How to Build an Agency Sales Process Before You Hire

If you hire a developer, your systems are already in place. You've got how your team reviews each other's code. All you have to do is give them access to the code, and then they go.

Hiring a salesperson without a sales process is like hiring a developer and saying, here's a computer, make web stuff. That's not how you onboard developers. Salespeople don't arrive with a process.

A lot of agencies come to me and say, I need more sales. I ask, do you need more clients, or are you having trouble closing what you already have? They're always like, I need more clients. And I'm like, well, that's not a sales problem.

I tell them, great. You want more planes to land at your airport. Let's take a look at the airport first. Then you look at the airport, and you're like, this can't handle more planes. Even if we got more planes, it would just crumble.

Key Takeaways

• You can't hire a salesperson and not have a sales process.
• A deal becomes a deal once it has two of three things figured out: a budget, a timeline and a defined project.
• We get rid of deals that stall in the columns, because they just are distractions.
• Start to move new deals into a new process as they come in.

What is an agency sales process?

An agency sales process is a shared definition of the stages a deal moves through, what a deal needs at each stage, and who owns it.

The CRM that you use doesn't really matter. It's a tool. It's more how you use it. What's important is each of the stages on the board, and how we define them.

As we grow as a business and new people come into this process, everybody knows what it means when something is at a certain stage and what that thing needs at that stage.

Each stage needs an owner, because what you can't do is scale everybody doing everything. The accountability changes as a deal moves along, and that's important, because that's where we start to see an actual forecast of revenue.

What are the stages of an agency sales process?

The first column is interest. All we know is that a prospect has shown interest.

Next is qualified lead. A qualified lead usually matches two out of three qualifications: they have a budget, they have a timeline, and they actually have a project, something defined. Otherwise, it stays in the first column. If there's nothing driving it, if there's no timeline, it'll just hang out forever.

You want to put a price on everything as fast as possible, especially in qualified lead, even if it's just a guess. If we can get an anchor to a price really fast in the first conversation, it makes it so much easier to keep the conversation going.

There's a big difference between a prospect agreeing to a call and the call actually happening.

After that, I think of the stages as modes, and each one has different activities. First we're in negotiation mode. Then we're in information mode, giving them all the information they need. Then we've already figured it out: we have a cost, a timeline and a scope, so why aren't you signing, and what's wrong?

It's not uncommon for deals to jump around and even go backwards sometimes. That's why we're tracking everything.

The last stage is passing the deal to delivery. Sales puts together documentation with the historical record of what happened during the sale and what expectations were set. We had a rule: sales can't pass a deal to delivery without that document. The last thing we want is to have the client repeat information.

Where do agency deals stall?

The reason people aren't getting back to us is something internal going on their side. Before they reply to you, they've got to talk to somebody else, and that person's not available.

When we keep sending emails saying, hey, how about now? How about now? It can make people less interested in moving forward. Or they assume you're always going to be there anyway, so they can just wait till they're ready. Every outreach should be something of value.

If a prospect has stopped responding to you, something that's always worked for me is to completely change the conversation. Stop asking them the same question over and over again. The best question I've learned to ask is, why is now the time to invest in that?

I recall a pitch where the main contact was genuinely excited and almost ready to sign on the dotted line. Before you know it, procurement got involved, and then finance took over. By the time legal stepped in, what had begun as a quick, easy deal turned into weeks of additional calls and paperwork.

I worked with a design agency that thought their proposals were the problem. They kept losing late-stage deals and assumed the fix was better decks. The issue was a lack of trust before the proposal ever hit the table.

Why build the process before you hire?

If your sales process is you and your partner getting together to talk about what you should charge and how you should scope it, you can't just hand that off to a salesperson. That's not a process. I learned that lesson because I hired a salesperson at an agency I ran.

An owner told me they'd been thinking about hiring a salesperson. I said that's the worst decision you could make, because you don't even have a sales process. You don't even have a CRM. What is that person going to do? They said the new hire would cold call and go on LinkedIn.

The proper way to bring in a salesperson is to have the tools and the processes in place and say, so you're our new salesperson. This is our sales process. This is what you need to follow. If you have ideas on how to improve it, let's talk about it.

In SparkToro's 2024 survey of 612 agency owners and consultants, 66 percent said existing and past clients were their top source of referrals for new business. If that's where your work comes from, you haven't focused on a sales process, because the work just kept rolling in. Right until it doesn't.

When you get to the hire itself, When Should an Agency Hire Its First Salesperson? covers readiness, the role and pay. If you're weighing a training course or a coach instead, Sales Coaching for Agency Owners covers the options.

How do you build an agency sales process from the deals you already have?

I'd like to just start to move new deals into a new process as they come in, and leave what you've got where it is. It's an on-ramp. The goal is to set some good pylons in the bedrock that we can build on over time.

First things first, there should be a weekly sales meeting. Each week we're working this board. There should be nothing on it unless it's actionable or being worked. Otherwise, it's a distraction.

You need to know what percentage of your qualified leads are closing, because then you'll know where on the scale to put your thumb. Is it on the pricing scale? Is it on the quality scale?

Instead of anecdotal information, you can see if you're losing on price regularly. If you are, go back and check your estimation process.

Then you can look at it and ask, should I hire? Should I not hire? You start to get better metrics that way.

How does Schmidt Consulting Group help an agency owner build a sales process?

Schmidt Consulting Group works with founder-led agencies and professional services firms on positioning, pricing and new business.

Mentorship is twice-monthly counsel for founders on pricing, hiring, clients and direction. You set the agenda, and your team does the work.

Advisory is a weekly operating rhythm for growth: a written plan, one priority at a time, and a review of results every week.

You'll hear the fee on our first call.