You've launched your agency. You've built a solid service offering. You've maybe even worked with a friend or two for free or cheap just to get portfolio pieces.
Now you're stuck.
You're refreshing your email inbox constantly, hoping someone reaches out. You're posting on LinkedIn hoping the algorithm gods bless you. You're asking every contact you know if they "know anyone who might need your services." And you're making exactly zero dollars.
The problem isn't your service quality. It's that you're waiting for business to come to you instead of going out and getting it.
Getting your first 10 clients is actually simpler than you think - but it requires you to do something most agencies refuse to do.
Here's the truth: inbound marketing is great when you have an established brand, existing clients, and time to wait 6-12 months for results. You have none of those things right now.
Your first 10 clients are going to come from outbound. Direct outreach. Talking to people who actually need what you do.
This isn't sexy. It's not something you post about on LinkedIn. But it works immediately, and it works reliably.
Before you send a single message, you need to be crystal clear on who you're reaching out to. Not "businesses that need marketing." Not "growing companies." Specific.
Pick a niche or service and a target company size. Here are some real examples:
The more specific you are, the better your pitch will be. And the better your pitch, the higher your close rate.
You need contact information for 100-200 people in your target market. Not thousands. Start small.
Use:
Spend one afternoon building a list of 150 companies and their contact info. That's your starting point.
This is where 90% of agencies fail. They write generic emails that could apply to literally anyone. "We help businesses grow." "We'd love to chat." "Are you interested in learning more?"
Nobody responds to that.
Your email needs to:
Example (for an SEO agency targeting e-commerce):
"Hey [Name] - I noticed [Company] doesn't show up for [keyword] in Google, even though your competitors rank for it. We helped [similar company] move from page 3 to top 3 for their highest-value keywords. Do you have 15 minutes next week for a quick call?"
That's it. That's the email.
Use Gmail, Outlook, or a cold email platform to send these emails. Track opens and clicks if you can. This tells you what's working.
Send in batches of 10-15 per day. This looks less spammy and gives you time to refine what you're doing based on responses.
People don't respond to your first email. They respond to your third or fourth. So plan to follow up 3-4 times over 2-3 weeks if you don't get a response.
You should expect a 5-15% response rate on your initial email, and maybe a 10-20% meeting rate from people who respond. That means from 150 emails, you might get 8-10 meetings. From those meetings, you should close 2-4 clients.
That's how you get your first 10 clients. Rinse and repeat until you hit that number, then start refining your pitch based on who actually said yes.
Getting a meeting means nothing. You still need to have a solid discovery call, understand their problem, present a solution, and close the deal. But at least you'll have meetings to have.
Most agencies quit before they send the first 50 emails. They say "cold outreach doesn't work" when really they just didn't give it enough attempts. This process isn't hard - it just requires you to actually do it consistently.
If you want to skip the "build a list" and "write emails" and "track responses" parts and have someone do this for you at scale - handling the entire outreach process with proven copy, infrastructure, and follow-up - that's exactly what we do at BEC Growth. We've helped agencies go from zero to their first 10-20 clients using cold email only. If you want to focus on closing deals instead of sending emails, that's worth a conversation.
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BEC Growth builds and manages your entire cold email system from infrastructure to reply handling.
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