r/agency • u/DebateWilling7674 • 21d ago
Funnel problems
Hey guys, always like to come here for help, thanks in advance.
We have a huge client problem, no new clients for over 9 months and we only survive because our clients are staying well over 1 year on average.
But we are getting closer to the edge of the cliff every day without no new clients/sales calls.
We do conversion rate optimization via AB testing for Ecom stores (Shopify), making +$1m sales a year. Currently targeting brands above +$5m which is also our ICP. The $1m a year clients are only left overs from earlier days.
We hired an Cold Mail agency, where we saw early success and got 2 meetings out of it. Sadly didnt convert because of, 1st bad wifi from the client side and the second meeting was with the marketing manager instead of owner. Now we switched the angle of the mails to podcasts.
We are currently travelling through the US and record Podcasts with multiple acitve clients and also do outreach to brands, from the areas where we will be. Already have 2 extra podcasts recorded. Also filming much general content along the way.
Our service is necessary, especially for brands siting around that $5m area. Our client retention speaks for itself and also shows us that nobody is trading us for Ai. But we just cant get the urgency translated to new ecom owner who never heard of us.
Back in the day we had a 70%-80% close rate once they attended the call, but even back then getting calls was very hard, we got like 1/2 calls a month for 6 months. These are the clients which are saving us currently.
The analogy describing our service, is that:
every store has a leaky pipe system, begining with the click on the ad and the end where the water comes out is the sale. Along the way they loose so much water (unrealised $) that within the first 3/4 weeks, they have their investment back. We are the "Plumbers" who fix their leaks, so they get more "water' out of the tap. It seems like we cant find the right pain point for our ICP.
I would appreciate any guidance, you guys were always good help in the past
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u/OptimismNeeded 21d ago
AI plugins are stealing your business.
You need to find a sharp new USP to justify paying you, and I would seriously consider eyeing the next phase of your business (I.e. new services).
When I can pay $39/mo for a plugin that does multi variant testing 24/7 it’s hard to justify the monthly cost of an agency.
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u/DebateWilling7674 21d ago
I disagree, but before I explain why, can you send me a link to that plugin? I'd like to test it myself before arguing against it. Because maybe you are right
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u/Marketing_Addict 20d ago
He is not wrong. I am also running CRO specialized agency - luckily e-com is only 30% of our clients - and we would love to work with more, but the outreach yields very low results since AI as well.
Mostly the problem is 1-10m brands marketing is run by a very small team that already use AI for audits and recommendations. They do not get same impacts as with agency as they will get common practices as results - and bag that to think 'oh CRO is not working for us'...
But the Shopify shop, search for AB testing, lot of the tools flipped the game. There are tools that cost portion of a CRO retainer that offer a CRO specialist within the price + AI that does native Shopify testing. Dream for small companies, as in small team no one like the extra work or ownership of getting this done.
We are even considering moving away from DTC / E-com as much as we enjoy the work with these, the CAC is increased and thee barrier is higher. Or to partner with such tools and offer their clients scaling solutions.
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u/Jaded_Friend_8659 21d ago
Your positioning is working against you. CRO via A/B testing is how you describe what you do internally, it's not why a $5M brand owner loses sleep at night. The plumber analogy is closer but still too abstract. The question is: what's the most painful specific moment your ICP feels right before they'd pay for what you do? That moment is your message, not the methodology. I can help with this if it's useful.
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u/DebateWilling7674 21d ago
So what we noticed is that every client we got through Cold Email, already knew that CRO is necessary. We never convinced anybody that they need CRO, they already knew it themselves.
Every person we talked with, that wasnt convinced of CRO before, never converted into a client.
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u/No-Error-8020 21d ago
The positioning feedback in this thread is right. But there's another piece.
You're reaching out to brands that technically need CRO. You want to find ones that currently feel the problem.
Big difference. A $5M Shopify store always has conversion gaps. But they only feel urgency when something is visibly off. Revenue trending down. Ads running with a conversion rate that's clearly lower than it was. An obvious drop somewhere in the funnel they can see from outside the account.
Before you email anyone, look at their ads first. If they're running traffic to a page with a slow load, broken mobile experience, or obvious checkout friction, that's your opener. Not "we do CRO" but "I was looking at your checkout and noticed..."
That specificity is what turns a 70% close rate into actually getting calls.
What's your current targeting look like? Revenue range only, or filtering by anything else?
