Six things to look for in a client when you run an agency.
Choosing an agency for your business to work with is tough. There is a helluva lot of choice out there. Do you believe the reviews? Should you reach out to your network for recommendations? Can you simply poach an agency from a competitor? There are thousands of posts out there about things to look for when you are choosing an app development agency.
It’s a tough choice. And some of the advice out there is solid stuff. Don’t ignore it. A good agency can make or break your project or campaign.
Doing things differently
When I got into the agency game I decided to flip the conversation on its head. I asked what we were looking in a client. What type of client did we want to work with. What clients would enhance our business and who we’d be proud to work for. We started selecting our clients. Choosing who we wanted to work with and what projects we believed in. We decided to #codeforgood and only develop apps that made the world a better place. And it made our business stronger. It made it easier to stay honest and true to our core values.
To help us maintain our focus we even made a list of six key things a client needed to represent before we’d choose to represent them.
1) They have a problem
I can’t stress this enough. We’re looking for clients who have a problem. Not problem clients. That’s a whole different story.
When I meet a client for the first time I want to understand whether they actually have a problem in their business. Not a perceived problem or an organisational problem. A real problem. I don’t want to sell our services to a client as a solution to a non-existent issue. Or create a ridiculously complicated process that isn’t going to actually benefit the client.
So often in the agency business the priority is to sell at all cost. But there is always a cost. Reputational, moral, personal.
At some point your eagerness to sell is going to come back and bite you in the ass. If you’ve been brought in as an agency to essentially replace an internal team, and then you can’t deliver what the original team could… you’re gonna end up with a pissed off client. And people talk.
Today, I insist on having full-day workshops with our clients before we both sign on the dotted line. Sure, it takes up a lot of my valuable time, but in the end frees my team up from toxic projects that’d usually suck up days (or weeks) of our time in firefighting and back tracking.
Sometimes the client just needs to invest in better people. Or replace the hamster in their server room. Or update their website and the sales packs they sent their business development teams out with. Maybe the leadership team are uncertain about the value being generated by one of their internal departments. They wanted more from their sales, or marketing or ops departments and saw bringing an agency in as the easy solution. The solution where they don’t have to get their hands dirty.
Why would you want to risk your agency reputation wading into that minefield?
2) They want to use your services to solve the problem
Ok, ok, so this one sounds painfully obvious right? A client will only start looking for an agency when they need to use your services… right? Well, actually you’d be surprised.
Often when we sit down with the mythical B2B ‘decision makers’ they don’t actually want to be there. We’ve been found, researched, suggested by a junior team member who is looking to solve a very specific problem within their own department. The CEO, or CFO, or director, or owner, has been roped into the conversation because they are simply tired of hearing the same excuses from their own employees.
And of course that’s where our sales team earn their salt. I’m always ready to convince clients that we are the perfect agency for their business. What we do keep a lookout for are those hints, those tiny undercurrents that suggest the relationship is going to be strained from the outset.
So I have the hard discussions early. We don’t want to build an app that will be redundant before it’s live. We’ll work with you to try to solve your specific problem, but if we get the impression we’re a stop-gap sticking plaster we’ll see ourselves out.
Again it’s about protecting the business, your staff, your reputation. Passing on a project and recommending an alternative agency isn’t going to hurt you. Taking on a poison chalice of a project will.
3) They have a budget assigned to fix the problem
My team need to eat from time to time. And pay the rent. Feed the electricity meter. Top up our coffee addiction. And I’m running a business here. That means that we do need to get paid from time to time. So when a client approaches us with an idea or a proposal we start talking budget early on.
What we often see is that clients don’t have a clue what things cost outside of their industry. My agency builds apps and the client will often be taken aback when bespoke development costs them more than a couple of grand. But it’s the same across the board, from ad agencies to PR agencies to digital agencies. Expertise costs.
I often drop this analogy into the conversation. You’ll have heard it before.
The well-aged heating system in a building is on the blink. A few amateur DIY enthusiasts have looked it over but they can’t get it working. The tenants are getting colder and more annoyed. A couple of engineers are called in, and they look at the antiquated boiler and are stumped. Eventually someone digs out the details of the company that originally installed the system. A grizzled old engineer arrives and looks at the system, before grabbing a spanner and repeatedly hitting the side of the boiler. With a groan and a shudder the systems kicks into life. The engineer hands over a bill for a thousand pounds. The landlord exclaims “A grand? But you just hit it with a spanner, what exactly am I paying for?” The engineer scribbles out another invoice which reads:
- Hitting it with a spanner: £2
- Knowing where to hit it: £998
That’s what an agency brings to the party. We deliver greater value because you’re buying our expertise. We’re a lean mean team and your hard-earned cash isn’t going to be splashed out on swanky Shoreditch offices packed with ping pong tables and arcade cabinets. (though we admit we sometimes hook the N64 up for a round of Goldeneye at lunchtime).
