Built for Agency Account Executives

The CRM agency AEs close retainers and projects out of.

Account Executives at marketing, creative, digital, and development agencies carry a number against retainers and project work with scope negotiations that run longer than any SaaS deal. The CRM has to hold the SOW, the estimate, the MSA, and the delivery hand-off on one record.

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Why buyers are here

Agencies Account Executives: the daily pains.

The agency AE job runs on a different clock than a SaaS AE job. A SaaS deal has a price list, a seat count, and a signed MSA inside 60 days. An agency deal has a scope conversation that starts broad, narrows across three or four rounds of calls, splits into retainer plus project line items, lives inside a Statement of Work the Legal reviewer at the client marks up twice, and only closes once the delivery lead has signed off that the agency can actually staff it. The AE at a 10 to 100 person agency almost always double-hats as the Account Manager after close, so the handoff is to themselves. The common stack is HoneyBook or Dubsado for proposals, Salesforce or HubSpot for CRM, a Google Sheet for estimate math, and Slack for the delivery handoff. The sections below show how Strkr collapses that into one workspace with the Products module holding SOW line items natively, DocuSign and PandaDoc as proposal and MSA integrations, and the Projects module picking up delivery at Closed Won.

SOW negotiation drag

Scope conversations stretch past 90 days.

A client discovery turns into three estimate rounds, two retainer-versus-project shape conversations, a Legal markup on the MSA, and a staffing confirmation from the delivery lead before anything closes. The deal lives on the AE pipeline for 90 to 180 days and the generic CRM has nowhere to hold the specific scope version that is current. Strkr lets the AE version SOW line items on the Products module, attach each estimate round to the deal, and surface the active version on the record so the Monday review never argues about which number is live.

Retainer plus project blend

My deals are not one shape, they are two.

A real agency deal is almost always a retainer plus a project bolt-on, or a project with a retainer attached once it ships. The pipeline needs to carry monthly recurring revenue on one line and one-time project revenue on another with different margins, different staffing plans, and different billing cadences. HubSpot pipelines force the AE to pick one deal shape and the forecast lies. Strkr pipelines carry mixed line items on the Products module and the forecast reports both MRR and project revenue on the same deal record.

Deliverables buried in Google Sheets

My estimate math lives in a tab nobody else can see.

Every agency AE has an estimate sheet with hours per role, blended rate, markup, and a margin check. The sheet never lives on the deal and the delivery lead has to rebuild it from a Slack screenshot. Strkr holds estimate line items on the Products module attached to the deal, with hours, role, rate, and margin visible to the delivery lead and the finance lead before signature so there is no scope gap when the project opens.

AE and AM double-hatting

I close the deal and I own the account forever.

At a 10 to 100 person agency, the person who closed the retainer is also the person on the weekly client call for the next 18 months. The CRM has to carry the sales context all the way through the account lifecycle without a hand-off that drops half of what was learned. Strkr renders the same account record for the AE in sales mode and the AM in delivery mode with role-aware views, so the context compounds instead of resetting at Closed Won.

HubSpot is marketing-centric

HubSpot was built for the marketing team, not me.

HubSpot sales tooling plays second fiddle to the marketing hub it was built around. The agency AE lives inside marketing-shaped primitives (lifecycle stages, lead score, nurture emails) when the sales job is retainer negotiation, SOW versioning, and MSA routing. Strkr is sales-first with the pipeline board, Products module for SOW line items, and native sequencing built for the AE motion from day zero.

Salesforce overkill

Salesforce is a sledgehammer on an agency pipeline.

A 10 to 100 person agency does not have a Salesforce admin on staff. The AE waits two weeks for a custom field, three weeks for a flow, and four weeks for a saved view. Strkr custom fields, Layouts, Flows, and saved views are self-serve for the AE and the sales manager inside the permission matrix. The pipeline change ships the hour it is needed with an audit trail.

How Strkr fits the agency AE day

The primitives agency AEs actually run deals on.

Strkr for agency Account Executives ships the same CRM every other role at the agency runs, with role-aware views shaped around retainer plus project sales motion. The primitives below line up with the AE weekly motion on a 60 to 180 day deal cycle: discovery with mixed scope, SOW drafts across two or three rounds, retainer and project line items on the Products module, DocuSign or PandaDoc for MSA signature, and the post-close hand-off into Projects.

Pipeline board

Retainer and project deals on one board.

