Welcome to the Collective Content Podcast’s How to choose a content agency series. In episode five our hosts, Daine Lindsay and Collective Content MD Tony Hallett, are joined by client services director Fiona Skilton and operations director Becky Thompson to talk through onboarding a new content team to handle your marketing. Their discussion covers the whole journey, from aligning your content and messaging, to delivering on a project with a short deadline. Hear about all the key processes, necessary documents and common pitfalls that you must avoid during this important phase.

Check out the full Collective Content How to choose a content agency guide to learn even more, available here.

You can also find the episode here;

Episode Transcript

[Music intro]

One, two, three, four

Daine: Hello and welcome to our How to choose a content agency podcast series for episode number five – Onboarding. Today, I’m once again joined by two great guests to help companies choose their next agency wisely. We have Fiona Skilton, Collective Content’s client services director, and Becky Thompson, Collective Content’s operations director, to shed some light on the key things that companies should consider when onboarding an agency.

And if you want to get your hands on more expert advice on this subject, then please check out the full Collective Content, How to choose a content agency guide available on our website, link in the description. Also joining us is Collective Content Managing Director Tony Hallett. Tony.

Tony: Hi there Daine. Great to be with you again and great to be really getting into the meat of what we’re getting into with this series. Having talked about choosing an agency, now it’s really about how you make it possible.

[Music swells]

Three, two, one. Yeah.

Tony: Fiona and Becky, welcome to this series. Personally, you know, I’ve been involved in an awful of onboarding with both of you over recent times. What I would say is that this episode, like the others in this series, it’s really important to see this from a client’s point of view. That’s what this is all about. And I think it’s worth acknowledging upfront as well that there is some pain with onboarding. I think everyone involved in onboarding admits that, but it is necessary, that’s the key thing.

Daine: Thanks for that, Tony. So following on from that, what legal aspect do you think we need to think about when it comes to onboarding then? Becky.

Becky: Okay. Hello everyone. Yes, the first thing when you’re onboarding a new agency is definitely to know the process with your procurement team as well as your legal team, because there’ll be lots of different areas that you’ll have to cover with your new agency and lots of different forms that will need to be sent over from both of those places.

Usually, the first thing that we’ll come across is sort of information about your agency and sort of the name, address, their bank details. But then you will also start to have to fill in legal papers for like GDPR, where data is held, things to do with security and privacy. Also maybe more details about the company and the employees ‒ who they’re going to be using on your projects.

There’s usually master service agreements, which could sometimes be quite straightforward and short, and other times can run up to 50+ pages that need to be read through with lots of legalese. Also, one of the first things that needs to be signed are usually NDAs, and these can kind of be catch-all contracts that your company will produce.

And it doesn’t matter if your agency is a small agency, a medium agency or a big agency ‒ these contracts are written to cover it all. So if you’re going to be working with a smaller agency, you may need to, kind of, be in the corner for your agency, because those contracts, some of what they ask for, is not always appropriate for a small agency.

Tony: And we know, Becky, that sometimes on the client side, there’s a lot more flexibility than other times. So it’s worth, sometimes, for the company that’s choosing the agency, having that chat quite early with their legal and procurement teams and asking how flexible are we? Because sometimes, not so much.

Becky: Yeah, exactly. And also, particularly when it’s to do with insurance, that’s a big one. The level of insurance that’s needed for a small- or medium-sized agency is not the level of insurance that’s needed for bigger agencies, or perhaps even agencies that are handling different types of work for that company. So you need to kind of know what is your agency going to be doing for you? And the insurance policies may be tweaked to fit that work.

Daine: How is onboarding affected depending on location of the client or an agency, Fiona?

Fiona: Well, as an agency, we need to be quite flexible and be set up to do business with all kinds of other businesses as well. Typically, onboarding takes – can take ‒ quite a long time and quite a lot of paperwork. We’ll look through contracts for jurisdictions, which court of law contracts are governed by. We’ll be looking at, as Becky’s already mentioned, NDA clauses. If there’s anything that stands out there. We’ll be looking at dispute resolution as well, and just making sure that in the unlikely event of a dispute, that there’s a clear and fair process that’s outlined in the paperwork to resolve anything that may come up.

And a big one for us, because we do global business is exchange rate.

