Getting your Lead Gen Agency from 0 to the first client in less than 3 weeks [+ BONUS]

Getting into the Lead Gen agency space, huh? 

Think again about it.

This calling is not for the weak. The job is freaking hard. Constantly getting results for your clients is demanding.

But at the same time, it’s worth like hell.

Lead gen agency is a cashflow machine if executed correctly.

In this guide, I will summarize my knowledge of running different agencies from scratch and the insights from other Lead Gen Founders founders.

In front of you is everything you need to know to get your agency from scratch to the first client in less than 3 weeks.

There’s also a bonus down the end on how to create a specific asset that will help you scale your agency to over $10k/mo

If you follow these steps, the only scenario where you won’t get your first client is if you’re lazy and terrified of getting the work done.

I’m going to trust that you’re not lazy. 

So let’s get to work.

Week 1 - Building the foundations

Before getting your first clients, there are a few things you need to understand:

• What’s your niche?

• What’s your pricing model? 

• What’s the first version of your website?

• What’s your offer?

Let’s go through them one by one.

Picking a niche

Don’t be like everyone else.

You don’t want to be the Lead Gen Agency for everyone.

You also don’t wanna be the Lead Gen Agency for X.

You want to be the Lead Gen Agency for X with a problem with Y.

The more specific you are, the better.

This way, your market size might be small, but you will have a better time getting clients.

Once you’re perfectly serving one small niche and have all the processes (SOPs) in place, expanding to other niches is the least of your concerns.

So, what niche to choose?

We wrote an article about 8 money printing niches with low competition, and here’s the breakdown of that:

We evaluated each of these niches in two categories:

• Delivery (how easy it is to deliver leads for these companies from 1-5)

• Profitability (what’s your earning potential)

Ideally, you want to choose a niche with low to medium competition but easy delivery.

What do I mean by “easy delivery”?

Not all niches for Lead Gen Agencies are created equal. Some are easy to do business with.

For others, delivery is hard, but one lead there is worth five in some other niches.

As a beginner (unless you have a deep expertise in a specific industry), you want a niche with easy delivery and good enough reward.

Some niches that come on top of my mind are:

• Marketing agencies that target other agencies, SaaS, and DTC companies

• HVAC and other “brick and mortar” companies that work with other businesses (not B2C)

You want to avoid niches with complicated regulations and long sales cycles like healthcare.

And the most important part - picking a niche is not enough. You need to narrow it down even further.

For example, don’t say: “I’ll book meetings for content marketing agencies.”

Everyone says that.

Instead, say this:

I’ll book meetings for content marketing agencies from the USA, with less than $1m ARR, who work exclusively with DTC brands.”

See the difference? Isn’t it better, more specific, and more convincing?

Anyway, I wrote an in-depth guide on choosing a niche for your agency. There I outlined 8 money-printing niches with low competition. Check it out.

Now, let’s move forward.

Choosing a pricing model

There are a few standard pricing models out there:

• Charging per booked call (i.e. charging $200 for each prospect you book a call with)

• Charging a setup fee + per booked call

• Monthly retainer with fixed deliverables

• Charging per booked call + percentage of the closed deal

Each model has its advantages and disadvantages.

For example, a monthly retainer is the best and most predictable model you can pick.

The downside?

Unfortunately, many fraudulent Lead Generation Agencies rip people for their money.

So, the “trust barrier” between your potential clients and you is automatically low.

Since you’re new in this space, my suggestion is to go with the following:

1. For the first clients - charge ONLY per booked call. This is a no-brainer for your potential clients since they have nothing to lose if you don’t bring them clients. But don’t be too greedy - $100 - $150 per booked call is reasonable for most companies.

2. Once you’re comfortable with delivery and you have a few case studies, go with the setup fee (for a quick cash upfront) + pay-per-lead model as before. The average setup fee in the industry is around $1500 - $2500 one-off.

3. When you have so much business and new inquiries that you can’t handle it, start charging premium monthly subscriptions. At that moment, you will be 101% confident in your delivery, and you can lose nothing.

The first version of your website/presentation

Note that I said website slash presentation.

Don’t go the classic noob way, and the first thing you do when starting your agency is creating a logo.

That’s not important at the moment.

You don’t even need a website.

When I started my first agency (it was a content marketing agency), I didn’t have a website for a year.

The moment I created a website was when we were doing around $20k a month.

When I was launching my second agency in the podcasting space, we got our first 5 clients through a simple Google spreadsheet.

