Built for Agency Sales Leaders

The CRM for the VP sales running a 20 to 100 person agency book.

You are selling retainers and projects on seasonal demand, your principals are closing half the deals in-between client work, and the forecast has to balance utilization against growth. Strkr ships retainer and project pipeline on one record, principal-selling visibility, and a delivery handoff into Projects that keeps the account intact.

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Why buyers are here

Agencies Sales Leaders: the daily pains.

The VP sales at a 20 to 100 person agency carries a different job than a SaaS sales leader. The deal shape is retainer plus project rather than a signed MSA with seats. The demand is seasonal rather than monthly recurring. The sellers are principals and senior account directors who sell between client work rather than full-time quota carriers. The utilization math (what percent of billable hours are sold) competes directly with the growth math (how much new business is on the pipeline). The six pains below show up on every agency sales leader buyer call we run.

Retainer plus project pipeline

My pipeline is two shapes, not one.

An agency deal is almost always a retainer plus a project bolt-on, or a project with a retainer attached once it ships. The pipeline has 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 sales leader 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. The monthly review covers both numbers in one view.

Seasonal demand

Q1 is dead, Q4 is on fire, every year.

Most agency verticals carry a seasonal pattern. Brand refresh deals cluster around planning season. Digital campaigns cluster around holiday pushes. Dev build deals cluster around fiscal year commitments. The sales leader is forecasting against a known seasonal pattern that a generic CRM does not model. Strkr lets the sales leader attach a seasonality curve per segment to the pipeline coverage math so a Q1 coverage of 2x is read against the historical Q1 close rate, not a flat quota expectation.

Principal selling tension

My principals sell between client work and nobody sees the pipeline.

At most agencies, the founder, the creative director, and the senior account directors are closing a meaningful share of new business between delivery work. The pipeline those principals carry lives in their heads and in individual email threads. The sales leader cannot forecast the number because half of it is a shadow pipeline. Strkr renders principal-owned deals on the same board as rep-owned deals, with watcher roles that keep the principal in the loop without forcing them to live in the CRM full-time. The hour a principal spends in the CRM each week is on the deals they are closing, not on data entry.

Utilization versus growth

My delivery team is at 95 percent and I am still selling.

The classic agency moment: the delivery team is at 95 percent utilization and the sales leader is about to close two new retainers that will push utilization to 110. Something breaks. The CRM has to show the sales leader what is sold, what is in late-stage pipeline, and what the delivery team can actually absorb. Strkr integrates with the staffing surface so the sales leader sees utilization by capability-area (strategy, design, dev, media) alongside pipeline value. The decision to close the retainer or push it to Q2 is grounded in a visible utilization number.

SOW versioning

Scope conversations stretch past 90 days.

An agency SOW goes through 3 to 5 rounds across 90 to 180 days. Discovery, scope v1, pricing conversation, legal markup, revised scope, staffing confirmation, final MSA. The CRM has nowhere to hold the specific scope version that is current. Strkr lets the account director 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. The forecast reads the active version automatically.

HubSpot is marketing-centric

My sales tool was built for the marketing team.

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

The retainer plus project motion on one record

Mixed line items, mixed billing, mixed delivery, same deal.

The core data model problem at an agency is that a deal is not one shape. It is a retainer line item plus a project line item plus sometimes a media pass-through. Each line has different margin, different billing cadence, different delivery owner. Strkr models the deal as a composite of Products line items so the account director captures the full scope on one record and the sales leader sees both the MRR and project revenue number on the forecast.

Products module for SOW

Line items with hours, role, rate, and margin.

Every opportunity carries Products line items with hours per role, blended rate, markup, margin, and billing cadence (monthly, upfront, milestone). The sales leader sees the deal total broken into retainer MRR and project revenue on the pipeline view. The delivery lead reads the staffing plan from the same line items the sales leader is closing against, no Google Sheet reconstruction at kickoff.

Retainer MRR forecast

Monthly recurring revenue on the deal, in the pipeline math.

Retainer line items roll into the MRR forecast as new recurring revenue added per period. The sales leader sees new MRR booked, churned MRR, and net new MRR for the agency on the dashboard. The retainer churn number is tracked separately from project revenue so the leading indicator of a shrinking agency (retainer attrition) is visible before project revenue masks it.

