How much new business is your agency losing every year?
You sell growth for a living - but the one pipeline that fills your own calendar never gets run. Move the sliders and see what that’s costing you.
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 new business you’re losing every year
For a 15-person agency (~$2.4M/yr implied - ) at $5,000/mo, national market
Build it in-house and it costs you $131k/yr - roughly 27% of your annual profit - for a build (SDR / outbound (part-time), Researcher and proposals (part-time)) you recruit and manage through a ~6-month ramp, burning about $42k before it produces a dollar. And it is still outbound only: content, follow-up, and CRM stay on you.
Markster runs your whole pipeline for you. Live in weeks.
Prospecting, content, follow-up, and CRM - run as one system on autopilot, in your voice. You approve the plan; a team plus AI runs it. No hire to manage, no six-month ramp. 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.
What owners ask before 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 real pipeline is several roles - an SDR/outbound, a researcher and proposal writer, content, and CRM/ops. A small agency can run a lean part-time version for about $97k a year (~20% of profit at a 20% EBITDA margin), but still has to recruit it, manage it, and wait about 6 months before it produces. A mid-size agency building it full-time 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 the whole way.
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.
Where do these numbers come from?
US market data: BLS OEWS and SHRM for salaries and payroll load, Promethean Research 2025 for revenue per employee, Focus Digital and the ANA/4As tenure study for client churn, and Orum, Bridge Group, and DePaul for ramp. The worked example above shows the full method.