Businesses are often sold by a senior, experienced agency leader, only to be handed off to a junior-level employee for the actual work. During the sales process, you must explicitly ask who you will be working with daily, confirm their experience, and even request to speak with them directly.
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To ensure you receive senior-level strategy and relationships, avoid large PR agencies where your company would be one of their smallest accounts. Instead, opt for boutique firms. During the pitch, ask specifically which senior people in the room will be on your day-to-day team to avoid being passed to a junior team post-sale.
It's common for a highly experienced agency leader to handle the sales process, only to pass the daily work to a junior-level employee after the contract is signed. To prevent this bait-and-switch, ask to meet the specific team members who will manage your account day-to-day before you commit.
The best agency relationships are partnerships, not just vendor transactions. Asking what they will teach you reframes the engagement towards collaboration and empowerment. A good partner should aim to educate you and your team, leaving your organization more knowledgeable than when they started.
To avoid a broken handoff, embed key business and integration experts into the core deal team from the start. These members view diligence through an integration lens, validating synergy assumptions and timelines in real-time. This prevents post-signing surprises and ensures the deal model is operationally achievable, creating a seamless transition from deal-making to execution.
To avoid sounding pushy when asking critical questions about a deal's viability, frame them as necessary steps to ensure the customer's success post-implementation. This shifts the intent from closing a deal to building a successful partnership, encouraging open answers.
Don't treat onboarding as a post-sale task. Instead, actively sell the onboarding experience during the sales cycle. Introduce the implementation team and detail the steps to manage expectations, build confidence, and frame onboarding as a core part of the value proposition, not an afterthought.
Instead of focusing on long-term commitments, ask a potential agency what happens if you want to end the contract early. A truly confident partner, who believes in the results they can deliver, won't try to trap you with hidden fees or restrictive clauses.
Small companies often overload their first salesperson with both new logo acquisition and existing account management. This is a trap. Prospecting will always lose out to servicing known customers. Plan for account continuity early to protect your growth engine, even before you can afford a second hire.
The success of your AI tool depends heavily on the vendor's human experts. Don't get stuck with a sales rep who doesn't understand the product. Demand access to their solution architects and onboarding specialists *before* you sign, ensuring you have a capable partner to guide your implementation.
