Seven questions to ask before you sign the big-agency contract.
A plain-language checklist for the marketing, operations, or executive leader evaluating a six- or seven-figure agency engagement. Print it. Forward it. Bring it to the pitch meeting. The vendor who answers all seven clearly is the one worth hiring.
How to use this checklist
Every agency will say yes to these questions. Listen for who answers in specifics.
A good vendor answers every one of these questions with names, dates, numbers, and written commitments. A weak vendor answers with frameworks, values, and culture decks.
Print this checklist, bring it to the next pitch meeting, and write the answers in the margin. The vendor who responds cleanly to all seven is probably the one worth hiring. The vendor who deflects on more than two is probably the one who will be hard to work with in month six.
After each question, we include the short version of how Rex Black answers it, for comparison. Use it as a floor, not a ceiling.
Who, specifically, will be working on my account in month four, six, and twelve?
Large, PE-owned agencies introduce senior staff during the pitch, then rotate in less experienced people after signing. Utilization targets make this inevitable. Ask for named individuals with titles and tenure.
Request an org chart for your account on day one. Ask for LinkedIn profiles and years at the firm. Tie the senior people to deliverables in the contract.
The person who pitches you is the person who ships. We are small enough that this is just true. No bench swap. No rotation.
Is any of the work subcontracted or sent offshore?
Pass-through offshoring is widespread at large agencies, often undisclosed. It is fine when transparent and priced honestly. It is a problem when a premium US rate is hiding offshore execution.
Ask which teams will touch your code or data, what country they are in, and what the hourly rate difference is between the quoted and the actual team.
US-based. In-house. Senior-led. No offshore pass-through. The name on the contract is the name doing the work.
What happens to my account if the agency is sold or the owning fund changes its strategy?
Most large digital agencies are owned by private equity or public holding companies. Exit timelines, margin compression before sale, and post-sale reshuffles directly affect account continuity.
Ask about ownership history, fund vintage, and any pending sale or recapitalization. Ask what happens to your account team if the firm is sold mid-engagement.
Rex Black Inc., independent since 1994. No outside capital. No exit plan. No reason to over-staff, over-scope, or rotate your team for margin.
What exactly will I own at the end, and can my team run it without you?
Some engagements leave you with a working system, a runbook, and independence. Others leave you with a vendor dependency priced as a retainer. The difference is not in the pitch. It is in the contract.
Ask for written acceptance criteria that include a team runbook, a training deliverable, and a codebase walkthrough. Make vendor independence an explicit exit condition.
We ship you the system, a runbook your team can follow, and the training to run it without us. Your independence from us is an acceptance criterion, not a footnote.
If something breaks on a Friday night, who picks up, and how fast?
The incident-response path is the single most important operational detail in any agency contract, and it is almost never written down. Ticketing queues and account-manager escalation are not the same as accountability.
Ask for an escalation path written into the SLA with named individuals, response-time commitments by severity, and a direct number for production-impacting incidents.
The owner-operator answers. Direct line for active clients. Not a ticketing queue. One of the reasons our clients sleep through launch weekends.
How do you price the work, and what stops the bill from doubling?
Hourly and time-and-materials billing rewards the wrong behavior. The agency is paid more when the project takes longer. Fixed-scope engagements align the incentive with your outcome.
Ask for fixed-scope pricing with named deliverables and a change-order process that requires your written approval before any additional work starts.
Fixed scope. Named deliverables. One invoice per phase. If scope changes, you see the new number before we touch a keyboard.
Can I speak with three clients whose engagement with you has ended? Not three active, happy ones.
Active reference calls are screened. Ended engagements are the real signal. You want to hear how the relationship wrapped, what transition looked like, and whether the internal team could run the system after.
Ask for two active references and one ended reference. If the agency cannot produce the ended reference, that is the answer.
We are proud of every engagement we have finished and every handoff we have done. We will introduce you to any of them, including ones that ended.
Scoring guide
What the answers tell you.
Clear on six or seven
This is a vendor you can sign with confidence. Tie the answers to contract language before signing so the spoken commitments become written ones.
Clear on four or five
Workable, but push on the two or three soft answers before signing. Those are the places the engagement will strain in month six.
Clear on three or fewer
Walk. The vendor either does not know the answer or does not want to give it in writing. Either is a reason to choose someone else.
Want a second opinion on a scope you have already been pitched?
Send us the SOW or the proposal. We will walk through it with you on a thirty-minute call, name the risks, and tell you honestly whether we think it is a fair price for the scope. No pitch deck. No follow-up sequence unless you ask.
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