From Vendor to Partner: Getting the Most Out of Your Agency Relationship

 “Stop buying deliverables. Start buying outcomes. When you and your agency align on why the work matters, scope stops ballooning, invoices stop surprising, and momentum finally sticks.”

Agencies inspire strong feelings. Some swear by them, others have the scars to prove it. In her talk, From Vendor to Partner, Tanesha Smith-Wattley, Head of Product and Delivery at Very Good Ventures, offered a clear, lived-in perspective from both sides of the table. Her argument is simple and disarming: the best agency relationships are not about managing suppliers. They are about co-owning results.

Reframing the relationship

Tanesha opens by puncturing familiar myths. No, your consultants do not want your job; most choose consulting for the variety and the challenge. No, the good ones are not trying to outshine you in front of your boss; their reputations compound through the relationships they maintain with you across companies and years. And yes, buzzwords exist, but serious partners learn your acronyms, absorb your culture and mirror your language until the team works as one.

Behind the mythbusting is a more important invitation. Agencies bring reps. They have seen similar problems again and again. The point is not to outsource judgment but to borrow experience. If you treat that experience as a threat, you will get shallow outputs. If you invite it into the centre of the work, you will get leverage.

Define outcomes before you define outputs

The most common failure mode begins with a seemingly crisp brief. “Ship the new checkout by Memorial Day.” Clear, time-boxed, measurable. Yet without an agreed definition of success, every additional screen or micro-interaction feels like a negotiation, every useful nudge looks like scope creep, and trust frays as the date slides.

Tanesha’s fix is deceptively straightforward. Replace the task with a target. Instead of “new checkout”, align on the behaviour and value you need to create. Perhaps first-time buyers who place five orders in 90 days show a 20% higher lifetime value. If that is true, then the work is not a set of screens but a ladder of commitments that helps a new customer return with confidence. Under that frame, a recovery email or a subtle prompt is not a change request. It is part of the job.

Two things follow. First, you need permission to iterate. Nobody nails it on day one, and discovery will refine the path. Second, you need predictable ways to pay for the journey. Weekly rates, monthly caps or clearly bounded work packets make costs boring and let the conversation focus on what is being learned and what is moving.

Plan for the reality of execution

Even the tightest strategy dissolves if execution realities are ignored. Tanesha paints a familiar scene. Copy is at capacity. Engineering changes the stack mid-project. Access is trapped in procurement. The team is capable but blocked; velocity drains away; everyone grows tense.

The solution is not heroics. It is mapping. Step back to a 30,000-foot view and chart every group that must touch the work, internal and external. Identify the access you will need, the systems that must be touched, the dependencies that will bite, and the places where testing or compliance will slow things down. This is not a negative exercise. Dependencies are where solutions live. Once they are in the light, you can sequence the work, agree on hand-offs, build feedback loops and give each team the notice required to plan.

Socialising that plan matters as much as drafting it. Bring the people together in real time to air anxieties and align on a shared definition of done. Co-conspirators are easier to work with than adversaries. When the room understands the path and feels heard, delayed approvals and surprise objections decline sharply.

Protect the vision from the swoop and the reset

There is a special pain in the late-stage parachute. A senior leader sees the work for the first time, questions the platform, and asks for a pivot that unpicks months. Tanesha does not dress it up. If someone has veto power, they must be present at the start. Otherwise, you are not launching a project; you are staging a future ambush.

Her guidance is crisp. Name the deciders. Document the North Star in writing and share it widely. Make the escalation path explicit before you need it. Then use the North Star as a test. When a new idea appears, the question is not who thought of it. It is whether it moves you closer to the goal you have already agreed on. Just as importantly, give your agency air cover. Partners make better decisions when they are not left to defend the plan alone in the corridor outside the boardroom.

Scope changes without the fight

Change is inevitable. The choice is whether it becomes a fight or a funnel. Tanesha’s practical tool is a living roadmap. Capture every hope, dream and wish raised in reviews, hallway chats and leadership meetings, and place them in time. People relax when they can see their idea on the page, even if it is later than they hoped. When something truly must come forward, make the trade explicit. If the confetti cannon goes in, what comes out? Clarity lowers temperature. Trades keep momentum.

Billing that enables partnership

There is no single correct commercial model. The right one depends on the work and the risk tolerance. Fixed fee or capped monthly arrangements calm nervous stakeholders and prevent surprise invoices, provided change is handled gracefully. Time and materials fit when the path is known and you are augmenting capacity. Hybrids are common, such as a time-boxed discovery at a fixed price followed by capped T&M for build. The thread that ties them together is transparency. Spend should be traceable to a learning or a result, not to a mysterious line item nobody remembers requesting.

Value can be broader than cash. Co-marketing, case studies and joint PR can be meaningful currencies for both sides. When you plan those in from the start, you strengthen the relationship and extend the impact of the work.

Turning sceptics into allies

Sometimes you inherit bias. A stakeholder burned by a previous vendor, or wary of consultants in principle. Tanesha’s method is to pull them closer, not push them away. Book the one-to-one. Ask where the friction comes from. Show respect for their expertise and make them shine where they are strongest. Cultural fluency helps here. If you adopt their vocabulary and rituals, you lower barriers and raise trust. Over time, the sceptic becomes a sponsor, not because you argued them into it, but because you showed you were safe to work with.

Why it matters now

AI is speeding up production and analysis, but it is not fixing alignment. A perfect prototype is useless if legal finds it late, security withholds access, or a senior sponsor rewrites the brief in week ten. The durable advantage is not more output. It is fewer unforced errors. Teams that align on outcomes, map execution, protect the vision and handle change with grace will ship more of the right things, faster, with less drama.

Tanesha’s talk lands on a humane truth. Vulnerability accelerates delivery. When you tell your partners what you fear, where you are blocked and how success will really be judged, you give them permission to carry the problem with you. Agencies stop ticking boxes and start solving for the number that matters. In turn, you stop managing suppliers and start building a coalition.

The question she leaves hanging is the one that reframes the whole relationship. Would you rather have a vendor who follows orders or a partner who helps you win?

Want to catch the full talk?

You can find it here on UXDX:  https://uxdx.com/session/from-vendor-to-partner-getting-the-most-out-of-your-agency-relationship/

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