team can run it. The full agency sales process guide explains each stage.
An agency sales process is a written, repeatable set of stages that moves a prospect from first conversation to signed client and smooth handoff. It covers discovery, qualification, proposal, follow-up, close and handoff, with clear rules for when a deal moves forward. The point is that your team can run it, so good-fit deals close whether or not the founder is on the call.
A sales process is the sequence of stages a deal moves through. A sales methodology is the way you behave inside those stages, such as SPIN, Challenger, MEDDIC or Sandler. You need the process first, because a methodology has nothing to attach to if every deal runs differently. Tim Kilroy’s Call Lab Pro tool scores calls against several of those methodologies.
Without a process, everything the founder knows about selling stays in the founder’s head, so nothing closes unless the founder is on the call. A process turns that knowledge into stages, questions and templates the team can use. It also makes sales measurable, so you can see which stage loses deals instead of guessing that you simply need more leads.
Common seven-step versions run from product knowledge and buyer personas through prospecting, qualification, pitch, and negotiation and close. For agencies, this playbook uses seven stages: positioning and ideal client, discovery, qualification, proposal or paid diagnostic, follow-up, close and handoff, and win/loss review. The agency version adds the handoff and review because that is where good deals turn into bad clients.
A useful five-step view for agencies is the funnel itself: Aware, Interested, Qualified, Proposed and Closed. Each stage only counts when the prospect has done something observable, such as naming the problem in their own words or opening the proposal. Counting the prospect’s actions rather than your own activity is what makes a five-step funnel useful for finding leaks.
Most processes group into three phases: before the conversation (positioning, research and getting the meeting), during the conversation (discovery, qualification and proposal) and after the conversation (follow-up, close, handoff and review). Agencies tend to underinvest in the first and third phases. Preparation and follow-up are where most avoidable losses happen.
There is no single official 10-step sales process; different trainers split the same work into more or fewer steps. A longer list usually separates research, outreach, rapport, needs analysis, presentation, objections, close, follow-up, referral and review. The number of steps matters less than having clear entry rules for each stage, so everyone on your team counts deals the same way.
Eight-step versions typically cover prospecting, preparation, approach, needs discovery, presentation, handling objections, closing and follow-up. Agencies benefit from adding one more: a clean sales-to-delivery handoff, because promises made in the sale shape the first months of the client relationship. Pick a version, write it down, and make sure every stage has an observable entry rule.
A discovery call is a structured conversation whose only job is to understand the prospect’s problem well enough to decide whether a next step makes sense. For agencies, it sits at the front of the sale, and the selling comes later. If both sides leave knowing enough to judge whether another call is worth the time, the discovery call did its job.
In a good discovery call the prospect does most of the talking. You learn what is broken in their business, how big the problem is, what they have already tried, how they make decisions, and whether you can genuinely help. You share insight and experience where it helps, but you do not run through your deck. It ends with an agreed next step or a clear no.
No. A cold call is unsolicited outreach to someone who has not asked to talk. A discovery call is a scheduled conversation that both sides agreed to, usually after a referral, inbound inquiry or successful outreach. Published figures put average cold call success around 2.3 percent (Leads at Scale), which is one reason the discovery call deserves real preparation once you earn it.
Discovery calls are also called discovery meetings, qualification calls, intro calls, needs analysis calls or exploratory calls. Some agencies call a deeper, paid version a diagnostic. Whatever the name, keep the definition: a conversation to understand the problem, not a pitch. Tim Kilroy’s booking page for agency owners calls its own version a WTF call.
Ask questions that reveal the business problem, not your service fit: what is broken, what it is costing them, what they have tried, who else is involved in the decision, how they will judge success, and what happens if nothing changes. Prepare with research first so you are not asking things their website already answers. Tools like Discovery Lab can build a prospect brief in about 60 seconds.
A good discovery call sounds like a curious conversation, not a presentation. The prospect talks far more than you do, you reflect their problem back in their words, and you both decide whether a next call is worthwhile. A useful test afterward: can you write down what you really learned about their business? If all you remember is your own pitch, it was not discovery.