You need to have something to show to your outbound traffic.

That can be a website, but it can also be a presentation, pdf file, google sheet, or whatever.

The most important thing is to ship fast.

If you can create a decent-looking and convincing website in a day, go ahead.

But if you can’t, a simple presentation will also do wonders.

The anatomy of a perfect website/presentation for a new Lead Gen Agency

Before I show the best “layout” I have, let me tell you this:

It’s not embarrassing to tell potential clients you’re new in the business.

It’s even better if you’re honest. It builds stronger relationships with your first clients.

So please, don't sugar coat numbers and say that you brought over $1m in sales so far, that you have 50+ clients and other bullshit things.

It’s better if you’re honest.

Now, let me show you the website (or a presentation) layout that will get you the first clients:

So, what do we have in there?

• Strong & bold claim - for example: “We’ll bring you $20.000 in new MRR in the next 3 months” - you wanna hold yourself accountable (+ it will pique potential clients’ interest). And if you deliver those results, you will be rewarded with fortune.
  
  As Naval said in his famous X thread:

• A quick explanation of the process - make it transparent and frictionless. People want to know how exactly you will take them from point A to the point B. But don’t be too technical.

• Transparent deliveries & timeline - what exactly can your future clients expect from you, and when?

• Social proof from other people - since you don’t have clients already, we can’t show them the evidence that you’re true to your claims. But we can ask other people you worked with in the past to create some exciting and catchy 30-second videos about you, your skills, and your ethics. It’s what separates future $1m Lead Gen Agencies from the broke ones.

• Offer - here, you show them your irresistible offer (we will talk more about this right away).

This, my friend, is the killing one-page formula for getting your first clients.

Even better - this is more or less the killing formula for a presentation you will show on future sales calls (but more about that in some other guide).

This brings us to the final part of your week numero uno.

Creating an irresistible offer

This topic is so complex that Hormozi wrote an entire book about it ($100m offers must be on your reading list).

Anyway, let me give you the most critical insights.

What’s an irresistible offer?

It’s an offer so good that people will feel stupid saying no to it.

Simple as that.

To do this effectively, you must understand your ICP well. 

But in a nutshell, the best offers in the world more or less have a strict formula:

In case your ICP is a content marketing agency, your irresistible offer might be something like this:

I’ll book you sales calls with 60+ SQLs who fit your criteria in the first 6 months of working together. You’ll pay me only for the successfully booked calls, and even if I don’t hit this milestone in 6 months, I’ll work for free until I do.

Side note: be careful with what you’re promising. Again, you must be ambitious, and your offer must sound unbelievable, but don’t go too far.

Now that we have the foundation, it’s time to get some clients.

Weeks 2-3 - Getting your first clients

This is the tricky part for everyone. The majority of agencies fail here and never try again.

But I have good news for you.

As one of my wise mentors once told me - when there’s 1st client, there’s also 101st.

You can get your first clients in many ways - from referrals, through friends, by reaching out to your network, etc.

But let’s assume you have no one. 

You’re alone in this world, and no one can help you get your first client.

What would you do then?

I was in that position when I was starting.

I knew no one. 

I would handle things differently if I were in the same position again. Then, I used to hang out in different Facebook communities and write some bullshit (thinking I was smart) until I got the first offer. Rest is the history.

That’s a good approach - don’t get me wrong. But it’s not the right choice for this stage.

We need first clients fast.

So, how are we going to do that?

It’s simple, yet no one is doing this because we’re not humans anymore.

Let me show you.

Getting your list of prospects

You’re about to do sales and lead generation for upcoming clients.

Do it for yourself now.

You know your niche, so you know who’s your ICP.

How are you going to find them?

Probably in some communities, directories, or on LinkedIn.

Those are the easiest choices.

Let’s get this list.

1. Write down who exactly is your target client

Let’s be more specific.

• Who are they?

• Where do they hang out on the internet?

• What’s the size of their company?

• What’s their average MRR or ARR?

• What problems do they have right now? 

2. Prospecting time

Go to one of the places where they hang out (LinkedIn or some specific community, for example), and personally write down the contact information of each lead one by one.

You don’t want to automate this part with AI, ChatGPT, scraping, or whatever. Save automations for later.

Now you must do the dirty and boring work.

