How to Land Your First Agency Client (and How Not to)

To start your solo agency, you need a clear ideal client profile (ICP) and a transformative ideal client journey (ICJ). These two, when combined, define your agency’s niche. But knowing your niche is not enough. To sustain your agency, you need to have real paying customers. And as with all good things that last, your success all starts with your first.

If you’ve defined a valuable niche, attracting your first client will not be a result of market buoyancy. It will be a direct result of who you know and who knows you. That is to say, your first client will almost always come from your existing network.

In fact, I’m willing to bet that if you don’t already know your first client (perhaps even your first few clients), your prospects for long-term success as an independent expert are grim. You’re not yet ready.

So, before you even start thinking about quitting your full-time job to build the next big agency, make sure you have at least 20 individuals in your niche who you can ask for feedback. Notice that I say, “ask for feedback” and not “pitch to.” That distinction is important, and I’ll come back to it shortly.

Learn from my mistake

Before we dive into what you should do to find your first client, I want to share a mistake I made that almost cost me my agency before it even started. This is an important lesson that you can learn from.

I had spent the year between 2019 and 2020 deep in thought about how I believed I could enter the Salesforce CRM ecosystem as an independent advisor. I was confident in my strategies and had defined a clear client journey. In the fall of 2020, I officially founded my agency, MVRK.

In early 2021, my first potential client reached out through a referral. At the time, I still had a full-time job. After a couple of fantastic conversations that included most of the company’s senior leadership team, they asked me for a quote.

I eagerly prepared it and sent it off. After some back and forth, we reached a verbal agreement to start at the beginning of the following month. Full of eagerness following that verbal agreement, I handed in my three weeks’ notice with my employer.

Can you guess what happened next? That’s right. My potential client ghosted me! There was no signed paperwork. No deposit was paid. I made an amateurish decision that left me with nothing.

The lesson is simple: You don’t have a client until they’ve paid you.

Instead of pitching, ask for feedback

For most people, that would have been the end of the journey before it even started. But for me, it turned out to be a stumble before a fantastic sprint. That sprint has turned into a marathon that I’m still running. Today, I have a small team and over a dozen fantastic clients.

But that journey had to start with a first. So, how did I go about finding my first paying client after being ghosted? I did what all great entrepreneurs do. I turned my focus towards getting feedback on my strategy from people I trusted.

Instead of becoming desperate and begging my former boss to take me back, I asked former clients and business acquaintances for 20 minutes of their time. When I met with them, I did not try to pitch myself to them or position some form of partnership. Instead, I asked for their feedback on my designed client journey.

The question that worked the best for getting that feedback, especially from former clients, was this: “If you’d had the option to choose what I’m offering now when you originally made the decision to work with my team, how would that have influenced your thinking?” Feel free to use it yourself!

No matter what questions you ask, there are two signals that you need to tune into:

1. What resonates with your audience. The elements they respond to positively are the things you will use as the keystones of your pitch.
2. What your audience is confused about. Anything that does not make sense to the person you ask for feedback needs to be refined immediately.

These feedback conversations will be the most important time investment you make at the start of your solo journey. And unlike me, you should have those conversations before you quit your job!

Start to strengthen your network today

So, how did these conversations turn into my first client? It’s quite simple. A CFO I met with from a former client told his VP of Sales about my consulting firm. That VP reached out, asking for my help. After a conversation about what I offered, they signed a contract, paid the deposit, and we got to work.

They are still my client to this day, over five years later! You will almost certainly find your first client or clients in a similar way.

This is why I recommend that before you start working solo, you should be in a position where you can ask as many relevant people as possible for feedback; 20 is the minimum, closer to 50 is more ideal. If you are saying to yourself, “I don’t think I have 20 people I can ask for feedback,” then you’re not yet ready. Instead of rushing in, work hard to strengthen your network.

Even if it means you need to work for someone else for longer, it is worth the wait because the strength of your network will have a proportional impact on your early agency success.

To start your solo agency, you need a clear ideal client profile (ICP) and a transformative ideal client journey (ICJ). These two, when combined, define your agency’s niche. But knowing your niche is not enough. To sustain your agency, you need to have real paying customers. And as with all good things that last, your success all starts with your first.

If you’ve defined a valuable niche, attracting your first client will not be a result of market buoyancy. It will be a direct result of who you know and who knows you. That is to say, your first client will almost always come from your existing network.

In fact, I’m willing to bet that if you don’t already know your first client (perhaps even your first few clients), your prospects for long-term success as an independent expert are grim. You’re not yet ready.