SSA FZE LLC

A UAE-based advisory firm working with a small number of founder-led agencies at a time.

SSA builds the function that sells, so growth stops depending on the founder.

Sales, business development and client services, built into agencies that have outgrown relationship-led selling. Five markets, two languages, and systems that keep originating when the founder is in delivery.

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5
Markets covered

US, UK & Ireland, UAE & KSA, Singapore & Hong Kong, Japan.

2
Delivery languages

English and native Japanese, including client-facing materials.

10
Days to a packaged offer

Sprint engagement ships a positioned, priced, sellable offer.

4
Dimensions scored

Founder-dependency diagnostic: origination, concentration, process, capability.

Figures describe SSA's operating scope and engagement structure, not client results. Client outcomes are discussed under NDA.

01Where agencies stall

Four constraints account for most stalled agency growth.

Each is structural rather than tactical. Tools and campaigns do not move them, because the constraint sits in who owns the selling.

01

Founder-sourced pipeline

Most qualified opportunities trace back to the founder's relationships. When the founder is committed to delivery, origination stops.

02

The reactive ceiling

Demand arrives through referral and inbound. Without an origination engine, revenue is capped by the reach of one network.

03

Revenue concentration

A small number of accounts carry the business. The risk is invisible until a single renewal decision moves the annual plan.

04

Deferred expansion

New markets, service lines and category positioning remain unfunded, because no one owns the selling that would pay for them.

02The approach

Built into the agency, not bolted on the side.

SSA builds the selling function so growth keeps moving without the founder in every room. Where a sales function is missing or still early, SSA co-creates it with leadership and moves the agency from reactive selling to proactive origination. The mandate covers sales, business development and client services, together with the systems and assets that make it run.

Built, not advised

Deliverables are working systems and sales assets — offer architecture, outreach specs, qualification criteria — not a series of calls and a slide deck.

AI-native by construction

Outreach specs, content systems and design prompts are written for LLM tooling from the first draft, so the function runs at a cost base a traditional team cannot match.

Five markets, two languages

US, UK & Ireland, UAE & KSA, Singapore & Hong Kong, and Japan, with client-facing delivery available in Japanese.

03Who this is for

Calibrated for a specific kind of agency.

Engagements are a fit when two or three of the following describe the last twelve months.

  • A midsized agency or boutique consultancy, typically 15–150 people
  • The founder or a small group closes most meaningful work directly
  • Growth has flattened and the pipeline leans on referral
  • A few accounts represent an uncomfortable share of revenue
  • New markets or service lines are planned, but no one owns the selling
  • Tactics and tooling have been tried; selling still depends on the founder
04Engagement model

One path, three phases. Engagements can close after any of them.

01 / Define

We establish where growth should come from before anything is built: market sizing, account strategy, territory whitespace, and account scoring.

What your team owns
  • Founder-dependency read
  • Target market and segment thesis
  • Scored account universe
  • Ninety-day growth roadmap

Engagements begin with a fixed-scope diagnostic or a ten-day Sprint. The Sprint fee is creditable against ongoing work.

05Practices

What gets built.

Six practices, each with defined deliverables and a stated outcome. They are sold individually or sequenced into a single mandate.

06Markets

Five markets, each with its own entry conditions.

Entry conditions — United States

Buying centres are decentralised and procurement is fast.

Named-account origination against marketing, digital and transformation budgets. English delivery.

Read the market view→
07Leadership

Sebastian Shimomichi.

Sebastian Shimomichi is a revenue-driven sales and marketing leader with a data-intensive background. His career has moved from surfacing actionable insight tied to growth and efficiency for enterprise and mid-market businesses, to owning that growth directly. At SSA he works with agency founders and leadership to set the roadmap across sales, business development, and client services, and to build the function that runs it. He takes on a small number of engagements at a time, by design.

Portrait of Sebastian Shimomichi, founder of SSA FZE LLC
08Selected work

Recent engagements and prior exposure.

Recent engagements
Systango — recent SSA client engagement
Creative Dock — recent SSA client engagement
Chesamel — recent SSA client engagement
Prior exposure through agency, consultancy and in-house roles
Google — brand previously worked with by SSA's founder
Microsoft — brand previously worked with by SSA's founder
Rakuten — brand previously worked with by SSA's founder
Shiseido — brand previously worked with by SSA's founder
L'Oréal — brand previously worked with by SSA's founder
Pfizer — brand previously worked with by SSA's founder
GSK — brand previously worked with by SSA's founder
Oracle — brand previously worked with by SSA's founder
OpenAI — brand previously worked with by SSA's founder
Standard Chartered — brand previously worked with by SSA's founder
Mizuho — brand previously worked with by SSA's founder
Bank of Sharjah — brand previously worked with by SSA's founder
Haleon — brand previously worked with by SSA's founder
Mashreq — brand previously worked with by SSA's founder
How the work is governed
10working days to a written read

Fixed scope, written output

Every engagement runs against a defined scope and ends in a document, system or asset your team keeps — not a retainer with an open horizon.

