I am always grateful to receive invites to pitch on new business.
Proper turns 15 this year, so I’ve known downturns and have learned not to expect new opportunities. We are entitled to exactly nothing.
That said, of late, I have been inundated with companies doing bad work around agency procurement.
Here’s why this matters: bad procurement leads to bad agency / client relationships and wasted dough.
Much of what I’ve seen is both oft-stated and entirely avoidable. I’m not quite sure why these poor practices keep occurring, but they do.
Keep the following in mind when you are hiring any agency (or really any form of expert service):
1) Be clear on order taker vs counsellor. If you want an entity to just execute, say so and screen for it. But note that real experts do not want to be order taking monkeys. More than that though, they do not want to participate in a process where they are initially told their counsel will be valued only to learn later that they are actually going to be order takers.
2) Avoid cattle calls. I am a huge fan of Blair Enns, so we try hard not to pitch, especially in mass cattle calls with multiple agencies.
We were invited to write a proposal for a company last week. When asked how many firms had received the brief, the Founder told me “less than 10 agencies received this brief.”
Wrong answer.
You don’t need more than 2-3 agencies to submit on a mandate. Doing so either suggests you want free ideas, or have no clue about what you seek in a partner. Both of these things scare off competent experts.
3) Humility around KPIs. At our firm, we have a saying that the client is often wrong. Thank God for this because it is why we exist and get the pleasure of creating value for our clients.
Nowhere are clients more often wrong than on KPI setting at the procurement phase. I have seen three briefs in two weeks using arbitrary metrics around “article count” as a critical KPI. Because, of course, an article in the NYT is the same as a piece on the blog of Jimmy the Incel who lives in Mommy’s basement.
Instead of throwing out random KPIs, give agencies your business and brand-level goals in the brief and then ask for their input on KPIs. You will get thinking by which to judge their brains.
4) Juniors. I know you need to train the children at your biz and realize that they can be armed with a process for filtering agencies.
However, if you send the 12-year old to the call with me – and equip them only with “I will have to ask my boss” sorts of answers to my basic questions – you are already close to being disqualified.
Sending senior and mid-level people to early calls with prospective agencies tells those experts that you give a fuck. If you can’t do this, then you either need to write a good brief or give the kids answers to questions around the basics.
5) Budget. I have encountered 3 briefs in the last month with no budget. How is this still happening in 2026? If you don’t know of a budget, ask someone before you go out to agencies with requests for proposals.
I, and many of my fellow agency owners, are open to taking calls around how to think about budgets. Make use of that help if you aren’t sure about investment levels, because not having a budget makes you look amateur and deeply un-serious. It is probably the worst of procurement sins.
Remember, you are not buying cement
Buying expertise is complex and should be done with great care. You don’t buy it the way you do a pile of cinderblocks. Getting the basic parts of buying service correct allows you to select the partner you need and get closer to your goals.
Procurement quality predicts relationship quality and ultimate outcomes.