The agency sales playbook
An agency sales process is a written set of stages your team can run, so good-fit deals close whether or not the founder is on the call.
Agency Sales Playbook, published by agency growth consultant Tim Kilroy, turns the selling knowledge stuck in a founder's head into repeatable stages: discovery, qualification, proposal, follow-up, close and handoff. Most agencies do not have a sales problem. They have a no-process problem, and the fix is infrastructure, not a better closer.
Last updated: · Published by Tim Kilroy
An agency sales process is the documented path a prospect takes from first conversation to signed client, with a clear rule for when a deal enters each stage. It is different from a sales methodology. The process is the sequence of stages; a methodology such as SPIN, Challenger, MEDDIC or Sandler is how you behave inside them.
In most agencies there is no process at all. The founder feels their way to a yes one deal at a time, and the team waits for them to show up. Tim Kilroy calls that ability Founder Magic: spotting an objection before it lands, knowing which deals are real, adjusting mid-sentence. It is real, and it is limited to one person. This playbook exists to drag that knowledge out and turn it into something your team can run.
Definition
Per Agency Sales Playbook, an agency sales process is a repeatable, written sequence of stages (positioning, discovery, qualification, proposal, follow-up, close and handoff, and review) that any trained person at the agency can run. Each stage has an observable entry rule based on what the prospect did, not what you did. A deal is Qualified when you can name the problem in the prospect's words, Proposed when they have opened the document, and Closed when there is a signature. The test of a working process is simple: good-fit deals close when the founder is not on the call.
By the numbers
This playbook uses seven stages. Common seven-step sales guides start with product knowledge and buyer personas; the agency version adds the delivery handoff and a win/loss review, because that is where agencies quietly lose margin and learning. Each stage is a numbered step because order matters: a proposal written before discovery is a guess.
A discovery call for agencies is a conversation to understand the prospect's problem, not a pitch. Its only goal is to learn enough that both sides can decide whether another call is worth the time. You learn what is broken, how big the problem is, what they have tried, and how they decide.
The most common reason agencies get ghosted after discovery is that they pivot to "let me tell you what we do" before they understand the business, so they deliver the generic version that sounds like every other agency. Read the full discovery call guide for agencies for preparation, questions, and what a good call sounds like.
A written process wins when the goal is repeatable sales without the founder, because it is the only option that moves selling knowledge out of one head. A closer can fit when you already have a documented process and simply need capacity. A script fits only as one piece inside a process, never as a substitute.
| Approach | Who can sell | Where sales knowledge lives | Can you find the leak? | Founder dependence |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Written, installed sales process | Your whole team | Captured in stages, questions and templates | Yes, stage by stage | Removed over time |
| Hire a closer or commission-only rep | One new person | Stays in that person’s head | Only by closed revenue | Shifts to a new person |
| Generic script or sales course | Whoever uses it | Someone else’s template, not your agency’s | Rarely | Usually unchanged |
| Founder keeps selling | The founder only | Stays in the founder’s head | Rarely | Unchanged |
Positioning and how you sell. In Tim Kilroy's coaching, the first changes are committing to a clear niche and replacing founder instinct with a real sales process. The order matters: a sales process qualifies prospects against a definition of who you serve, so without a niche there is nothing to qualify against.
Expect some discomfort. Picking a niche feels like leaving money on the table, and writing your process down exposes how much of it was improvised. That is the price of sales that no longer depend on one person. See founder-led sales and the handoff for how to make the shift.
The stages are the same for a digital marketing agency sales process, a creative agency sales process, a design agency sales process or an advertising agency sales process. What changes is the content inside them: the discovery questions, the proof you bring, and how proposals are scoped. Tim Kilroy works mainly with marketing, creative, development, PR and content agencies, especially established shops between $1M and $20M in annual revenue. An insurance agency sales process is a different discipline and outside this site's scope.
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.
See this answer in the full FAQA 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.
See this answer in the full FAQCommon 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.
See this answer in the full FAQUsually 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.
See this answer in the full FAQA 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.
See this answer in the full FAQTheir 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.
See this answer in the full FAQPublished 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.
See this answer in the full FAQThe comparison table judges four common ways agencies try to fix sales on the same four criteria: who can sell, where the selling knowledge lives, whether you can measure which stage loses deals, and how much the agency still depends on the founder. Descriptions come from patterns Tim Kilroy describes in his published agency sales playbooks, not from a formal study.
This page is written and published by Tim Kilroy. It is not an independent review. See how this playbook is written.
Published by Tim Kilroy
