Your client work is quietly starving your agency’s own new business
Most agencies don’t lack demand - they lack a pipeline that gets run every week. See what yours should be creating, and what building it in-house would cost.
Adjust the revenue, salary, and ramp assumptions
The rest change the in-house build cost only. Defaults are US market base pay, loaded 1.4x for benefits and payroll (sources below).
The growth you leave on the table
For a 15-person agency (~$2.4M/yr implied) at $5,000/mo, national rates
Build it in-house instead: about $108k/yr for one new-business hire - roughly 22% of your annual profit. And that is outbound only: content, follow-up, and CRM stay on you - and it is ~6 months before the hire reaches full productivity.
Live in weeks. No new hires to manage, no six-month ramp to wait out.
You approve the plan, the voice, and the target client. From there it runs on autopilot - a team plus AI running your weekly prospecting, content, follow-up, and CRM, in your voice. New plays still come to you first. We don’t stop until you hit the goal.
Built from agency benchmarks, with the math exposed.
~$163k revenue per employee, so your headcount sets the base. Promethean Research, 2025.
EBITDA ~20% of revenue - a well-run agency margin. Agency profitability benchmarks 2025.
~20% of clients churn a year; a pipeline replaces them to hold flat. Focus Digital 2025; ANA/4As tenure.
A real pipeline adds ~20% growth on top of replacing churn. 2025 agency growth benchmarks.
US base pay, loaded 1.4x, location-adjusted. BLS OEWS / ECEC; Glassdoor; SHRM.
A new-business hire takes ~6 months to reach full productivity. Orum / Bridge Group / DePaul.
Illustrative defaults you can adjust - not a quote. Your exact number depends on your market and goals; we walk through it on the call.
How much new revenue is an agency leaving on the table without its own pipeline?
It scales with agency size. At ~$163k revenue per employee, a working pipeline needs to replace ~20% annual client churn just to hold flat, plus ~20% growth on top. For a 25-person agency (~$4M revenue) that is roughly $800k to $1.6M a year at stake.
What does it cost to build an in-house growth function at an agency?
A lean in-house pipeline (one new-business hire) runs about $108k a year loaded at national rates - roughly 13 to 22% of a small agency’s annual profit at a 20% EBITDA margin - and it produces nothing for its first ~6 months. A larger agency building a full function spends materially more.
How long before a new-business hire produces results?
About 6 months to full productivity, per Orum, Bridge Group, and DePaul sales-onboarding benchmarks - loaded salary you carry before it is fully productive.
What is a typical marketing agency client churn rate?
Retainer agencies churn roughly 18 to 20% of clients a year (higher for smaller and project-based shops), per 2025 retention benchmarks and the ANA/4As tenure study. A working pipeline has to replace that churn before it can drive any growth.