Winning clients · Lesson 11 of 18 · 6 min
Almost always someone who already knows you. Nearly every guide skips this, because most are published by companies selling outreach software. We sell outreach software, and it is still true.
A new agency has no track record, no references and no case studies. In a cold conversation, those are precisely the things a hiring manager uses to decide whether to risk a role on you. Which means the first clients have to come from somewhere that does not require them — people who already have an opinion of you.
This is not a warm-up phase before the real business development starts. For most agencies it is the first five to ten clients, it is where the reputation you will later use in cold outreach gets built, and it is the highest-converting channel you will ever have.
Written down, with names. The exercise takes an hour and almost nobody does it properly — most people work from memory, which surfaces the same six contacts repeatedly and forgets the rest.
Managers you actually recruited for
The strongest category by a distance. Someone who has seen you fill a role knows what you are like to work with, and that is the thing a new agency cannot otherwise prove. Start here and work down.
Candidates you placed who are now hiring
The most underused source in recruitment. A candidate you placed three years ago may now be a manager with a team and a budget, and they remember the person who got them the job. Go through your placement history by name.
Colleagues from your last agency’s client sites
People you worked alongside during a contract, or met while managing an account. This is where the restrictive covenant question bites, so read the section below before you contact anyone here.
People from your pre-recruitment career
If you worked in the sector before recruiting, that cohort has spent the intervening years becoming managers. They are also the group most likely to believe you understand the work, which is worth more than warmth on its own.
Suppliers and adjacent professionals
Accountants, MSPs, consultants and equipment suppliers sell into the same companies you do and hear about hiring before job boards do. They are not clients, but they are the most reliable source of warm introductions there is.
The most common mistake is delivering a pitch to someone who wanted a conversation. They know you. The value proposition is not the interesting part; their situation is.
Say what you have done, briefly
One sentence. You have started an agency, you are specialising in a defined thing. Not a pitch, not a value proposition — they know you, so the interesting information is what you have set up and where you are focused.
Ask about their situation, and mean it
What are they hiring for, what is hard about it, what have they tried. This is the part that determines whether the conversation is useful. A person who talks for three minutes about their hiring problem has told you whether there is any business here.
Make a specific offer, or none at all
If they have a live problem you can help with, propose something concrete and small. If they do not, do not manufacture one — say you will keep in touch and mean that instead. Pushing a person who has no need is how you spend a relationship you needed.
Ask who else you should speak to
Every conversation, including and especially the ones with no business in them. This is what turns a finite list into a growing one, and warm-network lists die when people stop asking.
Write down when to come back
Most of these conversations end in "not right now", which is a real answer with a date attached. Capture it. A new agency that follows up in three months when it said it would is a rarity.
Check yourself
You have worked through twenty warm contacts and won two clients. What is the most valuable thing the other eighteen conversations produced?
Which of these is the clearest signal that your warm network has run out?
A warm list has a fixed size. Worked once, it is spent. What keeps it producing is that every conversation — including the ones that go nowhere — can add names to it, and every “not right now” can add a date.
Asking who else you should speak to is a small, slightly uncomfortable habit that roughly determines whether your first year has one wave of business development or a continuous one. There is more on building this deliberately in building a referral engine.
Not when you have contacted everyone once — a warm network keeps producing through revisits and referrals for a long time. It has run out when the referral chain has dried up and the names remaining are people who barely remember you.
At that point you are doing cold outreach while telling yourself it is warm, which is the worst of both. That is the moment the next two lessons matter: finding companies that are hiring right now and what to say to them.
One thing to carry forward: by the time you get there, you will have placements to point at and clients who will speak for you. Cold outreach works considerably better with those than without. Doing the warm work first is not just easier — it is what makes the hard channel viable.
Key takeaways
From someone who already knows you, in almost every case. Hiring managers you recruited for, candidates you placed who now manage teams, colleagues from client sites, and people from your career before recruitment. The reason this works and cold outreach does not, at the start, is that a new agency has no track record to point at — so the only credibility available is personal. Build a written list of every such person, work through it deliberately, and ask each one who else you should speak to.
It depends entirely on what you signed. Employment contracts in recruitment commonly contain non-solicitation or non-compete clauses covering clients and candidates you dealt with, and they vary in scope, duration and enforceability by state. This is a question for an employment attorney who can read your actual agreement, not for a web page — and it is worth asking before you contact anyone rather than after, because the cost of being wrong is a legal dispute in your first year of trading.
There is no threshold number, and anyone quoting one is guessing. What matters more is the quality of the relationships and how many of those people are in a position to buy — someone who liked you but has no hiring authority is a referral source, not a client. Write the list out honestly, mark who could actually issue a job order, and you will have a realistic picture of your first quarter within an hour.
Less than you think. They know you, so the pitch is unnecessary; what is useful is telling them briefly what you have set up and what you are focusing on, then asking about their situation and listening. If they have a problem you can help with, make one specific small offer. If they do not, say you will keep in touch and then actually do it. The most common mistake is treating a warm contact like a cold prospect and delivering a value proposition to someone who wanted a conversation.
When the warm network stops producing referrals and the remaining names are people who barely know you. Starting cold outreach before that point is doing the harder thing while the easier thing is still available — and doing it without the references, case studies or track record that make cold outreach work. The signal is not a date; it is the referral chain drying up.
Finished this lesson?
Next: Prospecting: finding companies that are hiring now
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