The last time we were together, I told you a pretty hard truth. I got some pushback on the idea that Your Funnel is a Fantasy and that consideration sets are often built through actual human relationships, not your “personalized” cold email or your meticulously optimized landing page. (Editor’s Note: I am not pooping on cold email (I wrote a book about it in 2020 - it’s outdated, but there are nuggets worth keeping - get it free) nor am I pooping on funnels - a great funnel is a super-strong weapon in your arsenal…but human recommendations and referrals still rule. Something like 50% of all agency leads and 75% of all agency revenue comes from referrals and frequent fliers.)

Anyway, cool, back to our story:
Let's say you did the work, built visibility., were interesting and somebody in a conference room said, "Holy shit, we have a problem," and your name came up.

Congratulations. You made the list. [FIST BUMP. HIGH FIVE. ETC.]

Here's the shitty reality - the easy part (making the consideration set) is over

Here's what happens after your name gets dropped in that conference room. Somebody, sometimes the most senior person in the group, sometimes not, gets assigned to lead the search. Their job? Figure out which of the 3-5 names on that list actually belong there.

Their job is not to find the best agency. Their job is to eliminate the agencies that don't belong.

They are a filter, not a pump. The discovery call isn't "tell me why you're great." It's "gonna be a no, unless you give me a reason NOT to say NO."

Consideration set: BIG YES ENERGY
Finalist List: BIG “WHY ARE YOU EVEN HERE, BRO?” ENERGY

Most agencies walk into this moment like it's a casual coffee chat because Dave referred them.

Dave's referral got you in the room. Dave's referral does not keep you in the room. The agency that was referred by Susan, or the other agency that gave away stuffed tigers at eTail East did three hours of homework on the prospect's market, their competitors, and their Q2 product launch? They are gonna eat your lunch while you are still talking about “good ol’ Dave”.

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Several years ago, my neice auditioned for American Idol. She sang for one set of screeners, then another set of screeners, and a 3rd, and then finally some kind of producer person. After you make it through there, you get to go sing for Carrie, Blake & Lionel.

Your presence and your relationships got you through all the screeners. Now you have to sing for people who have opinions. My niece knew that she was auditioning…you have got to remember that you are auditioning, too.

BTW, at this point, you are not selling. Please hear the words coming out of my mouth ➞ I'm not telling you to sell. You, however, are being evaluated on whether you actually understand the world the prospect lives in. During the audition, you don’t want to be a YAFA (Yet Another Fucking Agency) and ask, "So…what are you looking for?" and letting the producer down.

That's not how this works.

A couple years ago, Ad Age reported that 69% of Fortune 500 companies said their agency didn't really understand their business. 69 FREAKIN’ PERCENT. Not understanding the business was number one concern…not execution, not reporting, not technology, not creative, but the basic, fundamental understanding of their business.

That stat should haunt you. If the biggest, most well-resourced agencies in the world are getting dinged for not understanding their clients' businesses, what makes you think you can wing it on a discovery call to which you were referred?

Before you get on any discovery call, you need to have done three layers of research. Not one, not "I looked at their website for five minutes." but three.

Layer 1: The Market
You need to know the trends in this prospect's market that they may not even bring up on the call, but are absolutely feeling. Tariffs, supply chain disruptions, platform algorithm changes, inflation, shifts in consumer behavior…whatever is happening in their world that isn't about marketing but is absolutely affecting their business.

If you sell to DTC brands, you should be ready to talk about shipping costs and logistics uncertainty. If you sell to B2B SaaS, you should know what's happening with VC funding cycles and how that changes buying behavior. If you sell to hospitality, you should understand seasonal booking patterns and OTA dynamics.

This is not about showing off. It's about demonstrating that you BELONG in their world, not just your own.

Layer 2: The Industry
If you don't know their industry well, get smart fast. Discovery Lab Pro is built for exactly this. It will help you go deep on industry intelligence, smarts about your strengths & everything we can find out about the prospect so you walk in knowing what matters. (Or you can fire up your LLM of choice and dive in. (I'd rather you use our Agency Growth Tools because they way cooler, but I MAY be somewhat biased. 😉)

You cannot fake industry knowledge on a discovery call - either you know what's happening in their vertical or you don't, and the prospect can tell within about 90 seconds.

