Agency churn often starts with a failure to understand the business

Agency churn is often discussed as a performance problem: missed targets, weak execution or a tactic that stopped working. Tim Kilroy’s homepage puts a different explanation in the foreground. It says 70% of CMOs who fire their agency do so because they do not feel the agency understands their business.

That figure is a claim made on the company’s site, not a complete dataset presented with its methodology. It should not be treated as a universal benchmark for agency churn. But the underlying point is useful to agency operators: a client can see activity and still conclude that the agency does not understand what the business needs.

For a retainer, that gap matters. Delivery can be competent while the relationship becomes harder to defend. If a client cannot connect the work to its business priorities, the agency is left arguing for tactics rather than demonstrating a shared view of the problem.

Use the quarterly review to test alignment

A client quarterly business review should do more than list completed work and report channel metrics. It is a chance to check whether the agency and client still agree on the business problem, the constraints around it and the signals that would count as progress.

That means asking specific questions. What changed in the client’s priorities since the last review? Which market or internal constraint is shaping the work? What does the client consider a useful outcome now? Which decisions need to be made before the next quarter? The answers may change the plan. They may also confirm that the current work is still aimed at the right problem.

These questions are not a substitute for performance reporting. They put performance in context. A campaign metric has more meaning when both sides know which business goal it is supposed to support and what could limit the result.

There is a practical test for the meeting: can the agency explain the client’s current priorities in the client’s own terms, and can the client explain why the agency’s work matters to them? If either side struggles, the review should surface that before the next renewal or budget decision.

Find the gap before the account is at risk

The same discipline belongs in sales and discovery. Agencies that lead with services and deliverables can move quickly into scope, but they may leave important business context untested. A discovery conversation should establish what the prospect is trying to change, what is getting in the way and how the organization will judge progress.

That is also why call review can be useful. Listen for whether the agency asked about business conditions and constraints, or moved straight to pitching its familiar approach. A gap in understanding may begin during the first conversation, then follow the account into delivery.

For a more detailed starting point, a business-first discovery call framework lays out a way to uncover the desired change before discussing tactics or price. Later, a structured review of sales calls can help identify where qualification, discovery or next steps are breaking down.

In delivery, account teams can turn the client’s answers into a short working record: current priorities, known constraints, agreed measures and open questions. This is not a claim that every agency needs another document. It is a way to make the shared understanding visible and easier to revisit when the work or the client’s situation changes.

Systems matter more than a single save

When an account feels strained, a new tactic can be tempting. But a tactical change will not resolve a disagreement about the client’s goals or what success means. The order matters: clarify the business context, agree on the problem, then decide whether the work or the measurement needs to change.

That emphasis on diagnosing before prescribing is also the organizing idea behind Kilroy’s agency-growth offering. The site describes DemandOS for pipeline generation and authority content, SalesOS for repeatable sales processes and team growth, and Agency Studio group coaching and community. Agency Studio is listed at $399 per month; Agency Studio+ includes one-on-one coaching and is listed at $997 per month. The site also lists diagnostic tools including Call Lab, Discovery Lab, Visibility Lab and WTF Assessments.

Those offers sit in the education and coaching corner of agency growth, rather than representing a new churn metric or a reported market-wide pricing move. For agency builders, the practical lesson is more direct: retention is not only a delivery question. It is also a test of whether the client believes the agency understands the business and can explain how its work fits.

Make that test routine. Use the quarterly review to check the client’s priorities, revisit the measures that matter and name the unresolved questions. When the shared picture is clear, the agency has a stronger basis for deciding what to do next. When it is not, that is the work to fix before proposing another tactic.