The Agency Marketing & New Biz Summit
• New biz got you down? You’ve come to the right place.
• This is your chance to suss out how other agencies like yours are sourcing
leads, growing their reputation, and keeping their pipelines steady.
Tuesday 15th July 2025 – 9.30am to 5.00pm
The British Library, Kings Cross
It’s not a fun time to work in new business right now.
- “The landscape is scary – a lot of clients are really struggling.”
- “We’ve been chasing our tails for six months.”
- “We’re still not out of the danger zone. Every month we’re having to replace the revenue. There’s just no commitment to long-term money.”
Last year’s economic turmoil still lingers, and 2025 has brought its own set of nightmares: tinier budgets, client-side musical chairs, and the rise of ‘in-house AI specialist teams’ (🥱).
The competition is brutal – 20 agencies all vying for one project, and it still takes around six months to seal the deal.
It seems agencies have been left with only a few options:
- UPSELLING – focus on getting more from existing clients.
- REPOSITIONING – redefine who you serve best and how you add value.
- TEAMING UP – partner with other agencies to form a stronger service offering.
- INNOVATE – find new ways to get clients to come to you without resorting to spam tactics.
Each of those comes with a fair bit of elbow grease. So where should you be focussing your time?
👉 At Pipeline, we’ll be spotlighting agency leaders who are getting innovative with lead generation, growing existing revenue, and becoming masters of their own marketing. If your new biz strategy is in need of a facelift, join us for a full-day of interactive sessions and candid conversations – you might just find the inspiration you’ve been looking for.

Who you’ll hear from…

Stop Being Ghosted & Book More Meetings With
Lumpy Mail
Who knew posting a clock would cause a bomb threat?
“It didn’t even have batteries!” Louis Sandford justifies. His company, The Lumpy Mail Shop, sends a whole host of wacky, attention-grabbing items to top level CEOs in the hopes to secure a deal with them as clients.
Louis got his start from being inspired by direct-marketing legends like Gary Halbert who pasted fake dollar bills onto letters to secure responses from clients. With this in mind, he developed his own spin on things.
Things quickly escalated. Louis posted lottery tickets and birthday cards to prospects. One day, he tried sending clients coconuts with a note: “Is getting new customers your toughest nut to crack? You’d be cocoNUTS not to give me a call.”
It worked! One coconut secured him a £40,000 deal.
Louis didn’t stop there. He’s since sent mannequin arms, ransom notes, piñatas, vinyl records, even cucumbers and vaseline all to secure his place in meeting rooms with prospective brands.
In 2023, he set up The Lumpy Mail Shop as a platform to help other businesses cut the ghosting and secure spots in meetings with brands they actually want to work with.
🚀 At Pipeline, Louis will reveal how thinking outside the inbox can grab attention, spark conversations and win new business. “The riskiest thing you can do is blend in,” he says – come and find out why.
The Power of
People-Centred Marketing
What if your strongest marketing strategy was your team all along?
For Katie Street, marketing is all about making it personal.
“It’s not just about the founders or CEOs, the thought leaders,” she says. “It should be about everyone in the business.”
At Street Agency, Katie has built a strong pipeline by championing employee-generated content. From short videos to candid social posts, she’s shifted the focus away from brands and clients – and instead, to the people behind them.
“Clients don’t want to engage with branded decks and boring reports,” she says. “They want to learn from people.”
And increasingly, that means showing up on video. “Short-form video’s on the rise, so we should all tap into that.”
🚀 At Pipeline, Katie will be sharing how her people-powered marketing approach is reshaping B2B, and how you too can use this approach to secure new and exciting clients.



Mistake-Making Marketing
“Look guys, there’s no way we’re ever working with Peppa Pig World.”
This was the moment that Mike Maynard, owner of Napier, realised things had gone too far. Just because the agency was down the road from the beloved character’s amusement park didn’t mean the agency was necessarily the best fit for that client.
Being in the agency game for almost 25 years, you’re bound to have made some mistakes to learn from. Whether it’s going into a client meeting completely underprepared, only talking about yourselves in a pitch, or even pricing your agency’s services all wrong – Napier has been there, done that, and got the t-shirt.
But making these mistakes has also been vital to Napier’s growth:
“I see making mistakes in two different categories,” says Mike. “Naturally, we’ve made inadvertent ones in the past, but there’s also been intentional ones – mistakes where we’ve trialled something and asked why they went wrong, in order to go ‘right’ next time.”
“We trial and test our methods a lot and I think not being afraid to fall on your face is very important.”
🚀 At Pipeline, Mike will be joined by Nesbert Musuwo, Account Manager at Napier, where they’ll take you through the stages that they’ve messed up in the past – all in the efforts to help you learn and grow!

