Agency diligence
You're about to sign an agency. Let someone who owns three of them read the contract first.
How it runs
The scope teardown
I read the scope of work line by line. Hours, titles, blended rates, pass-throughs, what's included and what quietly isn't. I've written these documents. I know what the language is protecting.
The staffing check
Who is actually on your account versus who was in the pitch. Seniority, utilization, how many other clients they carry. This is where most of the money goes missing.
The margin math
What the agency is making on you, and whether that number is fair, thin or absurd. Thin is as dangerous as absurd — a starved account gets junior staff.
The output review
Six months of work product against six months of invoices. Strategy, creative, media, reporting. Volume is easy to fake. Judgment isn't.
The verdict
Keep them, renegotiate them, or replace them. Written, specific, with the numbers behind it and the exact terms I'd put in front of them.
What you get
- A written findings document you own outright
- A line-by-line read on the current scope and what it should cost
- Renegotiation terms, drafted and ready to send
- A shortlist of replacement partners if that's the call
- One working session to walk your team through it
Two ways people use it
Before you sign. Three agencies in a bake-off and no way to tell which one is telling the truth. I sit in the finals, read the scopes, and tell you which one can actually staff the work.
After you've signed. You've been with them two years, the invoices keep growing, and nobody in your building can explain what changed. I find out.
Terms
Fixed fee. Three to four weeks. Deliberately priced so it isn't a board decision — and it almost always pays for itself in the first renegotiation.
Thirty minutes. No deck.
Tell me what you're trying to get done — a deal, an exit, an agency problem, an empty seat. I'll tell you what I'd do and whether I'm the right person to do it.