Column-per-stage board grouped by owner, service line, retainer size, project size, or close month. Drag a deal between stages and the flow runs entry criteria for the required SOW version, surfaces the missing estimate line, and prompts the next-step date. The AE builds the view that matches today, not the view the admin shipped a quarter ago.

Deal record

One record holds the whole agency deal.

The deal record pulls in client contacts, call recordings, meeting notes, estimate rounds, Products line items, Slack threads, MSA markups, and signed artifacts. A role-aware sidebar renders selling fields for the AE, scoping fields for the delivery lead, and legal fields for Legal on the same record without a tab switch.

Products module

SOW line items on the deal, native.

The native Products module holds every SOW line item on the deal record with retainer rate, project fee, hours per role, blended margin, and MRR versus one-time breakdown. The AE builds the quote on the deal, the delivery lead reviews the hours and roles, finance confirms margin, and the signed artifact carries the exact line items into the Projects module at Closed Won.

Proposal and MSA integrations

DocuSign and PandaDoc on every deal.

Draft the proposal and the MSA from the Products line items on the deal, route through DocuSign or PandaDoc, and the signed PDF returns to the deal with the stage auto-bumping to Closed Won. The agency keeps the signature tool it already pays for and the AE stops copy-pasting signed artifacts into a CRM document tab.

Call capture

Discovery, scope, and pricing calls on the record.

Click-to-join every client meeting on the deal, auto-record where consent is captured, and Strkr AI drafts the summary with scope answers, objections, and next steps extracted. The AE edits the draft in 90 seconds and the record is live. The follow-up email template pre-fills with the next step the call captured.

Email and calendar

Thread sync and auto-logging on every account.

Native Gmail and Microsoft 365 sync. Every email, meeting, and calendar event lands on the account and deal timeline with role-aware visibility. Meeting booking links ship native with team round-robin so the agency never pings a client with a booking link that lives outside the record.

Sequence and mobile

Cadences and offline edit on the phone.

Native sequencing covers inbound follow-up, outbound prospecting, and renewal nudges with reply detection that pauses on response. Strkr mobile is first-class with offline queue, voice-note capture, and pipeline edit for the AE walking out of a client pitch.

SOW and proposal workflow built for agencies

The scope conversation lives on the deal, not in email.

The scope conversation is the deal for an agency AE. An agency AE moves a deal from Qualification to Proposal with a line-by-line scope that the delivery lead can staff, the finance lead can margin, the Legal reviewer can mark up, and the client stakeholder can approve inside a specific SOW version. Strkr holds every piece of that conversation on the deal with the Products module as the backbone, DocuSign and PandaDoc as the signature integrations, and Strkr AI as the drafting assistant for the first-pass SOW.

Line-item scoping

Retainer, project, and bolt-ons on one deal.

The Products module carries SOW line items as retainer MRR, one-time project fees, and optional bolt-on scope. Each line carries hours per role, blended rate, markup, and margin. Flip a line from retainer to project and the forecast re-math is instant.

Estimate rounds versioned

Every SOW round is on the deal, not in email.

Draft estimate v1, send to the client, mark up to v2 after the scope call, add a bolt-on in v3. Each version lives on the deal with timestamp, author, and the client comment that triggered the change. The delivery lead reviews the version the client is actually signing, not the version from two scope calls ago.

Internal review routing

Delivery, finance, and Legal on the same record.

A deal moving from Proposal to Closed Won routes a scope review to the delivery lead, a margin review to finance, and an MSA review to Legal where needed. Each reviewer sees the role-aware view of the record and comments inline on the Products line items instead of three separate meetings.

Strkr AI proposal draft

A first draft of the SOW off the discovery notes.

Strkr AI reads the discovery call summary and the historical pricing on similar accounts, and drafts a first-pass SOW with the recommended retainer rate, project line items, and MRR versus one-time breakdown. The AE edits the draft in 10 minutes and sends the same day instead of the normal 3 day turnaround.

Proposal to MSA to signature

DocuSign and PandaDoc on the deal.

The AE drafts the proposal document from the Products line items, routes to the client for signature through DocuSign or PandaDoc, and the signed PDF returns to the deal. The MSA follows the same path with Legal markup rounds captured on the deal timeline.

Rate card template library

The agency rate card is one source of truth.

The Products module holds the agency rate card (hours per role, blended rate per service line, standard markup, approved discount band) as a template library the AE pulls from on every deal. A new AE builds a scope on day one with the same math every senior AE uses.

