How to run a check-in that isn’t a status update

I sit in on the first check-in with most agencies that join Keepwell, and the same thing happens in about half of them. The account lead opens a deck, walks through last month’s numbers for twenty-five minutes, asks “any questions?” with four minutes left, and the client says no, this all looks great.

That is a status update. It is a perfectly good meeting, and it tells you nothing about whether the client will renew, because the client has not been asked to say anything.

The difference in one sentence

A status update is about the work. A check-in is about the relationship. You can tell which one you are in by who is talking: in a status update it is you, and in a check-in it should be them for at least half the time.

Before the call

Send the agenda two days ahead, and make it three questions, not three topics. “Scope” is a topic. “You have used about 60% of your hours for three weeks; is four videos a month still the right number?” is a question, and the client will arrive having thought about it.

Keep the monthly numbers out of it. Send those separately, the day before, with a line that says you will not be walking through them unless they would like to.

Three questions that work

These are the three we see most in agendas that end in a renewal. Adjust the words; keep the shape.

1. What has changed on your side since we last spoke? New boss, new budget, new priorities. Ask it first, and then wait. The pause after this question is where most of the useful information in the meeting arrives.
2. Here is something we noticed. What is behind it? Name one signal plainly, without apology or accusation: hours are down, approvals are slower, the standing call moved twice. You are not complaining. You are showing that you pay attention.
3. If we were starting this retainer today, what would you want in it? This is the renewal conversation, held early, while the scope can still change. Often the answer is a smaller retainer that fits. A smaller retainer that renews is worth more than a larger one that lapses.

One rule

The person who owns the relationship runs the call, and they do it without a deck. Not the agency owner, unless the owner is the account lead. Clients read a founder appearing on a routine call as a sign that something is wrong, and they are usually right.

After the call

Write down what you heard within the hour, in three lines, and send it to the client: what changed, what you agreed, what happens next and by when. Then do the thing you said, on the date you said.

That last part is not a formality. In our data a check-in that is held lifts a client’s score by a median of 9 points the following Monday. A check-in that is held and then followed by a change in scope, cadence or contact lifts it by 22. The call does not keep the client. What you do in the two weeks after it does.

How often

Quarterly is enough for a healthy retainer. Monthly, for the first three months of a new one. And once, right away, whenever two signals move in the same fortnight. That is the call most agencies skip, because it is the uncomfortable one, and it is the only one of the three that reliably changes the outcome.