Pitch Perfection: The Therapy-Led Outreach Strategy
The thud of a Yellow pages on a desk is enough to make any salesperson shudder. But to Jack Frimston and Zac Thompson, it was a sign that made them realise that something had to change.
As childhood friends, they were hired in a local call centre as sixteen-year-olds in Blackpool: “It was one of those jobs where they put a Yellow pages on your desk and say ‘start at the front or the back and just call through’.” Jack says.
When they were setting up their own company, We Have a Meeting, they knew they wanted to do things differently. “We wanted to offer people a good job,” Zac continues, “Where you’re not ashamed to say ‘I work in sales’ and can tell Nana at the family barbecue.”
But how did their own method differ from the traditional sales scripts?
“What we found was that a lot of what is taught to therapists is useful in sales.” Zac explains. “Getting someone to open up and tell you about their problems, their motivations, what’s holding them back.”
As a result, Jack and Zac implemented these therapy-based tactics into their cold-outreach strategies and found incredible results. “It’s a win-win.” Jack says. “It makes everyone in the team feel like they’re being much more ethical, and it makes the prospect feel much safer through this process, rather than being force-fed a proposition.”
🚀 Want to hear how they’re flipping the script? Join Jack and Zac at Pipeline for an in-depth session on how they’re making cold calls feel human again.


Building a Client Community That Drives Your Pipeline
When Ian Harris first stepped into the agency world, he noticed something baffling.
“You’d think agency leaders are out in the market, sharing ideas and networking at dinners. But they’re just sat at their computers, eating a sandwich, and slowly dying.”
There was no place for agency leaders to really connect and complain – so he built one himself.
Agency Hackers didn’t begin with a grand plan. It started as a humble email newsletter, with no website or logo in the early days. It was steered by engaging audience-led stories that related to the community.
Eventually, the newsletter grew, expanding into online events and large conferences, selling tickets to the audience it had cultivated.
“If you can become the watering hole where all the antelope gather, then that’s a really good place for you to put your lemonade stand,” says Ian.
🚀 At Pipeline, Ian’s pulling back the curtain on how he’s built a community and pipeline, all in one.

How to Make Lead Gen a
Whole Team Effort
Most agencies say they want a ‘team effort’ on new business. But when it comes down to it, it’s usually down to just one or two people.
So, how can ensemble thinking change this, and fuel your new biz pipeline with the collective brain power of your whole team?
“A pipeline thrives when it’s not reliant on one or two voices,” says Henry Regan, managing partner of Carbon Global. “Instead, you create a team of ‘dance captains’ – each playing to their strengths, each helping you move faster.”
Coming from an acting background, Henry uses performance-led thinking to help agencies boost their lead generation efforts. “Typically we ask our clients to brainstorm their wish list of thirty dream brands that the team would love to work with, and start there,” he explains. “We then explore what skillsets we have in the team (the ensemble) to create the best solutions to problems at pace.”
For Henry, a key driver of new biz is to get the whole team involved from the beginning. “Go ask your team what they want to work on,” he advises. “You won’t believe how fast they will want to get involved to help supercharge your pipeline with their individual attributes.”
This is your chance to redefine roles into little slices of leadership – harnessing the power of the individual to help your agency grow from strength to strength.
🚀 Join Henry’s interactive workshop at Pipeline, where in teams you’ll take on different lead gen roles, to harness the power of ensemble thinking to win new biz as a collective, rather than just a lone ranger.

Create a Funnel That Speaks Everyone’s Language
Have you ever thought that your finance team speaks a completely different language to your sales and marketing team?
You’re not alone. Mitch Richards knows the feeling all too well.
On his way to being Managing Director of Future Perform and Future Social, he was in a budgeting meeting when the finance team hit him with a curveball: “Where’s the money?” closely followed by “The sales team says all the leads you’re sending them are garbage.”
Yikes.
But it didn’t add up – sales were happening, the pipeline looked healthy. Mitch realised he didn’t have a system that clearly showed how his leads were converting from MQLs, to SQLs, and how many were becoming recurring customers.
“I went away and I designed something to help – I read up about this thing called Bowtie Funnel Methodology.” Mitch explains. “It turned into a holistic system of measurement to understand how to take people from knowing absolutely nothing about you, all the way to being your biggest and best customer.”
It universalised the language between the different departments of your agency, and highlighted the bottlenecks and pain points that need an extra push.
Since then, Mitch has rolled out this operating model in 50+ different businesses over the years with a big success story coming from InPost, transforming their €4bn evaluation into becoming a €7bn company within 5 years.
🚀 Come along to Pipeline, where he’ll explain the Bowtie Operating Funnel, and show you how to align your teams, sharpen your pipeline, and scale with confidence.


