A proposal is agreed on scope and price. Then the client sees a twelve month term with three months notice, and the conversation stops.
She is not planning to leave. She is worried about being unable to, and that worry has just cost the agency a client who would probably have stayed three years.
When a longer term makes sense
It makes sense where onboarding is genuinely expensive, where results take many months to appear, where the agency is investing in tooling or people for the account, or where the client wants price certainty in exchange.
When a shorter term wins more
It wins when the client has been trapped before, when the agency is confident in its retention, when the market is competitive and when the objection is costing more deals than the occasional early departure costs.
The middle position
A minimum term covering onboarding and the period before results are reasonable to expect, then rolling with a stated notice. It is defensible, it is explicable and it converts.
Explain why the minimum exists
Not because you want to trap anyone, but because the first two months are setup and the work does not produce anything until after that. Clients accept a reason and resist a rule.
Publish the notice period plainly
How long, how it is served and when it can be served. Notice that can only be given at certain points is the term clients most resent discovering.
Explain what happens to work in progress
Whether it is completed, whether it is handed over and what is charged. A campaign half built when notice is served needs a stated position.
Be clear about ownership
Accounts, ad platforms, domains, analytics, creative files and data. An agency that hands everything over cleanly is recommended by clients who left, and one that does not is warned about, which is the exit thinking in notice period and moving out questions storage customers ask applied to services.
Publish the offboarding process
What is handed over, in what format, within what period and at what cost. Publishing a good offboarding process is one of the most effective sales assets an agency can have.
Offer a pilot instead of a term
A defined first project, at a fixed price, with the retainer starting afterwards. It removes the objection entirely and identifies the clients who were never going to commit.
Explain what a pause looks like
Clients have quiet quarters and budget freezes. A pause arrangement retains a relationship that a rigid contract turns into a departure.
Explain what happens to the results after they leave
Clients worry that the rankings, audiences and momentum built during the engagement belong to the agency rather than to them. Saying plainly what continues working after a handover, and what stops the moment the retainer ends, is an honest answer that separates the parts of the service genuinely worth staying for from the parts that were rented.
Pricing is the other half of the objection
It is covered in marketing retainer enquiries that stall at pricing.
Reporting keeps clients from wondering
It is covered in reporting questions from marketing clients, and agencies use the same tools for their own clients as in how marketing agencies use chatbots for their clients.
Getting started
Publish your minimum term, notice period, ownership position and offboarding process, then answer contract questions at any hour. SpideyChat for agencies answers from your published pages, our plans are on the pricing page, and the chatbot ROI calculator works through the numbers.