I’m going to preface this…
Service providers and sellers are not looking for additional unnecessary problems on top of solving the real issues in the business. As a seller, you might occasionally encounter an Amazon customer who acts like a tyrant: they are rude, obnoxious, insincere, and engage in unruly behaviors that distract you from your business.
Most people on the planet are good, honest individuals trying to do their best, but there are also bad actors. A small subset of sellers is no different – such as hardcore black-hatters, for example.
These are the exceptions, not the rule. Most service providers are doing their best to serve you as a seller. As mentioned earlier, there are blacklists with sellers and brands that disappear and fail to pay their bills, among other unruly behaviors.
The Agency Switcher
Imagine you’re hiring, dedicating a lot of time to recruit the best possible individuals for your business, aiming for a long-term team member.
Then, you review a candidate’s CV—it looks great, but they’ve switched jobs every 6-12 months. You might see this as a red flag, yet you decide to interview them to give them the benefit of the doubt. During the interview, it turns out the departures were supposedly all the fault of the employers—all of them.
Similarly, imagine you’re someone looking for a long-term relationship (man or woman), only to find out that all of a person’s past relationships were short-term, lasting less than a year, and reportedly, all the exes were toxic.
You see where I’m going with this. I mention this not as criticism but because of the substantial switching costs it imposes on your business.
Previous behaviors often predict future behaviors, unless those behaviors have changed
Recognizing these patterns allows you to make adjustments, thus closing the cycle.
I’ve discussed this at length with potential clients—not as a red flag but as an opportunity to help them meet their needs and address some of their blind spots so they can achieve the results they desire.
If you are on your third agency in a year, it will put tremendous pressure on your business and consume a huge amount of your time.
Let’s consider some scenarios:
Your agency was incompetent (all three of them).
Your agency was misaligned with your expectations (all three of them).
You picked the cheapest option available (all three of them).
The key point here, like your listing, is that you will optimize for a better outcome.
When you left your first agency, did you detail the issues, write down what they did wrong, and then consider what you could have done better? I only ask this because you can use that information to mitigate these problems as much as possible when entering the next gig. And before your third agency, did you review your notes from the first and second?
I’ve seen horror stories firsthand. Last year I had a client leave as the full service agency demanded they get the PPC.
Which would make sense, if they were managing the full account. They came back 5 months later with the business 89% down from when they left. They made radical changes to the listings without any testing and set up all their own campaigns. Great sales team, questionable expertise.
“Full-service” does not mean they are good at PPC. I have rejected dozens of requests over the years for us to be their back end and manage their clients’ PPC with them on the front end.
This simply does not work; you have to communicate with the client directly, otherwise it’s a mess, as it turns into a game of Chinese whispers and miscommunication. That is not to say there are not great full-service agencies out there, because there are.
