FAQ
Agency Growth FAQ
These are straight answers to the questions agency owners ask most about positioning, referrals, discovery calls, cash flow, and coaching.
The Agency Playbook Journal, published by Tim Kilroy, answers 48 questions here, grouped by topic. Each answer leads with the direct answer, then the supporting facts.
Published by Tim KilroyLast updated:
What these playbooks are
What is an agency positioning playbook?
An agency positioning playbook is a working guide for choosing who your agency serves and how the market should describe you in one sentence. This one, published by Tim Kilroy, treats positioning as a choice to take options away so the remaining work is your strongest. It also connects positioning to lead generation, discovery calls, and cash flow.
Who publishes the Agency Playbook Journal?
Tim Kilroy publishes this site. Tim coaches and consults with marketing and creative agency owners on positioning, lead generation, sales processes, and operations. He reports coaching more than 300 agencies and brings over 25 years of agency and marketing experience. This is one of a small number of websites the business publishes; the main website is timkilroy.com.
Who are these agency playbooks written for?
They are written for established small marketing and PR agencies that have outgrown referrals. Typical readers have a team, steady delivery, and good clients, but new business still depends on who happens to call. If you want a repeatable way to win clients through sharper positioning, better lead generation, and disciplined discovery calls, these guides are for you.
What topics do the playbooks cover?
The playbooks cover four connected areas: agency positioning and vertical positioning, lead generation after referrals slow, discovery calls and qualifying the prospect, and agency cash flow. Each guide answers the main question first, then gives a definition, numbers, a comparison, and a step-by-step procedure. A by-the-numbers page collects published industry statistics with their sources.
Are the playbooks free to read?
Yes. Every guide on this site is free to read, with no account or download gate, and each one is written to be useful on its own. If you want help applying a playbook to your agency, the contact buttons lead to Tim Kilroy’s contact page, where you can start a conversation about coaching or consulting.
Is this site an independent review of agency coaches?
No. Tim Kilroy publishes this site, and it presents his approach to growing an agency. Where other coaches or options are mentioned, they are described with neutral facts and judged on the same criteria. Nothing here is an independent study or audit. Read it as a practitioner’s playbook with a clear point of view, and check other sources before you decide.
Positioning and vertical positioning
Why do agencies keep losing deals on price?
Agencies usually lose on price because they sell 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’s fix runs three ways: move the conversation to the outcome, raise the floor on who you take, and walk away from deals that anchor you low.
How do I explain what makes my agency different?
Start by naming the buyer you serve, not the services you list. If a prospect, a client, a teammate, or you cannot describe what you do in under 20 seconds, you do not have a defensible position yet. Write the position around the buyer and the outcome you create, then commit to it long enough for the market to notice.
Is positioning the same as messaging?
No. Messaging is what you say about yourself; positioning is how the market hears it. Buyers sort you within seconds based on options they already understand. You can rewrite headlines in a week, but repositioning takes years, because your case studies and client list have to back the words. A specialist tagline cannot outrun generalist case studies.
How long does it take for new positioning to work?
Expect new positioning to take a long time to register. Tim Kilroy’s positioning playbook notes that headlines can change in a week while repositioning takes years, because your work has to prove the words. The practical advice is to choose a position you can hold for at least the next 18 months and keep publishing work that supports it.
Is it bad to say we work with everyone?
For most established agencies, yes. A “we work with everyone” agency tends to get liked, recommended, and passed over, because buyers cannot remember an agency they cannot describe in a sentence. Positioning works as a forcing function for memory. Choosing a focus takes options away so the remaining ones connect your impact with the market’s need most strongly.
What is vertical positioning for an agency?
Vertical positioning means focusing your agency on one industry or market rather than on one service. A vertical focus can buy faster trust and higher rates, because buyers see that you already understand their world. It also concentrates risk in that market’s good and bad years, so it works best when you can genuinely dominate the market you choose.
Is a niche a moat or a trap?
