FAQ
Straight answers to 44 questions agency founders ask about sales process consulting, discovery calls, follow-up, closing, and agency rates. Each answer starts with the direct answer, then the supporting facts.
Published by Tim KilroyLast updated: November 2026
Sales process consulting is outside help that turns how a business sells into a documented routine. For a founder-led agency, it writes down the stages, the discovery questions, the follow-up, and the closing rules, so the team can sell without the founder on every call. The full answer is the first question below.
Sales process consulting is outside help that turns how a business sells into a documented, repeatable routine. For agencies, that usually means writing down the stages from first conversation to signature, the questions asked in discovery, the follow-up after each call, and the rules for moving a deal forward, so the team can sell without the founder on every call.
A sales process is the sequence of stages your deals move through; a sales methodology is the style of conversation used inside those stages. The process says what happens next and when a deal counts as qualified. Methodologies such as SPIN, Challenger, MEDDIC, or Sandler shape how you ask questions and handle objections. An agency needs the process first, because a methodology has nowhere to live without one.
A standard sales process moves a buyer from awareness to a signed agreement through a fixed set of stages. Common versions run seven steps: product knowledge, buyer persona, prospecting, qualification and discovery, the pitch, negotiation, and closing. For agencies, Tim Kilroy uses five stages: aware, interested, qualified, proposed, and closed, each with a clear rule for when a prospect counts.
There is no single official list, but most models group selling into three phases: before the conversation, during it, and after it. On this site those map to three routines: discovery, where you understand the problem; follow-up, where you recap and guide the prospect past friction; and closing, where a written proposal becomes a signed agreement.
An agency sales process is the documented path a marketing, creative, design, or development agency uses to turn a conversation into a signed client. It covers prospecting, discovery, qualification, proposal, follow-up, and close, with clear exit rules at each stage. In a founder-led agency, its main job is to move selling knowledge out of the founder's head so a team can run it.
Sales agencies sell on behalf of other companies. Depending on the firm, they provide outsourced sales development reps who prospect and book meetings, account executives who run deals, or a full outsourced sales team. They add selling capacity. They do not usually write the agency's own process, positioning, or discovery routine, which is why many agencies document their process before outsourcing any part of it.
A sales agent finds potential buyers, learns what they need, presents a fit, and moves them toward a purchase, usually paid through salary, commission, or both. In an agency, the closest equivalent is a business development lead. Tim Kilroy's guidance on a first agency sales hire is that they need a documented process before day one, or they inherit guesswork instead of a system.
Costs vary by depth. On Tim Kilroy's main site, Agency Studio group coaching is listed at $399 a month and Agency Studio+ at $999 a month with a custom plan and monthly one-on-one time. The custom SalesOS build for agencies from $1M to $20M is scoped after an initial conversation, so no public price is listed. The guides and templates on this site are free.
Set agency rates from the outcome you create and the capacity you reserve, not from hours alone. Tim Kilroy's cash flow guidance suggests capacity-based language, such as reserving a pod of three specialists for up to forty hours a month and collecting in advance. When a prospect cannot see the specific change you create, the only thing left to compare is your rate.
Agencies lose on price when they sell effort while the buyer pays for an outcome. If a prospect cannot see the specific change you will create, the rate becomes the only point of comparison. 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.
Yes, in Tim Kilroy's view agencies should collect before they deliver. His cash flow playbook suggests invoicing on the 15th to 20th for next month's services, or charging ACH on day one of the service month, with a thirty-day cancellation notice and auto-renewal. Prepayments sit in a deferred-revenue liability account and are recognized month by month as work is completed.
Tie project payments to calendar dates rather than client approvals. Tim Kilroy's playbook suggests a 50/30/20 or 60/30/10 schedule, so the next payment still lands if the client goes quiet for two weeks. For short fixed-scope work, prepaid one-week or two-week sprints paid in full up front remove collection risk, and rush work can carry a 25 percent premium collected on signature.
Sales agent pay varies widely by industry, region, and how much of it is commission. Many roles combine a base salary with commission, so total earnings can land far above or below the base. This site does not publish salary data; for current figures, check the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics Occupational Outlook Handbook for the specific sales occupation you have in mind.
