Bridging the Gap: Where the ideal client and ideal agency overlap

As a business designer, I’m in the front row when meeting new clients. Recently, I started thinking about the “ideal client”, which led me to think about the “ideal agency”. This provided me with an introspective analysis as to how we, as an agency, used to approach things with clients, and at the same time, how clients expect to be approached by us. For example, when a client has a problem or challenge and reaches out for expertise and help, we share our skill set along with our approach and, if required, provide a ballpark solution in order to get them to sign and work with us.

This, and I say this without sarcasm, is where the actual fun starts. We start sprinting by filling the backlog with the product owner. Every other week we look for feedback from stakeholders during the review and move on the next sprint. Good chance things will work out for the client and us. But we learned through experiences there was still a gap to bridge.

In many ways it was still about us delivering what was asked and the client eagerly anticipating what we achieved after two weeks. This leads up to my point: the “ideal client” and “ideal agency” will occur simultaneously if they overlap each other by reducing the client’s anticipation from the get-go.

Gravity’s get-go-approach starts way before signatures are penned down on statements of work. When we meet a new client, we’re looking for a connection on a more personal level. From there, it’s all about understanding the client’s challenge and figuring out whether our agency is the right fit. At that point we stop guessing as we need to dig deep, asking questions and often time more questions. This is where we start bridging the gap.

Gravity’s get-go-approach starts way before signatures are penned down on statements of work.

In order to keep decreasing the gap, continuous validation with the client is key. To give you an example, at Gravity we validate our proposals with the client before we send it out as a proposal. We might even do this multiple times. It’s full of assumptions based on obtained knowledge from the extensive introduction. We want the people on the other end of the table to understand and own the content of the proposal just as much as we do. They might not be responsible for the budget, so when they have to convince the one that is, they should be as passionate about the forecasted deliverables as we are.

From this point, we’ve set the stage and move on. If the client is up for our approach and to start working together, we try to leave little to chance. Throughout our research, design, and development cycle, we aim to build a unity or oneness together with our clients. From our end, we expect product owners or stakeholders closely connected to the project to be involved and available for our pressing questions or quick validations when we have blanks to fill in. All of this leads to shared ownership and clear alignment. We strive to not surprise the client with something they might like but don’t really need.

We strive to not surprise the client with something they might like but don’t really need.

As stated before, we want to keep the client’s eager anticipation during sprint reviews to a minimum. Surprises can be nice, but can also lead to unmet expectations. We do enjoy surprising clients with our spot on designs and development of solutions. This is a result of overlapping minds where the “ideal client” and “ideal agency” exchange and validate ideas and insights consistently. That is how we meet expectations and from where we, as an agency, can excel.