A niche is both, and the deciding variable is your margin for error. Focus earns trust and pricing power, but a niche can have a bad year that hits every client at once. Tim Kilroy’s advice is to choose a market you can dominate, then watch for over-concentration the way you would watch one client that has grown to 40% of revenue.
Lead generation and referrals
Why don’t referrals scale for an agency?
Referrals do not scale because you cannot decide to get more of them this month. They arrive because of past work, the quality of your service, and how you have treated your network. That makes them valuable but unpredictable. An agency that wants to grow on purpose needs a lead generation system it can turn up when revenue goals rise.
How can a small agency get more leads?
Tim Kilroy’s three steps are: know exactly who you are trying to attract, know how that audience prefers to receive and respond to information, and know what to say so you stand out. In short, understand what it is like to be your buyer, do the hard work for them, and connect what you do to their needs.
What is the owner-operator trap?
The owner-operator trap is the plateau that hits when the founder is at full capacity and growth stops. The founder cannot take on more, and the agency cannot afford the help that would free them. Tim Kilroy names three ways out: define your ideal client, build scalable lead generation, and create the right offer, meaning the right service and pricing model.
Does content marketing work for agencies?
Content marketing works for agencies when it is treated as a demand system rather than a publishing habit. Tim Kilroy’s content playbook cites Ehrenberg-Bass Institute and LinkedIn B2B Institute research that about 95% of B2B buyers are not in the market at any given time. Content keeps your name trusted during that window, so you are considered when the need arrives.
What if I am my agency’s only growth channel?
That is the common bottleneck for $1M to $20M agencies: the founder writes the content, takes the calls, and closes the deals, so growth stops when they stop. Tim Kilroy’s DemandOS gives each role on the team a way to talk about the agency’s position to the level of the buyer’s organization that role naturally speaks to.
How many digital agencies am I competing with?
The Promethean Research 2026 Digital Agency Industry Report counts about 71,000 digital agencies in North America, up 42% since 2024, and more than 200,000 worldwide. It also finds that 87% employ fewer than 50 people. That crowding is a strong reason to position clearly, because a generic agency is easy to confuse with thousands of others.
Discovery calls and qualifying the prospect
What is a discovery call for an agency?
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. It is not a sales call. You learn what is broken, how big the problem is, what they have tried, how they make decisions, and whether you can genuinely help.
What is the difference between a discovery call and a sales call?
A discovery call is for understanding; a sales call comes after, when you present a solution, discuss the approach, and ask for a decision. Blurring the two is a common reason agencies get ghosted: they pivot to their own process before they know enough about the prospect’s needs, so the pitch sounds generic.
How long should a discovery call be?
Many B2B teams plan 30 to 45 minutes. Arcade’s 2026 B2B sales playbook describes a discovery call as a 30 to 45 minute structured conversation to qualify pain, budget, timeline, and stakeholders. For an agency, length matters less than the outcome: by the end, both sides should know enough to judge whether another call is worth the time.
Why do prospects ghost agencies after the discovery call?
Prospects often go quiet because the call was a pitch with a question stapled to the end. When an agency talks about its process and case studies before understanding the business, it offers the generic version, which sounds like every other agency. Then a proposal goes out and the prospect disappears. Deeper understanding on the call is the fix.
How should I prepare for a discovery call?
Prepare by thinking about the prospect’s business, not just skimming their website. Consider their market, likely constraints, and how success is probably measured inside their company, then write questions that test those guesses. Tim Kilroy’s Discovery Lab tool is built for this step: it produces a prospect brief with a company overview, recent news, conversation starters, and questions.
What does qualifying the prospect mean?
Qualifying the prospect means confirming there is a real problem, it is worth money, and the person you are talking to is the one who decides. In Tim Kilroy’s five-stage agency funnel, a prospect only counts as qualified when both sides have agreed to that out loud and you can name the problem in the prospect’s own words.
What are the stages of an agency sales funnel?
