Playbook, marketing agency
The handover an agency actually wants to happen
In every other trade in this family the handover is a boundary. Here it is the objective. Nothing an agency sells can be specified in a chat window, so the assistant's whole job is to answer the qualifying questions well enough that a prospect is willing to book a scoping conversation, and then to hand over before anybody starts describing the work. The failure mode is not saying too much, it is a handover that reads as a defeat rather than as the next step.
Why this is not the general answer
The handling pattern for asking for a person holds across every trade. What follows is the part that does not.
- The handover is the conversion event rather than a safety valve, so it should sound like an invitation and not like a limitation.
- The trigger is a brief starting to arrive, which is the exact moment a prospect is most engaged and most likely to be given a number they will hold the agency to.
- Existing clients asking about a live account need a completely different destination from new business, and sending an account question to the new business inbox is a visible failure to a paying client.
- The prospect is deciding whether the next step is safe rather than whether the agency is competent, so the handover has to describe what the call is before it asks for details.
How it arrives
- can we set up a call
- who do i speak to about a project
- here is what we are trying to do can you tell me if you can help
- what does a discovery call involve
- we are an existing client and need to speak to our account manager
- can we see work you have done in our sector
What has to be indexed for this to work
| What a discovery call is, in detail | Length, who attends from your side, what you will ask, what the prospect should bring, whether it is chargeable, and what they receive afterwards. A prospect who cannot tell whether it is a consultation or a pitch books neither. |
|---|---|
| Who you work with, and who you do not | Sectors, company size, geography, and any categories you decline. Agencies lose an enormous amount of time to calls that were never going to convert, and a clear statement of fit ends those before they are booked. |
| The separate route for existing clients | How a current client reaches their account team, and how that differs from new business. An account question that lands with new business tells a paying client exactly how they are ranked. |
| Published case studies, in the approved wording | Only work you have written permission to publish, worded as it was approved. Confidentiality in agency contracts commonly outlasts the engagement and often covers the existence of the relationship, so anything unapproved stays out of the material entirely. |
The reply
That sounds like a discovery call rather than something to work through here. It runs about forty five minutes with a strategist and an account lead, we will ask about what exists today, what has been tried and what success looks like, and you get a written summary of what we would propose afterwards. We work with businesses across the sectors listed on our clients page, so it is worth a conversation. Leave your name, your email and a line on what you are trying to do and we will get it booked.
It describes the call concretely, because the prospect's hesitation is about what they are walking into rather than about the agency. Naming who attends and what they receive makes it feel like work rather than a sales appointment. Asking for a line rather than the brief keeps the assistant clear of anything it might price, while still capturing enough for a strategist to prepare.
Where it stops
The trigger. The prospect begins describing the work they want done, or asks whether the agency can help with something specific.
This is worth a proper conversation rather than a chat reply, because what you are describing needs scoping before anyone can say anything useful about it. Leave your name, email and a line on what you are trying to do and we will set up a discovery call.
It stops answering before it guesses, says who will pick it up, and asks for the one thing that makes a reply possible. Nothing about it reads as a dead end.
Never say this here
Out of bounds
- Never say whether the agency can deliver something before a strategist has heard it.
- Never describe work done for a client that is not already published with permission.
- Never predict traffic, leads, return or a timeline for results.
- Never route an existing client's account question to new business.
Questions
- Why does this handover need to sound different from the others?
- Because it is the sale rather than a refusal. A prospect who reaches the boundary and hears an apology leaves, whereas one who is told what the next conversation contains books it. The wording is the difference between an enquiry and a lost one.
- Should it take the brief if the prospect wants to send one?
- Take a line, not the brief. It cannot receive files, and a full brief pasted into the chat invites a priced reply, which is the specific failure this whole set of pages exists to prevent.
- How does it tell an existing client from a prospect?
- Usually from the question, which is why the material has to include a clearly separate route for account enquiries. Publish that route in its own document with its own vocabulary, and check the citations to confirm the assistant is reaching for it rather than for the new business page.
Keep reading
- Everything for a marketing agencyService definitions and engagement terms convert. A price quoted for work nobody has scoped is the trap on an agency site.
- Handling asking for a person in generalThe design question at the centre of a support assistant. Offer early, offer once, collect what a reply needs, promise a time you can keep.
- A client has the invoice open and is asking about one linePass through spend, the hours allowance and the out of scope line. What a client is really disputing when they query an agency invoice.
- What happens between signing and the first campaign going liveAccess to the client's own accounts, the brand assets, the measurement check, and why month one produces less than month two.
- Delete my data, sent to a company the sender has never heard ofThe stranger writing to an agency is usually in a client's list rather than the agency's, and the assistant cannot even say whose.
Try it on your own material
Upload a document or point it at your site, paste one line of HTML, then ask it something only your business could answer.