How to Grow Without a Dev Team
Ever turned down a big project because your software development team couldn’t handle it – or didn’t exist at all?
Ben Morris, Agency and AI lead at Deazy, says agencies are opening up entirely new revenue streams without adding a single new developer to the team.
That’s where Deazy comes in.
Joined by Rochelle Giblin from Big Partnership, in this session they will demonstrate how Big Partnership and Deazy teamed up to unlock growth in a low-risk, high-margin way.
“We essentially bolt onto companies as their software arm,” Ben says. “Agencies come to us with a software development brief, and we match them with the right team from our network of six thousand developers.”
It’s not just small briefs, either. Deazy has worked on everything from consumer-facing apps like Papa John’s to more complex and sensitive builds, including government satellite systems. “We’ve worked with Curve, RAC, and Popeyes – and we can white-label the work, so the client would never know we’re there.”
Whether you’ve got a few developers or none at all, this is about scaling capability without scaling headcount. “We can supplement your team – or we can be the team.”
🚀 Come along to Pipeline, where Ben will reveal how Deazy helped Big Partnership unlock a new revenue stream — without hiring a single developer.

New Business Surgery
Feeling the pain of slow pipelines and ghosted cold emails?
At Pipeline 2025, we’re hosting a New Business Surgery where agency folks can get practical advice on what’s really holding their pipeline back.
You’ll hear from:
- Ryan Hall, Friday Solved’s founder, who will share a proven sales method that goes against the tradition: ‘Don’t Sell’. He’s even written a book of the same name. It’s all about building a steady, sustainable pipeline, owning your process, and staying consistent – even when replies are slow.
“You’re not the centre of your clients’ universe,” says Ryan, who sold two of his previous agencies. “Maybe you need to send a second, third, fourth, fifth, or even more messages – because that’s how sales actually works.”
- And Amanda Rosevear, from ALF Insights, who’s spent over a decade helping agencies build proper new business systems.
“A lot of agencies are quite reactive,” she says. “They rely on referrals, and then worry when the pipeline dries up.” Amanda’s big on process, structure, and helping teams figure out what to focus on day-to-day.
🚀 Come equipped with your burning questions or pipeline pain points, to gain direct information from industry experts!
What a BD100 Submission Can Do For You

They’re the ones who make the agency famous, but how often do they get the recognition they deserve?
Behind every winning pitch, iconic campaign, or breakthrough client, is a business development star who brought the opportunity through the door.
The BD100 list exists to celebrate exactly that – to shine a light on a discipline often left in the shadows – and this panel will lift the lid on what it really means to be one of the industry’s best.
“I love business development, I made it my career when the profession didn’t really exist.” says Rich McHardy, co-founder of The BD100. “But until BD100, there wasn’t much recognition for the role – we’re changing that big time!”
You’ll hear first-hand from past winners and panel judges about what the awards mean and how they work. “Receiving recognition was really motivating” says Lizzie Clayton, Head of New Business and Marketing at Fold7, on winning Business Developer of the Year 2024. “There are often misconceptions about the BD role, but writing the submission made me truly appreciate how multifaceted and brilliant our industry is.”
The role of a business developer is rarely straightforward – often siloed, sometimes solitary, but always pivotal. “You kind of operate on a lone island – it’s strategic, emotional, commercial and relentless.” says Oya Mustafa.
That’s why moments of recognition like this really matter. “Being shortlisted made me straighten my crown. It gave me the confidence to fully own what I do.”
🚀 Whether you’re in it to win it, or simply curious about what it takes to reach The BD100 Hall of Fame (“five consecutive BD100 list appearances — it’s rightly quite tough,” says Rich), this session at Pipeline will validate, inspire, and give you the recognition you didn’t know you needed.

