Ask twelve questions and score the answers, weighted. The five that matter most: who does the work, how many accounts your manager carries, what market size they estimate for your category, what would make them tell you to stop, and what happens on the day you leave.
The short version
- Score the answers, do not collect them. Weighted criteria turn three pitch calls into one comparable number.
- Four questions are disqualifying. A vague answer on any of them ends the conversation regardless of the total.
- Market sizing comes before pricing. A quote that arrives before anyone has looked at your category is a quote for hours.
- Ask what they analyze besides reviews and sales rank. That answer separates operators from tool subscribers.
- Read the exit clause on the way in. Notice period, account ownership, and handover, in writing.
Use a scorecard, not a gut feeling
Sit with the same twelve questions on every call, write the answers down verbatim, and score each from 0 to 3 afterwards. Zero means they did not really answer. Three means they answered with a number, a method, or an example. Multiply each score by the weight, add them up, and the shortlist ranks itself.
The reason for the discipline is simple. Pitch calls are performances, and the firm with the best presenter usually wins a gut-feel comparison. Written answers with weights attached are much harder to charm your way through.
| Weight | Question | What a three-point answer contains |
|---|---|---|
| 10 | Who does the work, and where do they sit? | Named roles, employed by the firm, no subcontracting layer |
| 10 | How many brands will my account manager carry? | An actual ratio, not "it depends on the account" |
| 10 | How big is my market, and how did you size it? | A revenue figure for the category and the method behind it |
| 10 | What would make you tell me to stop selling a product? | Named criteria and a defined window, decided before launch |
| 10 | What does the contract restrict me from doing? | A short, specific answer, ideally nothing beyond non-solicit |
| 8 | What is included at my tier, and what is billed separately? | A written scope with pass-through costs listed apart from fee |
| 8 | What are the notice terms, and what happens on exit? | Notice in days, account and asset ownership stated plainly |
| 8 | What do you analyze besides review count and sales volume? | Return rate, rating gap, growth trajectory, segment dynamics |
| 8 | Who owns the creative, campaigns, and data? | Client IP on payment, with the handover format described |
| 6 | How will you access my account? | Granted user permissions on your account, revocable by you |
| 6 | What does reporting look like and how often? | A cadence and a format, written and live, not a dashboard link |
| 6 | What will the first 30 days produce? | Specific deliverables and a measurable change, not onboarding |
The four that are disqualifying
Questions one, two, four, and five carry a veto in my version of this scorecard. A firm can be weak on reporting cadence and still be excellent. A firm that cannot tell you who does the work, or what would make them recommend stopping, is telling you something structural.
The market sizing question deserves its own note because it is the one buyers skip. We hold a $2 million a year minimum market size before we take a brand into a category, because below that there is not enough revenue to capture profitably once customer acquisition cost is accounted for. You do not have to use our floor. You do have to make somebody state a floor and defend it, because a firm with no size threshold will happily take a fee to work a category that cannot pay for the work.
The validation question sits underneath it. Ask what a first phase looks like in units and dollars. Ours is 200 units and $5,000 to $10,000, with up to four products tested at once, and scale only once rating, conversion rate, and acquisition cost are proven. Any structured answer is fine. No structured answer is the finding.
Questions about the money that are not about the price
The price is the easiest thing to compare and the least informative. These four questions tell you more:
- Does the fee change if my ad spend goes up? If yes, the firm earns more when you spend more, and the conflict appears exactly when discipline is needed.
- Is there an onboarding fee? Ask what work it pays for that the first month does not.
- What is the billing schedule? Ours invoices the first and last month upfront, which is worth knowing before it appears on an invoice rather than after.
- What would you charge to do less? A firm with a single all-in scope should say so. A firm that quietly unbundles under pressure has a scope that was never fixed.
I ran data and technology at BRANDED and at Moonshot Brands, two large Amazon aggregators, which meant sitting on the buying side of these conversations rather than the selling side. The proposals that turned out well were the ones where the numbers arrived after the analysis. That order is the single most reliable tell I know.
What a pitch deck will not tell you
Case studies are selected. Every firm shows the account that tripled, and none show the account that was quietly offboarded in month four. The way around it is not to demand more case studies, it is to ask what happened to the last three clients who left and why. The answer, and the willingness to give one, is worth more than a deck.
The other omission is attention. Capability is a page on a website, attention is how many hours a week a human spends inside your account. That is why the ratio question carries a heavy weight. A firm with 200 clients and a large team may be excellent, and it may also mean your brand is one of many on somebody's Tuesday.
Related answers
- Questions to ask before hiring an Amazon agency
- Amazon agency red flags to watch out for
- Contract terms to negotiate with Amazon agencies
- What does a good Amazon account audit include
- Amazon agency pricing and economics: the complete guide
Run all twelve questions at us before you sign anything, at Flapen.
