What a B2B marketing agency is for
When a founder in freight, insurance or advisory calls me about marketing, he has usually hired an agency before and is calling because it never learned his business. The work looked busy, with posts and a report every month, and very little of it was aimed at the few hundred companies he wanted as clients.
For a firm where one client is worth $100K or more and the whole market fits on a spreadsheet, a B2B marketing agency's work should end in more conversations between you or your sales lead and decision makers at the companies you want. Referrals and shows still bring in the best deals in these markets, and each one now gets checked online first, as the guide on how B2B buyers choose a vendor now lays out. Judge everything an agency makes for you by whether it starts conversations with those companies.
A B2B marketing agency, as this guide uses the term, is a firm paid a monthly fee to start conversations between you and decision makers at the companies you want as clients. Named accounts are the specific companies you want as clients, written down by name, with the people inside each one who sign or influence the deal. We call that list the Sniper Sheet. When this guide says an agency should count conversations with named accounts, it means conversations with people on that list.
I learned this work inside agencies and ran client accounts as an accounts director before I started Kung Pow in 2021. Over more than ten years in B2B marketing I've helped 123 businesses and managed more than $11M in ad spend. An agency sells a monthly , and a retainer needs something to point to each month, such as a count of posts and a campaign report. Those are easy to produce and bill whether or not they reach your buyers. Trade shows, reps and referral partners close the deals in your market, and none of them produces a tidy monthly deliverable, so most agencies leave them out of the plan because they're hard to bill against.
This guide assumes you've decided to hire a B2B marketing agency and have two or three in the running. If you're still weighing an agency against a fractional CMO, freelancers or a hire, start with the guide on fractional CMO, agency or in-house.
How many meetings should the fee buy?
Kyle Meagher of Kung Pow Marketing sizes a B2B marketing agency's fee by working back from one client. For a firm whose new client brings $100K in year one at a 35% margin and signs after ten qualified meetings, each $1,000 of monthly fee needs about 0.3 extra qualified meetings a month with decision makers at accounts on your list.
Before the first sales call, work out how many qualified meetings an agency has to add each month to pay for itself. That number becomes the yardstick for every proposal, contract and report that follows.
I open my own first calls by asking how many qualified meetings the firm had last year and what a signed client is worth in a year. Say it's 60 meetings and $100K. A qualified meeting, as I use the term, is a real conversation with a decision maker at an account you want, with notes taken and a next step agreed. Badge scans and form fills don't count. If your team wins one client for every ten of those meetings, each one is worth about $10K in first-year revenue and about $3,500 in first-year gross profit at a 35% margin, and several times that over the years a client stays.
What a quote has to produce
Put in a quote, your margin and your own deal numbers. The top result is how many extra qualified meetings a month the agency has to add to earn its fee back from first-year gross profit.
At $8,000 a month and a 35% margin, the agency earns its fee back from first-year gross profit if it adds 2.3 qualified meetings a month, about 27 a year, with accounts on your list. At your close rate that's about 2.7 new clients a year. Counted over the 5 years a client stays, each of those meetings is worth about $17.5K in gross profit to you.
The $8,000 fee and the 35% margin are placeholders for a real quote and your own margin. Add your monthly ad budget if the quote leaves it out. The first-year test ignores the later years on purpose, so it's the strict version.
At deal sizes like these the target comes out at two or three extra meetings a month. A proposal built around 200 leads a month answers a problem you don't have, because a market of a few thousand decision makers can't produce 200 buyers a month and your sales lead couldn't call them if it did. When the captive insurance advisory firm we work with had the option of twice the leads at twice the cost, it turned it down: "Lead quality is crucial for our business, and if there's any risk of that declining, it's not worth the trade-off."
Give your number to every B2B marketing firm you talk to and ask how it would get there. The same number becomes the target in the contract and the line every monthly report has to explain.
