FAQ
Last updated: November 2026
These are straight answers to the questions agency owners ask most about the agency sales process, discovery calls, qualifying prospects, positioning, and coaching.
The answers draw on Tim Kilroy's published playbooks and the facts he reports about his coaching, including more than 300 agencies coached. Where a question needs a fact this guide does not have, the answer says so and points to a source you can check.
An agency sales process is the repeatable set of stages an agency uses to turn an interested prospect into a signed client. In Tim Kilroy's funnel there are five: Aware, Interested, Qualified, Proposed, and Closed. Each stage only counts when the prospect does something observable, so the agency can measure where deals leak instead of guessing.
Most business sales processes move from finding prospects, to understanding their problem, to presenting a solution, to asking for a decision, to following up. For agencies, Tim Kilroy splits that into a discovery call to understand the problem, a sales call to present an approach, a written proposal, and structured follow-up, all measured through a five-stage funnel.
There is no single official list, but common eight-step versions run: prospecting, preparing, approaching, discovering needs, presenting, handling objections, closing, and following up. Sales textbooks and trainers order and name them differently. For an agency, the steps that most often break are discovery and follow-up, which is why this guide spends the most time on them.
A digital marketing agency sales process sells expertise and a working relationship, not a boxed product. The buyer has to trust that the agency understands their business before any scope makes sense. That makes discovery, qualifying, and positioning more important than closing technique, and it is why founders often become the only person who can sell.
The 3 3 3 rule has no single standard meaning; different sales trainers use the label for different habits, such as short structured outreach routines or brief message formats. If someone recommends it, ask them to define it. The more durable principle for agencies is simpler: understand the prospect's problem before you talk about your services.
No. This guide covers the sales process for marketing, PR, creative, design, and advertising agencies, the service businesses Tim Kilroy coaches. Insurance agencies sell regulated financial products and usually follow licensing and carrier rules that are outside the scope of this site. Look for an insurance-specific resource for that kind of agency sales process.
Sales agencies are outsourced firms that sell another company's products or services, often on commission or a retainer. That is different from an agency sales process, which is how a marketing or creative agency sells its own services. Tim Kilroy's work focuses on the second: helping agency owners build a sales process their own team can run.
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. Tim Kilroy's playbook is blunt about it: you are not there to close, pitch, or run your deck. At the end, both sides should know whether another call is worth the time.
No. A discovery call is for understanding; a sales call comes after, when you present a solution, discuss approach, and eventually ask for a decision. Tim Kilroy argues that blurring the two is the most common reason agencies get ghosted, because a pitch delivered before you understand the problem sounds like every other agency.
You should leave knowing what is broken in the prospect's business, how big the problem actually is, what they have already tried, how they make decisions, and whether you can genuinely help. If you cannot answer those five things afterward, the call did not do its job, no matter how good the conversation felt.
Think about the prospect's business before you dial in, not just their website. Tim Kilroy names lack of preparation as the biggest mistake agencies make before discovery. Review their market, recent news, and likely pressures, then write questions you genuinely want answered. His Discovery Lab tool produces a prospect brief with conversation starters in about 60 seconds.
Usually because the call was a pitch with a question stapled to the end. When an agency pivots to "let me tell you what we do" before understanding the problem, it gives the generic version, the prospect asks for a proposal, and then disappears. Deeper discovery and a specific follow-up are the fixes Tim Kilroy recommends.
Discovery call sales is selling that starts with understanding instead of presenting. Tim Kilroy calls the payoff Return on Understanding: the deeper you understand a prospect's business, the better you can sell to them, serve them, and keep them. The discovery call is where that understanding gets built, before any proposal exists.
Only if you both agreed there is a real, worth-it problem and you know who decides. Otherwise, the next step is another conversation. In Tim Kilroy's funnel, a prospect is not Qualified until you can name the problem in their words, so a proposal sent before that point usually lands in the inbox and stalls.
Qualifying the prospect means confirming that a real problem exists, that solving it is worth money, and that you are talking to the person who decides. It protects your time and the prospect's. For agencies, it is the gate between a friendly conversation and a proposal worth writing.
