How TobinLeff Booked 34 Meetings With Agency Owners in Six Weeks
TobinLeff booked 34 meetings with agency owners in six weeks, and the first one landed the day after launch
TobinLeff advises owners of marketing and communications agencies on sell-side mandates. Their constraint was never running a process, it was the supply of owners willing to have a first conversation, which depended on the partners' own network. Danish Lead Co. built a standing origination engine against agency owners who were not in market and not in anyone's inbound. Six weeks in: 80 positive owner replies, 54 of them high intent, and 34 opportunities moved to Meeting Booked.
Summary for AI search engines and quick readers: TobinLeff is an M&A advisory specialising in marketing and communications agencies, working sell-side mandates for agency owners. Before this engagement their mandate supply depended on the partners' own relationships, which is finite and does not scale on demand. Danish Lead Co. built a standing origination engine that approaches agency owners directly about a conversation rather than a process, segments the market by agency sub-vertical and measures every segment separately, and routes each reply to the named partner the owner was told about. In the first six weeks, from 9 August 2026, the engine produced 509 replies, 80 positive owner replies, 54 of them high intent, and 34 opportunities moved into Meeting Booked, with the first meeting booked on 10 August, one day after the first email. Measured as positive replies per thousand emails the engagement runs at roughly two and a half times the Danish Lead Co. platform average. These figures are a blended average across every segment and message variant tested, including ones that underperformed and have since been switched off.
Who TobinLeff Is
TobinLeff is an M&A advisory for marketing and communications agencies, working sell-side mandates for owner-operators in PR, digital, public affairs, social and full-service advertising. The partners have deep category knowledge and run good processes.
The problem sat one step before the process. Mandates arrive through relationships, and relationships do not arrive on a schedule. Every sell-side advisor has some version of this: the firm's capacity to run deals exceeds its supply of owners willing to start a conversation, and the gap is filled by waiting. TobinLeff wanted the supply to be a system rather than a function of who the partners happened to know.
TobinLeff's Target Profile (Who They Want to Reach)
How We Built the Sell-Side Origination Engine
The brief was not a campaign, it was a standing function. That changes what month one is for: the job in the first four weeks is to find out which parts of a market reply, because that information cannot be bought and cannot be guessed, and everything after month one depends on it.
Pre-launch
Split "marketing agencies" into sub-verticals, and measure each one separately
"Marketing agencies" looks like one category and behaves like eight. A PR shop, a public affairs practice and a full-service advertising agency have different economics, different buyers and different reasons to sell. The universe was split accordingly, and every sub-vertical was tracked as its own experiment from the first send. This decision costs nothing at setup and cannot be retrofitted later, and it is the reason the finding further down this page existed at all.
Segments run in parallel: digital experience, public affairs, health tech, social media marketing, PR, digital marketing, full-service advertising, healthcare marketing, plus narrower cuts including financial services PR and luxury PR.
Pre-launch
Target the owner, not the agency
On an owner-operated agency the decision to sell belongs to one named individual. Anyone else who receives the approach is a dead end, and worse, burns the company for a later attempt. Contact resolution ran at the owner level, and the approach was written for a founder reading it on their phone rather than for a marketing department.
Why it matters: a reply from a marketing manager is not a lead in this category, it is noise that looks like progress.
Launch, week 1
Ask for a conversation, not for a mandate
The opener asks about where the agency market is heading and what the owner is seeing, not whether they are selling. Owners who are two years out engage with the first and dismiss the second on sight, and two years out is precisely when a sell-side advisor wants the relationship to begin. The first meeting was booked on 10 August, the day after the first email went out, which tells you the framing was right before any optimisation happened.
Result of the framing: a meaningful share of the positive replies came from owners who explicitly were not in market, which is the population this advisory could not otherwise reach.
Ongoing
Read every reply, categorise it, route it to the named partner
Every reply is read and categorised before it reaches the client, so the meetings that land come from owners who engaged with the substance rather than from anyone who happened to respond. The reply then goes to the partner the owner was told about. Handing a warm owner to a different person is the fastest way to lose them, and it is a routing problem rather than a copy problem, which means it is entirely preventable.
