How to get clients in 2026: 8 ways, fastest first
2026-10-22 · updated 2026-10-22 · 9 min read · Adam Axelsson, founder of Revexa
The fastest way to get clients in 2026 is to start with the people who already trust you, then reach the companies that just showed a public sign that they need your service: a new marketing leader, a funding round, a wall of open jobs or a system switch. Cold outreach to cold lists comes last. The average reply rate for cold email is 3.43 percent, and 73 percent of B2B buyers say they actively avoid suppliers who send irrelevant outreach (Instantly, 2026, Gartner, 2025).
This guide is for service businesses that sell to other companies: marketing, web and design agencies, consultants, recruitment firms, and IT and software consultancies. Checked on 22 October 2026; prices are the ones a US buyer sees, before tax, unless another currency is named. Revexa builds Leo, a tool for one of the ways below.
How to get clients: eight ways, ranked by speed to a real sales call
Referrals and buying signals can put you on a call within days; cold lists come last because they rarely produce a good call at all. The ranking and the table are our assessment of how fast each way usually leads to a conversation with a buyer who has a real need, not a study; the prices come from the sources under the table.
| Rank | Way | Time to a first call (our assessment) | Cash cost | Works best for | Weak spot |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Referrals and your network | Days | $0 | Every service firm | You cannot schedule it, and it runs dry |
| 2 | Answering buying signals | Days to two weeks | $0 by hand, tools from about $99 a month | Firms with a clear specialty | Needs a daily habit or a tool |
| 3 | Weeks | $0, or $119.99 a month for Sales Navigator Core | Founders and partners who write | Slow until people know your name | |
| 4 | Content | Months | Your time | Firms with a point of view | Takes a quarter or more to compound |
| 5 | Partners | One to three months | $0 to a referral fee | Firms with a natural neighbor | One-sided partnerships fade |
| 6 | Platforms and directories | Days to apply, weeks to win | Upwork's freelancer fee: 0% to 15% per contract | New firms that need first projects | You compete on price |
| 7 | Paid advertising | Weeks to tune | Your ad budget | Packaged services with a clear price | Expensive while you learn |
| 8 | Cold outreach to cold lists | Fast to send, slow to produce calls | Data and sending tools | Testing a brand new market | Few replies, and it wears out your name |
Sources: LinkedIn Sales Navigator plans ($119.99 a month or $1,079.88 a year for Core), Upwork's fee page. Buying-signal agents from $99 a month are compared in our guide to finding B2B customers.
1. Referrals and your network
Referrals are the fastest route to a client because the trust is borrowed. Even in 2018, though, buyers leaned on them less than five years earlier. In the Hinge Research Institute's 2018 study of 1,475 buyers and 3,005 sellers of professional services, referrals were still the top way to find a provider, but fewer than 60 percent of buyers asked for one; in 2013, more than 70 percent had turned to their network when they needed a provider. Nearly 1 in 5 buyers in 2018 turned to search engines (Hinge, 2018). Referrals are a great floor and a poor ceiling.
How to get more of them without begging:
- Ask at the moment of a win, when the site launches, the role is filled or the migration goes live. Not when you send the invoice.
- Make the ask narrow. "Who do you know who just hired a head of marketing?" gets names. "Know anyone?" gets nothing.
- Keep a list of the 30 people who have seen your work. When one of them changes jobs, write that week. A known name in a new seat is the warmest lead you will ever get.
2. Answer buying signals
A buying signal is anything public that shows a company's situation just changed in a way that creates work for you. Reach the right person within days of it and you arrive while the problem is new, before the buyer has a shortlist. What counts as a signal depends on what you sell. The table is our assessment, not a study:
| You are | Signals that say a company needs you now | Who to write to |
|---|---|---|
| Marketing agency | Hiring its first marketer or a head of marketing; just raised a round; expanding into a new country | The new marketing leader, or the founder before the hire starts |
| Web or design agency | A rebrand or new product announced; hiring a designer or front-end developer; fresh funding | Head of marketing or brand |
| Management or strategy consultant | A new CEO or COO; fast headcount growth; a merger or acquisition announced | The new executive, in the first 90 days |
| Recruitment firm | Many open jobs at once; the same role reposted for weeks; a new office | Head of talent, or the hiring manager for the stuck role |
| IT or software consultancy | Job ads naming a new system ("experience with a Salesforce migration"); a new CTO or CIO; a competitor's tool appearing on their website | The CTO, IT lead or system owner |
Fictional example for a recruitment firm: "Saw you have six engineering roles open, two of them since July. When roles stay open that long it is usually sourcing, not the offer. Want three senior backend profiles this week?" Our buying signals guide explains each signal, and the signs a company is switching software matter most to IT consultancies.
