How to Do Reference Checks on a Lead Gen Agency

You’ve got two finalists and a “reference list” from each. Six logos per agency. Names and emails. You’re trying to figure out how to actually use them.

Most reference calls don’t sort finalists because most reference calls are run wrong. You take the list the agency provides, you book a 30-minute call, you ask “how was working with them?” and the reference says “great.” You hang up and you’re no closer to a decision than you were before.

The reference checks that actually change finalists are not the ones the agency hands you. They’re the ones you find yourself.

What we’ve learned across 1,000+ B2B engagements

What We Cover

1. Why curated reference lists are mostly noise

The agency’s reference list is the agency’s six best clients, hand-picked, primed to say nice things. Three of them are personal friends of the founder. One was a five-figure pilot that ended six months ago and they don’t quite remember the details. One is a current customer who’ll lose service if they badmouth the agency.

This is not a trick — it’s just what reference lists are. They exist for the same reason every company has a careers page that says “we love our employees.” But they don’t sort finalists.

A reference call with even one curated reference is fine — the agency should be able to point you at one happy customer. A reference call with all curated references tells you only that the agency has at least six happy customers. Useful baseline. Not a tiebreaker.

2. How to find non-curated references

Three places to look:

• LinkedIn. Search the agency’s name in the search bar, filter by “People.” You’ll see employees, but also the brand-name clients who’ve publicly engaged with the agency’s posts. Their employees who’d recognize the agency are reachable.
• Published case studies. Every case study on the agency’s site has a named client. The case study has the names; LinkedIn has the contact info. Two minutes of searching gets you the right person.
• Industry communities. Slack groups, Reddit threads, and trade-press articles where buyers compare lead gen agencies. The buyers who chose this agency are usually willing to talk; the buyers who chose a competitor are even more willing.

For each agency, find two non-curated references. Add the agency’s curated reference to make three. Three calls per finalist, three finalists, that’s nine calls — call it five hours of work for what might be a $200K decision. The math is on your side.

3. Running the call — agenda and timing

Twenty-five minutes, not thirty. Buyers are doing you a favor; respect their time.

The structure:

• Minute 1: thank them, frame the call. “We’re evaluating [Agency] for [type of engagement] and would value 25 minutes of your perspective. There are no wrong answers — we’re trying to make a real decision.”
• Minutes 2 to 15: the seven questions in the next section.
• Minutes 15 to 22: open-ended. “Anything I should have asked?”
• Minutes 22 to 25: close. “If you don’t mind, may I email you one follow-up question if it comes up?” (This makes them honest — if they wouldn’t take a follow-up, they don’t really endorse the agency.)

Don’t share your specific situation in detail. Asking the reference how the agency handled their problem is more useful than asking them to predict how the agency will handle yours.

4. The seven questions that sort finalists

In order of priority:

1. “What was the hardest part of the engagement?” Tests whether the relationship was real. Every real engagement has a hard part. References who say “nothing was hard” either weren’t paying attention or are protecting the agency.
2. “How did the agency handle that hard part?” Tells you the agency’s failure mode. Did they iterate? Did they go quiet? Did the senior people show up or did the junior people stop responding?
3. “What’s something the agency did better than you expected?” Tests for genuine enthusiasm. References who can name something specific are different from references who say “they did everything well.”
4. “What’s something they did worse than you expected?” The mirror image. Real references can name one thing. Curated references can’t.
5. “Was the team you started with the team that delivered six months in?” Tests for bait-and-switch. Pitch teams sell, delivery teams execute, the gap is often the problem.
6. “How was the dashboard / reporting? What did it tell you, what did it hide?” Real references will name something the dashboard hid. Curated references will say “great reporting.”
7. “Would you sign with them again, knowing what you know now?” The decisive question. A confident yes is a strong signal. A “yes, but…” is a stronger signal — that’s where the real information lives. A “no” is rarer and you should ask why before you weight it.

5. What to listen for besides the words

The words are half the signal. The other half:

• Pause length before the answer. A confident reference answers within a beat. A reference who has to think before answering is editing.
• Specificity vs. generality. Names, numbers, dates beat “they were great” every time. Generality is the language of references who don’t quite remember.
• Voluntary detail. A reference who keeps going past the question is enthusiastic. A reference who answers the question and stops is being polite.
• Tone shift on hard questions. If the energy drops on questions 4 and 6, the engagement had texture. If the energy stays the same, the reference is on autopilot.

Take notes. Compare across the three calls per finalist. The patterns emerge in the comparison, not in any single call.

6. What to do with what you hear

After all nine calls, write one paragraph per finalist:

• What’s the consistent theme across their references?
• What’s the consistent gap?
• Which finalist’s hard-part story matches your situation most closely?
• Where’s the bait-and-switch risk?

Most decisions sort themselves at this stage. The finalist whose references can’t quite name what was hard is usually the one to drop. The finalist whose references mention the same delivery person by name twice is usually the one to advance.

For the broader evaluation framework, see How to Choose a Lead Generation Company. For the questions to ask the agency directly (different list, different purpose), see 12 questions every lead gen vendor hopes you don’t ask.

Frequently asked questions

Want help running reference calls on the agencies you’re evaluating?

Get on a call with our team. We’ll talk through your finalists, help you find non-curated references, and walk through the seven questions for your specific situation.

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If we’re not the right fit for what you need, we’ll say so on the call.

Launch Leads is a B2B lead generation company that has set 76,000+ appointments and sourced over $3B in client revenue across 1,000+ engagements. We focus on multi-channel outbound, real-person outreach, and pipeline outcomes — not activity metrics.