Lead generation for many clients: an agency playbook

What changes when there are ten clients, not one

Doing outbound for one company is a craft. Doing it for ten is operations. The skills are the same; what breaks is separation. A lead found for client A ends up in client B's sequence. A suppression list from one client is missing from another. One client's careless sending damages a domain the others rely on. A client asks what their leads cost and nobody can say.

Every rule in this playbook exists to keep clients apart.

The four separations

1. Profiles. Each client gets its own written customer profile and its own signals (search phrases). Never reuse one client's profile as a starting point for another without rewriting it; you will carry over traits that do not belong.
2. Suppression. Each client's customers, open deals and opt-outs are a separate list, checked before every send for that client. An opt-out from client A's prospect does not opt them out of client B, but it is a strong hint to check before contacting them for B.
3. Sending. Messages go from the client's own accounts: their domain or a secondary domain they own, their LinkedIn. Gmail counts all messages from the same primary domain toward its bulk-sender threshold, so a shared agency domain means every client's volume adds up on one reputation.
4. Money. Every credit, lookup and connected account is attributed to a client. Without this you cannot price, and you cannot tell which client is unprofitable.

The onboarding checklist

Run the same checklist for every client, in the first week.

1. Write their customer profile from their ten best customers (method in how to build an ideal customer profile).
2. Write the not-a-fit list, including their competitors and partners.
3. Import their customer list, open deals and opt-outs as suppression.
4. Agree the sending accounts: which domain, which mailboxes, whose LinkedIn. Check SPF, DKIM and DMARC are set on that domain.
5. Agree who approves messages. Ideally the client approves the first twenty, then a sample.
6. Pick two or three sources that fit their buyers.
7. Set a monthly spend ceiling.
8. Agree the report and the date it arrives.
9. Write down what happens to the data if they leave.

Conflicts between clients

Sooner or later two clients sell into the same market. Rules that keep it clean:

• Tell both clients, in writing, before you start.
• Separate profiles and lists completely. No exporting from one to the other.
• Decide in advance who gets a person who fits both: usually the client whose profile they score higher against, or the one who found them first.
• If the clients are direct competitors, decline one. The trust cost is higher than the fee.

A worked cost example

Say you run five clients on Sluice's Agency plan. These are Sluice's published prices; your tool will differ, but the method is the same.

If each client uses an even share of credits, that is 2,980 credits ($29.80) each. At 5 cents per directory reveal, that is up to about 596 revealed people per client per month, if reveals were all they used. In practice credits also go on lookups (at supplier cost + 40% on Agency, or no markup with your own data key) and on searches across sources.

Splitting evenly is a simplification. The useful number is per client: if client C used 6,000 credits and client D used 1,000, they should not cost you the same. Track actual credits by client and divide.

Then add your hours, which are usually the bigger cost. Two hours a week per client reviewing leads and approving messages, at whatever your time costs, often dwarfs the tools.

The monthly report

Same structure for every client, so you can compare them and they can compare months.

Cost per lead worth contacting is the number that makes renewals easy. "Reviews cost $1.20 per good lead, Reddit $0.40, the directory $2.10, so we are moving budget to Reddit" is a conversation clients value. (Those figures are illustrative.)

Where Sluice fits for agencies

The Agency plan was built for this: unlimited customer profiles (one per client), 14,900 credits a month (20,000 the first month), lookups at cost + 40% or your own data key with no markup, and no seats, so your team can grow without the bill growing per person. Teams have roles and invites. Each profile has its own signals and searches; Insights shows reply rate by predicted score, bounce rate and cost per lead worth contacting by source; sending goes only through accounts you connect, only for messages someone approves. Limits to know: HubSpot is the only CRM integration, so clients on Salesforce need exports, and Sluice is new, without public agency case studies yet. See Sluice for agencies, marketing agencies and pricing.

Start with one client

Take your newest client, run them through the nine-step checklist, and build their first monthly report. When it reads clearly, copy the structure to the rest, not the content.