Hey - it’s Tom.

Welcome to this week’s Tactical Tuesday edition of Ctrl+Shift, where we give you quick, no-bullshit tactics to overcome real business challenges.

Est. time to implement: 15 minutes.

Mandate a 'Business Results First' Reporting Structure

Are your agency reports a sea of confusing jargon like 'impressions' and 'clicks'? Do you get to the end of a meeting and still not know if you're winning?

This tactic forces your agency to change the conversation from "what we did" to "what we achieved," by putting the 3-4 business KPIs that matter most to you at the top of every report and meeting agenda.

Note from Tom: I once let an agency lead me on for six months with impressive-looking 'reach' and 'engagement' charts. It was a $30,000 lesson in tracking the wrong things, because while the charts looked good, our sales were flat. This 'Results First' structure is the simple change I enforced to make sure that never happened again. It's non-negotiable now; it forces the conversation to be about business impact from day one.

1. Define Your Business KPIs: Identify the 3-4 key business results you hired the agency to influence. This could be 'Number of Qualified Leads', 'Cost Per Qualified Lead', or 'Revenue from Marketing Channels'.

2. Send the Instruction: Send a clear email stating that, moving forward, all reports and meetings must start with these KPIs.

Here’s template you can use:

Subject: Quick update on our reporting structure

Hi [Agency Contact],

To ensure we're tightly aligned on business impact, I'd like to update our reporting format going forward.

Please begin every report and meeting by covering these 3 KPIs first:

1. [Your KPI #1, e.g., Number of Qualified Leads]

2. [Your KPI #2, e.g., Cost Per Qualified Lead]

3. [Your KPI #3, e.g., Revenue from Marketing Channels]

All the other activity metrics are useful context, but I want to start with these core results first.

Thanks, [Your Name]

3. Enforce the Structure: In your next meeting, if they start with activity metrics, gently guide the conversation back: "This is great context, but let's start with the business results first, as we discussed."

This will quickly train them to adopt the new structure - and get you the information you need to know what’s working.

That’s it for this edition, see you on Freedom Friday!

Cheers,

Tom