Here’s the information you need:

• Name of the company

• Website URL

• First name of the CEO

• Last name of the CEO

• LinkedIn URL of the CEO

• Email of the CEO

• Icebreaker (personalized one sentence about each prospect)

To make it easy for you, I already made a sheet you can use for this.

Get it here.

3. Outreach time

Now it’s time for the outreach and buying your first outreach software.

Outreach software is the alpha and omega of everything you’ll do from now on.

So it’s important to choose the software that’s best for you.

Don’t be a cheap bastard here. This is really important. It will either make you a million bucks or you’ll walk away broke.

If you’re looking for my recommendation:

• Instantly or lemlist if you’re just going to do email outreach.

• But I’m more a fan of an omni-channel outreach (Email + LinkedIn) - in this case, go with Expandi. You can’t be wrong (it’s also made with lead gen agencies in mind).

Creating the sequence

Read this carefully. Here’s exactly what you’re going to do.

Of course, you can change the messaging slightly to make it feel more like you, but the core focus must be honesty.

Here we go, email #1:

See? Honesty.

It’s sad not a lot of people have this skill anymore.

Anyway, here’s the follow-up #1, after 3 days:

Why does this follow-up work?

First, it’s honest.

Second, in the P.S. section, we’re solving the two major objections all people have when an Lead Gen Agency approaches them:

• Damage to their brand (because many agencies do a poor job)

• Poor quality of leads

The LinkedIn message request is the final touch to this sequence (and this is why you need Expandi).

Many people have full inboxes, and it’s easy for them to miss your emails. But if you also message them on LinkedIn, your chances of getting a reply will double.

Here is the LinkedIn message request:

And that’s it.

This is how you get your first clients.

If you send 100 emails, you’ll probably lose 2-3 clients like this.

By the end of week 3, you should already have some clients secured.

Now, let’s see how to do delivery and collect testimonials.

BONUS - How to get testimonials that convert 20%+ of people who watch it

It’s time to get the work done.

If you’re starting a Lead Generation Agency, you probably already know how to deliver results for your clients.

So, I’m not going to speak about that here.

The most important thing is to do work fast, day and night, so you can bring your new clients from the blunt state of “not giving a f*ck” about you to “this man is my hero.”

Do whatever it takes to fulfill your promise to them as quickly as possible.

Once you get them results, the most important thing is to take their testimonials to get other clients.

Let me show you the best way to do that.

How to get testimonials that convince new clients to give you money

There’s no luck here. Only science and a clear framework you need to follow:

Let’s break it down:

1. Jump on the quick 15-minute call with your clients

2. Press the record button (don’t forget this)

3. Ask them the following questions in this order:

   1. Can you please introduce yourself in one sentence?

   2. In one sentence, at what stage were you before working with us? Please start your sentence with “Before we started working with [yourName]” and be specific.

   3. In one sentence, at what stage are you right now? Please start your sentence with “After [number of days/weeks/months], [yourName] brought us to…” and be specific.

   4. Why do you recommend other people to work with us in one sentence? Please start your sentence with If you’re experiencing/struggling with [description of the same problem your client had].

4. Pick only the clients’ answers and make a 30-45-second video out of them.

Ideally, your testimonial should look like this:

Hey, I’m Matt from Acme Inc.

Before working with Ugi, we got only 5 demos a month and closed just 1 new client monthly.

After 30 days of working with him and his team, we got 25 demos and 5 new clients worth over $15.000 per month.

If you’re struggling to get new clients, I recommend you work with Ugi because he knows his stuff, holds himself accountable for what he says, and always delivers results. Peace!

BOOOM!

That’s it.

A few testimonials like this, and you’ll start getting more clients.

But don’t stop creating them. After every win you get for your clients, make them record testimonials like this, and you will be unstoppable.

Getting more clients

If you correctly do the work I gave you for the first 7 weeks, the rest will be history.

What will you do now to get you to $10k in MRR?

Scale your sales game.

Reach out to more people (but don’t be spammy).

Push your testimonials with the combination of your irresistible offer - and continue doing the amazing work for the clients you already have.

But once you reach the $10k MRR stage, the shit becomes difficult again.

You’ll now have to start dealing with hiring, optimizing processes, client onboarding, SOPs, etc.

To be frank, that scaling stage where you go from $10k to $80k in MRR is the funniest part of the Lead Gen Agency journey.

Soon, we’ll write and publish guides (as well as many other insights) on going from $10k to $80k in MRR, hiring the A players, optimizing your agency so it will run without you, and many other things.

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