Last fall, a seed-stage SaaS founder walked me through how he hired his previous agency. The pitch deck was gorgeous. The case studies had names he recognized. He signed a 6-month retainer that same week without asking a single question about who would run the account or how the fee was built.
By month 4, the senior team from the pitch had moved on to newer logos. His monthly report was a screenshot of impressions. Then he discovered the out clause needed 90 days of notice. The work was mediocre. The structure was worse. He had agreed to all of it in one meeting.
This post is the question list that would have saved him. There are 12 questions, grouped into 4 themes: incentives and pricing, process and cadence, measurement, and team and access. If you are still deciding whether an agency is even the right shape for your stage, read growth agency vs in-house hire first. If you know you want one, ask these before you sign.
Which 5 Questions Tell You the Most?
If you only get one call, ask these 5: how do you price and why, what happens in the first 30 days, how fast do you kill losing work, what metric does your reporting center on, and do I own my ad accounts and data? Those answers expose incentives, speed, and operating discipline faster than any case study.
| Question | Green flag | Red flag |
|---|---|---|
| How do you price, and why? | Flat fee, model defended openly | Percentage of spend, no alternative |
| What happens in the first 30 days? | Diagnostic before scaling spend | "We launch campaigns week 1" |
| How fast do you kill losing work? | Written thresholds, acted on in days | "We give everything a full quarter" |
| What metric do you report on? | CAC, revenue, pipeline | Impressions, reach, engagement |
| Do I own my accounts and data? | Yes, full admin from day 1 | Agency-owned accounts you'd migrate off |
The remaining 7 questions live under the theme sections below. None of them require expertise to ask. All of them require specificity to answer, which is the point.
What Should You Ask About Incentives and Pricing?
Ask 3 things here: how the agency prices and why that model, what happens to the fee if your spend doubles, and what the exit looks like. You are testing one thing: whether the agency makes more money when you get results or simply when you spend more.
Question 1: How do you price, and why that model? Percentage-of-spend agencies typically charge 10 to 20% of your ad budget, according to Feedbird. That model pays the agency more every time your budget goes up. A good answer defends the model out loud and offers a flat-fee alternative. A bad answer treats the percentage as a law of nature.
Question 2: What happens to your fee if my spend doubles? The good answer is “nothing, unless the workload changes, and here is how we would scope that.” The bad answer is a fee that scales automatically with budget, because at that point your wins and their invoice point in different directions.
Question 3: How long is the contract, and what does leaving look like? Good: a short initial term, month-to-month after that, and 30-day notice. Bad: 12-month lock-in, 90-day notice, auto-renew buried on page 6. Confident agencies keep the door unlocked. We wrote a channel-specific version of this screening in how to choose a paid media agency.
What Should You Ask About Process and Cadence?
Ask what the first 30 days contain, who makes decisions between calls, and how fast underperforming work gets cut. These questions reveal whether the agency runs a system or improvises one per client. An agency with no named cadence drifts. You find out at the quarterly review, when the budget is already gone.
Question 4: What happens in the first 30 days? A real answer describes an audit, a diagnosis, and a prioritized plan before spend scales. A weak answer jumps straight to launching, which means they plan to learn on your budget.
Question 5: How often do we talk, and who decides what between calls? You want a weekly rhythm plus a named owner for decisions that cannot wait. If everything queues for a monthly check-in, your account moves at 1/4 the speed of the market.
Question 6: How fast do you kill something that is not working? The good answer includes actual thresholds and a window measured in days. “We like to give things time to mature” sounds patient. In practice it is a slow drain with a friendly face.
What Should You Ask About Measurement?
Ask what metric the reporting centers on, how they handle attribution when sources disagree, and what failure would look like. Measurement is where weak agencies hide. Roughly a third of marketing leaders say they can show the short-term impact of spend quantitatively, according to The CMO Survey, so an agency claiming perfect clarity is overselling certainty.
Question 7: What metric will your reports center on, and what will they leave out? Good: cost per acquisition, revenue, pipeline, stated up front. Bad: impressions and engagement, which measure activity rather than outcomes. The second half of the question matters too; a serious agency names what it cannot measure.
Question 8: How do you handle attribution when the numbers disagree? The numbers will disagree. A good answer triangulates platform data against blended numbers and admits the seams. A bad answer is “our dashboard handles it,” which translates to “please stop asking.”
Question 9: What does failure look like, and when would you tell me? This one rattles weak agencies. Strong ones answer with checkpoints: “if the core thesis has not shown signal by day 60, we tell you and change the plan.” If they claim no client has ever churned unhappy, end the call politely.
What Should You Ask About Team and Access?
Ask who works on your account by name, whether you own your accounts and data outright, and how many clients your lead carries. The gap between the pitch team and the delivery team is the most common bait and switch in this industry, and it is fully preventable with 3 questions.
Question 10: Who runs my account day to day, by name and seniority? Good: the people on the sales call are the people on the work, named before signing. Bad: “you will be assigned a pod after kickoff.” Pods are where senior pitches go to become junior execution.
Question 11: Do I own my ad accounts, data, and creative? The only acceptable answer is yes, with full admin access from day 1. Agency-owned accounts create switching costs you pay for monthly. If you leave, you start from zero history.
Question 12: How many clients does my account lead carry? You want a specific, single-digit number. An account lead spread across 15 clients gives you about 2 focused hours a week. The dodge (“it varies by scope”) is the data point.
How Do We Answer These Ourselves?
Fair question. Here is our answer. We charge a flat monthly fee, never a percentage of spend, and the fee moves only when scope does. After the initial engagement, contracts run month-to-month with 30 days notice. Clients hold full admin on every ad account, data source, and creative asset from day 1.
Our first 30 days are diagnostic: audit, growth model, prioritized plan, then scaled spend. The cadence is weekly, with written kill thresholds agreed before launch. Reporting centers on CAC and revenue, and the senior people who managed $50M+ in paid media are the ones in your Slack, not a pitch-only cast. The full scope of what we run is on our services page.
Print this list. Bring it to every agency call, including one with us. The agencies worth hiring will welcome the conversation. The ones that squirm just saved you a 6-month retainer.
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