Agency Owners, Are Your Kids Still Barefoot?

Why agencies need to stop treating their own growth like someone else’s problem

Back in 2017, I wrote “Are You Advertising Your Ad Agency?” for Forbes as a member of the invite-only Young Entrepreneur Council (YEC). In 2019, I contributed to John Hall’s “How Marketing Agencies Can Boost Their Own Marketing”.

I’ve been trying to get agencies to market themselves for a long time. In 2013, I started Bull & Beard, an agency growth consulting firm. In 2019, I launched Agency Match, a B2B matchmaking service and platform.

And judging by what I still see, the cobbler’s kids still need a shoe allowance.

The irony didn’t escape me then, and it certainly doesn’t now.

Agencies spend their days telling clients to invest in positioning, build awareness, generate demand, nurture relationships, measure outcomes, and have patience with the sales cycle.

Then we turn around, look at our own new-business strategy, and say, “Well, most of our work comes from referrals.”

Which is wonderful. Referrals are earned, and they can be one of the healthiest sources of business.

But hope is not a pipeline stage. Neither is “a friend of a client knows a guy.” I’ve checked the CRM settings.

The cobbler’s kids have no shoes... Again

I’ve owned agencies, coached and advised agencies on new business, and worked as an agency search consultant and matchmaker. I’ve seen this pattern from just about every angle.

The agency does impressive work. Clients love the team. The referrals flow. Everyone is busy, and the founder is thrilled that they “haven’t had to do much marketing.”

Until a big account pauses, a project wraps, a budget disappears, or referrals slow down.

Suddenly, the agency needs more business. Immediately.

And because client work has always taken precedence, the agency’s own website is dated, its positioning could describe 40 competitors, the case studies are collecting dust, and the CRM is somewhere between an abandoned spreadsheet and a group hallucination.

The cobbler’s kids are barefoot. Again.

That’s not a criticism of agency owners from the outside. I’ve been one. I am one. Client deadlines are real. Payroll is real. It’s easy to let your own growth initiatives become the thing you’ll get to after this launch.

Funny how there’s always another launch.

Enter the mythical rainmaker

Eventually, the agency decides it needs a business development leader.

Not a strategy. Not a consistent marketing budget. Not a defined ideal client profile, differentiated positioning, usable case studies, or a functioning new-business playbook.

A person.

Preferably someone with an extraordinary network who can open doors on Monday, fill the pipeline by Wednesday, and close a six-figure engagement by Friday.

Compensation? Commission-only, of course. But hey, unlimited earning potential!

Y’all, “unlimited” sounds considerably less exciting when the starting number is zero.

To be clear, some independent commission-based arrangements work beautifully.

I’ve actually built a business around one.

With Bull & Beard and Agency Match, we maintained a vetted roster of more than 500 agencies and helped companies find the right agency partners. Our commission model was 15% of first-year gross revenue and 10% of second-year gross revenue on business we placed.

I understand the economics of referrals and agency matchmaking. I was even included in RSW/Agency Search's "The Most Complete List of Top Agency Search Consultants and Agency Search Firms".

And that’s precisely why the distinction matters.

A referral partnership is a channel. Business development leadership is a function.

A referral partner identifies and facilitates an opportunity under a defined commercial arrangement, generally with considerable independence. A dedicated business development leader has a much broader responsibility: understand the offer, improve the pitch, identify and qualify prospects, build relationships, manage a pipeline, coordinate the team, navigate procurement, and help close business.

Those are not identical jobs just because the compensation spreadsheet contains the word “commission.”

You can’t microwave a relationship

This gets even more important when the work being sold is worth five, six, or seven figures.

Agency engagements often involve multiple decision-makers, trust, timing, internal politics, and budget approvals. Larger companies, government agencies, and nonprofits may also have lengthy procurement processes. The right prospect may be interested today but unable to sign for months.

Sure, you can create urgency. You can ask good questions. You can move an opportunity forward. But you can’t make a client ready to buy simply because your agency needs the revenue. And pushing too hard often only pushes prospects away.

You certainly can’t turn a six-month relationship into a six-day one by sending “just circling back” seven times.