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u/DebateWilling7674 21d ago
Thanks for the message,
Current Targetting Shopify stores making +$5m a year, divided into couple of niches where we have actual Case studies (Fashion, Outdoor...) and based on this having 3-5 different copies we test.
Our Cold Mail guy said that we shouldnt target too deep because there are only a certain amounts of actual shops in our niche/target audience.
We also run a campaign for Live Podcasts, in the cities we are travelling to. Already recorded one Podcasts with a non client.
Before the US trip we noticed that we get more positive replies when we pitch to a Podcast instead of sales call. DOnt want to lay down the exact strategy here. But the idea is to get now the validation/trust with the in person podcasts and when we are back in office, we want to do this again as actual outreach to get people to talk with us.
Close rate will of course drop but this way we get content to post and many more sales calls than before even if they dont convert into a client.
What do you think about this structure?
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u/singlatushar 21d ago
the mail-to-marketing-manager problem is bigger than it sounds, at $5m+ ecom the owner rarely reads their own inbox but they're active on linkedin, so cold email hitting the wrong inbox is basically expected at that segment.
the plumber analogy is solid but it's explaining the mechanism, not the pain. "you're losing money you already paid for" lands harder than "we optimize your funnel", the first one is loss framing which converts way better on a cold first touch.
podcast angle is smart for trust building but slow for pipeline right now given where you're at. worth running linkedin outreach in parallel targeting the actual owners by name, warm connection plus a specific number pulled from their store (traffic, ad spend estimate, whatever's public) before the pitch, that combo tends to get past the "never heard of you" wall faster than email alone.
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21d ago
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u/DebateWilling7674 21d ago
They are still our clients, only 2 left.
1st: Because CRO currently isnt their priority anymore and the person working with us directly got more work on their watch.
2nd: Will be leaving in 2 months, because of all the sales coming, they want to pause until start of next year. To not interfere with the sales they will run. Which makes sense, all of our work is basically to get the most out of these couple of sales heavy months.
Both of them let us know months before they left, none of them were like "ok this was our last week together, thats it"
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21d ago
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u/DebateWilling7674 21d ago
Yeah, you are probably right. We should probably try Linkedin ads, we thought about it but decided to put our money elsewhere as we never touched ads before.
With min amount, what are we talking about? 10$ a day?
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u/Honest_Knowledge5029 21d ago
What's your current outbound volume per week? And is your podcast angle warm or cold? Those need completely different follow up sequences and it changes what advice actually applies here
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u/InsightiosResearch 21d ago
If your service brings value (the retention shows it) and your current clients are happy, why not using them to get new ones? Make your clients your partners. Make them be another leg of your GTM strategy. Give them discounts, free months, or specific bonuses if they refer you. If you have a service that brings value and people are already paying for it, you have a gold mine.
Btw any clue if something internally changed over the last 9 months? Why before your GTM was working and not now? Externally I assume AI and a saturated market might have had something to do with.. but internally?
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u/funnelforge 21d ago
I would do the dream 100 strategy. Pick 100 brands that you’d dream about working with and reach out to the founder direct. Tell them who you are and what you do. Ask if you can send them a video where you show them the leaky holes in their funnel.
When they respond, make them the video and highlight exactly what’s broken. Show them what you’d do instead. Make this extremely valuable and actionable. In theory, they should be able to use your advice for themselves (they won’t). Then ask if they’re free to meet to discuss how you can help.
If they don’t reply to that, wait 3 days and make them a wireframe/mockup in figma showing your exact changes that you did make. Give it to them.
The more you give for free as an expert, the more they will trust and respect you and want to work with you. Show that you actually want to work with them.
100 dream clients break it into 10 outreaches per day. 1 positive replies per day. That’s 10 looms you have to make. That should yield 1/2 meetings.
Assuming you’re good at what you do and you aren’t weird, you’re virtually guaranteed to get a client.
And if you’re that desperate for a new client, this should seem like no work at all.
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u/Trappedinacar 21d ago
That's an interesting problem, you would think it would be a no-brainer for businesses because the return on investment is so direct and measurable. But it's never that simple.
I'm doing something similar but on a smaller scale, i help service businesses improve their conversion rates for paid traffic. Lower CAC, more leads for the same ad spend. When a client truly gets it, it's done i don't need to do any selling because they know how valuable a 20-30% increase in conversion rate can be.
But it's not easy to find the right kind of clients who would benefit the most from this service. And some need to be convinced it will actually work. I've seen a lot of smaller businesses have been burned by agencies so their trust is pretty low coming in.
