Why the brief matters so much
A lead generation agency cannot read your mind. If you tell them you want "businesses that might be interested in our services," they will contact businesses that might be interested in your services — which is essentially everyone, and therefore no one in particular. The outbound team needs to know precisely who to target, precisely what to say, and precisely what a good prospect looks and sounds like.
The brief is also what allows you to hold the agency accountable. If the leads you receive are not a good fit for your business, the first question to ask is whether the brief was clear enough to produce a different result — or whether the agency simply did not follow it. A well-written brief makes that distinction obvious.
What to include in your brief
Your ideal prospect profile
This is the most important part of the brief. Describe your ideal customer in as much specific detail as possible:
- Sector — which industry or industries do they operate in? The more specific, the better. "Professional services" is too broad. "Independent IFAs and wealth management firms" is specific enough to work with.
- Business size — what size of business do you want to target? By number of employees, by turnover, by number of locations, or some other measure?
- Geographic area — which cities, regions, or postcodes do you want to target? The more specific you are, the more precisely the campaign can be targeted.
- Decision-maker — who, within the business, makes or influences the buying decision? Job title, seniority level, department?
- Qualifying signals — are there any observable signals that suggest a business is more likely to need your service? Businesses with more than five vehicles? Properties built before 1990? Businesses currently using a specific competitor?
What problem you solve
Describe the problem your business solves in the plainest possible language — the way a prospect would describe it, not the way your marketing team would. The outbound team needs to be able to introduce your business in one or two sentences that are immediately relevant to the person they are speaking with. If your proposition takes five minutes to explain, it will not survive a cold outreach call.
Your geographic target area
Be specific. A single city, a cluster of towns, a county, or a broader region — the more precisely you define this, the more efficiently the campaign can be run. We cover every major UK market: Birmingham, Leeds, Cardiff, and everywhere in between — but the brief needs to tell us exactly where to focus.
What a good lead looks and sounds like
Describe a recent good customer — not an idealised version, but an actual one. What did they say that told you they were a good fit? What was their situation when they came to you? What convinced you they were worth pursuing? This is the most useful input a client can give, and it is also the most consistently omitted from briefs.
What a bad lead looks like
Equally important: describe the types of business or prospect that are a bad fit. Businesses that are too small, too large, in the wrong geography, at the wrong stage, or with a specific characteristic that makes them unlikely to buy. Defining exclusions is as important as defining inclusions.
Your qualification criteria
Agree with the agency what questions a prospect must answer affirmatively before being confirmed as a lead. These should mirror your ideal prospect profile and your bad lead exclusions. The tighter and more specific these criteria, the higher the quality of the leads you receive — and the lower the volume. Decide which matters more for your business. Our article on what makes a lead qualified explains how qualification criteria work in practice.
The brief is a living document. Your first brief will not be perfect. After the first week or two of a campaign, you will have real-world feedback — leads that were a great fit, leads that were not, patterns in what the outbound team is hearing from prospects. A good agency will use this feedback to refine the brief. If your agency does not proactively discuss performance and iterate on the brief, that is a warning sign.
Questions a good agency should ask you
A professional lead generation agency will not simply accept your brief and start dialling. They will push back, ask clarifying questions, and challenge any aspects of the brief that seem too broad, too vague, or likely to produce poor results. Here are the questions you should expect — and want — to be asked:
- Why do your best customers buy from you rather than from a competitor?
- What is the single most common objection you face in a first sales conversation?
- What does a prospect typically say that signals they are a good fit?
- What have your best-converting leads had in common?
- What is your realistic conversion rate from qualified lead to closed sale?
- How quickly can your team follow up a lead once it arrives?
If an agency does not ask any of these questions, they are unlikely to produce leads that genuinely suit your business. The brief should be a collaborative process, not a one-way submission. For context on how much a campaign costs once the brief is agreed, see our article on how much lead generation costs in the UK.
Questions to ask the agency before you start
Before committing to any lead generation provider, there are several things worth asking directly. How do they qualify leads — what does the qualifying conversation involve? Are the leads exclusive? What information comes with each lead? What are the contract terms? And what happens if you receive leads that clearly do not match the brief?
A good agency will answer all of these questions clearly and without hesitation. Vague answers about process, lead exclusivity, or contract terms are red flags. For a full checklist, see our guide on outbound vs inbound lead generation which also covers what to ask providers of each type.
How Go2Leads approaches the brief
We build the brief collaboratively — typically in a single conversation that covers your ideal prospect profile, your qualification criteria, your target area, and your sales team's capacity to follow up. We do not go live until the brief is agreed and we are confident the campaign is set up to deliver leads that are genuinely useful to your business.
The brief also informs what the outbound team says on each call — if you want to understand how that calling framework works, our article on what makes a good lead generation script covers it in full. We cover the full UK — from London to Scotland. See how our process works, review our pricing, or get in touch to start a conversation about your campaign brief.