Kicking off a new year often opens the door for kicking off conversations about agency contracts, partnership scope and compensation. We believe in creating financially viable partnerships for both brands and agencies. Neither side should be getting price-gouged or squeezed. The fees and partnership scope should be reasonable and clear.

If your agency is telling you they need to increase their fees and that you’re running hot on hours, let us help you. You have the right to ask questions and to have an opinion about how the agency is spending time on your business. 

Rather than paying the new hefty price tag or cutting ties with the agency, we highly encourage having an honest, open and transparent conversation. Be quick to see how you can help the relationship operate more effectively and if you are contributing to the challenges. That said, you are not responsible for fixing agency side inefficiencies (or paying for them).

Here are some tips on how to renegotiate your agency fees:

1. SOW Transparency: Remove any ambiguous language (legal jargon language, easily misinterpreted language, etc.) from the SOW and replace it with simple and clear language that everyone can understand. This way everyone knows what is and isn’t included in the partnership, so there are no surprises.  
2. Team Participation: If there are agency team members on calls who do not participate (have their camera off, don't contribute to the conversation, etc.), suggest that they not attend the meeting and get an overview from their team after the call instead. This will saveyou the billable hours (even if you’re paying a retainer, commission, hybrid, etc. the fee is ultimately based on hours). 
3. Track Time Regularly: Ask for quarterly or monthly hours reports so that you have regular insight into the hours allocation and financial health of your partnership. This will keep you from being blindsided and enable both sides to make micro-adjustments as needed. You have the right to ask for detailed insight into how time is being spent. 
4. Create Efficiencies: Suggest efficiencies with communication and knowledge sharing (simple access to collaboration tools, communication tools, clear documentation, etc.). Streamlining communication and access can save time. Again, agency time = money. 
5. Be Timely & Concise: Make sure your team is timely and concise with feedback and deliverables, as to not burn hours needlessly. Be introspective and thoughtful about how multiple stakeholders, ad-hoc requests, campaign complexity, etc. could be leading to hours inefficiencies. Make reasonable adjustments on your side as needed. 

Agencies deserve to be paid fairly for their work, without a doubt. That said, many brands don’t have insight into how much you are actually paying your agency. You also have a right to know what you are paying for. Most agency contracts have ambitious and non-transparent language about the scope and fees. This means that agencies are charging you more money in fees than you think.

There are always hidden fees. Yes, always.

Tenx4 creates SOW transparency and scope alignment. We remove ambiguity and risk from contracts so that both sides are clear on what is (and what is not) included in the partnership. This way, there are no hidden fees or surprises.

If you want to truly understand how much you're paying your agency or want help renegotiating your contract, reach out for an agency audit. We'd be happy to help.