Why you may be struggling to grow
Do any of the following resonate with you?
If any do, don't worry, you are not alone. But challenges like this can hold back the potential growth of your agency.
Read on to find out why and what you can do about them.
1. You rely on referral or founder selling to win business
Why that's a problem
Referrals can be great – they come from a trusted source, cost less to acquire, are easier to convert and are driven by your reputation. The problem is, you have no control over when they come in or what type of business they attract. Your brand isn’t being developed, the market doesn’t know you exist and you are absent from broader conversations.
The same goes for founder sales. If the founder is the only one selling, then agency growth is always going to be limited by their singular expertise and perspective.
Both keep you trapped in one place because you are limited to existing networks, with people who only know you for one thing, making it hard for you to grow and scale. And if key people leave, they might take that business with them.
Referrals can be one source of business, but they shouldn’t fuel your entire commercial engine.
What you can do about it: Build brand awareness by engaging consistently with the market
Only around 5% of your prospects has an immediate need for your service. The other 95% may have a need sometime in the future. By engaging consistently with the whole of the market across multiple channels, you create the best opportunity to be top of mind when a need does arise.
You know that building a brand is more than just creating a logo and an identity. It’s the reason many insights agencies exist – to help their clients build strong brands. And yet, so often, agencies fail to apply their own knowledge and expertise to their own agency. A strong brand inspires confidence in clients that you know what you are doing and that you are going to help them make better business decisions.
If you are relying on your founder being in the room, you are not building your brand beyond that person. You need to:
2. You position yourself as a full-service agency and find it hard to describe why you are different
Why that’s a problem
Because you sound the same as everybody else!
A lot of agencies describe themselves in the same way – we are a full-service, strategic, data-led insights agency. The problem is, this positioning isn’t framed around how you help clients, it’s positioned around what you do. And in a crowded market, that means you lack distinction. It also positions you around your processes, rather than the problems you solve, which puts you at risk of competing on speed and price, rather than impact.
Without a clear proposition you risk sales feeling uncomfortable and marketing being inconsistent. If you can’t articulate your difference, you risk being perceived as interchangeable, and in professional services, that leads to commoditisation and price sensitivity.
Full-service sounds safe, but it can be risky if you don’t stand out.
What you can do about it: Focus on your positioning and differentiation
You need to work what makes you you, why clients care and how that make you different from your competition.
It helps if you start by defining your ideal customer profiles (ICPs). Imagine you are hosting a dinner party for your favourite prospects. What would they look like? What roles do they have? What are their goals and motivations? What challenges are they facing? What do they need to know? How can you help them?
When you start to frame your positioning around what your clients need, rather than what you offer, positioning becomes easier.
For example, instead of saying “We’re a full-service insight agency”, consider something like: “We help challenger brands reduce innovation risk”, or “We specialise in commercialization and brand strategy for global pharma” or “We turn complex data into board-level decisions.”
It can also help to think about who you are not serving. If you specialise in helping financial services brands, that is your specialist market and your niche. Now by working out who your competitors are in that space, you can position yourself within that sector. Options for how to differentiate yourself will also present themselves more clearly.
3. You lead with messages around methodology
Why this poses a challenge
Emphasising your methodologies may resonate if most of your buyers are internal heads of insight or research. However, for potential clients outside this niche - such as those in the C-suite or in brand and marketing - methodologies often seem interchangeable. What you really want clients to value is the impact your insights and recommendations make within their business.
In today’s AI-driven landscape, placing too much emphasis on survey design can prompt clients to question - can’t technology handle that? However, when your message is “We help leadership teams make confident commercial decisions,” in your niche, it becomes far more difficult to replicate.
While methodologies are important, they should complement your positioning rather than define it.
What you can do about it: Demonstrate impact with storytelling
Impact stories show clients what changes - for real people, in real organisations - when insight is done well.
These stories can be told through awards that you win, or webinars that you host, or presentations delivered by your subject matter experts. If you have proprietary data, stories can be told through the insights that they reveal. And, if you are lucky, and work in a sector where this is possible, your clients can tell the story on your behalf.
The methodologies you used can be woven into your stories, but your prospects will remember first how you impacted a client’s business.
4. You suffer with boom-and-bust sales cycles
Why that’s a problem
In a lot of insight agencies, the people responsible for winning work are also the people delivering it. This model works well in the early life of an agency because clients value direct access to experienced practitioners.
But eventually this setup creates a structural problem as the seller-doer’s time is constantly pulled in two directions. When the pipeline is quiet, they focus on business development, but as new projects are won, the team becomes busy delivering client work.
In practice this means marketing and sales activity is inconsistent, pipeline visibility is poor and growth becomes unpredictable.
You need to break this cycle if you want more controllable, sustainable growth.
What you can do about it: Let your marketing activity do the talking
When business development depends entirely the doer-seller, it stops when that person is busy. Marketing – campaigns, content, thought leadership - works in the background regardless of whether the team is at capacity or not. It creates a baseline of visibility and inbound interest that doesn't switch off when delivery peaks. Opportunities are being nurtured, so the pipeline becomes something you manage, not something you have to scramble to rebuild.
By the time a prospect reaches out, they already understand your positioning. The seller-doer can focus on relationships and conversion, not awareness.
Marketing builds institutional presence, so the agency is known, rather than key individuals. That's also what makes the business more scalable and ultimately more valuable.
Marketing doesn’t replace the seller-doer, but it makes their time count for more.