Vet an agency with ten questions

A note on the form. The ten below are things to look for in an agency. They are written here as questions because that is how you use them — one question per candidate, answered yes or no, across a shortlist.

1. The ten questions

#	Ask	What a yes looks like
1	Does somebody I know personally have good results with them?	A named person in your own network who used them and got what they wanted
2	Do prominent companies have good results with them?	Clients you recognize, even if you do not know them personally
3	Do they have a waiting list?	Demand running ahead of what they can deliver
4	Do they run a clear sales process that sets realistic expectations?	You say you could expect this; they correct it and commit to what they are confident about
5	Do they avoid short-term hacks?	The conversation stays on long-term strategy, with clear timelines for setup, scaling and results
6	Do they say exactly what they need from me, when, and what for?	A specific list, with dates and reasons
7	Do they propose a regular meeting schedule and several ways to update me?	They suggest the cadence, rather than waiting to be asked
8	Do they report in simple terms, with a clear way to track cost against result?	The invoice, what was achieved this month, and the counts behind it
9	Do they make a good offer?	Their pitch survives being run through the value elements
10	Are they expensive?	Yes — and see §3

2. What sits behind the harder ones

Question 1 — word of mouth, and how to raise it. Ask your own network directly: does anybody know who is really good at this particular kind of advertising? Name the platform. A few replies give you a shortlist, and the shortlist is the point.

Question 3 — the waiting list, and the inference from it. When demand for a service exceeds the supply of it, the people supplying it are probably good. The best agencies grow on word of mouth, the way the best of most things do, and for a high-touch service business the constraint is usually operational scale rather than demand. The uncomfortable corollary is stated and hedged: an agency you see running a lot of advertising for itself is usually not very good — offered as one person's experience, not as a finding, and with no insult intended. Take it for what it is worth.

Question 2 — recognition as a weaker form of the first check. You may not know an agency's clients personally, and you do not need to. The test is recognition: if the names on their list are ones you know of, that is a good sign on its own. It is the same evidence as question 1 with the personal warranty removed.

Question 6 — what they need from you. Ask them to state it exactly: what they need, when they need it, and how they intend to use it. This is the same clarity question as four and seven pointed at your obligations rather than theirs, and it matters more than it looks, because an agency running part of your advertising is going to be wired into your business rather than parked beside it.

Question 8 — reporting you can act on. What you want is the cost set against the result, in plain terms, with a way of tracking both. Concretely: the invoice, what was achieved this month, and the counts underneath — how many times the work was seen, how many likes it drew, how much engagement. Clear metrics, and nothing more elaborate than that.

Question 4 — what a clear sales process contains. Six things, and you are watching for them being done to you, because running them on its own buyers is a sign of a well-run business:

1. A clear onboarding process.
2. Clear qualifications for the kind of customer they sell to.
3. A dream outcome that sounds reasonable.
4. Results quickly.
5. Good communication.
6. A clear statement of what they want you to buy next.

The reason given for this one: agencies are large operational machines, so they need good operators. Bad operators at the start of an engagement are bad operators at the end of it.

Question 5 — the hack test in practice. The failure mode has a shape. An agency that is fascinated by one metric will optimize for that metric and not for you. Somebody promising a stream of viral posts is optimizing for views; if you are optimizing for a brand, those are not the same job. The instruction is not "avoid that agency" — it is make sure what they are set up to produce is what you actually want. If what you want really is volume of attention with no brand behind it, then that agency might be a good fit for you.

Question 7 — why the cadence has to come from them. If you get no communication, you cannot know whether anything is happening. They might be working; you have no way to tell. An agency that answers "most of our customers do not want to talk to us" has the relationship inverted: somebody running a component of your marketing is somebody you would meet with if they sat inside your business, and the fact that they do not changes nothing.

Question 9 — run their pitch through the value elements. The same ones you would run on any offer, and the diagnostic is SOP 3:

Element	The question to put to them
Dream outcome	What are they promising?
Perceived likelihood of achievement	How many people like me have they got that result for?
Time delay	How long will it take?
Effort and sacrifice	What do they require of me while we work together? What will I have to give up? Can I keep that up long enough to see the result?

Some of them might ask for things you cannot supply. If they need something you cannot supply, do not sign — both sides will be unhappy.

3. The tenth question, which reads in reverse

All good agencies are expensive — that is one person's experience. Not all expensive agencies are good.

Price is therefore a filter in one direction only. Cheapness rules an agency out; expense rules nothing in. Use it as a necessary condition and never as a sufficient one, and let the other nine questions do the discriminating. Agencies that clear the whole list are often worth considering.

4. The shopping behavior

Talk to as many as it takes, in order to become a better customer. Being an informed buyer helps both sides. Before you buy, talk to five or ten and learn how they work. At first you will mostly be learning new things. Over time the difference between the better ones and the worse ones becomes obvious, and at that point you can make an informed decision.

Ask the ones you like but cannot use for a name. Sometimes you find an agency you rate that simply does not do the thing you want. The question to ask them is whether they know anybody as good as they are at that other thing. A good agency in one specialty will send you to good agencies in others, and those are some of the best referrals you will get.

The action step, even when one has already said yes. Even if an agency has agreed to your terms, talk to a few more before you decide. Compare them on the ten questions and pick the one that fits best. Realize that none of them will be perfect — the standard is better than doing nothing, and often on a much faster timeline than doing nothing would have taken.

5. What this page does not decide for you

These are gaps in the procedure, not omissions from this page.

• How the ten questions are weighted. They are a list, not a score. Nothing says how many a candidate must clear, or whether any one of them is disqualifying on its own.
• What to do when candidates tie, or when the best on the list is the one you cannot afford.
• How long a waiting list has to be to count as a waiting list.
• How expensive is expensive. The tenth question has no number attached, in either direction.
• How many clients count as "prominent".
• What to do when nobody in your network has used anybody. Question 1 assumes a network that has bought this service before.
• How to verify a claimed result. The opening questions rest on other people's reports and no method of checking them is given.

6. The checklist

Question	The answer
Who runs this	You, before signing anything
How many checks	Ten
Check 1	Somebody you know got good results
Check 2	Companies you recognize got good results
Check 3	They have a waiting list
Check 4	A clear sales process that sets realistic expectations
Check 5	No short-term hacks; long-term strategy and clear timelines
Check 6	They name what they need from you, when, and why
Check 7	They propose the meeting cadence themselves
Check 8	Simple reporting, cost against result
Check 9	Their own offer survives the value elements
Check 10	They are expensive
How check 10 reads	Good means expensive; expensive does not mean good
The six things inside check 4	Onboarding, qualifications, a reasonable dream outcome, quick results, communication, what to buy next
What a self-advertising agency suggests	Usually not very good — one person's experience
How many agencies to talk to	Five or ten
Why talk to that many	To become an informed buyer before you spend
What to ask an agency you like but cannot use	Who is as good as you at the thing I need?
What to do when one says yes	Talk to a few more first
How many checks a candidate must pass	Not established on this page
The price band to expect	This page gives no figure for what an agency should cost

7. What this page does not cover

What to ask an agency for once you have picked one — the teaching arrangement, the six-month term and the exit — is SOP 45. Deciding to hire the skill permanently instead of renting it is SOP 44, and training your own people in it afterwards is SOP 43. Running the value elements as a diagnostic on an offer is SOP 3.

Contract terms, fees and notice periods are not covered on this page.