Most agency discovery calls run 30 to 60 minutes. Casey Stillman's agency sales process describes a 20 to 30 minute introductory conversation followed by a 45 to 60 minute discovery meeting. Tim Kilroy's own strategy calls are set at 30 minutes. The right length is whatever lets both sides decide whether a second conversation is worth the time.
Ask questions that reveal the problem, its cost, and who decides. Useful ones: What prompted this conversation now? What have you already tried? What happens if nothing changes this quarter? How will you measure success? Who else weighs in? The goal, in Tim Kilroy's framing, is to understand the problem well enough to decide whether a next step makes sense, not to pitch.
Qualify a prospect by confirming, out loud and together, that there is a real problem, that solving it is worth money, and that the person you are talking to decides or can get you to whoever does. In Tim Kilroy's five-stage funnel, a prospect only counts as qualified when you can name the problem in their own words.
Often more than most agencies send. Tim Kilroy's Follow-Up Playbook cites figures showing that 80 percent of sales require five or more follow-ups after the first meeting, while 44 percent of salespeople give up after one attempt. The practical takeaway is to plan a sequence of useful follow-ups in advance instead of improvising a single check-in.
A strong follow-up includes a recap of what the prospect said, a clear link between your offer and their situation, and a next step that helps them past whatever is slowing the decision. Tim Kilroy's playbook calls the first two parts Recap and Relevance. Recap their words, not your pitch, and skip the generic just-checking-in note.
Run the leak test. Pull the last 90 days, count how many prospects entered each stage (aware, interested, qualified, proposed, closed), then calculate the conversion from each stage to the next. The stage with the steepest drop is your leak. Fix that one stage before buying more leads, because more volume poured into a leaky stage just leaks faster.
Work it backward from revenue. Divide your quarterly revenue goal by your average deal size to get deals needed, divide by your close rate to get proposals, divide by your proposal rate to get conversations, then divide by 13 weeks. The pipeline math calculator on the templates page runs this for you and labels every assumption.
There is no single agreed definition of the 3 3 3 rule in sales; different trainers use the name for different habits, such as three touches across three channels or three questions before three minutes of pitching. Treat it as a memory aid rather than a standard. What matters more is a defined follow-up sequence your whole team uses the same way.
This site is for founders of digital agencies at roughly $1M to $5M in revenue who still run most sales themselves and want a clearer sales process. That includes digital marketing, creative, design, development, and advertising agencies. If your agency is under about $20K a month, Tim Kilroy's advice is to get reps and a clear offer first.
A small agency needs a simple one sooner than it thinks. Below about $20K a month, Tim Kilroy's guidance is that reps and a clear offer matter most. From there, structure becomes the constraint, because every deal still runs through the founder. A one-page list of stages with exit rules is enough to start, and it grows with the agency.
Yes. The stages are the same for a digital marketing agency sales process, a creative agency sales process, or a design agency sales process: aware, interested, qualified, proposed, closed. What changes is the discovery questions and the proposal format. Creative and design work often needs more time defining scope, while performance marketing discovery leans on numbers the client already tracks.
It can, once your selling knowledge is written down and tested. Tim Kilroy calls the founder's instinct for deals Founder Magic and argues the fix is building structures around it: documented stages, discovery questions, follow-up templates, and proposal rules. Prove it by letting a teammate run a deal end to end while you observe, before you step away.
Hire after the process exists, not instead of it. Tim Kilroy's view is that a first agency sales hire needs documented stages, discovery questions, qualification rules, and proof that the process works before day one. Otherwise the new hire inherits guesswork, and months later you are judging a person when the real problem was the missing system.
It can be. Sales roles involve frequent rejection, pressure from targets, and pay that may depend on results. A clear process makes it easier, because the rep knows what each stage requires and when to move on. For agency founders, the hard part is usually the time selling takes away from running the business, not the conversations themselves.
A sales coach improves how a person sells; a sales process consultant improves the system everyone sells inside. If one strong seller closes well but nobody else can, the gap is process. If the process exists but calls go badly, coaching helps. Many founder-led agencies at $1M to $5M need the process first, then coaching on top of it.
