There is a classic scene by actor Chris Tucker in the movie Rush Hour where he asks:
“Do you understand the words that are coming out of my mouth?”
The movie reference is about a language barrier, but the business version is often a listening barrier. People hear the words. They may even repeat them back. But they don’t necessarily hear what those words are telling them.
Active listening, as you learn in management training, is not just about maintaining eye contact, paraphrasing what someone said, and asking follow-up questions. It’s recognizing the meaning behind the words and changing your behavior accordingly. In marketing, we often forget this. And nowhere is that clearer than in pitch rooms.
The Fortune 50 Pitch That Proved the Point
I was part of a major pitch shortly after our agency was acquired. A Fortune 50 brand was looking for a new Agency of Record. Their lead marketing executive made it crystal clear, well in advance of the meeting, that she needed a significant increase in advertising and marketing performance, and she outlined four critical KPIs:
- Increased revenue,
- Increased CRM leads,
- Increased ROAS,
- Reduction in expense-to-revenue ratios.
She told us those were assigned by the C-Suite and were non-negotiable, and asked how we would help them achieve them
The agency creative team put the KPIs in giant font on the board at the front of the room. Yet for the next six hours, speaker after speaker took the stage and delivered glossy capabilities decks, industry awards, ad reels, and generic platitudes. Not one tied the presentation back to the four metrics.
When my time came, I had 10 minutes left from a planned 30. I threw out the overview slides and focused on five things: the client’s stated goals, how search could contribute to each, proof that it was possible, what we would do, and what we needed from them. Then after me the analytics person had about 5 minutes to explain how we would track those metrics.
When he and I finished, the SVP leaned forward and said, “At least someone here understands why we’re all in this room.”
We didn’t win the AOR, but we did win a direct Search engagement with that team, and they stayed with us for a decade.
Expected Outcomes and Economic Value
This is where KPI chaining becomes not just helpful, but essential. KPI chaining is the practice of ensuring that every action, deliverable, and external partner directly supports a client’s measurable business objective—ideally one that rolls up to shareholder value. When done well, it creates clarity, accountability, and a clear line of sight between execution and impact.
Client-side marketing leaders are increasingly held to KPIs tightly linked to shareholder value: revenue growth, lead conversion, marketing efficiency, and cost savings. These are the numbers that determine bonuses, headcount, and even career trajectories.
But agency teams—often unintentionally—optimize for an entirely different set of goals: client retention, profitable delivery, automation, junior staffing leverage, and internal margin. They sell what they can deliver efficiently, not necessarily what will move the client’s strategic needle.
That’s where friction comes in. If vendors are truly extensions of your team, then you must force KPI chaining. That means:
- Making sure every outsourced deliverable maps directly to an internal KPI
- Rejecting work that doesn’t tie to a business outcome
- Holding partners accountable not just for activity, but for contribution
This isn’t just about governance. It’s about alignment.
Why SEO Projects Fail Quietly
Nowhere is this misalignment more visible than in SEO. Most projects begin with a flurry of tactical work—audits, keyword research, content gap analyses. This activity consumes the first quarter’s budget, generates hundreds of technical tickets, and delivers exactly zero wins in the short term.
Meanwhile, the client still has KPIs to hit. Leads need to grow. Traffic needs to rise. Conversions need to be measurable. But IT teams are overwhelmed, seasonal code freezes are in place, and marketing leadership sees no movement.
The project gets labeled “underperforming” before it even gets a chance.
Delivering Early Wins as Contribution Proof
One of the best ways to buy trust and time is to deliver early proof of the value of your contributions. That means identifying quick wins:
- High-ranking queries with low clicks (worked better before zero-click), but you get the idea
- Optimize SERP snippets to improve click-through rates
- Swap weak landing pages with high-converting alternatives
In one case, we replaced a PDF that ranked for a major query with the appropriate product page. The result? $30K in immediate revenue and $10K in saved paid search costs in just one month. That single action bought us runway for the more methodical audit work.
This idea connects with Epiphany 8: Showing the Love, where I explained the power of early wins in building credibility and momentum.
Align with Their Workflows
You must also sync your recommendations with the client’s operational reality:
- Tie into existing sprints
- Match their prioritization logic
- Offer recommendations in bite-sized, clearly referenced formats
Your job isn’t to flood them with 300 SEO tickets. It’s to help them take meaningful action that hits their numbers.
Final Thought: Contribution Is a Culture
Listening unlocks the opportunity to understand what matters to your client, but KPI chaining ensures your actions align with those priorities over time. It’s the connective tissue between vision and execution.
Contribution value isn’t a feature of good agency work—it’s the foundation. You can’t tack it on after the fact. If every vendor, deliverable, and internal team isn’t part of a unified KPI chain, you’ll get activity without impact.
Force the chain. Because in the end, it’s not the deliverables that get renewed. It’s the results.
Explore More Epiphanies
This article is part of my ongoing series, My Digital Marketing Epiphanies – realizations, hard-earned lessons, and mental models shaped by decades in the field.
For more insights, visit the full archive here: My Digital Marketing Epiphanies.
