There is one evil that haunts the days and even the nights of most agency workers: the timesheet.

Employees avoid it at every opportunity, but eventually, time -- or the poor soul in charge of collecting timesheets -- catches up with them. Some agencies have even gone as far as rewarding employees with free beer if they submit their reports on time, which isn't such a bad idea. 

Let's set the scene: It's a snowy day in Erie, Pennsylvania, during Christmas break of 2010. 

Ten of my eleven siblings were home for the holidays, and I was happy to be with family. Christmas break was filled with family time, working out, and running my startup web hosting business, which would quickly evolve into the agency GuavaBox.

Agency and client relationships have historically built, and will continue to build, wildly successful campaigns and brand experiences: Apple’s promise that 1984 won’t be like 1984, Volkswagen's lemon, Nike’s challenge, Dos Equis’ Most Interesting Man.

When things are good, they’re great.

To create a culture where ideas rule, you must become a Creative Leader. There is a premium on originality. Building creative environments, inspiring creative ideas, finding creative solutions -- these are the signatures of peak performing organizations. I call this the SuperVUCA challenge, the drive to create outcomes that are V-ibrant, U-nreal, C-razy, and A-stounding. In a SuperVUCA world, the crazies reign and the speed demons rule.

In the next year, 55% of clients expect to increase their digital marketing spend, specifically in the areas of digital experience, content development, and digital projects, found a recent report from the Society of Digital Agencies (SODA).

The agency industry has long relied on a culture of long hours. Employees, veterans, and TV shows romanticize the late nights spent finalizing a pitch, the spark of an idea fueled by lack of sleep that won over a client, and weekends spent creating noteworthy campaigns.

Why is it that some agencies do top-notch strategic work for their clients, but have a hard time doing it for themselves? Always crunched for time, agencies are prone to falling back on language that is a bit too broad, a bit too generic, and a bit too safe when it comes to their brands. The ability to spell out what makes your agency special is critical for new business, and they have the talent needed to pull this off. So why is it that so many agencies appear to be interchangeable?

It was right in front of your nose for so long ...

It should have been as clear as day. After all, you could feel this moment coming. There was something in your bones that told you everything was wrong.

Why didn't you do something about it?

What's your reaction when you get an invite for a brainstorming meeting?

Most agency people can quickly rattle off a list of all the annoying, frustrating, and infuriating things clients do. Stories of clients provide most of the lighthearted fodder for conversations over 5:00 beers and late nights at the office. 

But as in most relationships, there are two sides to every story, and agencies can be just as guilty of annoying their clients. 

The client discovery process is a key phase in the beginning of a new relationship. It helps to build trust and sets the stage for any successful project. 

When facing a fastly approaching deadline, it's easy to feel paralyzed. At first, you had so many ideas. Now, there's no spark of any creativity in sight. You need an idea -- and fast. 

It's always exciting to start a new project. The team is ready to go. You want to provide your client with customer service that matches the quality of your work. But sometimes, clients can make that challenging.

Not long after a project starts, the requests start coming in for "little tweaks." Things will "only take a minute." On occasion, you also get the "let's rethink this strategy" musings from client-side personnel coming in late to the project. Clients think these twists and turns are all part of the original project scope -- and of course, the budget.

Many people believe that marketing and advertising has changed so much that looking toward the past is futile. Innovation, new technology and tools, and disrupting ideas are the focus of both headlines and boardroom conversations. 

What can we even learn from history that would be relevant for today?

It's a statement said casually without much consideration. We leave a new business pitch or a first client meeting and throw it out as a final goodbye. It's the period at the end of a sentence. 

It's nice to meet you.

But, is it true?

Most of us running marketing agencies come from any background other than traditional business. Some of you are creative types, others have technical backgrounds, and if you’re like me, I’m 100% marketing. So when it comes to business, we’re all learning how to help our companies run smoothly and make money. If we can’t make money, then there’s no point in doing what we do.

The color you use to communicate a message, a value, or a brand can either support that idea or detract from it. 

Your daily to-do list is packed with a number of priorities: meet with a client, review a proposal, interview candidates for a position, discuss quarterly sales targets, and call your accountant. 

Good communication is the foundation of any good agency-client relationship. But as with any kind of relationship, certain types of communications are more challenging than others. Sending an email to let a client know that a recently launched landing page has a conversion rate that's through the roof -- that's easy. Having to send (another) email asking the client to give her approval on the latest design comp -- less easy.

We pay attention to the fonts and colors in design, yet equally important is the shape of a logo or a product. When our memory fails us on the name of a brand, we can still "see" the outline of the logo or the shape of the familiar packaging. 

What is the best method for new business success?

In the past 30 minutes, how many times have you looked at your phone, refreshed your email, or checked a chat notification? 

We have more tools to help us be productive than ever before, yet these tools can also be a source of distractions, leading people to feel more stressed, have more anxiety, and spend more time completing tasks outside of normal work hours. 

The agency business is in a near-constant state of change. Browse through half a dozen agency websites and odds are you’ll see adjectives such as “nimble” and “agile” used on almost every one. Change and its close cousin disruption are now embraced as positives attributes by clients.  

How do you find new clients? 

This is a common question agency execs ask. But it's not the right question. 

Instead, you should be asking: How do new clients find my agency?

The agency allergy to measuring work has a long history, but we only have to go back to the early 1960s to find a grand figure who not only wrote about it but may have influenced several generations of agency executives.

The grand historical figure is none other than Bill Bernbach.

As a marketing agency, you practice what you preach and have well-defined ideal client profiles and personas, right? Great. Glad we got that out of the way.