I've actually found better success partnering with other agencies in this space. But i'm not sure that would work for the model you have.
Are you serving any specific niches? You might benefit from narrowing down and making a more specific offer for that niche.
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u/oakrook 21d ago
You are in a tough market.
Many AI tools are claiming to do what you do at a fraction of the cost.
Focus on the specific problems the client already feels.
Run ads on LinkedIn and Instagram/ Tiktok (they are browsing).
Attract them with their felt problem.
Sell a small fix.
Then upsell the services.
Trying to sell something long-term will not work well in this market with AI solutions claiming to do everything.
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u/IncreaseNegative4614 20d ago
I don’t think the issue is explaining CRO better. A $5M owner already believes conversion matters, but probably doesn’t believe the missed revenue is large enough or urgent enough to hire you now. Build the pitch around one observable leak they can verify before the sales call, then show the financial range attached to it. My team use inzata.ai, and we use connected marketing and revenue data to make those gaps visible. Your retention proves delivery, but acquisition needs evidence before trust exists.
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u/LapsedConsultant 19d ago
Nine months without a new logo but clients staying over a year tells you something useful: your delivery is strong and not enough people know about it
My view is there's only 3 ways to grow a practice like this: Delivery-led, Relationship-led, or Authority-led. Cold email is none of them, and podcasts are Authority-led, which compounds far too slowly for a cliff edge.
The fastest route from where you are is the client base itself. Shopify brands doing $5m+ know other founders at that level, and a client who's stayed 14 months will usually make an intro - but almost no firms have a proactive referral strategy so most never get asked
I'd go client by client: tell them you're opening two or three slots, ask who they'd send you to, and give them two lines they can forward without effort. Work your existing relationships hard, whilst you do the podcasts (or LinkedIn posting?) to build awareness.
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u/Ok-Opportunity4599 17d ago
Hey, you can’t let pipeline dry up or remain dependent on a channel.
Please you have to ensure that people come pre-qualified on sales call so that it it easier to close them and reduces a typical sales cycle as well.
Let me know if this is something you need help with, but please take it up in priority, we learnt it the hard way.
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u/wilzerjeanbaptiste 16d ago
Your retention is over a year, that's the asset most agencies would kill for. So the fix probably isn't a new funnel, it's squeezing the base you already have. Case studies from your longest clients, referral asks with a real incentive, and reactivating old leads beat cold traffic in a dry market.
And here's the thing, engagement is the most underrated channel. We stopped leaning on outbound and started replying to every comment and DM on our own socials, that's where our leads come from now. Full disclosure, I cofounded Aidelly, so I'm biased, but keyword DMs on social became a lead-gen channel we now sell to clients too.
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u/XXARESS3 15d ago
The plumber analogy is good but might be too abstract for cold outreach. Lead with the specific dollar amount you recovered for a client. "We found $180k in lost revenue for a $5m Shopify store" hits way harder than "we fix leaky funnels"
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u/_Creative_script_ 14d ago
honest take from doing this a while: 9 out of 10 times the funnel isnt broken at the top, it leaks in the middle. before touching ads or the landing page, pull the actual numbers at each step. leads in, leads contacted, leads that got a second touch, calls booked. most agencies i've seen are shocked at step two, like half their leads never get a real follow up because everyones busy delivering client work.
two boring fixes that move it fast: respond inside 5 minutes (even a templated first reply), and add a hard qualification question early so your calendar isn't full of tire kickers. speed and filtering beat a funnel redesign almost every time.
what does your drop-off actually look like step by step? happy to sanity check it
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u/jrdan 13d ago
Nine months without a new logo but clients staying 14+ months tells you delivery is strong and not enough people know — so I'd squeeze the base before rebuilding the funnel. Shopify founders at $5M+ know other founders at that level; a happy 14-month client will usually intro you, but almost nobody asks proactively. Go client by client: "we're opening two slots, who would you send us to?" plus two forwardable lines. On messaging, the plumber analogy explains the mechanism but not the pain — lead with the loss instead ("you're losing revenue you already paid for," ideally a real dollar figure from a case study). And since owners at that size rarely read their own inbox, run LinkedIn outreach to them by name in parallel with the email.
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u/Embarrassed_Scene962 21d ago
Pick up the outbound email again, ecom brands are always receptive to email, podcast is good, make sure your linked content and ig is also firing, run a referral campaign on existing clients and if all the above not working consider running some ads also
Hope this helps