When You Hear These Words, It’s Time to Fire Your Agency

Being client-centred is something many agencies say but few truly live up to. Listen carefully to what your agency may be telling you. If as a client you’ve heard any one of these – worse yet if you’ve heard several – you’re probably in need of a change.

1. “We need more time.” When an agency says this it means they were busy on other assignments and put your work on the back burner. Your relegation to second-tier status is a symptom of bigger issues. Your business isn’t a priority. Or the agency isn’t motivated to embrace your challenge. Either way, your account is being taken for granted. They may need more time. But you may need a new agency.

2. “We’re running hot on hours.” Why is it that an inefficient process, hourly overages and fee reconciliations have become problems owned by clients? When an agency fails to properly manage its time or its resources, the responsibility should lie with the agency. Wouldn’t it be refreshing to have a fee agreed to at the start of the relationship and revisited twelve months later when setting the course for the following year? And during that twelve months, have your agency devoted to the development of remarkable ideas that benefit your business rather than spent debating hours, fees or bills. If your agency is frequently running hot on hours, it’s time for you to run short on patience.

3. “Meet your new Account Director.” “You’ll love her as much as you did the last three.” Are you a client feeling the pain of frequent transition on your account? Or of being handed off to the B team? And then there’s the further question of who’s paying for the continuous learning curve of new agency team members? Bigger yet, the issue of opportunity cost as you devote your fee to training agency employees rather than to having effective work in the marketplace.

4. “Let me introduce you to the head of our PR Group.” Or Digital Lab. Or holding company sibling. Or whatever other way the agency has devised to extend their reach into your marketing wallet and grow their revenue instead of yours. Is it too much to ask for your agency to stay focused on what they’re good at and the very reason you hired them in the first place?

5. “You’re a bad client.” What makes an agency call a client “bad?” Is it because the client has asked their agency to be more collaborative? Or perhaps the client doesn’t view the agency’s work as being as brilliant as the agency does? Or the client expresses concerns that the agency’s phoning it in (and the agency is resentful because they know the client is right)? We don’t think that’s a bad client. We think it’s a client stuck with an underachieving agency.

Life is short. Your agency relationship doesn’t have to be a pain point in your day. Don’t live with an agency you don’t love. If you feel that way, odds are they don’t love you either.

This opinion piece was originally published in The Drum. 

Roman Paluta is director of business development, partner at Minneapolis-based Solve.