Northpeak SEO (anonymized)

How a 9-person B2B SEO agency reclaimed founder time and stopped losing inbound leads to faster competitors — by qualifying every call in under two seconds, 24/7.

The problem

The agency's growth was capped by founder bandwidth. Inbound calls came in at all hours — B2B SaaS founders researching agencies between meetings, on weekends, or in different timezones. The team relied on a contact form plus a 9–5 voicemail box, which meant most callers either left a vague message or moved on to the next agency on Google. By the time the founder returned the call, often four to six hours later, roughly half of high-intent leads had already booked a discovery call with a competitor. Worse, the calls that did get returned were a mix of strong fits and tire-kickers; the team was spending the same time on a $500/month inquiry as on a $9,000/month one.

The solution

WildRun built a custom voice agent trained on the agency's ICP, qualification questions, disqualification language, and brand voice. Every inbound call is now answered in under two seconds, day or night. The agent confirms fit across four dimensions — current traffic, in-house vs. existing agency, budget range, and timeline — then either books the prospect directly into the lead strategist's calendar or politely disqualifies with a referral. Calls are logged to HubSpot with a full transcript, structured fit score, and audio recording. Misfit calls never reach the founder; fit calls land on the calendar with a calendar invite and prep doc already sent before the prospect hangs up.

The outcome

Within the first 30 days, discovery-call volume rose from a baseline of roughly twelve per month to over thirty, with the lift coming almost entirely from after-hours and weekend leads that previously went unanswered. The qualification step removed a category of low-fit calls the founder was previously absorbing — saving roughly eleven hours of founder time per week, which now goes to delivery and existing-client retention. Close rate on discovery calls rose modestly as well, since the calls now skewed toward better-fit prospects who had been pre-qualified before the conversation. Anecdotally, several closed prospects mentioned they had called two or three other agencies the same evening and went with the one that picked up.

Timeline

Day 1: discovery call to capture ICP, qualification questions, and disqualification language. Days 2–6: agent build, voice selection, HubSpot + Google Calendar integration, internal test calls. Day 7: phased rollout — agent handles overflow first, then takes 100% of inbound. Day 10: live across all channels with monitoring dashboard.

"Honestly, the part that surprised me wasn't the new bookings — it was getting my evenings back. I used to feel like I had to be on call for our pipeline. Now the agent handles the first conversation, and I only show up for the ones that are already a fit." — Founder, Northpeak SEO (anonymized)