So a lot of our bigger clients actually set exchange rates at the start of the year. This is important for transparency, so the clients know where they’re at with their budgets through the year. But also we do as the agency as well. And it’s really important to have a review clause for exchange rates in the contracts because, of course, as we’ve seen over the last couple of years, the exchange rates can fluctuate quite dramatically and there can’t be any winners or losers when it comes to that. So we’ll look out for those sorts of things.

And in terms of who sets pricing, this is an interesting one as well. So some of our clients specify the rates that we can charge, but mostly what we create is a bespoke rate cards that matches our clients’ budgets and content needs as well.

Tony: It’s great to hear it from the point of view of a client services director because on the client side, you’re trying to marry up how things work and not always knowing the full visibility of an agency, a certain type of agency, in this case, a content agency.

I was going to add to that, touching on something Becky said earlier about what’s flexible or not. Very large clients we deal with, we know will have dedicated procurement departments, smaller clients won’t necessarily have a procurement department or even a dedicated team, but they will always have legal, won’t they? So there’s always going to be the legal checks on both sides. But when there’s a procurement team, it is a different type of conversation.

Fiona: Yeah, that’s right, Tony. And I think that’s a really important point because we’re experienced both with onboarding through procurement, as well as not through procurement. So we can help our clients by guiding them through the process if procurement aren’t involved. So, for example, some of our clients come to us with their own contracts for review, but we can also provide contracts.

So we have templated contracts. So if a client doesn’t have a contract, then we can provide that, absolutely not a problem. And we’ve also got other paperwork such as NDA templates for clients if they don’t have these as well. So we’re here to make the process as easy as possible.

Becky: I was going to bring up something that Fiona touched on about working globally across different countries.

One of the things you need to be aware about for your own company is if, for example, if your headquarters are based in the States, quite often you will need to bill from the United States and the agency you’re going to onboard will need to have the tax paperwork put in place to be able to take payments from the United States.

So one thing you should be thinking about when you’re working with agencies across different countries is looking at where will the payments be coming from and how that will affect the taxes that your agency and your company will need to deal with.

Tony: And we’ve seen that across lots of different countries as well, haven’t we? And whilst we might think a second country’s tax and legal framework is slightly alien to the territory you’re used to, at least for example in the States, Becky, you’re dealing in English.

We’ve seen this in multiple countries where there’s a second language and it’s not a language that any of us speaks. So it can get quite complicated. And that’s why that has to be that cooperation on both sides.

Becky: Yeah. And if you don’t have the paperwork in place, then quite often what will happen is tax money will be withheld when your agency is being paid and then you may be getting into discussions with your agency about how they get that money back. And if you think about those things at the beginning, then that avoids some of that pain point at the end.

[Sound break]

Daine: Fiona, could you tell us about re-onboarding for existing clients?

Fiona: Yeah, absolutely. So quite a few of our larger clients require us to be re-onboarded. So, typically a contract or MSA will have an expiry date on that.

It doesn’t mean that that’s the end of the relationship. Certainly, we hope not. But it just means that after that expiry date, we need to fill in some paperwork and be re-onboarded, so there’s a few checks that go through.

Now, typically that doesn’t take as long as the initial onboarding, but it’s a very good conversation to have with your agency if there is that requirement at the initial contracting stage, because then your agency can diarise when that re-onboarding needs to take place, get everything prepped in advance, which then just means that you can carry on working seamlessly together.

Tony: One tip from the top on that, I think, Fiona, that we’ve seen over the years. I know earlier on in this pod we shuddered a little bit when one of you mentioned this, a 50- or 60-page Master Services Agreement.

What’s quite handy is for the company that’s working with us is to ask their legal team “What has changed in this, if anything?” because sometimes it’s a few clauses here and there, which in 50 or 60 pages can be quite hard to spot, unless you get a bit of a heads up. So that’s a that’s really helpful on all sides.

Fiona: Yeah, definitely. Red lining and tracking changes. Absolutely.

Becky: We have had companies where they do just say we’re renewing the contract and you basically just hit Accept and it says that everything in the previous contract carries forward. But, from an agency point of view, as well as the companies we’re working at, this is the time where you would be looking at discussing any hourly rate changes or changes to your pieces of content and how you work together. This is the opportunity where you would be making those changes.

Daine: And so, what happens if it’s a short notice assignment and needs a quick turnaround that you’re being onboarded for, Fiona?