Answering signals is not cold outreach with a better excuse. The company told the world something changed. You are replying to that.
3. LinkedIn
LinkedIn is where your buyers say what they care about, in public, every week. It has more than 1 billion members in more than 200 countries and territories (LinkedIn). Use it two ways:
- Post about the problems you solve, then look at who reacts. A head of operations who likes three of your posts about ERP projects is telling you something.
- Start conversations with the people who show interest, one at a time, about their situation. A connection request with a pitch attached is a cold email in a different window.
Sales Navigator Core ($119.99 a month) includes more than 50 search filters and alerts on job changes, according to LinkedIn's plan comparison. A free LinkedIn account is enough to start.
4. Content
Content brings clients who have already decided you know your field before the first call, but it takes months. Write the answer to the questions a client asks before hiring you: what a website rebuild costs, how long a senior search takes, what a CRM migration breaks. Publish one case write-up a quarter, with the numbers your client lets you share.
Answer one specific question per page, because pages that answer the exact question are the ones search engines and AI assistants tend to quote (our observation, not a study), and sign it with a real name.
5. Partners
The best partner serves your client right before or right after you do. Natural pairs: a web agency and an SEO agency, a recruiter and an HR consultancy, an IT consultancy and the software vendor whose system it implements (through the vendor's partner program), a strategy consultant and a law or accounting firm. Make it two-way, agree on a referral fee or reciprocal introductions, and meet every quarter with names on the agenda.
6. Platforms and directories
Freelance platforms and agency directories get a new firm its first projects quickly, at the cost of margin and price competition. Upwork charges freelancers a service fee that "ranges from 0% to 15% per contract" (Upwork). Use them for case studies and reviews, not as your whole pipeline.
7. Paid advertising
Ads work for services only when the offer is concrete: a fixed-price audit, a two-week sprint, a named package with a price. Search ads catch people already looking ("Shopify agency Chicago"). LinkedIn ads let you target by job title, industry and seniority, which suits a narrow buyer (LinkedIn). Stop any campaign that cannot point to booked calls.
8. Cold outreach to cold lists, and why it comes last
Cold outreach to a bought list is the slowest way to a good call, because nobody on that list asked to hear from you. A list is not a market.
- Replies are rare. Instantly's 2026 benchmark puts the average cold email reply rate at 3.43 percent, with the top quarter of senders at 5.5 percent (Instantly). Even a top-quartile sender gets no reply to about 95 of every 100 emails (our arithmetic).
- Irrelevant messages cost you later. In a Gartner survey of 632 B2B buyers (August to September 2024), 73 percent said they actively avoid suppliers who send irrelevant outreach (Gartner press release "Gartner Sales Survey Finds 61% of B2B Buyers Prefer a Rep-Free Buying Experience", 25 June 2025). The company you spam today is the client you want next year.
The fix is timing, not a cleverer template. The same three-line message, sent to a company that just showed a signal, is no longer cold. Our cold email reply rates guide explains what separates a 1 percent sender from a 10 percent one.
Skip the cold outreach. Answer the raised hands.
How to get more clients when you already have some
To get more clients, grow from your best clients, the companies that look like them and the proposals you lost:
- Find what your best five clients had in common the month they hired you: size, stage, trigger, the person who signed. Our ideal customer profile guide shows how to write it, with a template.
- Look for companies showing the same trigger now. If your best clients all hired you right after a funding round, funding is your signal.