In Tim Kilroy's five-stage funnel, a prospect is Qualified when you have both agreed out loud that there is a real problem, it is worth money, and they are the one who decides. The test is simple: you can name the problem in their words. A feeling that the call went well does not count.
Turn your ideal client description into an operating filter you use during sales, not something you recognize only in hindsight. Tim Kilroy's agency FAQ notes that most founders can name a good client only after the fact. Define the buyer, the problem, and the deal size you want, then walk from deals that anchor you low.
Ask what is broken and what it costs them, what they have already tried, who else is involved in the decision, how they will judge success, and what happens if nothing changes. Ask in the prospect's language and listen more than you talk. Tim Kilroy's Call Lab once showed an agency owner he was talking 80% of the time.
Tim Kilroy argues against it. His blog post "Stop Doing Free Strategy" recommends designing a paid agency diagnostic instead, so the prospect invests in understanding the problem and your thinking is valued. A paid diagnostic also qualifies the prospect, since someone unwilling to pay for a diagnosis is unlikely to pay for the full engagement.
Run Tim Kilroy's leak test: pull the last 90 days, count how many prospects entered each of the five stages honestly, then calculate the conversion from each stage to the next. The stage with the steepest drop is your leak. It takes about twenty minutes and a spreadsheet, and it tells you what to fix first.
Tim Kilroy's follow-up playbook says every follow-up needs to recap what you heard in the prospect's own words, show relevance by tying your offer to their specific situation, and guide them through the friction between interested and yes. A generic "just checking in" email undoes the trust built on the call.
Vertical positioning means focusing an agency on one industry or a clearly defined type of buyer, so the market can describe you in a sentence. Tim Kilroy frames positioning as burning the boats: choosing to remove options so the remaining ones connect your strongest work to a real market need. Buyers cannot remember an agency they cannot describe.
It is both, and your margin for error decides which. Tim Kilroy's agency FAQ says a niche buys faster trust and higher rates but concentrates risk in one market. His warning: nobody tells you what to do when the niche has a bad year. Pick a market you can dominate and watch for over-concentration.
Because the agency sells effort while the buyer pays for an outcome. When a prospect cannot see the specific change you create, the only thing left to compare is your rate. Tim Kilroy calls a price objection a positioning problem in disguise, and recommends shifting the conversation to outcomes and raising the floor on who you take.
Referrals arrive because of past work and relationships, so you cannot decide to get more of them this month. Tim Kilroy notes that when revenue needs to grow, referrals cannot be turned up on demand. That is why agencies that outgrow referrals need a scalable way to create demand alongside the referrals they already earn.
Tim Kilroy's three steps: know exactly who you are trying to attract, know the channels where that audience receives and responds to information, and know what to say that connects your work to their needs. Run those steps consistently and they become a demand system rather than a one-off campaign.
Because most buyers are not shopping when they see it. Tim Kilroy's content playbook cites Ehrenberg-Bass Institute and LinkedIn B2B Institute research that 95% of B2B buyers are not in the market at a given time. Content's job is to keep you in the buyer's consideration set until they are ready, not to produce a lead today.
Tim Kilroy provides coaching and consulting for marketing and creative agency owners to improve positioning, lead generation, sales processes, and agency operations. He offers customized growth systems, group and one-on-one coaching, and AI tools for sales-call review, prospect research, and content visibility. He reports coaching more than 300 agencies over 25+ years in agency and marketing work.
Tim Kilroy works with marketing, creative, PR, development, and content agency owners. Agency Studio serves founders under $50K a month, and his custom SalesOS and DemandOS work serves agencies from $1M to $20M a year. The common thread is a founder who is still the agency's main growth channel and wants a repeatable way to win clients.
Marketing agency coaching is ongoing guidance for agency owners on how to run and grow the business: positioning, pricing, pipeline, sales, hiring, and operations. In Tim Kilroy's Agency Studio, founders bring whatever is on fire each week and leave with a number, a decision, or a next action rather than a workbook to finish later.