Fiona: A lot of it really just depends on how strict, shall we say, the client’s legal or procurement teams are. Sometimes a legal or procurement team will not allow any work to get started until certain boxes have been ticked ‒ sometimes even until the onboarding process is complete.

So that can be a pitfall, but we’re really flexible and we can do what our clients need us to do. But, I think it’s really important to make sure that onboarding is a priority. We all know that when there’s a lot of day-to-day work on, the prospect of going through a 50- or 60-page document and lots of sign offs can be a bit daunting, but a lot of our bigger clients, actually their legal and procurement departments, will insist that onboarding is complete before we can start any work.

So for our clients in marketing, that can be quite challenging. So we will always make sure onboarding is a priority and we’ll follow up with our colleagues and clients to make sure that the same is happening on their side as well.

Some clients do come to us with very urgent needs. We can take credit card payments if that is something that’s open with our clients. So there are ways around it. We’ll always be as flexible as we can be, but obviously we need to adhere to the rules of clients’ legal and procurement departments as well.

Tony: Just to add to that, Fiona, we always encounter work that’s extremely urgent and that’s just going to be a fact of doing business for any company. But there is a difference knowing that you’re about to engage in a big long-term relationship with an agency and therefore there’s a lot of onboarding and paperwork that needs to be right. A good agency will still, you know, bend over backwards just to get things started in all kinds of ways, so that the moment the ink is dry, boom, you are fully up to speed.

That’s one scenario. And we know that. We love that. It’s a little bit different when someone comes to you for a very ad hoc, discrete piece of work, and increasingly agencies will be fussy about that, because the risk factor is taking the risk of less reward. So I’m not saying that agencies won’t do that, but sometimes things like payment upfront is more important in those scenarios.

[Sound break]

Daine: What would be considered the biggest potholes that should be avoided then, and how would you, I guess, avoid them essentially, Becky?

Becky: I think the key thing is know your company’s procurement process. Know how many documents there are, what’s involved, and get a rough idea of how long it generally takes. It’s not unusual with really big companies that onboarding can take 3 to 4 months at times.

So like Tony mentioned, if this is a relationship that you’re going to value with your agency and it’s a long-term relationship, it will be worth it, you just need to be patient and you just need to persevere.

Tony: So to jump in there, I think there are probably two things, Daine, that I would add to what Becky said. One thing we haven’t talked about is companies using freelancers. So typically one person acting by themself, sometimes that’s really hard to use those people.

So I would say from quite early on, work out what’s necessary for your company to have and can a lone freelancer satisfy that. Now what often happens is, there’s a lone freelancer who is really good for some reason. It could be the expertise around the subject matter, it could be language, it could be a few different things. So quite often those people are then used through a third party, which is probably one of the agencies you have already have onboarded.

And my second point is to say, when that happens, just be aware of the legal chain of command. The legal – there’s probably a proper legal term for this – the order of things, because essentially your relationship is then with that agency, and if you’re not happy with the freelancer’s output, you don’t have a direct legal agreement with them. And by the way, the agency has the reverse dilemma in that they are being held accountable for someone’s work that isn’t their own. So think very carefully about using so-called go between bodies, which are often other agencies.

Daine: Fiona, over to you.

Fiona: I think transparency absolutely is key. Sometimes we do see contracts and there’s clauses in there that are tricky, perhaps, but having these open and honest conversations with our clients about these clauses will always end up in a good result. So if you can see it from both sides, that’s a good thing.

I think from my perspective, the most important thing is just making sure that onboarding is done as a priority. So don’t put it on the backburner. You can’t really get going in earnest with all of the work that you want to do until your agency’s been onboarded. So yeah, we’ll make it a priority as well. Needs to be a priority across the board.

Multiple voices: This is the Collective Content podcast.

Daine: So thanks to both our guests, Fiona and Becky, and thank you to you as well, Tony.

Fiona: Thank you.

Becky: Thank you, Daine.

Tony: Thanks a lot, Daine.

Daine: It’s been great chatting with you and getting into the thick of what makes tech marketing tick. And thank you to the listeners. We’ll be touching on ways of working with your new content agency in the next episode, so I guess following on from the step of onboarding, so please join us again for that. In the meantime, don’t forget you can always get more quality insights in Collective Content’s How to choose a content agency guide on our website. Links are in the description. Check it out and let us know your thoughts on Twitter/X and LinkedIn. So until next time, I’ve been Daine, take care.