- Grow inside current accounts: a second team, a second country, a retainer after a project.
- Reopen lost proposals when something changes. A new leader or new money turns last year's "not now" into this month's call.
- Ask for referrals right after a measurable win, and record where every client came from.
Fictional example: a 12-person design agency finds that its four best clients all hired it within two months of naming a new head of product, so it starts watching for that one change. If you still do all the selling yourself, our founder-led outbound guide sets out a weekly routine.
Where to find clients
You find clients where companies reveal a need in public, not in a database of names:
| Source | What it tells you | Most useful for |
|---|---|---|
| Career pages and job boards | Who is hiring, for what, and for how long | Recruiters, agencies, IT consultancies |
| Funding announcements and press releases | New money and new plans | Agencies, consultants |
| LinkedIn job changes and posts | New leaders and their stated priorities | Every service firm |
| Company websites | A rebrand, a new product, the tools they run | Web agencies, IT consultancies |
| Your own CRM | Lost proposals and past clients with a new reason to talk | Every service firm |
| Software vendors' partner directories | Implementation work around one system | IT and software consultancies |
| Freelance platforms and agency directories | Posted projects with a budget | New firms |
Doing it with Leo
Leo by Revexa is an AI GTM agent that finds the B2B companies ready to buy and starts the conversations that turn them into customers, by email and LinkedIn. By default you approve every message before it is sent.
For an agency, consultancy or recruiter, Leo does the watching and drafting in way 2. It reads your website to work out which companies you serve, then watches for hiring, funding, headcount growth, new executives in the buying role, job ads, competitors' tools on a company's website and people engaging with LinkedIn posts (your own, your competitors' and industry voices'). When a company fits and moves, Leo picks the person who owns the problem and writes a personal email or LinkedIn message that sounds like you. In review mode, the default, every draft waits for you to approve or skip it in the portal, Slack or iMessage, in your own words. If your CRM is HubSpot, Pipedrive, Salesforce, Upsales or Close, current clients and live deals are left out, and a lost deal returns when that company shows a new signal. Leads in Germany get no cold messages (UWG §7).
Pricing: $99 a month in the US and the rest of the world, €89 in Europe and 999 SEK in Sweden, excluding VAT or sales tax. The first 7 days cost nothing, and you can cancel whenever you want (pricing). For what a meeting costs by hand, with a tool stack, through an agency or with a hire, see our cost per meeting calculation.
Leo will not bring you referrals, hand you a contact list to export, make phone calls or post your projects on a marketplace. Revexa is a Swedish company started in 2026, with no published customer results so far. Skip Leo if referrals already fill your calendar, if your clients are mostly German, or if you want case studies first.
Related: Client acquisition strategies, How to generate leads, Where to find clients and Get clients without cold outreach.
By industry: Web design, Marketing agencies, Consultants, Recruitment agencies and Software development companies.
Frequently asked questions
How do I get clients in 2026?
Start with referrals, then write to companies that just showed a sign they need you, such as a new leader, new funding or many open jobs. Leave cold lists for last.
How do I find clients for my agency or consultancy?
Find the trigger that made your best clients hire you and watch for it in public: job ads, funding, leadership changes, a rebrand or a system switch. Then write to the person who owns that problem, within days.
How do I get more clients when I already have a few?
Study your best five clients, find companies showing the same trigger, grow inside current accounts, reopen lost proposals when something changes and ask for referrals right after a win.
Where can I find clients?
On career pages and job boards, in funding news, in LinkedIn job changes and posts, on company websites, in your CRM's lost deals, in vendors' partner directories and on freelance platforms.
How do I win new business without cold outreach?
Replace bought lists with timing: referrals, partners and replies to buying signals reach a company when it has a reason to listen. In a Gartner survey of 632 B2B buyers (August to September 2024, published June 2025), 73 percent said they actively avoid suppliers who send irrelevant outreach.
How do I land my first clients as a new firm?
Tell everyone you have worked with exactly what you do and ask each for one name. Take a few platform projects to earn case studies, then pick one signal that fits your specialty and answer it every week.