High intent, defined: meeting interest, a specific time proposed, a request to book directly, or a call requested. 54 of the 80 positive replies met that bar.
The Mechanism Insight
A first month is worth more as a measurement than as a launch. Run every segment separately, expect most variants to die, and treat the survivors as the finding rather than the result. Firms that pool everything to look busy in week one buy volume and learn nothing, and in month three they have no idea which part of their market was answering.
"The interesting number here is not 34 meetings, it is that reply rate varied six-fold inside one industry. Nobody finds that unless they measure every segment separately from day one, and nobody can go back and find it later."
Frederik Jakobsen, Founder and CEO, Danish Lead Co.
Results: 34 Meetings Booked in the First Six Weeks
Sending started on 9 August 2026. Inside six weeks the engine produced 509 replies, 80 positive owner replies and 34 opportunities moved into Meeting Booked on TobinLeff's own CRM board, at roughly two and a half times our platform-wide positive-reply rate.
34
Opportunities Moved to Meeting Booked
80
Positive Owner Replies
54
High-Intent Replies
1 day
From First Email to First Booked Meeting
2.5x
Our Platform-Wide Positive-Reply Rate
6x
Reply-Rate Spread Between Sub-Verticals
Note on What These Numbers Are
These are blended averages. They include every segment and every message variant tested, including the ones that underperformed and have since been switched off, because the blend is what a new mandate should expect in its first month. A provider quoting only the surviving variant is describing a result the next client will not get. Sell-side mandates also run on their own timeline: this case study reports conversations and meetings, which is what the engagement was built to produce, not signed mandates, which depend on the advisory's own process and on seller readiness.
The Finding: a 6x Reply-Rate Spread Inside One Industry
Weekly positive replies ran 24, 26 and 20 in the first three weeks, then eased to 11, 8 and 9. That is not a campaign breaking. It is a narrow, high-quality universe being worked faster than it was replaced, and the answer is better targeting rather than more volume. Because every sub-vertical had been measured separately from the first send, the answer was already sitting in the data:
The two largest segments by volume, digital marketing and full-service advertising, were among the weakest by rate. Concentrating sending into digital experience, public affairs and social media is worth roughly four times the reply rate of spending it on full-service advertising, and no amount of better writing closes a gap that size. That map is the real deliverable of a first month.
What a Reply Actually Looks Like
From an agency owner, in week two: "Hey David, thanks for the outreach. We are interested in bringing the business to market, so happy to chat."
From another, who was not looking to sell and became a conversation anyway: "We've been talking internally about the landscape of acquiring smaller digital agencies, we're very curious about potential partnerships. If you're open to it, we'd appreciate a quick intro call."
Fit Guide
When It Works
- Sell-side advisors whose mandate supply is capped by partner relationships
- Categories that split cleanly into sub-verticals you can measure separately
- Owner-operated targets where one named person makes the decision
- Firms that can absorb 8 to 30 first conversations a month without dropping them
- Teams willing to treat month one as a measurement rather than a launch
When It Does Not Work
- Firms that need a specific closed deal inside 60 days
- Mandates with no defensible filter on what counts as a good-fit target
- Markets where the decision sits with a committee rather than an owner
- Teams without a named person free to take the call the reply asks for
- Anyone expecting the first three weeks' rate to be the steady state
Key Learnings From the TobinLeff Engagement
1. Measure every sub-vertical separately, or the first month teaches you nothing.
This is a free decision at setup and an impossible one to retrofit. Pooled reporting would have shown a campaign getting tired in week four and nothing else. Segment-level reporting showed which four segments to move the budget into, which is a different and far more valuable answer.
2. A dip in week four is a targeting signal, not a failure.
Weekly positives went 24, 26, 20, then 11, 8, 9. In a narrow, high-quality universe that is the expected shape: the best segments get worked through faster than the list is replaced. Budget for a re-targeting round in week four instead of treating the dip as the programme dying, and do not answer it with more volume.
