We turn down clients. Not frequently, but deliberately, and for specific reasons. The businesses that do not end up being good fits almost always reveal themselves in one of a handful of predictable ways during initial conversations.
Writing this down is not a filter exercise designed to reduce our inbound volume. It is an honest description of what makes a client relationship productive, because we have learned that the engagements where we produce the best results have specific things in common.
They can describe what success looks like
Not “more business” or “better marketing.” A specific outcome: 15 new patients per month from digital channels, 30 percent of our project inquiries coming from sources other than referrals, revenue from the wellness studio’s second location hitting breakeven within 12 months.
When a potential client can describe what success looks like with specificity, several things follow automatically. We can tell them whether the budget, timeline, and market conditions make that outcome achievable. We can build a campaign that targets that outcome rather than general marketing activity. And we have a shared standard to evaluate the relationship against.
When a potential client cannot describe success except in vague terms, the engagement typically runs on activity rather than results. The reports look good, the actual business impact is unclear, and there is no shared standard for evaluating the work. That is not a relationship either side should want.
They have done the diagnostic work
We are not the right partner for businesses that are not yet sure what their problem is. A business that says “our marketing isn’t working, we’re not sure why, we’d like help figuring it out” needs a consultant before they need an agency.
The diagnostic work we want clients to have done is simple: do you know which channels are currently producing leads, and do you know which channels are not? Do you know what your close rate is on the leads you get? Do you have a read on where in the funnel you are losing the most potential customers?
Clients who have done this work come to the engagement ready to act. Clients who have not spend the first several months doing it, which is fine, but it changes what we need to be.
They hold marketing accountable
We want clients who will fire us if we are not producing results. Not clients who will hold us to vanity metrics, but clients who care about whether the marketing is growing their business and who will ask hard questions if it is not.
This might sound backwards. An agency that wants clients who might fire them is unusual. The reason we want this is that clients who hold us accountable also give us the resources and trust to produce results: a clear brief, timely approvals, consistent access to project information or patient outcomes, and the patience to let campaigns run long enough to produce meaningful data.
Clients who do not hold us accountable tend to create the conditions where good work is hard: constantly shifting priorities, slow approvals, reluctance to measure the things that would prove or disprove what we are doing. We want partners, not observers.
What happens in the first conversation
If you are considering reaching out, the things that make our first conversation most productive are: a brief description of your business and what it does, an honest characterization of where your current marketing is and is not working, a sense of what growth looks like in concrete terms, and a budget range you are realistic about.
We will come back with a specific read on whether we are a good fit for what you are trying to do, and what the path looks like if we are. Start here.