The Questions Every CEO Should Ask Before Hiring an Agency
Most CEOs ask agencies the questions agencies are rehearsed to answer beautifully. Here are the ones that actually separate the firm that will deliver from the one that will disappoint.
We sit on the receiving end of agency reviews all the time. So we know which questions agencies are ready to answer well. We also know which ones make a room go quiet. Most CEOs ask the easy ones, about process, portfolio, and team size. They learn very little, because every good agency has a polished answer ready. The questions that show who you are dealing with are the ones agencies hope you skip.
We are going to hand you those questions. We have to answer them honestly ourselves.
The uncomfortable truth
The standard questions are nearly useless, because they were built to be easy to pass. "Walk us through your process." "Show us relevant work." "Who is on the team." Every agency that has lasted a year has answers ready for all of them. They show that the agency can present. They do not show whether it can deliver, or whether it will be honest with you when the work gets hard. The revealing questions are the ones with no safe script.
The questions that actually matter
Ask these, and watch how the agency responds. The pause tells you as much as the words:
- "Tell me about an engagement that failed, and what your part in it was." An agency that cannot name a failure is either lying or has never looked back. Both should rule them out.
- "What kind of work or client do you turn down?" If the answer is "none," they have no standards. They just have a sales target.
- "Who specifically will do my work, and can I meet them?" If you only ever meet the senior closer and the account manager, ask where the real makers are.
- "How do you define success for this work, in numbers?" Vague answers now mean no one is on the hook later.
- "When have you told a client they were wrong, and what happened?" This shows whether you are buying candor or flattery.
- "What would make you walk away from this project?" An agency with a real answer has standards. One that cannot picture walking away has only a quota.
Why this matters for you
These questions work because no slide can ace them. They probe what really predicts a good project: honesty, standards, accountability, and the nerve to disagree with you. None of that shows up in a capabilities deck. How at ease the agency is here is itself the answer. A firm that meets a hard question with a thoughtful, slightly awkward, honest reply is showing you something useful. That is how it will act when your project hits a hard moment, which it will.
How we actually operate
We welcome every one of these questions. We answer them straight, even when the honest answer is not flattering. We will tell you about an engagement that failed and own our half of it. We will tell you what we turn down and why. We will put the people doing your work in the room. We will define success in numbers we are willing to be held to. We will tell you about the times we told a client they were wrong, including the ones that cost us the relationship. We do this for a simple reason. We would rather lose a prospect who wanted comfortable answers than win one who later finds out we only had comfortable answers. The questions that scare a bad agency are the ones a good agency has been waiting to be asked.
The honest take
The best questions to ask an agency are the ones it cannot answer from a script. Ask about its failures, its standards, its candor, and its will to disagree with you. Stop asking what agencies are ready to ace. Start asking what makes them think. How a firm handles a hard question in the pitch is the best preview of how it will handle a hard moment in the work. Ask the uncomfortable questions. The agency worth hiring will be glad you finally did.
Sources
- TTGC: our own agency philosophy and client engagement principles.
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