Project revenue forecast

One-time revenue layered on the same deal, not split out.

Project line items roll into the project revenue forecast as one-time revenue booked per period. The sales leader sees new project revenue booked, pipeline project revenue, and the monthly split between retainer and project revenue on the dashboard. The seasonal pattern on project revenue is visible against the stable retainer base.

Margin visibility

Each line item carries margin, surfaced before signature.

Every line item carries margin computed from hours, blended rate, and the client-facing price. The sales leader sees margin per deal and margin blended per period. The classic agency moment of discovering a signed retainer is 15 percent margin instead of 35 percent is caught at review, before signature. Margin thresholds can be enforced via a Flow that routes low-margin deals to the sales leader for approval.

MSA routing

DocuSign or PandaDoc attached to the deal, status visible.

The MSA and SOW route to DocuSign or PandaDoc from the Strkr deal record. Signature status is pulled back onto the deal and the sales leader sees which deals are sitting in signature versus which are stuck in legal markup. Signed MSAs attach to the deal and the account record automatically with a timestamped version history.

Pass-through tracking

Media and vendor spend tracked separately from fees.

For agencies with media buying or vendor pass-through, Strkr models the pass-through as a separate line item with its own margin. The sales leader reports fee revenue separately from pass-through so the agency top-line number is not inflated by media spend. The GAAP revenue reporting at the finance level is grounded in the same line items.

Principal-selling visibility without forcing them into the CRM

Watchers, mentions, deal rooms, Slack sync.

The founder, the creative director, and the senior account directors at an agency sell between client work. Forcing them to live in the CRM full-time will not happen. Strkr ships a principal-selling pattern with watcher roles, inline mentions, deal rooms, and Slack sync so principals contribute context on the deals they own without a daily CRM habit, and the sales leader forecasts the full book instead of half.

Watcher roles

Principals follow a deal without a full sales seat.

The founder, creative director, and senior account directors are added as watchers on their deals. Watchers get the deal timeline, activity feed, and inline mention notifications without needing a full sales seat. The principal sees activity on the top 5 deals they are driving without being spammed with the whole pipeline. The sales leader has visibility into principal-driven deals from day one.

Inline mentions

Pull the principal into the deal in six keystrokes.

Inside any deal note, timeline comment, or SOW field, the account director mentions the principal who is driving the relationship. The principal gets notified on the record with context. The classic flow of screenshotting a Slack thread into HubSpot is replaced by a one-line mention that pulls the principal into the deal with a link back to the opportunity.

Deal rooms

Pitch deck, SOW drafts, pricing math on the deal.

Each opportunity has a deal room where the team pins the pitch deck, the SOW drafts, the pricing math, the client-side brief, and the mutual action plan. The principal joining a late-stage call opens the room and has everything needed to prep. The classic "where is the latest pricing" scramble disappears.

Slack bidirectional sync

Deal channel updates the CRM and vice versa.

Strkr integrates with Slack so a per-deal channel syncs with the opportunity. Messages posted in the deal channel land as timeline entries. Status updates posted on the deal fire into the channel. The principal who prefers to live in Slack still contributes context to the CRM because the two surfaces are the same surface.

Principal pipeline view

A saved view the principal reads in two minutes a week.

A pre-built saved view renders the deals a specific principal is driving, sorted by stage and close date. The principal opens the view on Monday for two minutes, reads the five deals in motion, and clicks into the one that needs their attention. The sales leader forecasts the principal pipeline off the same view with full visibility.

Principal activity reports

Who is actually selling how much, visible.

The sales leader runs a principal activity report that shows deals closed, pipeline generated, and revenue booked per principal. The quarterly conversation with the founder or creative director about selling cadence is grounded in a shared number instead of a feeling. The classic agency debate of "the principals do not sell enough" or "the principals sell too much" becomes a data conversation.

Utilization versus growth, on one dashboard

Capability-area utilization alongside pipeline value.

The agency sales leader is forecasting growth against a delivery team with finite capacity. Close too much and utilization goes over 100 and the team breaks. Close too little and the delivery team sits idle and the agency bleeds margin. Strkr integrates with the staffing surface so the sales leader sees capability-area utilization alongside pipeline value and makes the close-or-defer decision on grounded numbers.

