The Pipeline Wasn’t the Problem

The Pipeline Wasn’t the Problem

A few years ago, I had a video call with an agency owner who, by most external measures, was doing fine. Revenue was steady. Referrals were trickling in. The calendar had new business meetings on it. From the outside, nothing looked broken. So why did he invite me over?

Halfway through our conversation, he said something that put it all into perspective.

“I’m busy. But I’m not excited. I’m thinking of selling.”

He went on to explain that the meetings felt repetitive. The same mid-level titles. The same cautious budgets. The same incremental scopes dressed up as strategic opportunities. Nothing felt consequential. Nothing felt career-defining. He wasn’t losing constantly. He just wasn’t winning the kinds of clients he actually wanted.

That was the real issue. He did not have a pipeline problem. He had a gravity problem. His agency was attracting a predictable class of opportunity, and he was bored. He really didn’t want to sell. He wanted the adrenaline rush again. He thrived on the impossible challenges. Most agencies would be happy with a steady pipeline and predictable cash flow. He was different.

The first step we took was to analyze three years of his agency deals. We mapped which clients expanded and which stalled. Which ones moved quickly, and which ones dragged their feet. Which ones respected strategy and which ones negotiated every line item.

A pattern emerged almost immediately. Their best clients had one thing in common: visible tension. These were companies facing recent rapid growth stalls, sudden leadership changes, blindsiding competitive threats, or board-level scrutiny. There were stakes. There was urgency. There were consequences. That was his playground.

Their weakest clients were stable companies “exploring options.” That left him yearning for more.

The agency had defined its ideal client by industry and size, as stated in the owner’s manual. What it should have defined was marketers under high tension. That realization led to some hard decisions. We narrowed the ICP dramatically. Instead of targeting mid-sized B2B brands broadly across tech and healthcare, we refined it to mid-sized B2B brands in any industry experiencing revenue stagnation after a failed repositioning or a growth plateau. That was a smaller universe. It made him and me very uncomfortable at first.

“Are we shrinking the market too much?” he asked.

Yes. And that was exactly why it would work.

I have to pause here for a minute because I can feel all the BD experts gasping, “How can you build a list around that?” I felt the same way at the start, but it didn’t take long to define criteria that could be applied across various sources: press, analysts, company performance, and other factors. I’ll go into greater detail in a future post, like a framework for discovery of this kind.

Within 45 days of shifting the targeting, positioning, and narrative, the meetings began to change. The volume dipped, which tested our nerve. But the titles improved. The urgency sharpened. In one of the first calls under the new approach, a CEO opened by saying, “We need to fix this before our Q3 board meeting.”

That is an entirely different kind of conversation than “We’re thinking about refreshing our brand.” My client was ecstatic. I’d never seen him so pumped. And I knew the worries about a narrow ICP and meeting volumes disappeared. I also knew that “We need to fix this before our Q3 board meeting” would come with a higher price tag.

The second stage of the strategy was about market education, not promotion. We did not flood LinkedIn with generic thought leadership. We did not blast email campaigns to broad lists. We built a consistent narrative around failed repositioning attempts and the hidden structural reasons companies plateau. The agency owner began publishing his perspective, rooted in pattern recognition rather than opinion. Outbound messaging mirrored the same tension. We did not ask for introductions. We surfaced blind spots that this audience could relate to or fear.

The response quality shifted over time. Fewer polite brush-offs. More thoughtful replies. Prospects who engaged self-identified as being in the very tension we defined.

Around month six, something subtle but important began happening. Prospects would say, “We’ve been following your perspective.” That is not a lead generation metric. That is a perception shift. The agency was no longer explaining what it did. It was being associated with a specific problem and a specific strategic approach to fix it. Just the thing that drives an agency owner who wants excitement.

As that perception compounded, sales cycles shortened. Scopes expanded. Pricing conversations became less defensive. Over the past 12 months, the average deal size increased significantly, and close rates improved. But the financial results were not the first indicator of success. The first indicator was emotional.

The owner stopped feeling reactive. He was more discerning about every inquiry. He stopped trying to make average opportunities look exciting. He began declining conversations earlier. Meetings that remained on the calendar carried weight. He feeds on their energy. That energy was not accidental. It was engineered through narrowing, positioning discipline, and consistent market conditioning.

The most difficult moment in the process was not tactical. It was psychological. There was a stretch early on when the calendar looked much lighter because we were disqualifying aggressively. That is where many agency owners lose conviction and revert to volume. He did not. He tolerated the narrowing long enough for everything to recalibrate. That patience created a compounding advantage.

The lesson from that experience is simple but scary. Most agencies do not need more outreach. They need sharper alignment between the problems they are built to solve and the prospects they target. When that alignment is off, meetings feel safe and incremental. When it is right, meetings feel consequential.

If an agency owner tells me their pipeline feels uninspiring, I do not start with tactics. I start with gravity. Because when gravity shifts, the quality of conversations changes first. Revenue follows. Your trajectory will not change overnight. But it will change with the right discipline and conviction when the right kind of tension enters the room.

Happy Hunting

If you are feeling uninspired, low-energy, and nothing feels consequential or career-defining, and you aren’t winning the kinds of clients you actually want, let’s have a conversation. You never know where we’ll end up, but I guarantee the chat will be high-energy. You can learn more about me at jheenan.com or grab time with me here: calendly.com/jheenan. If you haven’t already done so, sign up for my New Business Newsletter. If you know someone who might benefit from this post, please forward it. If you like this post, I’d appreciate a thumbs up and a comment. While you are at it, let’s connect on LinkedIn.

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