If that worked, we’d all be billionaires by lunch, and Outlook would need a trophy case.

Good business development takes judgment. It’s knowing when to challenge, when to follow up, when to show value, and when to shut up and give a serious prospect room to make a serious decision. Patience matters. So does knowing when to ask for the sale.

That work can produce results long before a contract is signed. A qualified pipeline, stronger proposals, better conversion data, and deeper relationships are real assets even before the checks clear.

Before you hire the rainmaker, build a playbook

When I advised agency owners who wanted a more predictable new-business pipeline, I started here:

1. Get painfully clear about who you serve. Define your ideal clients, their buying triggers, the problems you solve best, the budgets that make sense, and the opportunities you should decline. “Anyone who needs marketing” is not an ideal client profile.

2. Invest in your own marketing. Treat your agency like a real client. Give it a budget and a schedule. Assign roles and responsibilities so the work has an owner and the team is accountable. Publish useful thinking. Maintain a compelling website. Build case studies. Test channels. Develop partnerships. Don’t rely on word of mouth to do all the heavy lifting.

3. Make your proof easy to sell. Back clear offers with relevant case studies, credible testimonials, thoughtful proposals, and a point of view. A business development leader shouldn’t have to reverse-engineer the agency’s value proposition and proof points on the fly during intro calls.

4. Create a systematic sales process. Document how you qualify leads, who owns each phase, when leadership gets involved, how you build proposals, and how you maintain the CRM. “We’ll figure it out as we go” is not a playbook. It’s improv theater with invoices. Define the process, use it, and improve it as you learn. That gives you something you can scale and something that stays with the agency if your rainmaker leaves.

5. Fund the ramp and measure the right things. Budget for onboarding and the time it takes to build a productive pipeline. Early on, look at target-account coverage, qualified meetings, pipeline quality, proposal progression, and time spent at each stage. Closed revenue matters, but it can’t be the only measure of progress. Evaluate wins and losses against an honest understanding of your sales cycle.

If you need occasional introductions, build a compelling referral program with clear terms and aim to find a handful of referral partners to supplement your lead volume. If you need someone accountable for leading sustained, consistent growth, fund the role. Align compensation with the actual job, including a reasonable base or paid ramp, performance upside, and the support to succeed.

Strong business development professionals expect to be accountable for results. They also need the resources and time to produce them. Give them a ladder, remove the ceiling, and let them climb.

But don’t offer commission-only compensation and expect someone to build your entire growth function on their own dime. Put your money where your mouth is. It’s your business they’re helping grow, and your equity that benefits when they succeed.

Founder risk and outside-hire risk are not the same thing

I’m an entrepreneur. I’ve taken plenty of risks building businesses, and Amber and I are taking them again with Alto Ember.

But there’s a major difference between risking your own time and money to build an enterprise you own and asking someone else to fund the acquisition costs of a business in which they have no equity.

Founders retain the company, client relationships, recurring revenue, and long-term enterprise value. An outside business development professional typically does not.

That doesn’t mean every arrangement needs to look like a conventional salary. It means the risk, autonomy, work, and upside need to align.

And when an established agency refuses to invest in its own pipeline but expects a senior professional to build it from scratch with no guaranteed compensation, I have to wonder whether it’s really ready to hire that person.

In Sum

Can you imagine a prospect telling you and your agency: “Listen, we want a reliable growth engine. But we don’t want to pay for strategy, creative, media, research, or the first several months of work. We’ll pay you when and if the revenue arrives.”

Would you be motivated to close the deal?

You wouldn’t. Most agencies would recognize the problem with that brief immediately.

Why, then, do some apply the same logic to their own growth?

Referrals are valuable. Relationships are invaluable. Skilled business development professionals can make an enormous difference.

But none of them can substitute for an agency owner’s willingness to invest, build the system, and stay committed long enough to let it work.

Your agency deserves the same strategic discipline you sell to your clients.

Give it a plan. Give it a budget. Give it proof. Give it a process. Give the people responsible for growth a fair shot at succeeding.

The cobbler’s kids don’t need another motivational speech about the importance of footwear.

They need shoes.