For teams
Agencies need recommendations that can be reopened
An agency's recommendation usually outlives the meeting where it was given. Months later a new marketing director asks why the budget moved, and the answer is buried in a deck and a chat thread. The recommendations that survive that question are the ones whose testing was written down.
Name the conflict
Many agencies are paid a share of media spend, so advice to spend less costs them money. Clients know this, even when nobody says it.
Stating the fee effect of a recommendation, plainly and early, makes every other number in the deck more believable. It is also the clearest sign that the advice was given in the client's interest.
Recommend at the margin
The useful question is rarely whether a channel works. The question is whether the last dollar in it still works. Returns usually fall as spend rises, so a channel can be profitable overall and wasteful at the top of its budget.
The record outlasts the account team
People leave agencies, and clients change their teams. A recommendation stored with its options, evidence, and reasons can be read by whoever inherits the account, and defended without the person who made it.
That continuity is worth more to a client than a fresh deck each quarter.
A client recommendation in a Decision Room
Holding the budget, trimming it, and moving it each get their own Champion. The Challenger presses on the marginal return figure. Aslan weighs the duty to the client against the agency's own interest and keeps that tension on the record. Inspector marks platform dashboards as unverified until they match the client's sales data.
Run Challenge the Verdict before the client presentation rather than after, so an independent second pass has the chance to overturn the first.
Advice that lowers the fee
A client spends $60,000 a month on paid social, and the agency earns 12 percent of spend, or $7,200. Tests show the first $35,000 a month performs well, but the last $25,000 brings only about $14,000 a month in gross profit, a loss of about $11,000 a month on that slice. The room compares holding spend, trimming to $35,000, and moving $10,000 of the cut into email work billed at a flat fee. Trimming lowers the agency's media fee to $4,200 a month. The Verdict favors trimming, and the record shows the agency recommended it knowing the fee effect, which is the part of the advice a client remembers longest.
Questions
- Can clients see the record?
- Yes, if you share it. The client can read each option's case, the evidence, the scores, and the Verdict, and can ask for a Challenge the Verdict pass of their own.
- Who owns the decision?
- The client makes the Human Decision. The agency owns its advice, and the record shows how that advice was tested.
Further reading
Bring Argumont a Decision worth challenging.
Start with a paid 60 day pilot on your own real Decisions.