Questions to ask on the sales call
A sales call shows you the agency at its best, with its most senior people and its sharpest deck. Use the hour to find out how the work would run after you sign.
Notice first what they ask you. An agency that quotes before it knows your deal size, close rate and sales cycle is pricing its own time, and it has no way to judge its work against what a client is worth to you. Then put these five questions to each agency.
Who will do the work?
In most B2B marketing agencies the people who sell an account and the people who run it are different people. A senior strategist pitches, and the work goes to whoever has room that month, often an account manager with a full roster and a writer who has never been on a call with you. Ask for names, roles and hours a month, and ask to meet the person who will write in your voice. Ask too whether any of the work goes to another shop working under the agency's name, which is common.
Names the two or three people on your account, what each does and the hours you get, and offers you a call with them before you sign.
"You'll have a dedicated team." No names or hours, and the person pitching won't appear again after the kickoff.
Which accounts would you go after first?
The answer shows whether the agency will build a list of companies or a description of a type of buyer. At a consulting and training firm we work with, one holding-company account runs 50 to 70 classes a year. When a single account can be worth that much, the plan has to name the companies that could become one and the people inside them who sign. The guide on account-based marketing for founder-led firms covers how that list gets built. For an LTL freight provider, we turned one trade show's exhibitor directory into 318 decision makers, a list two sales reps can work by hand (trade show guide).
Asks for your best five clients, your CRM and your show lists, and talks about turning them into a named list in the first month.
"We'll run a persona workshop and target operations leaders at companies with 50 to 500 employees." Any competitor's agency can buy the same database filter.
What would you do with our shows and referrals?
A plan that ignores your shows and referral partners leaves out most of your pipeline. The captive insurance advisory firm we work with got 75 to 85% of its business by referral through brokers and CPAs, so its plan has to reach the brokers and CPAs who send that business as well as the owners (demand generation guide). For a firm that exhibits, the work starts about 60 days before each show, as the guide on trade show marketing lays out.
Asks which shows you work and who sends you referrals, then describes work around them, such as warming up the show list before the doors open and giving partners something worth forwarding.
"We focus on digital." Or a booth graphics package and an email blast to every badge you scanned.
Can I see a report from a client like us?
Ask for a real monthly report, with the client's name blacked out, from a firm whose deals look like yours. The report shows you what the agency counts, and an agency works toward whatever it counts. Chapter 06 shows what a good one contains.
A report that names accounts and counts conversations, meetings and pipeline, written so a partner who isn't a marketer can read it in two minutes.
A dashboard of impressions, clicks, visits and leads, every line going up, with no mention of a single company.
What do you need from me each month?
If the answer is nothing, the work won't sound like you, because your buyers can tell when a writer learned the business from a questionnaire. A weekly two-hour meeting and a stack of drafts is the opposite problem. The founder of an 8-figure 3PL and eCommerce company we work with said of one pile, "I ain't reviewing this many a week." We run on an interview of about an hour every other week, plus a few minutes to approve each piece.
A number of hours and what they're for, plus a plan to write down your red lines once: topics to avoid, claims you won't make and clients you can't name.
"Nothing, we handle everything." Or a standing weekly meeting where you edit drafts line by line.
Checking the proposal and contract
When the proposal arrives, read four things before the price: how long you're committed, who owns what, who does the work and what the fee is meant to produce.
Term and notice
Read the term, the notice period and the renewal clause together. A 12-month term that renews itself unless you give 90 days' notice in writing can hold you for most of a second year if someone misses a date. A 12-month term makes sense once you've seen the work and agreed a written plan, and before that point you want a fixed first phase with a defined end. We open every engagement with a fixed-fee first phase of about 90 days for that reason. After the first phase, either side can end the work on written notice, and everything we built for you stays yours: the accounts, the lists, the content and the logins.