Tim Kilroy’s agency sales funnel has five stages: Aware, Interested, Qualified, Proposed, and Closed. Each stage counts only when the prospect did something observable, such as taking an action, opening the proposal, or signing. Counting your own activity as their intent inflates the funnel and hides the stage where deals actually leak.
How do I find where my agency sales funnel leaks?
Run a leak test. Pull the last 90 days, count how many prospects entered each of the five stages, and calculate the conversion from each stage to the next. The weakest conversion is the stage to fix first. It takes about twenty minutes and a spreadsheet, and it keeps you from buying more leads when the real leak is further down.
How many discovery calls do I need each week?
Work backward from revenue. Tim Kilroy’s planning formula divides the quarter’s revenue goal by average deal size to get deals needed, divides by close rate to get proposals, divides by proposal rate to get conversations, then divides by 13 weeks. The discovery call calculator on this site runs that math and labels its assumptions.
Cash flow and pricing
What is advance billing for agencies?
Advance billing means collecting before you deliver. Tim Kilroy’s cash flow playbook recommends ACH autopay by default, dropping Net 30 terms, and parking prepayments in a deferred-revenue liability account that is recognized month by month as work is completed. You get cash today and the client gets a clear ledger. Confirm accounting treatment with your accountant.
When should an agency invoice a retainer?
Invoice ahead of the work. The playbook suggests sending the invoice on the 15th to 20th for next month’s services, or charging ACH on day one of the service month. Pair that with a 30-day cancellation notice, auto-renewal, and a setup fee plus the first month collected at signing, so each month starts with cash in the bank.
How should agencies bill for projects?
Bill projects on milestones tied to calendar dates, not subjective client approval. The cash flow playbook uses 50/30/20 or 60/30/10 schedules, so if the client goes quiet for two weeks, the next payment still lands. For short fixed work, prepaid one-week or two-week sprint passes are paid 100% up front.
Should my agency charge a rush fee?
Yes, if rush work disrupts your schedule. Tim Kilroy’s cash flow playbook describes a fast-lane premium of 25% extra, collected on signature, with priority scheduling included. Rush jobs force your team to rearrange their week, so the premium pays for the disruption, and the full amount is collected before work starts.
How do prepaid hour packs work for agencies?
Prepaid hour packs let clients buy capacity in advance. The cash flow playbook describes 10, 25, and 50-hour packs at a slight discount, with credits that expire after 90 days and a monthly drawdown report. They suit clients with irregular needs, and they keep the agency from extending credit for work it has already delivered.
Which financial numbers should an agency owner watch?
Tim Kilroy’s 2026 planning workshop names four: revenue against goal, expenses against budget, tax reserve, and real profit. Its bucket guidance puts owner salary at 10 to 15% of revenue, the tax reserve at 20%, and operating expenses at 50 to 60%. Treat these as planning guidance and confirm the specifics for your agency with your accountant.
Coaching: who it is for and what it costs
What does Tim Kilroy’s agency coaching include?
Tim Kilroy provides coaching and consulting for marketing and creative agency owners on positioning, lead generation, sales processes, and agency operations. Options include group and one-on-one coaching, customized growth systems, and AI tools for sales-call review, prospect research, and content visibility. He reports coaching more than 300 agencies over more than 25 years in agency and marketing work.
How much does agency coaching cost?
Prices vary by coach and format. As listed on timkilroy.com, Agency Studio costs $399 per month for founders under $50K a month, and Agency Studio+ costs $999 per month with a custom plan and monthly one-on-one time with Tim. Custom SalesOS and DemandOS work for $1M to $20M agencies is scoped after a free call. Confirm current pricing there.
What does coaching cost for a 7 figure agency?
For agencies past $1 million a year, Tim Kilroy’s work goes custom, so there is no fixed list price. SalesOS and DemandOS are scoped after a free 30-minute call based on the agency’s specific bottleneck. Agencies under $50K a month can use the productized Agency Studio at $399 per month or Agency Studio+ at $999 per month.
