Celebrate the Wins. Fix the Losses.
Clients hire an agency for its judgment, then get a polished report nobody in the room can explain. You sold these people your expertise. Show up with it after the sale.
I’m tired of agencies using AI to build reports while the people presenting those reports have no idea what the fuck they’re talking about.
And I’m even more tired of clients paying for it.
A business owner hires an agency because they need expertise. They’re running a karate gym, a swim school, a franchise, or whatever business they’ve spent years building. They’re trusting someone else to understand the things they don’t have the time or experience to manage themselves.
That trust deserves more than a nice-looking website and a monthly report full of words nobody can explain.
Have you looked under the hood?
“We can build you a beautiful website.”
Amazing. Awesome. It looks great.
Have you looked under the hood at what you’re selling these people?
Who checked how it works? Who thought through the booking process? Who made sure someone could actually use it on their phone? Who understands how the content gets updated, how the integrations behave, and what happens when something breaks?
Because you can hand someone a really nice-looking thing and still have it run like a turd.
The client sees the polished homepage. They assume the work underneath it received the same attention. That’s a reasonable assumption when they’ve hired professionals.
They shouldn’t have to know which technical questions to ask to get a functioning product. They’re paying you to know those questions already.
Explain what you’re going to do
SEO is another example where this drives me absolutely insane.
The agency talks the talk. There are numbers, charts, rankings, and enough jargon to make the meeting sound productive.
Okay. We’re ranking tenth.
What are you going to do about it?
What have you learned about this business, its customers, and the competitors showing up ahead of it? What needs to change? What are you prioritizing? Why do you believe that’s the right next move?
How does your approach change when you’re working with a karate gym versus a swim school?
I want to hear the thinking.
And no, I don’t expect someone to guarantee a number-one ranking. I expect someone selling expertise to explain the work they believe will improve the result, the reasoning behind it, and how we’ll know whether it helped.
If the entire meeting consists of reading the numbers back to the client, what expertise are they actually receiving?
The report already has the numbers.
The sales meeting was great
This is the part that makes the whole experience feel so shitty.
The initial conversations were great. Everyone understood the goals. Leadership was involved. There were thoughtful answers and big promises about the partnership.
Then the contract gets signed. The money is in place. Maybe there’s an early win.
And suddenly, the people who sold the vision disappear.
Now the client is sitting in recurring meetings with an account executive who can present the deck but can’t explain the strategy.
Ask a question that goes beyond the slide and everything gets vague.
“We’re continuing to optimize.”
“We’re monitoring performance.”
“We’ll take that back to the team.”
Fine. Take it back to the team. But bring back an actual answer, and make sure somebody owns what happens next.
The client bought the expertise represented in those sales conversations. They should be able to access it after the invoice gets paid.
AI makes this easier to hide
AI can help organize information, summarize results, and produce a polished report quickly. There’s value in that.
But it also makes it easier to produce something that sounds informed without having done the thinking.
Someone still needs to understand the business. Someone needs to question the conclusions. Someone needs to notice when the explanation doesn’t match what’s actually happening.
And the person leading the client meeting needs enough understanding to have a conversation about it.
An account executive doesn’t need to personally build every website or execute every SEO task. They do need to understand what their team is doing, why they’re doing it, and when to bring the right expert into the room.
Agency leadership is responsible for making sure they can.
Selling a level of expertise and then staffing the account with people who haven’t been equipped to deliver it is a failure the client ends up funding.
Celebrate the wins. Fix the losses.
Absolutely celebrate the wins.
A successful launch deserves recognition. More qualified leads deserve recognition. A campaign that performs well deserves recognition.
Then give the losses the same attention.
If inquiries are down, address it. If the website is frustrating customers, fix it. If the strategy isn’t working, explain what you’ve learned and what you’re changing.
Clients can handle an honest conversation about something that didn’t work. What wears them down is paying month after month while every meeting finds a new way to avoid dealing with it.
I have a lot more respect for someone who says, “This missed the mark. Here’s what we think happened, and here’s what we’re doing next.”
That gives us something to work with.
A polished explanation that goes nowhere gives us another meeting.
You sold these people your judgment. Your experience. Your ability to help their business.
Show up with it after the sale.