Who owns the accounts
Everything the agency builds for you should sit in your firm's name from day one, including the ad accounts, the website, domain and analytics logins, the CRM and email platform, the content and design files and the target account list. The agency works inside accounts your firm owns, with access you can take back. Ask on the first call what happens to all of it if you part ways, while everyone is still friendly.
Check the ad accounts first, because an agency can open your account under its own with only its own people as admins, and you won't notice until you try to leave. Ask for your Google Ads customer ID on the sales call, and make sure someone at your firm holds admin access.
Access matters before any breakup, too. The ad account of the captive insurance advisory firm we have worked with since April 2024 had been hacked before we relaunched it, and its cost per lead came down 38% after the relaunch. When something goes wrong inside an account, whoever holds admin is the one who can see who has access and remove them.
Named people and hours
Have the people introduced on the sales call named in the proposal, with the hours each gives you a month, and for notice before any of them changes. If the agency won't name them on paper, treat the names from the sales call as part of the pitch.
What the fee is for
One kind of proposal lists volume, such as eight blog posts, twenty social posts and a newsletter a month. Volume is what an agency finds easiest to deliver, and the count says nothing about whether anyone on your list saw it. The other kind starts from an objective, more qualified meetings with accounts on your list, and treats the work as the current plan for getting there. Ask for the second kind, with the meeting target from chapter 02 written in as the 90-day objective, along with the it will be reported against from the first month.
Ad spend should be paid by your firm, straight to Google or LinkedIn, and reported apart from the agency's fee. An agency paid a percentage of ad spend earns more when you spend more, so ask what it would do with half the budget.
Score the proposal you're holding
It starts filled in with an example proposal. Change each answer to match yours, and the score and the questions to raise update as you go.
They asked our deal size, close rate and sales cycle before quoting.
Ask what they think one of your clients is worth to you.
The people who will do the work are named, with hours a month.
Get names, roles and monthly hours, and meet the writer.
They talked about specific companies we want, by name.
Ask which ten accounts they'd go after first.
It covers our shows, reps or referral partners.
Ask what they'd do before your next show and for your referral partners.
Content gets built from interviews with us, and our red lines get written down.
Ask how they'll get your knowledge out of your head, and how long it takes you.
There's a written 90-day objective counted in meetings or conversations.
Have the meeting target from chapter 02 written in as the 90-day objective.
Their sample report counts conversations and meetings with named accounts.
Get a real report from a client like you, name blacked out.
Ad accounts, content, lists and logins are in our name, with us as admin.
Put every account in your firm's name, with your own admin, in writing.
It starts with a fixed first phase before any long term.
Push for a fixed first phase with a defined end.
Ad spend is paid by us and reported apart from their fee.
Have ad spend billed to your card and shown apart from the fee.
Keep looking, or take the questions above back to this agency. At this score, most of what decides whether the work pays off is missing from the proposal.
8 questions to raise before you sign. Settle the account ownership first.
Yes scores 2, partly or unclear scores 1, no scores 0. If the accounts won't be in your name, don't sign, whatever the rest scores.
The first 90 days
Ninety days is long enough to judge an agency on its work and the first signals from your list, and too short to judge it on closed deals when some buyers take years to decide. Whoever you hire, this should exist by each point.
Your documents read, first interview done
The agency has read your sales decks, proposals and show handouts, and the kickoff interview's questions come from them. Your red lines are written down.
First content live in your voice
Posts in the founder's name, built from the interview and approved in a few minutes each. If the drafts could have come from anyone in your industry, say so now.
The account list, agreed with your sales lead
Named companies and the people inside them, from your CRM, show lists and industry directories, with the wrong names already cut. Tracking is set up, and the 90-day objective is in writing.
The warm-up running
People on the list are seeing the founder's posts, and the ones who engage get a connection request with no pitch attached. If a show falls in the window, the pre-show work has started.
First conversations handed to you
When someone on the list is ready to talk business, you or your sales lead take the call. Paid ads, if any, run behind a guide, case study or offer that already works.
