How to Get Your Agency to Be More Proactive
To get more proactive work from an agency, define the initiative you expect and check whether its scope, information, capacity and authority support it. Ask for recommendations connected to your business priorities, along with early warnings about risks. Agree on how proposals will be evaluated and funded.
Download the editable worksheet (Markdown). Replace the bracketed prompts with your own details.
An agency may be too passive because its leadership is weak. It may also be operating exactly within a narrow execution contract or waiting for decisions your team has not made. Diagnose the conditions before demanding a different behavior.
Describe the initiative you want.
Give examples of useful action. You might expect the agency to identify a coming campaign dependency, question a deteriorating assumption or recommend a test within its discipline.
Explain what is missing from the current relationship. Saying that the team lacks ideas is less useful than identifying a missed opportunity to flag an expiring offer or a repeated failure to recommend changes after weak results.
Tim's Agency Inner Circle article on client leadership argues that agencies should exercise informed judgment and update it when circumstances change. Translate that expectation into behaviors appropriate to the work you have bought.
Check the scope and available capacity.
Review whether the fee includes analysis, planning and recommendations or primarily production against client instructions. Ask what time the team has available for investigation.
If the client fills every available hour with urgent requests, the agency may have little capacity left for broader thinking. Decide which work can be reduced or what additional support is justified.
Avoid treating unsolicited sales proposals as the only evidence of initiative. A useful recommendation can involve stopping work, reducing spend or addressing a client dependency rather than buying another agency service.
Give the agency the context it needs.
Share upcoming changes in products, sales priorities and operating constraints. Tell the team what leadership is concerned about and what decisions are approaching.
Ask the agency to keep a current view of the business situation and to confirm when its assumptions become outdated. The information guide explains what to share and how to control access.
A team that learns about a launch only after the internal plan is fixed has limited opportunity to improve that plan. Include it early enough for its advice to matter.
Define what the team can do without permission.
Distinguish identifying an opportunity, investigating it and implementing a change. The agency can often make recommendations without having authority to spend more money or alter live activity.
Set specific boundaries for independent action. State what requires client approval, especially where a change affects brand claims, customer experience, data access or budget.
Encourage the agency to raise concerns without treating every concern as a failure. If the client responds badly whenever a risk is surfaced, the team has a reason to delay difficult conversations.
Review recommendations through a consistent process.
Ask for a short explanation of the opportunity, supporting evidence, expected benefit and required effort. Have the agency describe the uncertainty and the consequences for existing work.
Respond to the recommendation. Repeated silence teaches the agency that preparing proposals is unproductive. If you decline, explain whether the issue is evidence, timing, budget or strategic fit.
Review the quality and usefulness of recommendations rather than setting an arbitrary quota for ideas. A large backlog of unapproved suggestions can create work without improving decisions.
Use this reset conversation.
Adapt the wording to the actual relationship.
"We want your team to take more initiative in [area]. A recent example where we needed your judgment was [specific situation]. We would like recommendations that address [business priorities] and early warnings about [risks].
Please tell us whether the current scope and capacity support that expectation. We can improve your access to [information or people], and we will respond to recommendations through [approval process]. Your team may act independently on [matters] within [limits]. Changes involving [restricted matters] still require approval.
Let's agree on the first useful investigation, its owner and a review date. We will assess whether the resulting advice helps us make a better decision."
If the agency has sufficient context and capacity but repeatedly avoids taking responsibility, address that as a performance issue. The underperformance guide provides a process for setting specific expectations and deciding whether the relationship can improve.