Approval thresholds

Discounts and non-standard terms route automatically.

A line item outside the rate card, a project fee past a size threshold, a payment term past net 30, or a scope touching a non-standard service line fires a Strkr Flow that routes the deal for Director or Partner approval. The leadership team never finds a non-standard commitment in a signed MSA after the fact.

Audit trail on every scope move

Who changed what, and when.

Every line item added, every rate adjustment, and every markup flip lives on the audit log with timestamp, author, and reason code where required. The AE answers the client question about scope version 2 versus version 3 from the record, not from a Google Doc revision history scroll.

Flows for the agency AE motion

Automations across scope, proposal, close, and account hand-off.

The best agency AEs automate the administrative drag between stages and spend their hours on the three scope conversations where client judgment matters most. Strkr Flows cover the automations every agency AE team should run as native triggers with no webhook plumbing. The pattern below compounds into a cleaner retainer pipeline, a faster SOW turnaround, and a delivery hand-off that does not drop the context the AE spent 90 days building.

Stage entry criteria

A deal cannot move without the required artifact.

A deal moving from Discovery to Qualification needs a documented pain, a decision-maker, and a service-line tag. Qualification to Proposal needs a Products line-item set, a close date, and a delivery staffing confirmation. Strkr enforces entry criteria at the stage transition with inline prompts for the missing field.

Scope staleness nudge

Stale SOW rounds surface before the pipeline review.

Daily flow checks the Products line items on every open deal. If no new version has landed in 10 days on an active Proposal stage deal, the record surfaces on the AE triage view. The rep nudges the client or confirms the deal is dead instead of letting it rot through two forecast cycles.

Approval auto-route

Non-standard scope routes before the client sees it.

A line item outside the rate card, a project fee past the size threshold, a payment term past net 30, or a service line outside the standard offering fires a flow that routes the deal to the Director or Partner for sign-off before the AE sends the SOW. The AE never guesses who to ping.

Proposal sent

Proposal fires the DocuSign draft and schedules follow-up.

Move the deal to Proposal and the flow drafts the DocuSign or PandaDoc document from the Products line items, routes to the AE for review, and schedules a 48 hour follow-up task on the deal. The AE never forgets to send the proposal or chase the signature.

MSA markup return

Legal markup returns and the AE sees the diff.

The client Legal reviewer returns a redlined MSA. The flow stores the artifact, pings the agency Legal reviewer for sign-off, and surfaces the diff on the deal timeline. The MSA review cycle shrinks from a week of email ping-pong to a 24 hour turnaround.

Signature returned

Signed MSA bumps the stage and fires delivery.

DocuSign or PandaDoc returns the signed MSA. The flow stores the artifact, flips the stage to Closed Won, pings finance for the first invoice, and pings the delivery lead for kickoff. The AE moves on to the next deal without a status email thread.

Closed Won hand-off

Project spins up in Projects with deal context carried over.

At Closed Won, a flow creates a project in Strkr Projects, maps the Products line items to the project template, auto-generates kickoff tasks, assigns the delivery owner (often the AE double-hatting as AM), and surfaces the project on the account record. The hand-off is a status change, not a 30 minute rebuild.

Head-to-head

Strkr for agency AEs vs the HoneyBook + Salesforce + spreadsheets stack.

A typical agency AE stack runs HoneyBook or Dubsado for proposals, Salesforce or HubSpot for the CRM, a Google Sheet for the estimate math, DocuSign or PandaDoc for the MSA, and Slack for the delivery hand-off. Strkr collapses that into one workspace with the Products module holding SOW line items natively, DocuSign and PandaDoc as native integrations, and the Projects module picking up delivery at Closed Won.

What matters Strkr HoneyBook + Salesforce + spreadsheets
Number of tools agency AE opens daily 1 (Strkr) 4 to 6 (CRM, proposal tool, estimate sheet, signature tool, Slack)
SOW line items on the deal Native Products module with retainer, project, and bolt-on line items Separate proposal tool, Google Sheet for estimate math, no CRM record
Retainer plus project deal shape MRR and one-time revenue carried on the same deal with mixed forecast math Single deal shape, forecast lies on blended retainer plus project revenue
Proposal and MSA signature DocuSign and PandaDoc native with signed artifacts stored on the deal HoneyBook or Dubsado for proposals, DocuSign bolted on for MSA
Estimate math and rate card Rate card template library on Products with hours, roles, markup, margin Google Sheet nobody else can see, rebuilt from scratch per deal
Approval routing on non-standard scope Strkr Flow routes Director or Partner approval before the client sees the SOW Manual Slack ping, non-standard commitment found after signature
Delivery lead review before signature Role-aware view with inline comment on Products line items Slack screenshot, delivery lead rebuilds the picture from zero
Post-close hand-off to delivery Native flow to Projects with line items, roles, and context carried over Kickoff email, delivery lead rebuilds the picture, AE repeats discovery
AE and AM double-hat on same account One account record with role-aware views for sales and delivery mode Two tools, two record systems, context resets at Closed Won
Admin changes to pipeline Self-serve for AE and sales manager inside the permission matrix Salesforce admin queue, agency has no admin on staff, 2 week freeze