Layer 3: The Company
You need to know something real about this specific company. Not just what their homepage says or what color their logo is.

You need to get smart about their enterprise & focus on finding recent news, industry events they've been involved in, new pages on their website, leadership changes, product launches — anything that signals where their attention is right now. BTW, Discovery Lab Pro & and it’s free, less in-depth cousin, Discovery Lab can be enormously helpful.

If they (or you) are a smaller company, getting all of this insight can be genuinely hard. You ought to sign up for their email newsletter, check out their socials, look at their recent hires on LinkedIn to see what they're investing in.

If you're selling paid media, you should have already looked at every ad they're running. If you're selling retention marketing, you should be subscribed to their email list. If you are selling design and build, you should have found three websites in their vertical that are just freaking better than theirs.

You want to walk into that call with a hypothesis. Not a pitch - a hypothesis - an informed guess about what they need, based on your observation of their market, their industry, and their specific business.

Here is my best advice: if you can articulate a client's problem before they do, you have just amplified your credibility & authority at least 10x.

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I was at a Klaviyo event a couple years ago. Got introduced to someone by a client. We started talking, and she told me about some of the challenges she was having with her agency.

I said, "Oh yeah, that happens when you're around $40,000 to $50,000 a month in revenue."

Her jaw literally dropped.

"How did you know that?!?! We are at $46K a month?!?!"

I didn't know. I recognized the pattern - a solo founder whose business was getting bigger than her brain could hold all at once. In my experience, that happens somewhere around $40,000 to $60,000 a month. The problems she described… the feeling of being stretched too thin, the team not quite keeping up, the sense that things were slipping through the cracks…those are the symptoms of that specific growth stage.

She practically signed a consulting contract right then.

Why? Because she felt seen. She felt understood. Not sold to. Not pitched.
Understood.

That's what your discovery call needs to do. While you are extracting the depth of what the client has experienced, you also need to make them feel seen. Any context you can bring - from other clients, from research, from just being aware of the world they operate in right now - builds not just your technical credibility around the service they need, but your business credibility. That credibility creates trust, clarity, and affinity in a way that a capabilities deck never will.

Here's the simplest way I can frame the difference between agencies that survive the consideration set and agencies that get filtered out:

“Let me tell you” agencies say things like:

Thrivivalist agencies say things like:

One is a list of things that the agency wants you to know. The other is proof that you already understand their world. That positions you to not just SURVIVE the consideration set, but to show your depth, insight and expertise. You are a Thrivivalist!

“Let me tell you…” gets a "thanks, we'll be in touch." Being a Thrivivalist gets you access to their reporting, their sales targets, their annual strategic goals & and an invitation to meet the rest of the team so “we can get to work…”

Before your next discovery call, make sure you can check these boxes:
Market layer: You know at least two macro trends affecting their business that they probably won't mention but are definitely feeling.
Industry layer: You can speak intelligently about their vertical for at least five minutes without defaulting to generic marketing jargon.
Company layer: You've found at least one specific, recent thing about their business that demonstrates you did more than skim their About page.
Hypothesis: You have an informed guess about what they need (before they tell you).
Questions, not things to tell: Your prep has generated questions that could only come from someone who's done the work. Not "how is this quarter shaping up" but "how is [specific thing] affecting [specific outcome]?"

If you can't check those boxes, you aren’t gonna survive the consideration set, never mind experiencing a thrivival!.

Last week I told you when someone in a conference room says "holy shit, we have a problem," you want to be the name that comes up.

Your name came up. Now fucking earn it.

Don't coast on the referral, or on how clever your newsletter is, and don't wing it because you think you're charming. Don't show up unprepared and expect the prospect to connect the dots for you.

Do the research. Build the hypothesis. See the patterns that make their jaw drop. Make them feel seen and understood before you ever talk about what you do.

That's how you go from consideration set to finalist. That's how your agency becomes a THRIVIVALIST.

Discovery Lab & Discovery Lab Pro were literally built for this to help you walk into every discovery call with market intelligence, industry context, and company-specific insight that separates you from every other agency on the list.

Go do the work.

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