Getting agency-client contracts done right

Chip and Gini understand the excitement of closing a deal and the desire that agencies have to just get started with the creative process.

But it’s important to get the contracting process done right, including setting the best terms and having a signature before any work gets going.

In this episode, Chip and Gini talk about some of the common mistakes that they have seen agency owners make with contracts and how to go about it in the best way.

Key takeaways

* Chip Griffin: “You have to harness that excitement at the start of the relationship.”

* Gini Dietrich: “A little bit of an investment up front will be worth it in the long run.”

* Chip Griffin: “You are not in a position where your only choice is to sign or not sign the contract.”

* Gini Dietrich: “Not only do we have contracts in place before we do any work, but we require a deposit as well.”

Related

* 6 reasons why your agency needs client contracts

* The basics of agency-client contracts from a business perspective

* Sample Client Contract

View Transcript

The following is a computer-generated transcript. Please listen to the audio to confirm accuracy.

Chip Griffin: Hello and welcome to another episode of the agency leadership podcast. I’m Chip Griffin.

Gini Dietrich: And I’m Gini Dietrich.

Chip Griffin: Gini I think we need to go over the contract that we signed that governs how we conduct this podcast on a weekly basis. Let’s do it. Right after this.

Actually, now that I think of it, kind of like a lot of agencies, we don’t actually have a contract in place for this podcast.

Gini Dietrich: That is correct. So like a lot of agencies, we should probably, we probably don’t need one for this, but you should need one. You do need one for your agency.

Chip Griffin: But the horse has kind of left the barn on this one.

Right. We’re, we’re mere weeks away from the five year anniversary of the show’s first episode, five years. Yeah, that’s crazy. It is. It is crazy. How’s it been five years? Well, because we started in 2018 and now it is 2023. And so carry the… five, that’s crazy. I think the better question is how have we survived five years,

Gini Dietrich: but five years,

Chip Griffin: five years.

Yeah. But something like this, I mean, and actually in reality, when you have a podcast with multiple hosts, you probably should have some kind of paperwork for it, to be honest with you. I mean, it just, you know, probably should have something that just, you know, because if we were to go our own separate ways, who owns the archives and that kind of stuff?

I mean, at the end of the day, this is not like, you know, a hugely profitable podcast or anything like that. So we’re not going to bother having a fight over it, but you never know, right? It could, it could have spun up and become… could still spin up and become one of the top 10 podcasts in the world.