The purpose of a discovery meeting is mutual qualification: you find out whether the prospect has a real, valuable problem you can solve, and they find out whether you understand it. If it makes sense, the goal is to get to the next call. Closing is not the goal, and treating discovery as a close is the most common reason prospects go quiet afterward.
Prepare by thinking about the prospect’s business, not just glancing at their website. Review their market, recent news, offers, likely org chart and where your kind of work affects revenue. Write down three or four hypotheses about what might be broken, then plan questions that test them. Most agencies blow discovery before it starts because they skip this step.
Prospects usually go dark because the discovery call turned into a pitch. When an agency pivots to "let me tell you what we do" before understanding the problem, it delivers the generic version, which sounds like every other agency. The prospect asks for a proposal to end the call politely, then disappears. Deeper understanding on the call is the fix, not a better proposal template.
Often more than most agencies send. Tim Kilroy’s Agency Sales Follow-Up Playbook cites that 80 percent of sales require five or more follow-ups after the first meeting, while 44 percent of salespeople give up after one. Leads at Scale reports that 93 percent of conversions happen after six or more follow-ups. Each follow-up should add value, not just "check in."
Every follow-up should include a recap of what the prospect said, in their words, and a clear tie between your offer and their specific situation. It should then help them past whatever friction sits between interested and yes, such as an internal approval or a timing question. A bland "just checking in" email can undo the trust you built on the call.
Fast. Tim Kilroy’s follow-up playbook cites that 35 to 50 percent of sales go to the vendor that responds first, which makes speed a trust signal. Aim to send a personalized recap the same day while the conversation is fresh. Template the structure, not the words, so speed never turns into a generic email.
There is no single agreed definition of the 3 3 3 rule; different trainers use the phrase for different heuristics about timing, research or messaging. If someone on your team uses it, ask them to write down exactly what it means. For agencies, a more reliable rule is counting a deal in a stage only when the prospect has done something observable.
There is no universal list of seven golden rules; it varies by author. For agency sales, the principles this playbook keeps returning to are: diagnose before you prescribe, discovery is not a sales call, recap the prospect’s words, follow up fast, count prospect actions not your activity, write the process down, and review every win and loss.
The 7 C’s are a mnemonic that different authors fill differently, often with words like clarity, confidence, credibility, consistency and connection. There is no standard version, so treat any list as a prompt, not a rule. In agency sales, consistency matters most: the same stages, questions and follow-up structure run by everyone, every time.
Usually because what the founder knows about selling has never been written down. Tim Kilroy calls it Founder Magic: sensing objections early, knowing which deals are real, and adjusting mid-sentence. It is real, but it lives in one person. Until it becomes stages, questions and templates, the team can only wait for the founder to join the call.
Yes, but prove it before you step away. Write the process down, have someone else run discovery calls with you observing, review recordings against the stages, and compare their stage-to-stage conversion with yours. Tim Kilroy’s blog covers this in "Can Your Agency Sell Without You? Prove It Before You Step Away."
Hire after the process exists, not instead of it. A first sales hire with no written stages, no qualification rules and no follow-up structure has to invent your sales motion from scratch, and usually fails. A practical trigger from Tim Kilroy’s planning workshop: the constraint has existed for 60 or more days, blocks revenue, and removing it can fund the role within six months.
At minimum: a clear ideal client definition, the written stages with entry rules, a discovery question guide, a follow-up structure, example proposals, and access to recordings of good calls. They also need an outcome they own, decisions they can make, and a success metric both of you can see. Without those, you are hiring a helper, not a seller.
The handoff transfers everything learned in the sale to the people doing the work: the problem in the client’s words, what was promised, how success will be judged, who the decision makers are, and any risks. Done poorly, it is where good deals become bad clients, because delivery starts from a different understanding than the one the client bought.
A win/loss review is a short, structured look at why a prospect chose you or someone else, ideally asking the prospect directly. It finds the real reasons behind decisions instead of the ones you assume. Run it after every significant decision, record the answers, and feed patterns back into positioning, discovery questions and proposals.
Yes. The digital marketing agency sales process is the core case this playbook was written for. Tim Kilroy works mainly with marketing, creative, development, PR and content agencies, especially established agencies between $1M and $20M in annual revenue whose growth still depends on the founder. The stages apply to performance, SEO, paid media and full-service shops alike.
