Outcomes Over Output: How to Be a Better Partner to Your Agency's Clients

If you're a small agency struggling with increasing the lifetime value of your existing clients, the line between being a strategic partner and just another vendor often comes down to one crucial distinction: are you driving outcomes for your clients, or are you merely filling a role?

For many agencies, a significant portion of work can fall under what’s known as 'staff augmentation'. This is where an agency provides personnel to a client to work under their direction, often billed hourly or on retainer. While there's nothing inherently wrong with this model, it does pose a risk: you become easy to replace.

If your agency isn't focused on driving specific outcomes, you're not just at risk of blending into the background—you're at risk of being switched out for another vendor who can potentially offer the same type of staffing but at a lower cost or with a different skill set overlap.

What Sets You Apart

Think about it: if your client decides they need a change, how difficult would it be for them to find another agency that does what you do? If you're focused purely on satisfying a specific number of hours per week or per month, the answer is probably "not very." However, if you're driving outcomes—tangible, measurable results that directly impact your client's bottom line—you embed yourself as an integral part of their success.

Setting KPIs and Metrics

An essential aspect of being an outcomes-based agency is how you manage KPIs and metrics. Are these targets set by your clients, or do you collaborate to define what success looks like upon kickoff? Are you dictating the pace and direction of your projects, or are your clients steering the ship within tightly defined hours each week?

True partnership arises when both parties work together to set and achieve goals. That doesn't mean that you need to be committing to driving a certain amount of revenue on behalf of your client if you are, say, a digital marketing agency. But it does mean that if "driving revenue" is what the client is looking to get our of your relationship, then it's the goal you must be looking at, measuring, and proactively reporting on.

Or, to find a few other examples of moving from an output-based model to an outcome-based model:

• If you have a retainer to manage a client's marketing automation platform, then ensuring there's a clear roadmap of improvements and enhancements that you've suggested and dictated, and that those improvements and enhancements are tied to an outcome beyond "improve usability of your systems," (like diving revenue pipeline in a specific buyer stage, for example).
• If you're the client's main SEO partner, then helping discover and drive the right content by deeply understanding the client's content instead of just optimizing it, and reporting back to them how you've helped implement new content solutions and how those pieces of content are tracking to drive conversions.

And to be absolutely clear: managing to outcomes has very little to do with how your contract is structured. You could still be on an hourly contract and still manage to outcomes. It's about how the client sees what you're delivering, not how you measure your efficiency.

The Value of Outcomes Over Output

Selling and delivering your services based on the outcomes rather than the output can transform how clients perceive your value. If you promise and deliver significant results—like increasing lead generation by a specific percentage—you position your agency not just as a service provider, but as a crucial strategic ally.

To maintain a partnership-level relationship, you must take control of your work and consistently drive towards predefined outcomes. This approach not only solidifies your role as a key player in your client’s strategy but also makes it much harder for them to consider a replacement without risking their own goals. 

This approach also requires members of your staff across functions (sales, service delivery and account management) who deeply understand how to connect the services that you do best with the objectives that matter to your client, their boss and their organization at large. That's no small feat, and developing the capability around this kind of proactive account management takes time, commitment and resources.

Shifting Perspectives

If you think you've found yourself in a staff augmentation role with your clients and that may be impacting how long they stay with your agency, consider how you can move towards outcome-based engagements. Evaluate how your team interacts with clients, set clear and collaborative KPIs, and focus on driving substantial outcomes that showcase the unique value you bring. But shifting into an outcomes based model will require a top-down approach. You need to transform your sales, delivery and account management to a much more proactive framework. Your object should be to know what the client needs to do to attain their goals before they know.

By doing so, you ensure your agency isn't just seen as a temporary solution but as an essential partner in your client's long-term success, and sticky beyond just the one champion that likely brought you in as a service provider.

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