Congratulations! You just met with a design agency that you really respect and want to collaborate with. You are ready to engage with them and sign on the dotted line. But, instead of rushing into the proposal stage, I recommend pressing pause and asking yourself these questions:

1) Are you ready for marriage?

Most of my friends that run agencies seek out client partners that think long term, even if the relationship begins with a one-off project. Think of project work as “dating” and retainer work as “marriage.”

The onboarding of a new client requires heavy lifting for all parties. In the beginning of a client relationship, whether it’s a project or a retainer, we are researching your brand and competitors deeply, getting into your marketing heads to find ways to move the needle for you. At the same time, your team is investing time bringing a new partner up to speed. Unless there is a big “fit” issue and a good reason to stop “dating,” heading toward the altar will ultimately achieve incredibly creative, cost and time efficiencies for your work.

2) Are you ready for consistent workouts?

Entering into a business relationship with an agency is a two-way street, and requires client and agency involvement in all aspects of projects.

Think of working with an agency like purchasing a gym membership; your success at the gym is a direct result of how much effort you dedicate. Some clients view hiring an agency as a way to hand over a task and completely check out of the project, which in our experience, is the fastest route to uninspired work, a drained client team and a project schedule that goes off the rails resulting in unhappy clients. Most often, this becomes a challenge with understaffed client teams, whose team members are already overloaded and wearing so many “hats.”

But just like with that gym membership, you want to make every dollar work hard. To do that, appoint a skilled and trusted brand advocate as key contact who can make the time to provide us with well thought out briefs, share timely feedback, give us access to the key players on the team, leading to great results and needle-moving work.

3) Have you really, really read the proposal?

When our agency crafts a proposal and Scope of Work for client approval, we leverage everything the client has told us about their needs and then spend a lot of time considering the project, the workload, the disciplines needed down to the rounds of revisions and how many proofs we will pull. Most agencies operate the same exact way. There is consideration in this process.

I can recall too many times when client teams are in a rush to get started on the work, they have signed the SOW only to express to us once the work has begun that: They don’t understand it! It doesn’t include everything they need! The schedule doesn’t meet their needs! Maybe they weren’t truly ready for this stage of the project! Of course this is an incredibly frustrating situation for both the client and the agency. This mess can be avoided. At my agency we require that the client team review the SOW WITH US, either over the phone or in person, in every detail. We specifically ask “Do you understand this document? Does it meet your project needs?” before we ask them to sign it. It slows down the process at the start, but I guarantee it will make the work more efficient.

4)  Are you ready to be challenged?

One of the great benefits of working with an outside agency is that the agency team has not been weighed down by the past; we come to each client with a fresh perspective. With that advantage, an agency like ours will also challenge you to rethink your business and your long-ingrained point-of-view. If you want to make every dollar you spend with an agency work hard, then clients should be prepared to hear things that make them uncomfortable. With that said, we expect our clients to challenge us as well.

Back to point #2…both teams need to be putting brainpower and energy into the work and come to the table with an open mind.

This will ensure that both teams approach every business challenge differently than before.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR:

Jodi Katz is the founder & creative director of Base Beauty (contact her here), a full-service creative agency dedicated to the beauty industry. She was the first U.S. creative director of L’Occitane en Provence, and has worked with leading brands such as Clinique, Conair and L’Oreal Paris—among many others, large and small. In 2017, she launched the popular podcast series, Where Brains Meet Beauty on iTunes and GooglePlay. She is the 2017 recipient of the Enterprising Women of the Year Award.