A Data-Led Approach
to New Business
Peter Czapp knew that something about new business wasn’t adding up. Leading the annual BenchPress report, he gained direct insight into how agencies perform and what their blind spots are each year. This data-led approach to new business led to some shocking discoveries.
“Only 11% of agencies have a referral strategy, and referrals are still the number one source of leads.” He says. “This feels like a big missed opportunity.”
As the founder of The Wow Company, and creator of BenchPress, Peter has spent the last decade crunching the numbers behind agencies’ new business. And what does he see? Most agencies are winging it when it comes to their pipeline.
“I’ve got data from hundreds of agencies,” says Peter. “And honestly, it amazes me how few really understand what’s driving their pipeline – or even how many leads they need each month to hit their targets.”
It turns out, crossing your fingers and guessing isn’t the best new biz strategy – who would’ve thought?
During his talk, Peter will reveal:
- What the most successful agencies are doing differently to win work.
- A calculator that helps you work backwards from your revenue goals.
- And three powerful ways to boost your conversion rate (including a clever trick to help you price more profitably).
“Whatever results you’re getting right now, a data-led approach will improve them. I’ll show you how,” says Peter.
🚀 At Pipeline, Peter will walk you through the exact numbers and tactics the top-performing agencies use. Ditch the guesswork, focus your energy, and grow your pipeline with purpose.
Buyability: The Art of Sustainable Growth
Every agency wants to grow – but what’s your motivation for growth – and how do you achieve sustainable growth?
“If you’re not known for something, you’re not known at all.”
That’s the guiding truth behind Anna Stone’s refreshing and practical take on how to build an agency by winning the right clients.
And after 20+ years working across agencies of every shape and size – from lean founder-led teams, to giants like Ogilvy – Anna has seen what makes an agency’s services genuinely buyable. So much so, she’s even developed an approach to it.
“It’s a staged process, a set of questions. Every agency’s journey through the process will be different, some questions you’ll be able to answer quickly, and some will take a bit more time” she says.
In this keynote, Anna will challenge the obsession with growth for growth’s sake. She’ll ask the uncomfortable and thought-provoking questions agencies often avoid:
- Why do you want to grow?
- Who are your best clients and why?
- Why should clients buy from you?
“Most agencies say, ‘We could work with everybody’ – but there’s always a sweet spot, there’s always something, or a combination of things that you’re better at. Being known for something doesn’t mean being boxed in. It means standing out.”
🚀 Whether your focus is on selling services, nurturing relationships or pitching, Anna’s talk at Pipeline will help you ask the right questions, sharpen your sales approach, and help you drive sustainable growth.



Meet people who are interested in your story
Pipeline is a day that will help you get inspired, and meet other people you can learn from. We blend interactive talks and group discussion.
- We dot you around the venue so you can interact – and we mix up the groups so you meet different people.
- We poll you before the event to see what you want to talk about.
- We make sure all the talks are original and interesting. We facilitate questions and reflections throughout.
Who else will you meet? 👀
Here’s a few of the delegates we’re expecting. To see the full list, click here.
Pipeline – FAQs 💬
Q: What actually happens on the day?

We start the event at 9.30am, so try to arrive by 9.15am.
The day’s format is pretty simple: you will spend some time hearing from guests with interesting stories that you can learn from, and you will also spend some time in small groups discussing your journey with like-minded agency leaders.
The breakouts are hosted by an Agency Hackers facilitator who makes sure that everybody with something interesting to say gets heard. (We poll attendees before the event, so we know who to ‘pick on’ on the day.)
We will serve tea, coffee and sweet things to keep you going, but please eat a sandwich before you arrive.
Here’s some of the people you’ll meet at our Pipeline conference. You can view the full list here.
Q: Who will I hear from? Who are the speakers?

The people you’ll hear from all have interesting stories about marketing and new biz, and tactics you can adopt in your own agency.
We also decide who to spotlight based on the information we capture in the weeks before. (Look out for our emails!)
We will publish the line-up a few weeks before, but mostly we hope that you will trust us to select interesting folk from our audience. We find that the people who choose to attend our events are overwhelmingly on fascinating journeys that will resonate with you.
Also, the ‘talks’ aren’t really linear presentations. They’re more like structured case studies, with lots of questions and reflections from the audience.
You could potentially call them ‘fireside chats’, but these are not rambling cosy conversations. They are planned and structured. We put a lot of work into researching our guests, out of respect for your time.
Q: Who can attend?
This event is for anybody in your agency who cares about their marketing and new biz function.
That might be the person in charge of this area, the founder or owner, or it might be somebody else.
