Tools · How to choose a B2B marketing agency
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.
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.