You avoid a relationship review by having a relationship review. Let me be more specific: You avoid the big, formal competitive business relationship review (which the agency world so colourfully, albeit inaccurately, calls the gang bang) by having regular little reviews along the way.
These annual or biannual reviews should be formal and analog (face-to-face) meetings for that purpose alone. Both parties need to be prepared to discuss positives and negatives from their point of view. There needs to be quantifiable next steps agreed to in the meeting, with timelines, even if they are as far out as the time of the next review.
If there is a need for the big competitive agency review, there is a list of things the client company should do to optimise their results, but that list is better handled in a separate post.
In assessing the quality of the relationship, clients need to remember their agencies need at least two of three critical things:
- The opportunity to do good work–strategically, creatively, or both.
- A healthy personal relationship with key senior people.
- The ability to make a profit.
Every good relationship opportunity deserves some investment spending, but in the medium & long term, agencies (and clients) always need #3.
Agencies need to know that their clients want them to be as involved in their business as they can be. It shows personal commitment and it allows their partners to better understand what strategies will work for the business. It may even allow their partners to come up with new and better strategies and creative ideas through the insight that comes with closeness to customers and daily business operations.
Agencies need to understand that just like them, their clients need at least two of the three critical business relationship things above, and that over the medium & long term, clients need to believe that their investment in their partners produces a bottom line profit.
Personally, I struggle with this on-going review thinking in practice. It falls into the “easier to preach than practice” category for me. But I know it is the right way to run a business, and for that matter, your life.
When I started in this business, I made a conscious decision to keep my personal and business lives separate. I naively thought that a business relationship should be about the results, and that personal friendship part was a it’s-harder-to-fire-your-friends philosophy. [1] But even modest personal friendship in a business relationship leads to more communication of what’s good for both parties, and what isn’t. And that’s always a good thing. I also discovered I never had a bad business relationship with someone who was already a friend.
I’m learning, slowly.
- Articulated to me exactly this way more than once by senior agency people over the years.
