What buyers really look for in agencies - Jeremy Williams, The Agency Coach
Episode 18 - THAT MOMENT
Every agency owner dreams of the exit. The moment the deal closes, the burnout ends, and freedom begins. But here's the truth nobody tells you: most agencies will never get there. Not because they lack talent, but because they're building blind.
Welcome to That Moment: Study Edition - a new format where industry leaders share frameworks you can actually use. This isn't philosophy. It's the laminated checklist you stick in your notebook, on your fridge, inside your bathroom cabinet door. The daily sense check of whether what you're doing is actually pivotal in moving toward the goal.
Jeremy Williams is the agency coach who sold his B2B marketing agency for £11 million. He and his business partner set out with a plan from day one - fix a broken agency, turn it around, and execute the exit. They did. Now Jeremy coaches agencies through the same journey, and today he's sharing his Magnificent Seven - the seven things every agency must nail if they want a buyer to write the check.
This isn't for lifestyle agencies content with steady revenue and flexible schedules. This is for growers looking to scale, duplicators building multiple offices, and exiters who've invested everything and need to realize that strategic valuation. If your agency is your biggest investment, your net worth, and you've borrowed money or spent blood, sweat and tears building it - this framework is your roadmap.
The power of seven isn't accidental. Seven days of the week. Seven ages of man. Seven narrative plots. There's something about human psychology that can hold seven different things to remember. It's catchy. It's memorable. And according to Jeremy, it works.
The Magnificent Seven Framework:
#1 Revenue Growth - The Story Buyers Want to See: Sounds obvious. It's not. One bad patch and your numbers go down, creating a rollercoaster story that makes acquirers nervous. What buyers want is that bar chart going up in nice incremental steps - smooth, planned, intentional. Not the Laffer curve of big year, two terrible years into losses, back to a good year. Smooth revenue growth looks like business strategies that paid off. Spiky graphs look like luck and chaos. It takes work: focused client development, key account growth, business development, and a really great FD managing that story year to year across years.
#2 Profit Growth - The Magic 40: Picture twin histograms. Revenue in one colour, operating profit moving in line with it each year. Agency benchmark: 20% operating profit on your fee revenue or adjusted gross income. That's your magic number - shows acquirers this is a profit machine, year in, year out. But here's the twist: the Magic 40 is your annual growth rate plus operating profit. Can you grow at 20% per year and deliver 20% operating profit? That's 20 + 20 = 40. Buyers love that balance. But you can also do 10% profit + 30% rocket growth (buyers think "we can make it more profitable"), or 30% margin + 10% growth (buyers think "we can increase the growth"). Any combination adding to 40 puts you in really good shape.
#3 Succession - De-Risking the Founder: What if Jim gets his amazing payday and goes to a beach bar in Goa? What if he decides yoga in India is more appealing than board meetings? Acquirers need to see a structured senior leadership team - your SLT, SMT, ExCo, whatever acronym you use. Ideally two candidates for the MD role. Show them the business doesn't die when you leave. This is about building a balanced senior management team that proves the agency survives without its founder. De-risk yourself or watch your valuation crater.
#4 Blue Chip Clients - The Cross-Selling Goldmine: Buyers aren't excited about Berkshire's second largest Toyota dealership. They are excited about Barclays, Land Rover, British Airways. Big clients create cross-selling opportunities for acquirers' other services. The bigger the client, the more attractive your agency becomes - not just for the revenue, but for the strategic doors those relationships open. This is where acquirers see multiplication potential beyond your current offering.
#5 Proprietary IP - What Makes You Different: Systems, processes, methodologies that are uniquely yours. This is what separates "we do good work" from "we have a defendable competitive advantage." Proprietary IP shows you've built something that can't be easily replicated, something an acquirer is buying beyond just your client list and your people. It's the reason they're paying a premium instead of just hiring your team.
#6 Transparent Numbers - The Brad Dexter Nobody Remembers: Everyone forgets Brad Dexter in The Magnificent Seven. Similarly, everyone forgets how important clean, transparent financials are until they're in due diligence. Pages and pages of messy accounts kill deals. Buyers want clarity - numbers that tell a story they can understand quickly. Tools like Xero have improved this, but many agencies still haven't given consideration to how their numbers will look to an acquirer because they've never had to. Fix this early. It's transactional, fast to do, but deadly if ignored.
#7 The Cherry on Top - Your Secret Weapon: This is the specialized thing that makes your agency irresistible. It's context-dependent, unique to your situation. Maybe it's a particular market position, a unique partnership, a proprietary tool, a team structure nobody else has replicated. Jeremy doesn't prescribe what this is - because if he could, it wouldn't be your cherry on top.
The Three That Must Survive:
If Jeremy had to pick three of the Magnificent Seven to prioritize (like the surviving gunslingers in the film), he'd choose:
First: Operating Profit. If you've got a business that's profitable as an agency in this market, that's very attractive. It's the basic starting point - you can survive on this alone.
Second: Revenue Story. A smooth or increasing line graph. The narrative that shows intentional growth strategy paying off.
Third: Blue Chip Clients. Because that's where acquirers see the cross-selling opportunities that justify their investment and multiply value beyond your current revenue.
The others are important, but these three form the foundation everything else builds on.
What Training Means:
Jeremy's philosophy extends beyond agency operations into personal discipline. Training means developing healthy habits, methodology, and repetition. Training the self. Creating habits that don't require motivation - because when training becomes routine, you don't need to be motivated to do it. You do it because it's what you do. Match fit. Mentally fit. Little and often, building the discipline that translates into how you run your agency and prepare for exit.
From Jeremy's perspective as someone who executed an £11 million exit with his business partner, witness how being intentional from day one changes everything. They had the plan. They split roles effectively. They had the fit. And they executed it daily. The Magnificent Seven wasn't invented post-exit - it was the framework they lived while building toward it.
This Study Edition addresses the question every agency owner wrestling with growth asks: are you building something valuable, or just building something busy? And when buyers look at your agency, do they see a profit machine with a clear succession plan and blue chip clients - or do they see founder dependency, rollercoaster revenue, and messy numbers?
About Supo:
Supo provides people-first intelligence software for professional services firms, helping businesses maximise profit and motivate their people through powerful, AI-enabled business intelligence dashboards. By connecting over 500+ platforms and providing real-time data analysis, Supo helps firms make better data-driven decisions about their profit, projects, and people.
For more information about Supo: www.supo.co.uk
About Jeremy Williams - The Agency Coach:
Jeremy Williams sold his B2B marketing agency for £11 million and spent three years navigating the earn-out period. Now he coaches agency owners through growth, scale, and exit strategies, helping them build businesses that buyers actually want to acquire. His Magnificent Seven framework distills the essential principles that determine whether an agency achieves a strategic exit or simply fades. Jeremy works with growers, scalers, and exiters who are intentional about building valuable, saleable businesses.
For more information about Jeremy Williams: https://theagencycoach.uk/
Ready to discover whether you're building toward exit or just building blind? This Study Edition isn't about dreaming of the payday - it's about the seven daily disciplines that make the payday possible.