A review your partners can read
The quarter against the objective, with the costs and next quarter's plan, short enough for a partner who isn't a marketer to read in two minutes.
Some clients see deals inside that window. An LTL freight provider closed an $84K deal in 70 days at a 6.1x return on ad spend (trade show guide).
Those are the fast end of what I see. Some of the captive firm's buyers take "three to five years" to decide, and no agency moves that calendar, so hold an agency to the timeline above and to its first conversations with accounts on your list.
What should the monthly report show?
A monthly report can be full of numbers that rise every month while your pipeline stays where it was. It's also the easiest place to catch an agency drifting, because a new one lands every month.
Most agency reports lead with the numbers that are easiest to grow, such as , website visits and rate. Then comes a count of leads, which sounds like sales and deserves the hardest look. In many reports a lead is anyone who filled in a form or downloaded a guide, scored by rules the agency wrote, and marketers call these . Your sales lead never agreed to those rules, and in a market where one client is worth $100K, a hundred form fills from people who will never buy are worth less than one conversation with an account on your list.
The report to ask for starts from your list. It counts the accounts on it, how many engaged this month, which conversations started and which meetings were held, then shows the pipeline those meetings opened and what changes next month. Here it is beside the usual one.
Every line is up on last month. Nobody can say which companies are behind any of them.
- Ops VP, home-goods manufacturer ($90M)Met at the founder's booth after reading two of his posts. Freight review booked.
- Owner, regional furniture makerReplied to a newsletter. Second call set with the sales lead.
- CFO, bedding brandReferred by a current client. Asked for a quote on 40 shipments a month.
Next month: book meetings with the 22 accounts on the list that exhibit at the spring show.
The pipeline line needs a rule your sales lead agrees to. We count a deal as when the person had engaged with the founder's content or outreach before talking to sales. At an 8-figure 3PL and eCommerce company, the share of trade-show pipeline that met that rule went from 20 of 75 show leads to 9 of 18 in two quarters, 27% and then 50% (trade show guide). Agree the rule before the first report, and your partners can check the number against your own CRM.
A good report also opens with a few plain sentences on what moved, why it moved and what changes next month. The president of an independent wealth management firm we work with said what he values in one line: "I appreciate the time you take to explain not just the what but the how." (financial advisor guide)
Have the agency write the report for the partner who wasn't on the sales call. If he can't tell in two minutes whether the work is moving accounts on your list, ask the agency to rewrite it until he can.
Agency red flags
Most warning signs show up in the first conversations or the first few months, while acting on them is still cheap.
Before you sign
- A plan that could belong to any client. Ask the agency to point to what in the plan came from your business. If the answer is your logo and your industry's name, you're holding the template every client gets.
- Seniors on the pitch and nobody from delivery. If the agency can't put the people who'd do the work on a call before you sign, you'll meet them for the first time at the kickoff.
- A lead count as the goal. In a market you can count, an agency that promises a number of leads a month will hit it with people your sales lead never calls back.
- Cold outreach to your whole market in your name. A cold sequence can reach every decision maker in a market this size within weeks, and each of them is already getting the same note from other vendors. When an LTL freight provider ran a LinkedIn connection sequence to its show list without the founder content planned to go with it, it got a 4.4% accept rate (trade show guide). My own rule: "Authoritative, desirable people do not cold-pitch DMs on LinkedIn. Junior people do that. Hungry people do that."
- A long lock-in before you've seen any work, or ad accounts, a website or a list that would leave with the agency. Chapter 04 covers both.
After you sign
Once the work starts, the warning signs are smaller and arrive month by month. Deadlines slip, and the CEO of a B2B consulting and training firm we work with put that one plainly: "Nothing irritates me more than slipping deadlines." The content goes generic, and the same CEO's verdict on a run of weak blog posts was "the last few blog posts were just like very meh. You want to be able to protect the brand." The report changes shape, with new numbers in place of the ones that stopped moving, or the account manager you met turns into a new name on an email.
