By Tim Williams

Most advertising professionals are earnestly looking for the right answers to what they should be doing to make their agencies more relevant and valuable to clients.

But most good answers are the result of asking good questions. Here are three of the most important:

The Wrong Question: How can we get paid for all of the time we’re spending on our client’s business?

The Right Question: How can we get paid for the value we are adding to our client’s business?

The system most agencies use to price their services – hours, costs, full time equivalents, etc. – are all focused on internal operations and have nothing to do with the external value created for the client. We are chasing the wrong rabbit.

The Wrong Question: How can we become more efficient in the way we service our client’s business?

The Right Question: How can we be more effective on our client’s business?

Advertising agencies don’t exist to be efficient; they exist to create wealth for their clients. A compulsion to increase efficiency (doing things right) reduces the firm’s effectiveness at doing the right things. The relentless pursuit of efficiency hinders agencies from focusing on the things that truly matter – proactive ideas that build the success of the client’s brand.

The Wrong Question: What do we need to start doing to be more successful?

The Right Question: What do we need to stop doing to be more successful?

Most agencies don’t need to add to their list of capabilities and category experience – they need to subtract. They need to decide what they are not. Increasingly, clients are looking for “best of breed” partners, not “full-service marketing communications firms.”

Unless we ask the right questions, we’ll always get the wrong answer. The point for advertising agencies isn’t to get better; it’s to get different.