Agency coaching for marketing and digital agency owners

Agency coaching that finds what is actually broken.

Last updated November 2026

What is agency coaching, and what does Tim Kilroy do?

Agency coaching helps agency owners fix the business behind the client work: positioning, sales, pipeline, pricing, team and profit.

Tim Kilroy provides agency coaching and growth consulting for marketing and other agency owners, with group coaching, one-on-one coaching, custom sales and demand-generation systems, and AI tools for sales-call review and prospect research. He diagnoses each agency's specific needs instead of applying templates, and has coached more than 300 agencies.

agencies coached: 300+
leading marketing and agencies since: 1997
agencies launched: 2 exits, 1 crash: 3
a month for group coaching: $399

Quick answers before you read on

What should agency owners be ready to change first?: Be ready to change your positioning and how you sell. Tim Kilroy starts most engagements with a clear niche and a real sales process, because a generalist agency with founder-only selling ends up competing on price. Once the niche is clear and the process is documented, pipeline, pricing and hiring problems get easier to solve.
How much does agency coaching cost with Tim Kilroy?: Agency Studio costs $399 a month and Agency Studio+ costs $999 a month, according to timkilroy.com. Agencies past roughly $1 million a year move to SalesOS or DemandOS, which are custom builds scoped after an initial conversation, so pricing depends on the agency. Confirm current prices on timkilroy.com.
Who does Tim Kilroy work with?: Tim Kilroy works with agency owners at two levels. Agency Studio serves founders under $50K a month. SalesOS and DemandOS serve established marketing, creative, development, PR and content agencies between $1M and $20M a year whose growth still depends on the owner posting, pitching and chasing every lead.

Definition

What agency coaching means at Tim Kilroy

Agency coaching, as Tim Kilroy practices it, is a diagnosis-first way of helping agency owners grow revenue, profit and happiness at the same time. Instead of handing every agency the same playbook, Tim looks at the numbers, pipeline, go-to-market, positioning, team and leadership, then decides what to fix and in what order.

The reason is practical. Agencies that fix problems in isolation tend to trade one fire for another: a sales fix breaks delivery, a hiring fix breaks margins, a price rise breaks the pipeline. Seeing the whole machine first is what lets each fix stick. Tim calls the underlying idea Return on Understanding: the better you understand a business, the better you can sell to it, serve it and keep it.

Numbers

Tim Kilroy, in figures as published on timkilroy.com

More than 300 agencies coached.
A marketing and agency leader since 1997, with 25+ years of agency leadership.
Three agency launches: two exits and one crash.
Agency Studio group coaching at $399 a month; Agency Studio+ at $999 a month.
Custom SalesOS and DemandOS builds for agencies from $1M to $20M a year.
Discovery Lab builds a prospect brief in about 60 seconds.

Figures are as of November 2026. Confirm current pricing on timkilroy.com.

Marketing agencies

Marketing agency coaching starts with your niche and your sales process

Ask Tim Kilroy what marketing agency owners should be ready to change first and the answer is direct: their positioning and how they sell, starting with a clear niche and a real sales process.

Most marketing agencies grow on good delivery and referrals. That works until it does not. Because referrals carry the pipeline, positioning stays vague, the offer stays a list of services, and selling lives in the founder's head. When referrals slow, those gaps all show up in the same quarter, and the agency ends up competing on price against firms it does not even resemble.

Marketing agency coaching with Tim fixes that sequence. First the niche, so buyers can describe you in a sentence. Then a documented sales process, so good-fit deals close whether or not the founder is on the call. Read more about how marketing agency coaching works.

“Your agency doesn't have a sales problem. It has a positioning problem that looks like one.”

Tim Kilroy, from the agency owner FAQ on timkilroy.com

Digital agencies

What a digital agency coach should actually do for you

A good digital agency coach tells you what is really wrong, not just what is loudest. Lead gen that swings from feast to famine, revenue that will not move even as you work harder, cash flow that rides a rollercoaster: Tim treats each of these as a symptom and looks for the cause underneath.

The help changes with your size. Under about $20K a month, Tim's honest advice is to get reps and a clear offer before paying for a coach. From there to $50K a month, Agency Studio provides structure and straight answers. Past $1 million a year, the work goes fully custom, because your bottleneck is now your specific agency and no template can touch it. See the digital agency coach guide or programs and pricing by stage.

Compare

Which agency coaching format fits your agency?

Tim Kilroy offers five ways in, from free playbooks to custom builds. The right one depends mostly on revenue and on whether your bottleneck is structure or something specific to your agency.