Recruiting and hiring a designer, especially if you are not a designer, can be a confusing process. While you might have an eye for good design, how do you know if a person's portfolio is actually good? What skills should the designer have to be successful in the role? What is the mindset of the person who will be successful in the role?

A career can be mapped out like a journey. Sometimes, people purposefully set out to go down a certain path. While others, when looking back, are often surprised how different jobs and interests led them to build a career. 

"Irrelevant" doesn't sound good. But it is -- for you, your agency, and your employees. Stay with me here.

If you're necessary to the agency's success, that means your agency is at risk of failure. Certainly its longevity is at risk. No one is indestructible. We all get sick. We all have emergencies. We all need to take a break sometime. Yes, even you. If your agency can't function as expected when you're not around, that's like building your agency on top of a fault line. You don't know when the big one is coming, but you have no fail-safes in place to protect your agency when it does.

One of the major setbacks for an agency in achieving growth is unpredictable cash flow. Even when your team is working at full capacity with client work and there's new business coming in the door, cash flow can still be a problem.

No matter what type of agency you manage, hiring is one of those challenges that cannot be avoided. Hiring the right person is expensive. And hiring the wrong person -- or the right person at the wrong time -- can be even costlier.

It's said that emotion has no place in business. It's not personal.

Yet, emotions influence decision-making and the ability to trust. Building an emotional connection is a key aspect in building a long-term relationship. 

During the 1950s and 60s, there emerged two schools of thought on adverting. One side, led by Rosser Reeves and David Ogilvy (though his work rarely reflects this) was focused on selling by determining a unique brand position, reinforcing this unique message, and measurement and testing. Advertising was a science. 

On the other side of the debate was Bill Bernbach, who was more focused on using creativity to attract attention, and then sell.

What's the #1 thing clients value in their agency partners? 

It's not results, strategy, or even great creative.

According to the Society of Digital Agencies, it's expertise in emerging trends. 

How does a brand become a household name?

A great product, innovative marketing, loyal customers, and smart business decisions are all factors. But sometimes, there's that extra element -- what could be called a combination of luck and opportunity. 

If your agency has found success in running inbound marketing programs and generating leads, then you’ve likely experienced a surprising problem: You’ve got too many leads to follow up with and manage.

As your inbound marketing programs have scaled, it has likely become more difficult for your new business director or sales rep to make contact, qualify, and nurture these leads to the point where they are ready for a sales conversation or a proposal.

I absolutely despise email.

Perhaps I’m being a bit dramatic here, but the truth is that for most of us, this obligatory form of communication is a necessary evil for survival in business. But there's too much of it -- more 205 billion (that's with a capital B) emails are sent per day -- and it's too easy to lose track of communication, notes, attachments, and reminders. 

Maurice Levy, the chair and CEO of the French holding company Publicis, is reputed to have said about new business, “You never really know why you win; you never really know why you lose.” I have no idea if Levy actually said this, but no matter. I believe it to be true.

You have likely heard the success stories and benefits of becoming a more Agile agency. But hearing the stories and actually putting Agile processes into practice at your agency are two totally different things.

Building a strong agency brand is how you get more referrals -- the most important source of new business for any agency. 

But this takes time and focused effort, which can be challenging for many agencies as working on the business is usually sidelined when client issues and projects pop up. 

Actress Carrie Fisher (AKA Princess Leia) once wisely remarked: “Everything is negotiable. Whether or not the negotiation is easy is another thing.”

In agencies of all sizes, we purchase countless technology tools and partner with numerous vendors to better serve our clients. The problem is, few shops teach this all-important diplomacy skill before throwing you to the wolves.

To quote Advertising Age: "It's a good time to be in the agency game." Ad agency revenue is up, especially for those agencies focusing on digital services.

The industry is growing. Is your agency growing with it?

The competition for marketing and technical talent is only increasingly as agencies battle startups, brands, publishers, and a host of other industries when recruiting. 

Even more concerning is the turnover rate in the industry, which has increased by 10% in the past year and is growing faster than other industries according to the 4A's.

No project is an unmitigated success or failure. Regardless of the proportion between success and failure, there are always lessons to be learned. Thus, the project post-mortem.

There is no roadmap for being more creative more often. 

Yet, it's something we should all try to better understand. Producing great creative ideas -- great work -- is what sets apart one agency from another. Fostering a culture of creativity in your agency is the best way to attract new business and better clients. 

Everywhere you look in marketing you hear the term “KPI” being thrown around. With more and more ways to measure activity, it seems everything has a KPI now. Just the other day I found myself discussing my 2-year-old’s preschool KPIs. And how often do you sit in a meeting and see that a project has dozens of KPIs? Just because you can measure it doesn’t make it a KPI, nor does it mean that it’s even the thing you wanted the customer to do in the first place.

It can be difficult for an agency to take an unbiased look at their internal workings to see if things could be done better -- if efficiencies and improvements could be made. 

To you, that overly complex workflow process works for your team, even if everyone hates it. You’ve never been able to piece together a system to complete that one type of project, so it must be impossible. Don’t even get me started on the mess that is your project management tool. It’s a pain, but it’s your little pain.

Every prospect has a unique approach when selecting an agency -- a “secret sauce” he or she uses to evaluate potential partners.

Surprised by this?

So were we. We just completed a study in which we talked to 500 CMOs and business owners about their decision-making processes when hiring and firing agencies. Not only did we learn more about what a secret sauce for agency selection is, but we also learned the personal recipes of 92% of respondents. And what we learned will dramatically change the way your agency pitches new clients.