How do you achieve post evaluation success

Once advertisers have collected their assessments, and analyzed the data, it's time to share comments with their agency and start taking steps to improve operations. Advertisers want to deliver in-depth, but constructive feedback to continue to enhance their relationship with their agencies.

Debrief meetings, action planning and socializing success are key elements to post evaluation success.

Debrief with Marketers and Agency

When providing a debrief, it is important to review the overall scores and any gaps in perception to help identify and clarify any inconsistencies in the relationship. If an advertiser marks the agency as a “2” on a particular topic, while the agency marks themselves a “4, a discussion regarding the discrepancy needs to occur to ensure that there is no blind spot (where the agency is unaware of the identified issues).

Both parties should also evaluate year-on-year trends, not just current year performance.   This helps identify if there is continuous improvement over the years, or if the relationship is flat (and needs revitalization) or even worse is weakening. 

It is important to review and discuss the comments as these will help you understand the nuances of the relationship through supportive verbatims regarding particular scores. If an assessor gives a rating of “2”, it is important to review the comments behind that score to understand that score was provided, and more importantly what needs to be done about it!

Develop a Mutually-Agreed Action Plan

Once the results have been shared, discussed and understood, advertisers should review the top line scores and comments, the overall gap analysis and identify the most important issues and opportunities in order to develop a focused list of say 1-3 actions that should be taken to create a more effective relationship.

Both parties should actively participate in action planning, and the development of this formal list of tasks should be considered the top priority post-survey.  Without action planning and action plan tracking, continuous improvement will not occur and the relationship will continue to have the same problems.

Celebrate and Socialize!

Once both parties have developed an action plan and worked on completing these tasks, there is a growing “2020” recognition of the need to celebrate and socialize the success and results on the program! This visibility is crucial to ensure continued support and backing from leadership, and also for team members to see the impact and importance of their survey feedback.  Celebrate the strengthening of the relationships, including more effective outputs, efficiencies realized , mutual savings achieved, and any improved process changes. 

Furthermore, socialize the results to agency leadership, agency team members, internal leadership and all relevant departments. This amplifies the belief that this is a valuable program, and that their input is being used and utilized effectively.

For additional information regarding Agency Evaluation, please visit www.decideware.com.