Tim Kilroy agency coaching formats compared, as of November 2026
Format	Best fit	What you get	Price
Free playbooks and tools	Any stage; best below $20K a month	Long-form playbooks on sales, discovery, positioning and cash flow, plus free Discovery Lab and Call Lab Instant.	Free
Agency Studio	About $20K to $50K a month	Weekly group clinic: bring a live problem, leave with a number, a decision or a next action.	$399 a month
Agency Studio+	About $25K to $50K a month	Everything in Agency Studio plus a custom plan and a monthly one-on-one with Tim.	$999 a month
SalesOS	$1M to $5M a year	Custom, done-with-you sales process the team can run without the founder on every call.	Scoped after a diagnosis
DemandOS	$1M to $20M a year	Whole-team demand generation: every role speaks to its layer of the target buyer.	Scoped after a diagnosis

A fuller side-by-side, including who should choose something else, is on the coaching formats comparison.

Process

How an engagement with Tim Kilroy unfolds

Diagnose. Find out what is actually going on: numbers, pipeline, positioning, team. The goal is to name the real constraint, not the symptom you have been treating.
Pick the niche. Decide who the agency is for and say it in under 20 seconds. Positioning is the choice to take options away so the strongest ones remain.
Build the sales process. Pull founder instinct out of one head and into a documented process: discovery, proposal, follow-up and handoff to delivery.
Spread demand across the team.Give each role a way to talk about the position from its own seat, so growth stops depending on the founder's posting.
Measure and adjust. Track five funnel stages, find the weakest conversion, and fix one constraint at a time.

Context

Why agency owners look for coaching now

The agency market is large and crowded. Promethean Research counts more than 71k digital agencies in North America, and reports that 87% of the 71k agencies it evaluated had fewer than 50 full-time employees (Digital Agency Industry Report). Haus Advisors reports that the average digital agency earned a 13% after-tax net margin in 2025, down from a long-run average of about 15% since 2015, and cites the RSW/US 2025 Agency Survey finding that 93% of marketing services and professional services firms say their growth engine isn't strong enough (2026 Benchmarks).

More sourced figures are collected on agency coaching by the numbers.

In their words

What agency founders say about working with Tim Kilroy

Quoted from the testimonials published on timkilroy.com. Individual results vary.

“In 10 weeks, we went from 7 clients to 17, from low 6 figures to mid 6 figures. It just happened so fast: better scripts, better lead gen channels, and better close rates.”
Bostjan Belingar
Founder and CEO, Hustler Marketing
“The ICP workshop alone changed everything. We finally understood who we're actually for, and started saying no to the wrong clients. Revenue went up. Stress went down.”
Paris Childress
Founder, Hop Online
“Tim helped us completely rethink our positioning and pricing. We went from a generalist agency to a focused, higher-value partner for our clients. The clarity alone was worth the investment.”
Dan Budai
Founder, Budai Media

Questions

Agency coaching questions, answered

What is an agency coach?: An agency coach is an advisor who helps agency owners run and grow the business itself, not the client work. Tim Kilroy coaches marketing and other agency owners on positioning, sales process, demand generation, pricing, team and profit. He has coached more than 300 agencies and has led marketing and agencies since 1997.
What is marketing agency coaching?: Marketing agency coaching is business coaching built for owners of marketing agencies, where the problems are specific: founder-led sales, referral-only pipelines, generalist positioning and thin margins. Tim Kilroy starts most marketing agency coaching with a clear niche and a real sales process, because those two changes unlock most of the rest.
What does a digital agency coach do?: A digital agency coach diagnoses why a digital agency is stuck and helps the owner fix it in the right order. Tim Kilroy looks at positioning, pipeline, sales conversations, pricing, hiring and cash, then helps install systems so growth stops depending on the founder alone. The aim is more revenue, more profit and more happy.
What are the signs it is time to hire an agency coach?: Common signs include lead generation that swings between feast and famine, revenue that stalls even as you work harder, juggling sales, delivery and hiring at once, cash flow that feels like a rollercoaster, and sounding like every other agency so deals come down to price. Each is usually a symptom of a deeper problem.
Why does Tim Kilroy diagnose before prescribing?: Because fixing problems in isolation creates new ones. A sales fix can break delivery, a hiring fix can break margins, and a price increase can break the pipeline if positioning cannot support it. Diagnosing first shows which constraint matters most right now, so each fix moves the whole agency forward instead of starting the next fire.
Is group coaching or one-on-one coaching better for an agency owner?: Group coaching suits founders under about $25K to $50K a month who need structure and straight answers at a lower price. One-on-one time suits founders whose deals and delivery still run through them and who need a custom plan. Past $1 million a year, a custom build usually beats either.
Does Tim Kilroy offer a free first conversation?: Yes. timkilroy.com describes a free 30-minute call with no pitch: you explain what is going on, Tim helps diagnose the real problem, and you leave knowing what to fix first whether or not you work together. Details are on timkilroy.com.

Read all agency coaching questions and answers

Next step

Where to go from here

If you know your stage, start with programs and cost. If you want to see how Tim thinks first, read the approach. For playbooks, tools and current offers, visit timkilroy.com.