Utilization by capability-area

Strategy, design, dev, media, on one tile.

The sales leader dashboard renders utilization percentage by capability-area (strategy, design, dev, media, media buying) with trend over the last 6 weeks. The dashboard shows current, next 4 weeks, and next 12 weeks utilization against committed delivery. The sales leader spots the capability-area at 95 percent utilization and knows to defer or renegotiate scope on in-flight deals touching that area.

Pipeline by capability-area

Which deals load which part of the delivery team.

Open pipeline is rendered by capability-area so the sales leader sees that the 300K design-heavy deal in late stage will load the design team to 110 percent in Q2. The decision to close or defer is made before signature with the staffing math on the dashboard. The capability-area forecast is the agency version of territory forecasting at a SaaS company.

Seasonality curves

Q1 coverage read against Q1 historical close rate.

Capability-area win rates

Which deal shapes are closing, which are not.

Win rate is reported by capability-area, deal size band, and acquisition channel. The sales leader sees that dev-heavy mid-market deals are winning 42 percent while brand-only enterprise deals are winning 18 percent. The capability investment conversation (do we hire a creative director or a dev director) is grounded in the win-rate split.

Deferred-deal pipeline

Deals pushed to next quarter visible, not lost.

When the sales leader defers a deal to the next period due to utilization constraints, the deal stays in the pipeline with a deferred flag and the new target close date. The deferred list is a saved view the sales leader revisits at period kickoff. Deals do not get lost in the "we will come back to that" bucket because the system holds the backlog.

Growth versus utilization chart

The two numbers on one tile over time.

A dashboard tile renders quarterly revenue growth versus average delivery utilization over the last 8 quarters. The chart shows whether the agency is growing by selling more or by overloading the team. The founder and the sales leader read the same chart on the quarterly review and the staffing-plan versus growth conversation runs on shared numbers.

Head-to-head

Strkr vs HubSpot plus Pipedrive plus Harvest.

The common stack at a 20 to 100 person agency is HubSpot or Pipedrive for CRM, Monday or Asana for project management, Harvest or Kantata for time tracking, Salesforce (sometimes) for the enterprise segment, and a Google Sheet for forecast and utilization. Five tools, no system join between pipeline and utilization. The side-by-side below focuses on the sales leader job specifically.

What matters	Strkr	HubSpot + Pipedrive + Harvest
Retainer MRR plus project revenue on one deal	Native Products module with mixed line items and dual forecast	HubSpot pipelines force one deal shape, Pipedrive has no products on deals
Margin visibility per line item	Hours, rate, markup, margin on each line, enforced via Flows	Spreadsheet reconciliation at month end
Principal selling visibility	Watcher roles, inline mentions, deal rooms, Slack sync	Principals live outside the CRM, pipeline is partial
Utilization alongside pipeline	Native dashboard tile joining pipeline value and capability-area utilization	Separate dashboards in Harvest and HubSpot, no join
Seasonality curves on pipeline coverage	Per segment and per capability-area, applied to coverage math	Flat quota expectation, no seasonal adjustment
SOW versioning on the deal	Products module versions SOW line items with timestamped history	SOW drafts live in Google Docs, no system link
MSA routing	DocuSign or PandaDoc integration with signature status on the deal	DocuSign standalone, status copied back manually
Delivery handoff at closed won	Closed-won fires an onboarding project on the same account record	Context moves to Monday or Asana, deal context is lost
Hierarchical forecast with submit-lock	Native rep, manager, sales leader rollup with timestamped submissions	Google Sheet maintained by the sales leader
Capability-area win rates	Reported by capability-area, deal size, acquisition channel natively	Requires BI tool joining HubSpot and Harvest exports
Three-year TCO for a 20 to 100 person agency sales team	Flat per seat on one line item	HubSpot plus Pipedrive plus Harvest plus Monday typically 2 to 3x

The CRM for the VP sales running a 20 to 100 person agency.

Start a 14-day trial with retainer plus project pipeline on the Products module, principal watcher patterns, capability-area utilization dashboards, and delivery handoff into Projects enabled from day one. Migrate from HubSpot plus Pipedrive plus Harvest in 2 to 3 weeks and run your Monday forecast off a system number that reads retainer MRR, project revenue, and utilization in one view. The per-seat pricing is published in full before the trial starts.