Note. The diagnostic fee credits against the build that follows.

5markets covered directly

Cross-border by default

US, UK & Ireland, UAE & KSA, Singapore & Hong Kong, and Japan — with native Japanese delivery rather than translated material.

Note. Buying-committee mapping is adapted per market.

1principal on every mandate

No pass-down staffing

The person who sets the roadmap is the person who builds the function. A small number of engagements are taken at a time, by design.

Note. Prior exposure across agency, consultancy and in-house roles.

09Questions

What founders usually ask.

You are one person. What happens at capacity?
SSA takes a small number of engagements at a time, by design, so each one gets real attention. When the calendar is full, new inquiries are either declined or placed on a short waitlist with an honest start date. You will not be handed off to a junior associate or a subcontractor you did not vet.
How is this different from a fractional CRO or an agency coach?
A coach runs a call series and leaves you with notes. A fractional CRO occupies a seat on your org chart and manages your team. SSA does neither. SSA builds the selling function itself — the outreach, the CRM, the account scoring, the sales assets, the Sprint offer — and hands the working system back to your team so growth is no longer trapped in the founder's calendar.
Which markets and languages do you cover?
Five markets: the United States, the UK and Ireland, the UAE and KSA, Singapore and Hong Kong, and Japan. Delivery is available in English and Japanese. Account research and outreach are written for the norms of the specific market, not translated from a US template.
What does a first engagement look like?
Most relationships start with one of two fixed-scope entry points: a diagnostic (market entry, outbound conversion, or sector credibility) or a ten-day Sprint that ships a packaged offer you can sell. Both are quoted up front with a fixed fee. The Sprint fee is creditable toward a subsequent retainer, so the first invoice is never wasted spend.
What kinds of agencies is SSA the right fit for?
Founder-led agencies, typically between $1M and $15M in revenue, that have outgrown relationship-led selling and need a repeatable function. Strongest fit is creative, brand, design, content, and adjacent professional services. SSA is not the right fit for pre-revenue agencies, performance-media shops looking for a media buyer, or teams that want a coach rather than a builder.
How are engagements priced?
Three shapes. Fixed-fee diagnostics for a single, scoped question. The ten-day Sprint at tiered fixed pricing. A monthly retainer for ongoing pipeline origination, account intelligence, and brand-compliant content. Hourly billing is not used. Every engagement is quoted in writing before it starts.
Do you guarantee a number of leads or meetings?
No, and you should be skeptical of any advisor who does. SSA guarantees the system — outreach written to your brand, a CRM your team can actually run, account dossiers grounded in real research, and offers that hold up in a sales conversation. Meeting volume depends on your market, your ICP, and the strength of your existing reputation. Those variables are diagnosed before any outreach goes out.
Who owns the systems and assets you build?
You do. The CRM, the outreach kits, the brand voice guide, the Sprint package, the account dossiers, and the sales assets are delivered to you and remain yours after the engagement ends. SSA does not lock work behind a proprietary platform, and there is no recurring license fee for what was built.
How do you use AI in the work?
AI is used the way a serious operator uses it: to accelerate research, to draft from a tested prompt, and to keep brand voice consistent at volume. It is not used to mass-generate outreach that wastes a prospect's time. Every outbound message that goes out under your name is reviewed against a brand voice guide built from your own materials.
How do you handle confidentiality and competitive overlap?
Every engagement runs under a mutual NDA. SSA does not take on two agencies competing for the same accounts in the same market at the same time. If a potential conflict surfaces, you will hear about it before any work begins.
How long does an engagement typically run?
Diagnostics are one to three weeks. The ten-day Sprint is, by definition, ten working days. Retainers are usually a three-month initial term, renewable monthly thereafter, with a written 30-day exit. The goal is a working system you can run without SSA, not an indefinite dependency.
How do we get started?
Send a note through the contact page describing what you sell, which market matters most, and what is currently broken about the way new business comes in. You will get an honest read within two business days on whether SSA is the right fit and what the right first step would be.
10Contact

Start with the diagnostic or a direct conversation.

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Direct
Sebastian Shimomichi
sebastian@shimomichi.com+1-650-417-3985

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