See the CRM agency AEs actually close retainers and projects in.

Start a 14 day trial with the full agency AE stack enabled: pipeline board for retainer and project deals, Products module for SOW line items, DocuSign and PandaDoc for proposal and MSA signature, Strkr AI for first-pass scope drafts, Flows for discovery through Closed Won, and the post-close hand-off into Projects. The pricing page lays out the per-seat line in full, and the sales-forecast feature page shows the forecast surface for retainer plus project revenue if that is the piece to pressure-test first.

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Common questions

Agencies Account Executives buyer FAQ.

Does Strkr work for a 15 person creative agency, or is this built for bigger shops?

Strkr is built for agencies in the 10 to 100 person range running retainer plus project motion. The sales-first primitives (pipeline board, deal record, Products module for SOW line items, self-serve custom fields and Flows) do not need a dedicated CRM admin to run. A 15 person creative agency gets the same workspace a 90 person digital agency runs, with role-aware views so the AE sees sales mode, the delivery lead sees staffing mode, and the finance lead sees margin mode on the same account record.

How does the Products module handle a retainer plus project deal shape?

The Products module carries SOW line items on the deal with retainer MRR on one line and one-time project fees on another, each with hours per role, blended rate, markup, and margin. The forecast report pulls both retainer MRR and project revenue off the same deal record without a parallel spreadsheet. The delivery lead reviews the hours and roles before signature, the finance lead confirms margin, and the signed artifact carries the exact line items into the Projects module at Closed Won so the delivery team is staffing against the SOW the client actually signed.

Can Strkr replace HoneyBook or Dubsado for agency proposals?

Strkr does not replace the proposal document design. Strkr replaces the fragmented deal record that lives across HoneyBook, the CRM, the Google Sheet, and Slack. The Products module on the deal is the single source of truth for the SOW line items. DocuSign and PandaDoc are the native signature integrations. The agency keeps the signature tool it already pays for and gets the CRM record of truth it was missing. For agencies that still want HoneyBook or Dubsado for the branded proposal document design, those can continue in parallel and the signed PDF lives on the Strkr deal record either way.

How does the post-close hand-off work when the AE is also the Account Manager?

At Closed Won, a Strkr flow creates a project in Strkr Projects, maps the Products line items to the project template, auto-generates kickoff tasks, and assigns the delivery owner. When the AE double-hats as the Account Manager, the same person owns both the sales record and the delivery record with role-aware views. The context from 90 days of scope conversation compounds into the delivery relationship instead of resetting at the signature.

Why not just use HubSpot sales hub or Salesforce for an agency pipeline?

HubSpot sales hub was built around the HubSpot marketing hub. The agency AE lives inside marketing-shaped primitives (lifecycle stages, lead score, nurture emails) when the sales job is retainer negotiation, SOW versioning, and MSA routing. Salesforce is the opposite problem for a 10 to 100 person agency with no admin on staff, where every pipeline change waits two weeks on a release queue. Strkr is sales-first with the Products module built for SOW line items, Flows self-serve for the AE and the sales manager, and the Projects module ready at Closed Won.

Does Strkr integrate with DocuSign and PandaDoc for agency MSAs?

Yes. Both DocuSign and PandaDoc ship as native integrations. Draft the proposal from the Products line items on the deal record, send for signature, and the signed PDF returns to the deal with the stage auto-bumping to Closed Won. Signature events fire Strkr Flows so the kickoff hand-off, the finance invoice ping, and the delivery project auto-creation all run in parallel the moment the deal closes.

Also considering

Related combinations.

Agency Sales Managers Agency Account Managers Agency Founders Agency Marketing Managers SaaS Account Executives Consulting Firm Account Executives

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