Raise any one of these the month you see it. If several show up in the same quarter, act on them, and the term and notice clauses from chapter 04 decide how quickly you can.
Where Kung Pow fits
Kung Pow is a B2B marketing agency, so read this chapter with the skepticism you'd bring to any of them, and hold us to the rest of this guide.
We work with founder-led B2B services firms where one client is worth $100K or more, sales run through shows, referrals and a few relationship sellers, and the whole market is small enough to count. Everything we publish comes from interviews with the founder and is aimed at the Sniper Sheet. We warm up the people on that list with no pitch, work the shows and the referral partners, and report conversations and meetings with named accounts. In my words, "We make you micro-famous with the 2,000 best customers for your business in your market." Every engagement opens with a fixed-fee first phase of about 90 days, and every client works with me directly, which is why the client list stays short.
Who else we work for
The question I told you to ask any agency applies to us. We work with one firm per market segment at a time. If we already work for a firm that sells to the buyers you sell to, we tell you on the first call and don't take the engagement.
Who we're not for
The full list of who we turn away sits in the guide on fractional CMO, agency or in-house. One line of it applies here too: we turn away firms where one client is worth under $25K a year, because the meeting math in chapter 02 breaks at that value, and a good ads specialist running volume is the better buy.
The case studies hold the full results behind the numbers in this guide. Whoever you hire, take the meeting target from chapter 02 and the scorecard from chapter 04 into the sales call.
Holding a proposal now? Send us the one you're holding, and I check it against the questions and contract terms in this guide and send back the three to put to that agency.
Score my proposalQuestions founders ask us about this
What should a B2B marketing agency cost?
Work it back from one client. If the gross profit from one new client's first year covers the fee, the fee fits your deal size. The calculator in chapter 02 turns any quote into the number of qualified meetings a month it has to produce, which is easier to judge than a price on its own.
We quote our own work after the first call, once we know your deal size and sales cycle. Every engagement starts with a fixed-fee first phase of about 90 days.
Should the agency specialize in my industry?
Industry experience helps an agency get started faster. Over a year, it matters more that they learn your accounts and how your deals close, which comes from your documents and interviews with you.
Ask who else in your market they work for. In a market of a couple of thousand decision makers, an agency running the same plan for two competitors sends the same buyers the same message twice. We answer that question for ourselves in chapter 08.
Is a 12-month contract a red flag?
After a first phase where you've seen the work and agreed a written plan, a 12-month term is reasonable, because both sides know what they're committing to.
Be wary of 12 months signed before you've seen anything, with a long notice period and automatic renewal. Read the term, notice and renewal clauses together before you sign.
How long before I know whether it's working?
The leading indicators move within weeks, starting with people on your list accepting connection requests and replying. Conversations with named accounts should start inside the first 90 days.
Pipeline takes two or three quarters to show up in most of these markets, and closed deals follow your sales cycle. Some of the captive insurance firm's buyers take three to five years to decide, and no agency changes that.
The agency wants to run cold outreach in my name. Should I let it?
Not to your whole market. A cold sequence reaches every decision maker in a market this size within weeks, and they all hear the same pitch they get from other vendors.
People who had already liked or commented on the posts of an 8-figure 3PL and eCommerce company's founder accepted his connection request 81% of the time, against 21% for cold requests with a personal note. Some of that gap is warmth they had before they saw a post; the posts are how we find the warm ones and earn the request. The acceptance-rate data note has the counts. Run the content first and connect with the people who engage with it.
What should I do about the agency I have now?
Before any conversation about ending it, get admin access to every account in your firm's name and ask for your Google Ads customer ID. Then run its last three monthly reports against chapter 06 and give it the meeting target from chapter 02 as a 90-day objective.
If at the end of those 90 days it can't name the accounts it's working on or the conversations it has started, start looking.