How to Get the Most Out of Your Agency

Engaging an agency can offer significant strategic and creative input to any organization. For this arrangement to work well it is crucial that the engagement is clear, sincere, and built on trust. Based on twenty-five years of experience in the industry, I’ve found the following essential drivers lead to a successful partnership:

Align the agency to corporate goals

As the customer, you must be clear on your corporate goals. It is important to have either a VP or C-suite alignment with the use of an agency, to ensure that the mandate is aligned with the corporate strategy. With that association in place, we can then agree on metrics that align with the goals. Metrics give an agency the ability to monitor and report on progress. For example, a rationalization project can track FTE reduction, while a customer engagement initiative will follow increased sales. Without agreement from the top, misalignment and miscommunication will waste time and money on both sides.

Rules of engagement

There is potential to fall foul of organizational politics and power struggles without clear rules of engagement and access to the right channels. A project can quickly derail through a lack of awareness, and the toes of individuals, teams, or even trade groups can unknowingly be stepped on. A lack of clarity and ignorance of the context leads to challenging working environments. It is compounded by confusion, unnecessary expenses, delays, and disruption that lead to raised costs and reduced team momentum.

Why not avoid them? Agree on rules upfront and be open about the landscape. Tell us about politics or even better, don’t let them impact what we are delivering. If there are initiatives that we can't talk about, let us know. We can be discrete, but only if kept informed. A pre-mortem can be an effective tool for thinking about the potential problems in advance of work starting.

Ensure that the appropriate groups and critical individuals have been engaged and signed off on your engagement with us. Bringing in an agency can often kick-off disagreements over the direction to take and highlight divisions within the customer’s organization. Being caught up in internal arguments not only wastes time but saps creativity and energy.Where possible, be consistent with what you want an agency to deliver and the way you communicate. The more open and transparent you are, the more successful we can be.

Elements for the perfect partnership

Over the years, and having seen both successful and challenging engagements, it has become clear that the elements for a good partnership are simple.Honesty, sincerity, and trust are crucial to an effective partnership between agency and organization. So, too, is good communication. We need it between the customer and the agency and relevant parties within the organization. Good dialogue can address minor problems before they turn into major ones.

Early alignment and stakeholder meetings, often in advance of the kick-off meeting with the client, can call out red flags and deal with them without impacting key engagement meetings. Dialogue must be not only honest but also complete. We need to know your thinking with nothing held back. Talk to us, so we know about a situation and understand how we can help give you what you need.

Retainer your team

We are a business, and while we are passionate about what we do, agencies live and die by the billable hour. To maximize our team and provide you with the skills you need, we must continue as a viable entity. A retainer offers benefits all round. It provides you with the opportunity to negotiate a better rate and lock us in. After all, once you’ve built a trusted relationship with us (which you will because we are good at what we do and have the best resources), you don’t want us or our team to disappear. When you pick up the phone and need something we will have the team in place to deliver what you need. 

As an agency, we have to make financial decisions daily that impact your project and our staff's lives. If we don’t look after them with enough work, they will go elsewhere. We want to maintain the continuity that we offer you by keeping in place the skills that you will come to rely on. Signing up for a retainer builds and shows trust. In the long term saving you money by negotiating lower rates, keeping you in control, and us available and motivated. And if you need more assurance, tie us into a performance rated bonus. Delivering on time, or ahead, makes you happy and us too. 

Money is an efficient way of communicating intention in business. It provides us with stability, focus, and it maintains consistency in our team for you. At the same time, it drives all of us towards the same goals. We want to have success stories and bragging rights because that's how we grow our business.  A true partner has aligned incentives.

Innovation through partnership

While we can be managed like a vendor, it will be so much more successful to work with us as equal partners. Honesty, trust, and financial commitment will build a robust and sincere relationship between us. We really do care, and the more you tell us, the more we can help. And let us innovate. Don't waste time with ‘busy work.’ For example, changing direction at the last minute to get demos ready will interrupt the overall delivery. You don’t pay us to do demonstrations; you brought us in to deliver excellence and creativity. 

Put us in the position to innovate, and we will do the rest.

To find out more about what we can do for your business, check out our the rest of our blog.