If in our first conversation you’re already looking to cut costs or wondering aloud if it can be done cheaper internally… we’re not biting. If the conversations rapidly turn to developing apps in return for equity we’ll be asking to see your multi-million pound marketing campaign plans. We’re an agency. We’re not dragons from the den. We’re not angels. We’re developers.
4) Their project aligns with your core values
We want to change the world. For the better.
My agency exists to build apps that improve our world. We’ve done the big evil corporate thing and it wasn’t for us. It kinda sucked. We didn’t like it. That’s why we set up our agency. To be able to set our own corporate values and stick to our guns.
If a potential project or client stands for everything you hate, how are you going to be able to realistically apply yourself to the work? And even if you can, what does that do for the business and culture you’ve built for yourselves? What do you risk losing by taking on that piece of business. Integrity? A member of staff? Hours of sleep?
We’re a small agency. We’re not going to solve world hunger or trigger world peace. We won’t be able to halt global warming. It’s a bit like marginal gains. If we strive for every project we take on, every app we build to improve our world a tiny bit, it’ll all add up in the end.
We’ll be proud about it too.
5) We can make a real (usually commerical) difference to the client
Every now and then a client turns up with bags full of cash, ready and eager to splurge on their project. These clients have usually already built themselves a successful business (or at least convinced some investors that they’ve got a brilliant idea). Often they are coming off a stellar year and have cash to burn.
They want to bring an agency on board to help them get to the next level. To build on their success.
Back when we worked in the big bad corporate world that was the type of client we’d dream of. We’d upsell the hell out of them and pitch them projects so padded out that we’d be able to fund four or five overrunning projects we’d have on the backburners. Our account managers would sandbag like mad to deliver their quarterly targets.
The client would end up with an overpriced, overengineered project. Doomed never to break-even, let alone turn a profit. And the thing is… we’d know that at the start. It’d chip away at our soul. But we also found it would follow us around. We’d arrive for pitches we were excited about only to see a former employee of the original client sitting round the table. They knew. We didn’t win the business.
Get caught up in too many of those projects and you start to develop a reputation. We get paid for our expertise. If we don’t spot a dud of a project at the outset can we really claim to be experts? Carry on treating your clients like a money tree and you might just find it harder and harder to find one who’ll invest in you further down the line.
6) We gotta like you (and ideally you gotta like us)
Not in a weird way. No we mean that we’ve got to want to work with you, to enjoy working with you. When my team enjoy working with a client we end up delivering better results. And the feeling has to mutual.
Anyone with an agency background has been in one of those pitch meetings where the potential client is a bit of an… arse.
You’ve sat there throwing nervous glances at colleagues whilst a sense of foreboding builds up. You know it is going to be a rough ride. The client leaves and the room is silent. You’re all thinking it. The project is going to be a nightmare. Colleagues are suddenly talking about their busy schedules and trying to excuse themselves. Sure the money might be great, but if the client is a demonic megalomaniac who’ll take pleasure in torturing you for the next six months… we’d rather pass.
This is the hardest one to call.
Everyone has off days. Hell, we have off-weeks. And if you catch us before our morning coffee we’re pretty hard to stomach. First impressions can be pretty way off. Get to know a client better and suddenly all those concerns can melt away. There is nothing wrong with a client who is a demanding taskmaster when they are genuinely passionate about working with you on the project. Being challenged by a client is great when you can build a collaborative relationship with them.
However, sometimes it is just better to walk away. Look we’re not going to turn you down just because you’re a Man Utd fan, or because you swear that Nickelback is the greatest band ever. Break out a risqué or downright racist joke in our first meeting? Throw in some derogatory comments early on? Just plain rude and condescending to my team? Thanks for thinking of us. Sorry we can’t help.
Offering to pay us more won’t make us change our mind. Standing by our beliefs will probably mean we won’t ever get that private jet. But it will mean we can stay true to ourselves. And at the end of the day… there’s plenty more fish in the sea.
Reckon you’d pass the test? Need an app development agency that cuts the bull? Come and say hi.
Thom Gibbons is CEO of Apptaura, an app development agency in Hampshire, UK. Over the last few years he’s turned a back-room start-up into a successful agency, specialising in SME business apps.
