# What do I ask in a first meeting with an agency?

**Short answer.** Three questions surface the most: who works on my account day to day, what share of your revenue is your largest client, and which brief did you turn down this year. The third answer tells you the most.

A first meeting usually covers their cases and your challenge, which produces two hours in which nobody learns anything new. Three questions do surface something.

## The three questions

**"Who works on my account day to day?"** Ask for names and for how many other clients those people carry. Then ask whether they will be at the table next time. An agency that gets uncomfortable here is selling you a team it cannot guarantee.

**"What share of your revenue is your largest client?"** That number appears in no annual accounts and is the fifth of the five health checks. Above forty percent is a risk for them and therefore for you; below twenty-five you are fine. But the real signal is not the number: it is whether they answer. An agency open about this will also be open when something goes wrong on your account.

**"Which assignment did you turn down this year, and why?"** This is the question that yields the most and gets asked the least. An agency that never turns anything down takes everything, and is therefore either always overstretched or not selective. An agency with a good answer tells you in one go what it believes in and where its limit sits.

## Three things you put on the table yourself

- **Your budget**, or at least the order of magnitude. Without a budget you get a proposal that proves nothing.
- **Who decides on your side**, and how many rounds that means. Agencies price rounds in, and a surprise afterwards gets paid by someone.
- **What went wrong with your previous agency.** It sounds awkward and it saves you a repeat.

Prepare with that agency's [factsheet](https://www.ikag.be/en/factsheets/): the meeting then covers what you want to know rather than what is already public.

## What to watch while they talk

Whether they ask questions. An agency that presents for the full hour does not need your assignment to tell its story, and that is exactly what you will get back later in the work.

See also: [how to know whether an agency is good](https://www.ikag.be/en/factsheets/faq/hoe-weet-ik-of-een-bureau-goed-is) and [who works at an agency](https://www.ikag.be/en/factsheets/faq/wie-werkt-er-bij-een-bureau).

## Related questions

- [How do I know whether an agency is any good?](https://www.ikag.be/en/factsheets/faq/hoe-weet-ik-of-een-bureau-goed-is): Call two clients the agency did not put forward itself, and ask about the time it went wrong. A portfolio shows someone at their best; a reference shows how they work when things go badly.
- [Who works at an agency?](https://www.ikag.be/en/factsheets/faq/wie-werkt-er-bij-een-bureau): The question that matters is not who works there but who will be on your account, and whether that person was in the pitch room. Ask for names, not job titles, and put them in writing at the start.
- [Which criteria do I use to compare agencies?](https://www.ikag.be/en/factsheets/faq/criteria-om-bureaus-te-vergelijken): Five axes are enough: the work, the team you actually get, the fit with your sector and your way of working, the price per unit of work, and the stability of the business. Weight them before you see the first presentation.

---

IKAg is the business consultant for marketing and agencies in Belgium and the Netherlands. Market figures come from the Agency Barometer, calculated on the annual accounts agencies filed with the National Bank themselves. Figures on pitches and satisfaction come from IKAg-guided processes, and are always presented as such.

- All questions: https://www.ikag.be/en/factsheets/faq
- Last updated: 2026-08-19