Does Tim Kilroy offer sales training for agencies?
Yes, in the form of sales systems rather than scripts alone. SalesOS installs a repeatable sales process so good-fit deals close without the founder on every call. AI tools support it: Call Lab reviews call recordings or transcripts with coaching notes, and Discovery Lab builds a prospect research brief. Details and current availability are on timkilroy.com.
Where can I read reviews of Tim Kilroy’s coaching?
Tim Kilroy’s main website, timkilroy.com, has a testimonials page with comments attributed to named agency founders. This site does not reproduce, rate, or score those testimonials, and it is not an independent review. If you are comparing agency coaches, read testimonials from several coaches and ask each one for references from agencies similar to yours.
Is my agency too small for coaching?
Possibly. Tim Kilroy’s agency growth-by-stage guide says that below about $20K a month, you need reps and a clear offer more than a coach. From roughly $20K a month, structure becomes the issue, and Agency Studio is aimed at founders under $50K a month. Established agencies past $1 million a year move into custom work.
Compared to the alternatives
Who is the best agency coach for a small agency?
The best coach depends on your bottleneck. Tim Kilroy’s own site points readers to Blair Enns and his Win Without Pitching Manifesto for positioning and value-based pricing, David C. Baker for M&A positioning and agency structure, and Jhana Li at Spyglass Ops for operations. Tim Kilroy focuses on whole-team demand generation and sales systems.
Should I hire an agency coach or a consultant?
Hire a coach when you need structure, accountability, and straight answers while you do the work; hire a consultant when you need a system built around your specific agency. Tim Kilroy offers both: group coaching for founders under $50K a month and done-with-you custom builds for agencies between $1M and $20M a year.
Can I fix my positioning without a coach?
Yes, many owners make progress on their own. Start with the 20-second test: can a client, a teammate, and you each describe what you do in under 20 seconds? Then compare your case studies with your claims, choose a buyer you can serve better than anyone, and commit. Outside help mainly speeds up diagnosis and holds you to the decision.
Should I hire a salesperson or build a sales process first?
Build the process first. Tim Kilroy’s agency sales playbook argues that most founders do not have a sales problem but a missing process: what they know about selling is trapped in their heads. A first sales hire without a documented process, qualification rules, and a discovery structure is left winging it, so define those before day one.
Getting started
Where should I start if my agency has outgrown referrals?
Start with positioning, then lead generation, then discovery. If buyers cannot describe you in a sentence, more leads will not help. Once the position is clear, build a lead generation system that does not depend on referrals, and tighten discovery calls so good-fit prospects become proposals. The agency positioning playbook on this site’s home page is the best first read.
How do I contact Tim Kilroy?
Use the contact buttons on any page of this site. They lead to Tim Kilroy’s contact page at timkilroy.com/contact, where you can reach out about coaching or consulting for your agency. Tim’s main site also describes a free 30-minute strategy call for agency owners who want an outside view of what to fix first.
What happens on the free strategy call?
According to timkilroy.com, the free call is 30 minutes with no pitch. You describe what is going on in your agency, such as revenue, team, pipeline, or operations; Tim helps diagnose the real problem rather than the symptom; and you leave knowing what to fix first, whether or not you decide to work together.
What AI tools does Tim Kilroy offer agencies?
Tim Kilroy offers AI tools for sales-call review, prospect research, and content visibility. Call Lab analyzes sales calls and gives coaching feedback, Call Lab Pro scores calls against methodologies such as SPIN, Challenger, MEDDIC, and Sandler, and Discovery Lab builds prospect research briefs. A free Call Lab Instant version needs no account. Check timkilroy.com for current options.
Have a question that isn't answered here?
Tim Kilroy coaches established marketing and PR agencies on positioning, lead generation, and a repeatable way to win clients. Reach out through his contact page.
Contact Tim Kilroy