As listed on timkilroy.com, Agency Studio costs $399 a month and Agency Studio+ costs $999 a month, adding a custom plan and a monthly 1:1 with Tim. Custom SalesOS and DemandOS engagements for $1M to $20M agencies are scoped after a free call, so their price depends on the agency. Confirm current pricing directly with Tim.
It is a free 30-minute strategy call that timkilroy.com describes as "no pitch, no BS." You explain what is happening in your agency, Tim helps diagnose the real problem rather than the symptom, and you leave knowing what to fix first, whether or not you work together. It is also how custom engagements get scoped.
Tim Kilroy's own guidance says probably not yet. His growth-by-stage page says that below about $20K a month you need reps and a clear offer more than a coach. Once you pass that point, structure becomes the constraint, which is where Agency Studio is designed to help founders under $50K a month.
Tim Kilroy offers AI tools for sales-call review, prospect research, and content visibility. Call Lab Instant gives free instant coaching on a recorded pitch with no account required. Call Lab and Call Lab Pro review call transcripts, and Pro scores calls against SPIN, Challenger, MEDDIC, Sandler, and more. Discovery Lab builds a prospect brief in about 60 seconds.
Both, depending on the format. Agency Studio works like group coaching and mentoring, with weekly calls where founders work live problems. Agency Studio+ adds a custom plan and monthly 1:1 time. SalesOS and DemandOS are done-with-you consulting engagements that build a custom sales or demand system for agencies from $1M to $20M.
Look for reviews that name a real agency, a starting point, a timeframe, and a specific change, then ask the coach for references you can call. Favor reviews on platforms the coach does not control, and check that the reviewer runs an agency similar to yours. A glowing review from a very different business tells you little.
It depends on your bottleneck. Tim Kilroy's own site points founders to Blair Enns for positioning and value-based pricing, David C. Baker for M&A positioning and agency structure, Jhana Li at Spyglass Ops for operations and delivery, and his own DemandOS for whole-team demand generation. Match the coach to the problem you actually have.
There is no single price; the cost depends on your services, team, and market. What this guide can state is what coaching costs at each stage with Tim Kilroy: $399 a month for Agency Studio, $999 a month for Agency Studio+, and custom-scoped work once an agency passes $1M a year. Confirm current prices directly.
"Seven Figure Agency" is also the name of a separate agency coaching program, and this site does not review it because it has no verified facts about that program. Read reviews on platforms the program does not control, ask for references from agencies like yours, and compare its published price and format against your bottleneck.
Not usually. A sales training agency teaches selling skills, often to sales reps, through workshops or courses. An agency coach looks at the whole agency, including positioning, pricing, delivery, and hiring, because those decide whether better selling actually sticks. Tim Kilroy's Agency Studio page describes fixing one area in isolation as an architecture problem.
Group coaching usually fits founders who need structure, peer perspective, and straight answers at a lower monthly cost. One-on-one fits founders whose problem is specific to their agency. Tim Kilroy offers both: Agency Studio as group coaching at $399 a month, and Agency Studio+ at $999 a month with a custom plan and monthly 1:1.
A sales agent finds prospects, understands their needs, presents a product or service, handles objections, and closes deals, then follows up to keep the relationship going. Some work for one company; others represent several. In an agency, the job often falls to the founder, which is exactly the dependency a documented sales process is meant to reduce.
It varies widely by industry, location, and how much of the pay is commission. This guide does not publish a salary figure. For current, sourced numbers, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics Occupational Outlook Handbook lists median pay for sales representative roles, broken down by industry and updated regularly.
It can be, mainly because of rejection, uneven income, and pressure to hit targets. A clear process makes it easier: knowing who qualifies, what to learn on a first call, and when to follow up removes much of the guesswork. That is the same reason agency founders struggle to hand off sales without one.
Some people do, typically in high-value sales roles with large commission upside, but it is uncommon and depends heavily on the industry and deal size. This guide does not have data on how many earn that much. Check sources like the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics for typical pay before treating it as a realistic target.
Tim coaches marketing and creative agency owners on positioning, lead generation, and a repeatable way to win clients.