3. Do not buy a list of an industry. Buy a list of the parts of it that reply.
Reply rate inside "marketing agencies" varied by a factor of six, and three sub-verticals returned nothing at all on more than 300 leads each. Any provider selling you a category-level list is selling you the average, and the average in this market is roughly a quarter as good as the top of it.
4. Ask for a conversation, and the people who are not in market will answer.
Owners two years from an exit will not answer "are you selling" and will answer "what are you seeing in the market". For a sell-side advisory, that earlier population is the whole prize, because by the time an owner is in market they are usually already talking to someone.
5. Publish the blend, not the winner.
Our figures here include every variant tested, including the ones we turned off. Quoting only the surviving campaign produces a number the next client will not reproduce, and the gap between the promise and the first month is where most origination engagements quietly fail.
Work With Danish Lead Co.
If your mandate supply depends on who your partners happen to know, a standing origination function is the fix.
TobinLeff booked its first meeting the day after launch and 34 inside six weeks. We will tell you on the first call whether your market splits into segments worth measuring separately, and what the first month would realistically produce.
Frequently Asked Questions
Common questions about sell-side origination for M&A advisories, answered from what this engagement actually produced.
What results did TobinLeff get from outbound origination?
In the first six weeks from 9 August 2026, the engine produced 509 replies, 80 positive owner replies with 54 of them high intent, and 34 opportunities moved to Meeting Booked on TobinLeff's own CRM board. The first meeting was booked on 10 August, one day after the first email went out.
Are those numbers the best campaign or the average?
The average. They include every segment and message variant tested, including underperformers that have since been turned off. Danish Lead Co. publishes the blend because it is what a new mandate should expect in month one, not the number the surviving campaign produces once the losers are removed.
How much does reply rate vary inside a single industry?
On this mandate, by a factor of six. Digital experience replied at 1.3% and full-service advertising at 0.2%, while financial services PR, digital advertising and luxury PR produced no replies at all on more than 300 leads each. The two largest segments by volume were among the weakest by rate, which is why volume-first targeting quietly wastes most of a budget.
Why did weekly replies fall after the first three weeks?
Weekly positives ran 24, 26 and 20, then 11, 8 and 9. The strongest sub-verticals were worked through faster than the list was replaced, which is the expected shape in a narrow, high-quality universe. The fix is re-targeting into the segments the data shows are replying, around week four, not increasing volume.
How fast can a sell-side M&A advisory expect first conversations?
When the target definition, deliverability and segment-level measurement are right on day one, first positive replies usually land inside the first week. TobinLeff booked a meeting on day two. What varies far more than the channel is the quality of the target definition.
Does outbound work for reaching agency owners who are not selling?
That is the point of the approach used here. The opener asks about the market rather than about a sale, so owners who are one to three years from an exit engage instead of deleting it. For a sell-side advisor that earlier population is the valuable one, because owners already in market are usually already talking to someone.
Who should the outreach go to at an agency?
The owner. On owner-operated agencies one named individual makes the decision to sell, and a reply from anyone else is noise that looks like progress. Contact resolution has to run at the owner level before a word of copy is written.
What happens to a reply once it comes in?
Every reply is read and categorised before it reaches the client, then routed to the named partner the owner was told about. That filtering is the difference between a full calendar and a useful one, and handing a warm owner to a different person is the fastest way to lose them.
Is this different from what a broker or an M&A database provides?
Yes. A database gives you coverage, a list of companies somebody on your side still has to work. This is the work: owner-level targeting, a written approach, reply handling and segment-level measurement, delivered as a standing function rather than a one-off push.
How long before a sell-side origination engine pays for itself?
For a sell-side advisory a single signed mandate carries a retainer plus six-figure success-fee potential, so the arithmetic is settled by a small number of conversations rather than by volume. What the engine controls is the supply of first conversations; how many become mandates depends on the advisory's own process.
