“Tell us,” the client said to the ad agency executives surrounding him, “how are we going to increase sales on what you are proposing? When will it come in? How will you prove it? You want us to commit six crores in advertising and production costs, and we want to know what we are going to get for it.”

Client demands used to dwell on headlines and image, readership scores and calls to action, with not a word said about creating sales. Today, however, many agency-client discussions concentrate on sales results. And it will stay that way in future given the present crisis. Companies are less willing to invest 2 per cent to 5 per cent of sales in campaigns that do not point directly to a revenue stream.

Life is not as simple as it was, blaming the agency for a lack of “creativity.” Marketing managers and agencies alike struggle on the bleeding edge of accountability. When campaigns fail, senior management is just as inclined to fire the marketing manager as it is to dismiss the ad agency. The threadbare excuse, that budgets are so anaemic they preclude measurement, does not cut it anymore.

At the root of the accountability problem, agencies and the marketing managers who hire them either are unwilling, or think they are unable, to prove conclusively the value of advertising. Business-to-business advertising results – and to an extent consumer advertising results as well – can be measured, if managers want to. Instead, either the product manager won’t give the agency access to sales lead and selling activity information, or the agency does not even ask.

When clients launch campaigns, they should specify exactly how they will hold their agencies accountable, and then ensure that someone will collect the requisite data. For example, comparing databases of enquiries to booked orders or, at the worst, warranty cards, is an easy, inexpensive, and statistically sound metric for media advertising, direct mail, trade shows and the like. Then agencies and marketing managers have the chance to survive the accountability pressure cooker.

Sophisticated business and industrial marketers use a number of signposts to indicate the initial and long-term performance of a marketing communications programme, which could be adapted by consumer marketers with suitable amendments:

Granted, sales derive from many sources besides marketing communications, such as referrals, past customers, and hard-core cold calling. But what salesperson wouldn’t rather pursue someone who shows an interest and is qualified to buy?

Every inquiry that comes through the “promotional portals of entry” into the company – phone, fax and reader service cards – must be captured, tracked, profiled for potential, fed into the analytical data base and, of course, guided to someone who contacts the prospect to sell the product.

Maintaining the database, either in-house or through an outsourced service, is critical because, as that old truism goes, if you can’t measure it, you can’t manage it.

Agencies that ask for the right information, survive. And clients who have it survive with them. Any agency today that is content to simply “do creative” without measuring sales and sales-lead performance will continually lose good clients and be forced to struggle and inevitably decline with weak clients.

Businesses that do not give their agencies access to actual sales information, or permission to re-contact enquirers and determine sales results, will never learn the value of the communications rupees they spend.

Most agencies are up to the challenge. They welcome opportunities to measure the marketing muscle in their work. They have confidence in their creative approach, their ability to buy right, and the timing of their recommendations. When it comes to being on the bleeding edge of accountability, give your agency the opportunity to survive. Let it prove the value of its product.

The writer is CEO and managing director of CustomerLab Solutions