Independent agencies are getting meetings. That’s the good news. The bad news is they’re not converting them—or when they do win, the work stays small and one-off. The pipeline looks healthy on paper. The revenue tells a different story.
On the inaugural episode of Consultant Corner—a new Indie Agency News show hosted by members of the IAN community—Chantal Sagnes brought together three consultants who each solve a different piece of the new business puzzle: Alex Gardner, who gets agencies into pitch rooms they thought were locked; Mark Duval, who builds the sales systems that turn meetings into revenue; and Jordan Warren, who gives indie founders the fractional C-suite leadership to stop negotiating contracts and start scaling.
The conversation that followed was a masterclass in everything that happens before, during and after the pitch—and why most agencies are focused on the wrong part.
More pitches won’t save you
Gardner’s first observation landed hard: agencies assume more pitches mean more business, but when you’re hungry, selectivity goes out the window. Brands are ghosting agencies, timelines are shifting mid-process, and too many shops are saying yes to opportunities they have no business pursuing.
“I try to get my clients to focus on the things that we think are going to be the right types of clients,” Gardner says. “It’s a quality, not quantity game.”
Duval pushed it further. The question isn’t whether you can get a meeting—it’s whether you’ve earned the right to have one. “We don’t need any more leads or meetings,” he says. “We need revenue. There’s a big difference between the two.”
Start with who already knows you
Warren—who founded three agencies (Eleven, Argonaut and TBD Advertising) before launching Agency C-Suite—offered a framework he calls concentric circles. The bullseye is your existing network: former clients, former colleagues, people who already know what you’re capable of and are likely to give you work without a pitch.
“If you haven’t looked at your LinkedIn, you can download all your contacts, sort them by company, and you’d be surprised at how many people you already know who work for companies you’re interested in,” Warren explains. “It seems so simple, and yet it’s something that we rarely do.”
The outer rings—PR, conferences, cold outreach—have higher reach but lower probability. Warren’s advice: exhaust the inner circles first.
Gardner added a step before any of that. “Make sure what you’re saying about the agency—who you are, what you do, why somebody should work with you—is clear,” she says. “We sometimes only have one chance to make a first impression.”
Chemistry still beats the comms plan
The panel agreed: agencies over-index on deliverables and under-index on connection. Gardner called it the razzle-dazzle problem in reverse—agencies so focused on ticking every box in the brief that they forget people buy people.
“I’ve seen pitch meetings won and lost off chemistry alone—even when a client loves someone else’s idea,” Gardner says.
Warren brought up a familiar absurdity: chemistry meetings with briefs attached. “Is that a chemistry meeting or an assignment?” He argued that the pitch process itself should function as onboarding—one-on-one lunches, role-to-role conversations, relationship-building that starts before anyone presents a deck.
“By the time we were in a pitch room, they already knew what we were going to pitch,” Warren says. “The onboarding kind of happened during the pitch process.”
Winning is the entry point, not the end point
Duval reframed the entire conversation around what happens after the win. Too many agencies treat new business as a one-and-done exercise—land the project, do the work, move on. There’s no strategy to expand the relationship.
“Great work earns trust, but strategy turns trust into revenue,” Duval says. “The same strategies and rigors that you put into play to win the business are what you need to expand it.”
Gardner calls this the gap between dream work and work that wins. She’s not advocating for safe, uninspired pitches—but she is advocating for patience. “You’re not going to make the riskiest, best work in year one with a relationship. Win it. Show them you can listen. Year two, three—you’re doing work you’re excited about.”
Warren pointed back to the best source of growth: the clients already in the building. He referenced consultant Howard Moggs’s philosophy of building a culture of growth across the entire agency. “It’s everyone’s responsibility to be thinking about how to grow the relationship,” Warren says. “A lot of that comes from understanding your client, their business, where they’re going—and anticipating what their future needs might be.”
Follow-through is the real differentiator
In a market where agencies often look, feel and deliver similar work, Duval argued the prospect experience itself becomes the differentiator—starting with the first email.
“If you tell a prospect you’re going to get them whatever deliverable it is Friday at noon, don’t deliver it Tuesday at four,” he says. “That sets the tone right then and there for what it’s going to be like to work with you.”
Sagnes connected this to onboarding: the moment the pitch theater ends and the day-to-day begins is where agencies either prove or disprove everything they promised. Everyone—account leads, strategists, creatives—should have a counterpart on the client side. The contact strategy can’t live solely with the new business lead or the CEO.
New business is everyone’s job (but not the same job)
Gardner offered a nuance that’s easy to miss: new business is everyone’s business, but not everyone does it the same way. Some people thrive at conferences and networking. Others are better suited to writing op-eds or building relationships with pitch consultants. The job of leadership is to identify those strengths and create space for each person to prospect authentically.
“Identifying the leadership strengths and weaknesses—where they feel comfortable—so they can organically prospect and network in a way that feels authentic to them is the best way to help everyone feel like new business is their business too,” Gardner says.
Duval flagged a gap that runs beneath it all: the disconnect between positioning and pipeline. Before any outbound happens, the foundational work has to be done—identifying the ideal client profile, confirming relevance, and establishing a right to win. Without that alignment, agencies are hunting without a map.
Stop treating sales like a special event
The panel’s closing argument came down to consistency. Duval named the problem directly: agencies treat sales as episodic instead of operational. New business gets planned for Monday morning and abandoned by Monday afternoon when a client calls.
“What can I commit to on a daily, weekly basis? It may not be a lot, but do it consistently,” Duval says. “Lack of consistency is quite often the killer of any new business program.”
Warren offered a practical solution: fractional support. Founders don’t need to be the chief cook and bottle washer anymore. Fractional CEOs, CFOs and HR leads can absorb the operational load, freeing founders to focus on the two things that drive growth—doing the work they’re best at and building the pipeline.
Gardner agreed. The role of a new business lead or consultant isn’t to do the networking for the founders—it’s to organize, prompt and prepare them. “They should be pushing you to do that and giving you the tools to do it well when you don’t have the time,” she says.
Learn more
Comet Consulting
Alex Gardner LinkedIn
The Duval Partnership
Mark Duval LinkedIn
Agency C-Suite
Jordan Warren LinkedIn
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