Business Development for Founder-Led Agencies

Yes. We can start with the business development you're handling yourself. I review where your best clients came from and how you keep in touch with prospective clients. From there we decide what deserves regular attention and who can do the work.

Advisory provides a written plan and weekly working sessions while your team carries out the work. Fractional Partner brings SCG into the business to lead growth and marketing. Production is included where SCG runs the marketing function. We'll discuss the scope and price on an intro call.

Probably this work first. I've watched a few agencies fire and re-hire BD people two or three times before realizing it wasn't a hiring problem. The proposals don't carry without the founder's framing. The client still wants to hear it from the founder. Discovery without the founder turns into price-shopping. No BD hire can close on top of any of that, no matter how good they are. The BD person you have is usually the right person running on the wrong architecture. Fix the architecture first and see what they do with it.

Sales training assumes the architecture is right and the team needs better execution. This work assumes the architecture is broken and execution problems are a symptom. Different starting point, different work. Sales training has a place once the architecture is sound.

Pipeline doesn't snap. It compounds. The first new proposals using the new architecture usually go out in the first six to eight weeks. Referral flow takes longer because the description of what the agency does has to propagate through networks. Meaningful pipeline movement usually arrives in the second quarter.

Then we have a different conversation. Sharp positioning doesn't mean pipeline runs without the founder. It means the failure mode is somewhere else. The proposal templates can still depend on the founder's framing. The referral flow can still be trapped inside the founder's relationships. The BD role can still be undefined. I see agencies with strong positioning still run all their pipeline through the founder, because positioning fixes one input and pipeline architecture fixes a different one. They're co-active constraints, not stages of a build.

Inbound failure usually points at one of three things. The positioning was vague so the content didn't compound. The conversion path wasn't built for inbound prospects, so the fit-aligned ones bounced before they ever talked to anyone. Or the BD architecture couldn't carry an inbound prospect from form-fill to close without the founder. The fix depends on which one. The call is where we figure out whether your inbound problem is a positioning problem in disguise, a conversion-architecture problem, or a downstream BD problem.

AMI sells you better execution of the existing function. Outbound playbooks. Intro-call scripts. Peer-group accountability. You leave sharper at biz dev as it's currently structured at your agency. I do different work. Sales training does not fix the thing that matters: the trust runs through the founder. The proposals close because the founder wrote them. The referrals come because the founder asked someone for them. Training the BD person harder doesn't change any of that. Rebuilding what they're running on does. It's a different problem and a different fix.

Usually not. The BD hires I've worked with through this rebuild have usually been the most relieved when it lands. They knew the function they were trying to run wasn't built for anyone but the founder, and they couldn't say that to you. Once the architecture supports them, the same person who looked like a hiring mistake six months ago starts running discovery and closing.

Three things. Referrals that propagate beyond the founder's network because the description of what the agency does is portable. Prospects who arrive pre-qualified because the content and the discovery process do the filtering. Close motion that shortens because the proposal architecture survives without the founder's framing. The pipeline starts adding deals that don't require founder rescue, and the deals compound over quarters because the BD function runs without the founder.

Pipeline can be the visible failure while positioning is the underlying constraint, and vice versa. If prospects don't know what the agency is for, no pipeline architecture closes them. They price-shop instead of fit-check. If pricing leaks margin on every won deal, no pipeline volume fixes the P&L. The three are co-active failure modes, not stages. On the call we figure out which one is dominant right now. The diagnostic frame is at the four shapes a leak takes.

This is the pipeline pillar. There are three others: positioning, pricing, and AI capacity. If you're not sure which one is the dominant constraint right now, the diagnostic page is here.

Not always. Under $500K and the problem is volume, a BD resource or referral reactivation push may move faster. If the pipeline problem is really a positioning problem in disguise, you do. This buyer's guide to agency growth consultants helps you figure out which it is.

It depends on where you are. If your positioning is muddy, start with David C. Baker for positioning and valuation or Blair Enns for pricing and the sale itself. If the model is solid but pipeline is thin and founder-dependent, that's where Schmidt Consulting Group comes in. Kurt Schmidt and his team build the system end to end and run it with you, so the pipeline is producing deals while the work is happening. AMI and Jason Swenk are a good call if you want peer community and systems alongside the coaching.

You build an outbound system that runs on process rather than personality. Schmidt Consulting Group specializes in this. Kurt Schmidt works with agency founders to map the actual buyer, build the targeting and outreach infrastructure, and run the pipeline until it produces results. The founder stays in the picture for late-stage deals, but the early funnel stops requiring their daily attention. That's the difference between a founder with a pipeline and a founder who is the pipeline.

When buyers struggle to see why they should choose your agency, start with Agency Positioning. We can help through Advisory when your team will implement the plan, or Fractional Partner when SCG will lead the work.

Six stages cover it for the typical agency: a fit check, discovery, shaping, the proposal, the close, and the handoff to delivery. What makes it work is giving each stage an exit condition somebody else could verify by reading the notes. I wrote the whole thing up, including the exit condition for each stage and how to know when the process itself is what's holding you back, in the agency sales process guide.

Pipeline work runs as a flat monthly retainer, scoped to how much we take on. Advisory gives you the plan and a weekly cadence to work against. Fractional Partner means the lists, sequences, and routing get built alongside your team. You get a clear number on the intro call, before any commitment.