Outsourced SDR firms add prospecting volume and book meetings, which helps once your later stages convert. If discovery, follow-up, or proposals leak, more meetings mean more leaks. Run the leak test first. If the top of the funnel is the only weak stage, outsourcing prospecting can make sense. If not, fix the process before paying for volume.
Usually not on its own. Tim Kilroy's own stage guide positions his Agency Studio group program for agencies under $50K a month and says that past $1M a year the work goes custom, because the bottleneck becomes specific to your agency. Group coaching can still help with thinking and accountability, but expect to need custom process work as well.
Yes, many founders start that way. The templates on this site cover discovery prep, discovery questions, follow-up emails, stage exit rules, and pipeline math. Templates work when you use them on every deal and review the numbers each month. They fall short when the real issue is positioning, because no template fixes an offer the market cannot describe.
Tim Kilroy points to several specialists by bottleneck. For positioning and value-based pricing, Blair Enns wrote the Win Without Pitching Manifesto. For agency structure and M&A positioning, David C. Baker. For operations and delivery efficiency, Jhana Li at Spyglass Ops. If your sales process works but the offer is unclear, one of those may be the better first stop.
Some people do, typically in senior roles with large deal sizes and commission-heavy pay, but it is far from typical. For agency founders, the more useful question is how much revenue the agency can close without the founder on every call. A documented sales process is what lets that number grow past one person's calendar.
Start by writing down your last three wins: who they were, what they said on the first call, what you sent afterward, and what made them sign. Patterns appear quickly. Turn them into five stages with a rule for when a deal counts in each, then use the discovery and follow-up templates on the next real deal.
Measure conversion between stages over the last 90 days. Count prospects who became interested, qualified, proposed, and closed, then calculate each step's rate. In Tim Kilroy's view, half of all funnel inflation comes from counting your own activity as the prospect's intent, so only count a stage when the prospect did something observable.
It depends on how much already exists and how often you sell. Founders quoted on Tim Kilroy's main site describe changes within 10 weeks to 3 months, such as one agency going from 7 to 17 clients in 10 weeks with better scripts and close rates. Those are individual reports, not guarantees. A first written draft can take a single afternoon.
The templates page includes a discovery prep sheet, a discovery question list, a three-part follow-up email, stage exit rules for a five-stage funnel, a 90-day leak test sheet, and a pipeline math calculator. All are free, readable on the page without signing up, and written for founder-led agencies that want a clearer sales process.
No. This site publishes guides and templates only, with no booking, forms, or accounts. Tim Kilroy describes his coaching and custom sales systems on his main website, timkilroy.com, where you can read about Agency Studio, SalesOS, and his other work and decide whether any of it fits your agency.
Usually because the follow-up was late, generic, or missing a clear next step. Tim Kilroy's view is that most agency sales are lost after the call rather than on it. A same-day recap in the prospect's own words, tied to their situation, with a specific next step, protects the trust you built during the conversation.
Because talking about your agency feels productive and silence feels risky. Tim Kilroy's rule is that a discovery call is not a sales call: you are there to understand the problem, not to run the deck. Prepare questions in advance, cap your own talking, and end by agreeing whether a second conversation makes sense for both sides.
Referrals are a great source until the month they do not show up. Tim Kilroy cites RSW/US research showing 75 percent of agencies name referrals as their top new-business source, while 93 percent say their growth engine is not strong enough. A documented sales process plus a steady prospecting routine reduces dependence on a single channel.
Equip your champion to sell for you. Send a short written summary they can forward: the problem in their words, the outcome you will create, the scope, the price, and the decision timeline. If your contact cannot explain your proposal to their boss in a few sentences, the deal will stall in a meeting you are not in.
Proposals stall when they arrive before the problem is agreed, when nobody scheduled a review, or when the decision maker was never in the conversation. Casey Stillman's agency process schedules a 45 to 60 minute proposal review meeting instead of emailing the document cold. In Tim Kilroy's funnel, a proposal only counts once the prospect has opened it.
Good deals turn into bad clients when what was promised in sales never reaches the delivery team. Fix it with a written handoff: the client's goals in their words, scope, success measures, stakeholders, and anything promised verbally. Hold a short internal handoff meeting before kickoff so delivery hears it directly instead of rediscovering it later.
Want the full routines behind these answers? Read the discovery call guide, follow-up guide, and closing guide.
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