The agency business has a mythology about bad clients. The client who changes their mind at the eleventh hour. The client who approves work by committee and gets beige. The client who briefs for bold and kills for safe. Every creative has war stories. What the war stories rarely interrogate is why the agency said yes in the first place.
The Qualification Problem
Most agencies qualify on budget and category. Can they afford us? Is this a sector we know? These are necessary questions but not sufficient ones. The questions that actually predict whether great work will happen are different: Does this client have someone with authority and taste who can approve the work? Is there internal alignment on what success looks like? And — most importantly — has this client worked with an agency before without destroying the relationship?
"The most expensive client is not the one who pays the least. It's the one who costs your people their confidence."
What We Do Differently Now
We now run a qualification process that includes a reference check — not on us, but on the client. We ask their previous agencies what the working relationship was like. We ask about decision-making timelines and who the final approver is. We have a frank conversation about how they handle disagreement when we think a creative direction is wrong for their brand.
We've walked away from mandates that looked good on paper because the qualification conversation revealed something the revenue projections didn't. Every time we've done that, we've been glad we did. The client who isn't ready to be a good client will cost you more than they pay you — in time, in morale, and in the opportunity cost of the work you didn't do for someone who was.