Skip to content
Agency Pipeline Guides

Methodology

How these guides are made

Last updated: November 2026Published by Tim Kilroy

How are the recommendations on this site formed?

Recommendations on Agency Pipeline Guides come from Tim Kilroy's published agency guidance, checked against named market research, and every ranking uses one stated criterion.

Tim Kilroy writes and publishes this site. It is not independent, and no outside audit has been performed. What follows is exactly how pages are put together, so you can judge the advice for yourself.

Procedure

How each guide is written

  1. Start from a real question

    Each page targets a question agency owners actually ask, phrased the way they ask it.

  2. Answer from Tim Kilroy's frameworks

    Such as the five-stage funnel, the pipeline math, and the discovery call approach.

  3. Add named market research

    Statistics are quoted as published, with the source beside them.

  4. Label what is whose

    Tim's own figures, client-reported results, and market statistics are always marked differently.

  5. Date it

    Every page shows when it was last updated.

Sources

Which sources are used?

Market statistics on this site come from these published pages:

Some figures, such as RSW/US, Gartner, and Marketing Metrics findings, are cited as they appear in Tim Kilroy's own playbooks, and are labeled that way.

Rankings

How are rankings ordered?

The channel ranking is ordered strictly by published average cost per lead, lowest first. Only entries with a figure in the source are ranked. Each entry is described with the same kinds of facts.

Tim Kilroy does not sell any of the ranked channels. He sells coaching, systems, and tools to agencies.

Client results

How are client results handled?

Before-and-after results come only from founders' own published statements on Tim Kilroy's testimonials page. They are labeled client-reported. They are not audited and are not a promise of what any other agency will see.

Where Tim Kilroy's own products are mentioned, such as Call Lab or Agency Studio, the page discloses that he offers them.

Common questions

Short answers here. The full agency lead generation FAQ has 46.

What is a B2B lead generation strategy?
A B2B lead generation strategy is the plan a business uses to attract, identify, and qualify other businesses that could buy from it. For an agency, that means choosing a defined ideal client, picking the channels those buyers actually use, and saying something that connects your work to their needs. Tim Kilroy's guides treat it as a system you measure, not a set of hopeful conversations.See it in the FAQ
Who are these lead generation guides written for?
They are written for founders of digital agencies, especially founder-led shops between roughly $1M and $5M in revenue that want a clearer sales process. If every deal still runs through the founder and the pipeline swings month to month, these guides are aimed at you. Tim Kilroy, who publishes them, has coached more than 300 agencies.See it in the FAQ
Which B2B lead generation channels cost the least per lead?
According to Martal Group's 2026 lead generation statistics, SEO ($31), email marketing ($53), and webinars ($72) offer the lowest average cost per lead among B2B channels. Those are market averages, not guarantees. Your own cost per lead depends on your niche, your offer, and how well your message fits the buyer.See it in the FAQ
Should I hire a lead generation company instead?
It depends on what is broken. Outsourced lead generation companies can add volume, but if your positioning is unclear or your discovery and follow-up leak, more leads will leak too. Run a leak test first. If the bottleneck truly is top-of-funnel volume and your process already converts well, outside help can make sense.See it in the FAQ
Where should an agency owner start with lead generation?
Start by measuring. Pull the last 90 days of prospects, count how many reached each of the five funnel stages, and calculate stage-to-stage conversion. The stage with the worst conversion is your first fix. Tim Kilroy says this takes about twenty minutes and a spreadsheet, and it stops you from pouring more leads into a leaky process.See it in the FAQ

Published by Tim Kilroy