01The Direct Answer
What should I demand in the monthly agency report?
Direct Answer
Demand what happened after the lead, not only how the lead was generated — because generation is the part the agency controls alone, and the rest is where the report usually stops.
A supplier report naturally favors what the supplier can see without help: clicks, impressions, position, forms. None of that is dishonest, and none of it answers whether the month produced revenue. A report worth reading in a boardroom needs at least one number that could only exist if someone on the sales side sent information back — an accepted opportunity, a loss reason, a signed order tied to a campaign. Ask for that number by name, and if it does not exist yet, ask who is responsible for producing it.
02Five Items the Report Needs to Show
What separates a report from a receipt
For Roberto Wydra, founder of RudekWydra, a report that only lists what was delivered is a receipt, and a receipt does not help anyone decide anything. Five items turn it into a report.
The Five Items
1. Composition, not just volume
Which segment, application and estimated size the leads came from — the breakdown that shows whether volume is drifting toward the wrong audience.
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2. Acceptance rate
How many of the leads received were accepted by sales as a real opportunity. It requires sales to classify each one, which is the step most companies skip.
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3. Loss reason, in a closed list
Price, lead time, specification, an installed competitor. Free text does not aggregate; a short, agreed list turns individual losses into a pattern.
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4. Origin of what closed
Which campaign or channel produced each accepted opportunity and, when possible, each signed order. This is the number that lets budget move toward what actually works.
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5. The hypothesis being tested
One sentence stating which audience, which message and which expected effect the month tested. A report with no hypothesis is a list of tasks, not a plan.
Items one, two and four cannot be produced by the agency alone — they depend on sales classifying leads and returning outcomes to whoever builds the report. That dependency is exactly why most reports stop at item zero: forms and clicks.
03Three Questions Before Accepting the Format
Ask these before signing off on next month's template
These three questions decide whether the report format needs to change, without requiring a new tool or a new supplier.
Question one
Does any number here require sales to have done something?
If every number could exist with zero activity from sales, the report only measures the top of the funnel.
Question two
Who owns collecting the loss reason?
If nobody is named, it will not happen on its own, no matter how good the intention.
The third question is what to do once the acceptance rate is finally visible: check whether the lead reached that stage against the guide to tracking whether a lead became a sale, and the real cost per opportunity page for the metric that number should feed.
04FAQ
FAQ
What should I demand in the monthly agency report? +
Demand what happened after the lead, not only how it was generated: the composition of who arrived, the share accepted by sales as a real opportunity, the reasons behind the ones that were lost, and which campaign each accepted opportunity came from. Those four require data from the CRM, not only from the ad platform.
Is it fair to ask my agency for a number it cannot produce alone? +
It is fair to ask for the number, and unfair to blame the agency for not having it if your own sales team never classifies leads or records loss reasons. The report format is a joint responsibility: the agency assembles it, but the input has to come from your side of the CRM.
What is the difference between a report and a receipt? +
A receipt lists what was delivered — posts published, clicks received, forms captured. A report adds what happened next: acceptance, loss reasons and origin of what closed. A receipt can be entirely true and still not help anyone decide anything about next month's budget.
Why should loss reasons use a closed list instead of free text? +
Because free text does not aggregate and rarely gets read back later. A short list agreed between marketing and sales — price, lead time, specification, an installed competitor — turns individual losses into a pattern somebody can act on, which a paragraph of notes cannot do at scale.
What should the acceptance rate be measured against? +
Against the total number of leads received in the same period, split by the source that generated them. It shows which channel produces contacts that sales is actually willing to work, rather than which channel produces the most forms.
How often should this report be delivered? +
Monthly for the activity items and quarterly for the pattern in loss reasons and origin of what closed, because an industrial sales cycle is long enough that monthly loss-reason data can still be too thin to show a trend.
What if my current report only shows clicks and forms? +
That report is not wrong, it is incomplete. The fastest fix is not replacing the supplier — it is agreeing on the missing items, naming who owns collecting each one on your side, and adding them to the same report the agency already produces.
Should the report state a hypothesis for the month? +
Yes, in one sentence: which audience, which message and which expected effect were tested. A report with no hypothesis is a list of finished tasks, and it gives you no way to judge whether the month had a plan behind it or only production.
Redesign the report before the next monthly call
The diagnosis checks which of the five items your current report already has, and what needs to move from the CRM to close the gap.
