What to Ask Before You Hire an Agency, a Coach, or a Fractional Anybody

Take this into the call. You do not need all of it. Six good questions will do more than an hour of nodding. No single flag is a dealbreaker, but two or three together is a pattern, and patterns are the thing to watch.

Red flags

• The person selling is not the person who will do the work
• The proposal opens with deliverables instead of with your business
• They agreed with everything you said
• They cannot name one engagement that went badly
• The contract has no exit, or the exit costs the full term
• Nobody asked to see your numbers
• Urgency that comes from their calendar, not your business
• You cannot tell what you would own at the end

Green flags, which mostly feel like friction

• They told you no, or not yet, and explained what would change that
• They asked questions you could not immediately answer
• They offered a small paid first step
• They can name what they will not do
• They put the sequence in writing before the deliverables
• They talked about your client, not about your brand

The questions

About the work

• Who is doing this, and how many hours a week of theirs do I get?
• What does week one look like, and what exists at the end of month one?
• What do you need from me, and how much of my time is that?
• What are you not going to do?

About the money

• What does this cost all in, including anything I buy separately?
• What is the shortest version of this I could start with?
• If I want out at month three, what happens?

About their track record

• Tell me about one that did not work. What did you learn?
• Who is a client the size of my business, not the size you wish it was?
• Can I talk to someone you worked with a year ago, not last month?

About how we will know it worked

• What number are we trying to move, and what is it today?
• When will we know if this is working, and what would tell us it is not?
• If we hit month four and nothing has moved, what happens then?

The last question is the one that matters most. A person who has a real answer has been there before. A person who cannot imagine it has not done this long enough to have been wrong yet.

Ask before you sign.