The stages are the same; the content inside them changes. A creative agency sales process or design agency sales process often relies more on portfolio and project scoping, so discovery should dig into business outcomes before anyone talks about aesthetics. Advertising agency sales processes follow the same logic, with extra attention to who controls budget.
Not directly. This playbook is written for service agencies such as marketing, creative, development, PR and content firms that sell projects and retainers to businesses. An insurance agency sales process involves licensing, carriers and regulations that are outside this site’s scope. Some principles, like recapping in the client’s words, carry over, but look for insurance-specific guidance.
Sales agencies are outside firms that sell on a company’s behalf, often handling prospecting, appointment setting or closing for a fee or commission. That is different from what this site covers. This playbook is about building your own agency’s internal sales process, so your team, not an outside closer, can win good-fit clients consistently.
Tim Kilroy is an agency growth consultant and coach who has been a marketing and agency leader since 1997. He has launched three agencies, with two exits and one crash, and reports coaching more than 300 agencies. He works with established service agencies, mainly between $1M and $20M in annual revenue, plus smaller founders through Agency Studio.
Published prices on timkilroy.com, as of November 2026: Agency Studio is $399 per month and Agency Studio+ is $999 per month, which adds a custom plan and a monthly 1:1 with Tim. SalesOS, the custom sales system build for agencies past about $1M a year, is scoped individually after a diagnostic conversation, so no fixed price is published.
SalesOS is Tim Kilroy’s done-with-you engagement for installing a custom agency sales process. It is aimed at agencies roughly between $1M and $5M a year where sales still depend on the founder. It starts with positioning, then builds a sales engine around that specific agency. The published playbook is the artifact; SalesOS is where it gets installed.
Build the process first. A closer or commission-only rep without a process has to rely on their own instincts, which leaves you with a second person doing Founder Magic. A coach is most useful when they help you write your process down rather than hand you a generic script. The comparison table on this site’s home page lays out the trade-offs.
It depends on how much strategy you are giving away. A short free conversation to see whether there is a fit is a normal discovery step. Giving away a full strategy for free trains prospects to expect your thinking without paying. Tim Kilroy’s blog post "Stop Doing Free Strategy" covers designing a paid agency diagnostic as a middle step.
Agency Studio is a group coaching program for founders under about $50K a month, with weekly calls where founders bring whatever is on fire. SalesOS is a custom, done-with-you build for agencies past about $1M a year. Studio gives structure and straight answers; SalesOS diagnoses one agency in depth and installs a sales process built around it.
Yes. Tim Kilroy publishes Call Lab Instant, which gives quick feedback on a recorded pitch with no account required, and Discovery Lab, which builds a prospect research brief in about 60 seconds. Paid tiers, Call Lab and Call Lab Pro, analyze full call transcripts, and Pro scores calls against methodologies like SPIN, Challenger, MEDDIC and Sandler.
Their positioning and how they sell. In practice that means committing to a clear niche and replacing founder instinct with a real, written sales process. Tim Kilroy treats these as the first changes because a sales process has nothing to run on if the agency cannot say clearly who it serves and what problem it solves.
Run a leak test. Pull the last 90 days, count how many prospects entered each of the five stages (Aware, Interested, Qualified, Proposed, Closed), and calculate the conversion from each stage to the next. The stage with the biggest drop is your leak. It takes about twenty minutes and a spreadsheet, and it beats buying more leads.
Work backward from revenue. Divide your quarterly revenue goal by average deal size to get deals needed, divide by your close rate to get proposals, divide by your proposal rate to get conversations, then divide by 13 weeks. The pipeline math page on this site has a calculator that does this with your own numbers.
Referrals are valuable but they do not scale on demand; you cannot decide to get more of them this month. Tim Kilroy cites the RSW/US 2025 Agency Survey, where 75 percent of agencies named referrals their top new-business source and 93 percent said their growth engine was not strong enough. A written process lets you add other channels without losing what works.
Usually because the buyer cannot see the specific outcome you create, so the only thing left to compare is the rate. A price objection is often a positioning problem in disguise. Shift discovery and proposals toward the outcome, raise the floor on who you take, and be willing to walk from deals that anchor you low.
Published by Tim Kilroy
