Featured · SEO
Who will actually work on your account
An agency is a brand, a process and a group of people, and only the last of those does the work. Two firms hiring the same agency in the same month can get quite different results, because they were assigned different people and nobody told either of them.
This is the least examined part of the purchase. Firms scrutinise case studies and pricing at length, then accept without question whichever team happens to have capacity.
The gap between the pitch and the delivery
The pattern is common enough across the industry to assume rather than suspect, and asking about it directly is entirely normal.
The pitch is usually run by the founder or a senior salesperson. Neither will be doing your technical work or writing your pages.
Accounts are typically assigned by capacity rather than by fit, so which team you get depends on who happened to finish something that week.
Seniority varies enormously within the same agency, at the same price, between two clients signed a fortnight apart.
Specialist work — technical audits, digital PR — is often done by a shared internal team or subcontracted, which is fine if disclosed and unhelpful if discovered.
And the person you meet at month one is frequently not there at month twelve. Agency tenure is short in this industry.
None of this is scandalous. It is how service businesses staff themselves, and a well-run agency manages it deliberately with documented process and proper handovers.
The problem is only that firms buy without asking, and then attribute a disappointing year to the agency's methods when the cause was who was assigned to them.
What to ask about the people
These are reasonable questions that a good agency answers readily. Discomfort in response to any of them is itself the answer.
Who specifically will work on this account, by name and role, and may we meet them before signing?
How long have they been with the agency, and how many other accounts do they hold?
Which parts of the work are done in-house and which are subcontracted or offshored?
Who writes the content, and do they have any legal-sector experience?
What happens if the person assigned to us leaves — what is the handover, and are we told?
And who has authority to change the plan when something is not working: the assigned team, or somebody senior we will not meet again?
Protecting yourself in the arrangement
You cannot control an agency's staffing, but you can make the arrangement resilient to it.
Name the key people in the engagement documentation, along with what happens if they change.
Insist on being told about a change of account lead rather than discovering it from a new signature on an email.
Require that work is documented in your accounts and your systems rather than in the agency's private notes, so a handover loses less.
Meet the delivery team once a quarter, not only the account manager. It changes how your account is discussed internally.
Watch for the quiet signals of turnover: slipping report dates, vaguer answers, and a new name on the call without introduction.
Treat a change of team as a natural review point rather than as a problem — it is a reasonable moment to restate what you expect.
And judge the individuals rather than the brand. A strong practitioner at an unglamorous agency beats a junior at a famous one.
If the agency will not tell you who does the work, you are buying a logo and hoping.
The firms that get the most from agencies tend to know their delivery team by name and treat them as colleagues. It is not sentiment; it is the arrangement that survives the industry's turnover.
FAQs
Will the people who pitch actually do our work?
Usually not. Pitches are typically run by a founder or senior salesperson, while delivery goes to whichever team has capacity. Ask by name who will be assigned, and whether you can meet them before signing.
Does it matter which team we are assigned?
Considerably. Two firms hiring the same agency in the same month can get different results because seniority varies within an agency, at the same price. It is the least examined part of the purchase and one of the most consequential.
What should we ask about the team?
Who will work on the account by name and role, how long they have been there, how many other accounts they hold, which work is subcontracted or offshored, who writes the content and whether they know the legal sector, and what happens if the assigned person leaves.
How do we protect against agency turnover?
Name key people in the engagement documentation with an agreed process if they change, require work to be documented in your own accounts rather than the agency's notes, and meet the delivery team quarterly rather than only the account manager.
Is subcontracting a bad sign?
Not if disclosed. Specialist technical or PR work is commonly handled by a shared team or a partner, which is perfectly workable. The problem is discovering it rather than being told.
End Note
Every other part of this purchase gets examined — the case studies, the price, the reporting — and the part that determines the outcome is usually accepted without a question.
Ask who will do the work, meet them, name them in the paperwork, and see them quarterly. It takes an hour and it is the single highest-return diligence available on an agency.
Key Takeaways
You are buying named individuals, not a brand.
Accounts are usually assigned by capacity, not by fit.
Ask who does the work, their tenure, and how many accounts they hold.
Name key people in the documentation, with a process if they change.
An agency that will not say who does the work is selling you a logo.
