Get the best work from your agency

We often talk about what agencies should bring to the table when working with a client. But we rarely talk about what clients should bring to the table. Here's a short list. I'm guessing there are more. But when these are present, clients typically get the best work from their agencies.

Enthusiasm
Corporate life can be challenging. You deal with politics and budget pressure and product development challenges and channel marketing problems and the list never ends. It's sometimes hard to be enthusiastic when faced with so many different issues. But enthusiasm is contagious. If you're excited about a new product launch or a re-branding effort, odds are good your agency team will be, too. Agency people know the solutions they bring will not solve all (or even most) of the issues you face every day, but they do believe it will create a platform on which you can build — creating a sense of clarity and direction that will create a path of growth.

Enthusiasm from a client leads agency people to push harder for bigger, better ideas.

Trust
This is a tough one. Because trust is earned, not given. It's also a two-way street. The agency must earn your trust, but you must also earn the trust of the agency. Agency people put their heart and soul into the work they do for clients. All they want in return is for the client to work with them on the development of the campaign and to champion it within the halls of the company when the agency people are not there to champion it themselves. If a campaign doesn't fly, then what the agency people want to know is that their client advocate did the best they could to sell the campaign to their management. It the client contact stood up for the agency, then the agency team will go back and work even harder to get it right.

Engagement
Agencies want their clients to be engaged in the process. They want to know the client is just as interested in the success of the campaign as the agency is. That may seem unlikely to some, but occasionally clients act as if the advertising is not expected to achieve results, and therefore do not appear to fully engage in the process of creating and executing the campaign. Agency people can sense this lack of engagement and will begin to question how hard they should push, which in effect, reduces the chances of creating advertising that will move the sales needle.

Candor
Be forthright. If there is something the agency should know, then let them know as soon as possible. If the CEO is having second thoughts about a campaign, then there needs to be further discussion or a significant change in direction. Many good agencies unintentionally get thrown under the bus because of lack of candid communication. By the time the agency learns of the C-level questions, it's too late. The damage has been done.

Metrics
Set an objective for the campaign. A good objective should be achievable, measurable and within a specific time frame. An objective of "increasing sales" is not an objective, it's an goal. An objective is quantifiable. Your agency should ask you how you intend to measure success. You want to have an answer for that one.

There are a lot of companies clamoring about ROI. They want measurable results. The irony of that is many of these same companies are not interested in investing in the back-end systems so that campaign effectiveness can be measured. It's hard to manage what you don't measure.

Agencies and clients don't enter relationships anticipating failure. However, just like any other relationship, successful, long-lasting client/agency relationships require an effort from both parties. When that happens, great work and results follow.