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Common questions

Agencies Sales Leaders buyer FAQ.

Can Strkr model a retainer plus project agency deal correctly?

Yes, this is the core design assumption for the agency motion. Every opportunity in Strkr carries Products line items with hours per role, blended rate, markup, margin, and billing cadence. Retainer line items (monthly recurring) roll into the MRR forecast. Project line items (one-time) roll into the project revenue forecast. Pass-through line items (media, vendor spend) are tracked separately so the fee revenue is not inflated by pass-through. The sales leader sees the deal total broken into retainer MRR and project revenue on the pipeline view, and the delivery lead reads the staffing plan from the same line items at kickoff. The classic agency problem of a HubSpot pipeline forcing one deal shape and the forecast lying is solved by modeling the deal as a composite.

How does Strkr handle principal selling without forcing principals into the CRM full-time?

Strkr ships a principal-selling pattern designed for the agency moment where the founder, creative director, and senior account directors sell between client work. Principals are watchers on their deals. They get the deal timeline, activity feed, and inline mention notifications without needing a full sales seat. A pre-built saved view renders the deals a specific principal is driving, so the Monday review takes two minutes. Slack sync lets the principal contribute context from Slack with messages landing as timeline entries on the deal. The sales leader forecasts the full book, including principal-driven deals, from day one. The classic shadow-pipeline problem where half the deals live outside the CRM stops being a forecast risk.

How does Strkr show utilization alongside pipeline?

Strkr integrates with the staffing or time-tracking surface (Harvest, Kantata, or the native Strkr Projects module) to pull delivery utilization by capability-area onto the sales leader dashboard. The dashboard renders current utilization, next 4 weeks utilization, and next 12 weeks utilization against committed delivery, split by capability-area (strategy, design, dev, media). The pipeline is rendered by capability-area on the same dashboard so the sales leader sees that the 300K design-heavy deal will load design to 110 percent in Q2. The close-or-defer decision runs on grounded numbers. For a 20 to 100 person agency, this is often the single highest-value tile in the whole system.

How does seasonality factor into the agency forecast?

Strkr lets the sales leader attach a seasonality curve per segment and per capability-area to the pipeline coverage math. A Q1 coverage of 2x on a brand-refresh segment is read against the Q1 historical close rate (which might be 15 percent instead of the annual 25 percent). The sales leader knows which quarters need an outbound push 90 days out, not after the shortfall is already baked in. The seasonality curve is editable in the configuration surface without a BI engineer and updates as historical data accrues. The classic agency pattern of "Q1 is always dead" becomes a modeled expectation rather than an annual surprise.

What is the delivery handoff at closed won?

When a deal moves to closed won, Strkr creates an onboarding project on the same account record using a template keyed to deal size and shape (retainer onboarding, project kickoff, retainer plus project combo). The project template includes the kickoff call, implementation milestones, the training sessions, and the 30-60-90 check-ins. The account director opens the account and sees the sales deal history plus the live delivery project side by side. The classic post-close silence where the deal context lives in HubSpot and the delivery context lives in Monday or Asana is replaced by one record with both contexts visible. The sales leader can audit the handoff on any account by opening the record.

Can Strkr replace HubSpot plus Pipedrive plus Harvest in one move?

For most 20 to 100 person agencies, yes. The HubSpot or Pipedrive migration pulls contacts, companies, deals, custom properties, pipelines, and workflow logic. The Harvest or Kantata integration pulls utilization data via API so the sales leader dashboard renders capability-area utilization in week one. The Google Sheet forecast collapses into the native hierarchical forecast with submit-lock the first Friday after cutover. The Monday or Asana delivery context is kept via Strkr Projects (native) or the integration with Monday or Asana if the agency chooses to retain them. Most 20 to 50 person agencies complete the move in 2 to 3 weeks running the old stack and Strkr in parallel before the final switch.

Also considering

Related combinations.

Agency Account Executives Agency Account Managers Agency Sales Managers Agency RevOps Agency Founders Consulting Firm Sales Leaders Professional Services Sales Managers

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