At Manifest we work with three distinct types of agency, and the differences between them shape almost everything about how new business should be run. We think of them as Big Game Hunters, Hunter Gatherers and Farmers. Each one wants something different from outreach, measures success in its own way, and needs a strategy built around its appetite rather than a single template applied to everyone. The labels are deliberately blunt, but they capture a real distinction in how agencies think about risk, patience and the kind of win that makes the effort worthwhile. Getting that match right is what separates an outreach programme that fits the agency from one that quietly pulls against it, and most of the disappointment agencies feel with new business comes down to a mismatch between their mindset and the model they were sold.
Big Game Hunters: Focused On High-Value Accounts. Big Game Hunters are focused entirely on major wins. They only want meetings with prospects spending more than £500,000 a year, and they have little interest in smaller accounts however easy those might be to convert. For an agency like this, a new business partner such as Manifest will typically arrange one or two high-quality meetings a month, each one carefully targeted rather than chased in volume. Success here is measured in long-term revenue rather than the sheer volume of leads, and the agencies that win this way expect strategic alignment with industry leaders and household names. The Drum’s profile of how Mother London built its new business pipeline shows the approach working at the top end of the market.
Hunter Gatherers: Balancing Big And Small Wins. Hunter Gatherers are happy to land medium-sized accounts while welcoming smaller opportunities along the way. They understand that new business is a pipeline rather than a series of one-off wins, and that smaller clients often grow into bigger ones or open doors that would otherwise stay shut. For this kind of agency, a new business partner typically secures three to four meetings a month. The pipeline moves faster, the sales cycle is shorter, and results tend to arrive sooner than they do for Big Game Hunters. As Campaign has noted, agencies that take this blended approach often build momentum and end up with stronger long-term pipelines for it.
Farmers: Waiting For Live Briefs Only. Farmers are the most cautious and selective of the three. They only want to engage prospects who already have a live brief, on the principle that timing is everything in new business and there is little point reaching someone who has no immediate need. Rather than casting a wide net, they wait for the right moment, which keeps volumes deliberately low, perhaps one qualified meeting every month or two. Supporting a Farmer means watching for the signals that a brief is about to appear, which in practice means keeping an eye on pitch calendars, procurement announcements, and inbound signals such as award wins or a flurry of PR. Farmers often benefit from platforms like ALF Insight, which provide intelligence on live marketing briefs as they emerge.
Matching Strategy To Agency Type. Choosing the right approach matters more than it first appears. A new business agency has to tailor its service to the agency’s appetite, team size and growth ambition rather than running the same playbook for everyone. Blending elements of each model can work well, and most agencies sit somewhere between two of the three, but trying to chase all three at once tends to dilute the focus and weaken results across the board. Understanding which mindset genuinely describes your agency is the key to choosing the right new business partner and the right rhythm of activity, because the same effort produces very different outcomes depending on which model you run it through. A Big Game Hunter is buying patience and precision, while a Hunter Gatherer is buying pace and volume, and the targeting that suits one would frustrate the other. Forrester’s research on B2B buying groups is a useful guide to aligning strategy with the way prospects actually buy.
Clarity Is The Deciding Factor. The best new business outcomes come from matching tactics to ambition rather than reaching for whichever approach happens to be most fashionable. Whether an agency is hunting elephants, gathering as it goes, or waiting for the rain, the thing that decides the outcome is clarity about which of the three it actually is. Once that is settled, everything downstream follows from it, the targeting, the cadence of outreach, and the volume of meetings to expect.
