Creating Agency Success
Most agencies lose deals not because their work isn't good — but because of what happens in the room before the work ever starts.
The pitch. The discovery call. The follow-up where someone overcommits. The moment a junior account manager, terrified of silence, fills it with an answer they're only 80% sure about.
Sales in agency life is part art, part discipline, and a lot of knowing when to speak and when to ask. The problem is that most of the craft gets passed down informally, or not at all. Junior team members watch senior ones and absorb habits, good and bad. Leadership assumes people know how to qualify a prospect, push back on a bad deal structure, or say "I don't know" without losing the room.
They often don't.
What follows isn't a list of scripts or a funnel framework. It's a more honest look at the conversations that make or break client relationships — and the mindset shifts that separate agencies who constantly chase the next deal from ones who build something worth staying for.
1. It’s OK to say “I don’t know”
You don’t need to have all the answers. Nobody wants somebody who blurts out every answer without thinking or with 80% confidence. This message needs to be delivered from leadership down to the newest junior account manager. When you provide 80% confident answers, you have to shove your foot in your mouth 20% of the future time.
That erodes trust. You need a trust bank built in order to tap into it later, whether for future screw ups or future upsells.
“I don’t know” isn’t the end of it. Those words might be followed by these statements:
“...and our team is full of people who do know - let me check with them and get you an answer by EOW”
“...but let me pull some trends for existing clients so I can get you that answer.”
“....and I”m not sure if we will be able to know. Is this a question you need answered to move forward?
(If yes) “How have you seen others be successful at answering it in the past?”
2. It’s OK to say what you DON’T do
Whether it’s deal specific or overall about your agency, business development to delivery employees need to be able to clearly state what you DO NOT DO. Don’t shy away from it. This gives extreme clarity to the buyer. It actually builds your brand, moving away from a jack-of-all-trades view and one that is more specialized.
Having a slide about this in your pitch deck or in a presentation sounds odd, but gives you something to point back to.
We don’t offer development work, although we have trusted partners we can recommend.
We aren’t able to offer less than a 6 month contract. We’ve found clients actually gain more when they invest in a longer term agreement AND are able to keep their same team instead of starting with one and picking up after a gap with another team.
We aren’t able to guarantee results, although we have two references in your space who can speak to our work. We also have a X day out of our contracts in case something comes up.
We aren’t able to consult on PR initiatives - there are some really great PR teams we’ve worked with over the years who are experts in getting the most from your brand outside of performance marketing. Are you opposed to me making an introduction?
What you don’t do sets great expectations, provides referral business to your partners and revenue for you, as well as provides the venue to briefly add why you don’t do XYZ. All of the above doesn’t sound like a “No, we don’t do that.” and instead sounds like a partner who wants to help get the client the most value.
3. The Sales Process Is a Two Way Street. Ask Questions and Qualify.
Leadership needs to empower everyone to ask hard yet fair questions. While the prospect could be right, there are plenty who are flat out crazy and avoiding them through solid questioning is essential. There could be 100 examples, I’m going to limit this to a few about why questions are necessary to avoid making up your own story about the client.
“Are you open to a pay for performance model?”
A novice might feel challenged. Is this lead asking you to put your money where your mouth is? Pay for performance means a lot of risk. Now pause. The right response to this is understanding WHY. Everyone at your organization needs to know they can push back to understand why an opportunity or client is asking for something.
“Is that a necessity on your list of agency requirements?”
By asking that, you now get to hear their needs. They might say “Another agency proposed that and we were seeing if we could compare apples to apples, but we’re open to the payment model you suggested”. That’s a response I’d love to hear.
“We were burned previously and we’re not going to let another agency take advantage of us. You win when we win” - that’s a massive flag that they need agency therapy and the client comes in with a more jaded view.
Do you think this can be completed within the H1?
A novice sales person might hear that and think that they need results and quick.
More experience would beg the question “What happens after H1?”
Sure, the answer might be that they need to show performance. Just as often, the response might be one of the following:
“The site will go into a freeze for 3 months after that”
“We’re going to start our website relaunch project at that point”
“Our offerings are going to be trimmed after H1”
All of these three responses have implications that could make any work done in H1 a complete waste. Empower your team to ask questions AND share successes from the bottom first and failures from the top second.
Are you able to keep this under $100,000 this year?
Fantastic. Did we just enter a price negotiation? Let’s break this one down on why we need to ask questions before we begin to tell ourselves that story.
A novice sales or delivery person might start to build the defense. We need to be able to invest in work to have an impact. We’re not usually the most expensive, but we’re also never the cheapest. They might start to share differentiators.
A more tenured question would be “Is there something about $100k that’s important or limiting for you?”
Again, it could be the person trying to keep their budget way down. I once had an SOW out for signature and instead of signing, the prospect asked “Can we knock 30% off the price?”. I was furious. I pulled a line saying “I’m not sure how to do that” and we sat there in silence until he said “OK, it doesn’t hurt to ask” and no, it doesn’t.
After asking this, I’ve heard things like:
If we can keep it under $100k, we don’t have to send it out for RFP
If we can keep it under $100k, we don’t need to involve procurement or have the CEO sign off.
This now turns into a flexibility exercise of how you can split billing up, play with net payments, or frontload/backload BUT get a commitment first.
“If I’m able to figure this flexibility solution out, is there any reason you wouldn’t move ahead with us?” When you give, require a commitment.
Stay tuned for part 2 on creating agency success and avoiding friction next month!
