I Built an Agency on Referrals. Then I Had to Get Over My Fear of Outbound Sales.

For years, Anvil grew the way many agency founders dream about: good work, satisfied clients, referrals, speaking, public relations and relationships. We were fortunate to have a reputation that did much of the heavy lifting. For roughly the first 13 years, we didn't need a dedicated salesperson.

It worked. Until I had to admit something: a reputation is not the same as a predictable new-business process.

I also had a personal complication. I disliked outbound prospecting. I liked marketing, educating people and building relationships. I liked the idea of someone finding our work and deciding to call. Reaching out cold was considerably less appealing.

In 2022, I wrote for Inc. about the nudge my advisory board gave me several years earlier to get over my reluctance and start prospecting on LinkedIn. It was useful advice, partly because it addressed a blind spot I had spent a long time justifying.

Referrals are wonderful. They're also somebody else's calendar.

A referred prospect arrives with an introduction and a measure of trust. That's a major advantage. It can shorten the awkward early stages of a relationship and help the buyer understand what makes the agency different.

But you can't schedule the next referral. Even a generous network sends business when its timing and circumstances line up, not necessarily when your delivery team has capacity or when you need replacement revenue.

In an agency with meaningful fixed costs, that uncertainty matters. A couple of good months can conceal a thin pipeline. The temptation then is to chase anything that moves when a large project ends.

The answer isn't to abandon referrals. It's to give new-business development the same thoughtfulness you give client work.

The other mistake: selling harder than you can deliver

I have worked in agencies where aggressive new-business targets created tension with client service. A salesperson can promise an exciting future while the delivery team struggles with what has already been sold.

A full pipeline doesn't compensate for clients leaving through the back door. And one dramatic new-business win isn't worth much if the agency can't meet the expectations it creates.

I believe the healthier approach combines client retention and expansion with a deliberate process for attracting the right new accounts. The emphasis is on right. More prospects are not automatically better prospects.

Start by defining a useful target: What kind of client benefits most from your expertise? What size and problem can you serve well? Which engagements usually retain and expand? Which ones consume senior attention for little return?

Without an answer, outbound becomes a numbers game that may fill the calendar without improving the business.

Thought leadership isn't an instant lead machine

I speak, write and connect people because I genuinely enjoy sharing ideas and building communities. Those activities also helped establish credibility over my career. But it would be misleading to say one article reliably produces three clients, or a conference talk automatically fills a pipeline.

Good content creates opportunities for a buyer to understand how you think. It works best when the subject connects to a problem that buyer is already trying to solve. It also needs consistency, distribution and a sensible way to continue the conversation.

One well-researched article that attracts the right agency owner may be worth more than ten articles built to chase traffic from readers who will never need your help.

That applies to this website as much as it applied to my agency.

The new-business system I'd ask an owner to examine

If an agency founder told me, "We mostly grow by word of mouth and want a more dependable pipeline," I would start with four habits:

Name the buyer. Not "marketing managers." Pick the business type, problem, budget context and reason the agency is credible. A clear target makes every later decision easier.

Build a small, relevant prospect universe. Start with companies and contacts you can genuinely help. Research before outreach. Specificity beats a massive spreadsheet full of people who never asked to hear from you.

Give people a reason to engage. Share an observation, a useful resource or a thoughtful question. If the message could be sent unchanged to five hundred companies, it is probably not much of an introduction.

Measure progression, not activity. Track qualified conversations, proposals that reflect real needs, win rates and the health of the clients you subsequently serve. Ten thousand automated messages and no useful relationships is not success.

This isn't a claim that Anvil used precisely this four-step model. It's the test I would apply now, having experienced both the upsides and the blind spots of referral-driven growth.

Founders have to make sales less personal

One reason outbound was uncomfortable for me was that it felt like an interruption rather than a natural extension of my strengths. Reframing the activity helped: the objective wasn't to persuade strangers to buy something they didn't need. It was to identify people with a relevant problem and establish whether a conversation could help.

That still requires discipline. An owner who dislikes prospecting may keep delegating the uncomfortable part without ever defining the strategy. A founder who enjoys it too much may become the bottleneck for every deal.

A strong new-business operation should ultimately survive the owner's holiday, not depend on a heroic sprint whenever revenue dips.

Build a pipeline you would be proud to deliver

The most useful question isn't "How many leads can we generate?" It's "Can we reliably attract the kinds of clients our team does its best work for?"

If the answer is yes, referrals become an advantage rather than a dependency. Thought leadership becomes a credibility asset rather than a vanity project. And the sales process begins to reinforce the quality of the business instead of pulling against it.

I wish I'd tackled that distinction earlier.

If your agency has a great reputation but an unpredictable pipeline, bring the current sources, win rates and client mix to an agency-founder advisory session. That's a more productive starting point than buying another lead list.