Strategic counsel has become a hot topic in the agency world, and there is a reason for it. AI has made it possible for clients to handle much more execution themselves. Work they once handed to an agency can now be done in-house or with a tool, often well enough for what they need.
This doesn’t mean agencies are becoming less valuable. It means the source of their value is changing.
When clients come to an agency today, they are increasingly looking for someone who can help them decide what to do, understand why it matters, and recognize what they may be missing. They do not only need another pair of hands. They need a better way to think about the problem.
That leaves me with a question I keep returning to: What does strategic counsel actually look like in this new era?
My answer comes from having sat on both sides of the table. I spent years working in the agency world, and now I coach agency owners. Over time, I began to notice that the qualities that make strategic counsel valuable are remarkably similar to the qualities that make coaching effective.
There are four of them:
- Quality of advice
- Coaching ability
- Quality of focus
- Accumulated relational wisdom
These qualities reinforce one another. Strong advice will not get very far if you can’t help a client understand or act on it. A trusted relationship can’t compensate for advice that has never been tested. Even the right strategy will struggle to create results if everyone is focused on the wrong problem.
Quality of advice: Have you actually done it?
The quality of your advice comes down to experience, judgment, and your ability to produce outcomes. Have you done the thing you are advising someone else to do? Have you created the result they are looking for, and have you done it more than once?
On the agency side, this has always been one of the easiest forms of value for clients to recognize. They want proof that you have delivered for organizations like theirs.
Coaching works the same way. Agency owners want guidance from someone who has been in the seat, understands the pressures of running an agency, and has gotten results.
This is often what gets someone hired, and it is only the beginning.
Coaching ability: Can you uncover what is really happening?
Coaching ability is the resourcefulness to keep digging until the real issue comes into view.
In a done-for-you agency, that digging looks different than it does in a coaching relationship, but it serves a similar purpose.
Agencies cannot build their future value around producing more things than AI can produce.
The greater opportunity is in the thinking that surrounds the output: deciding what should be created, identifying what is not working, and connecting the work to the larger business problem.
In coaching, I do that digging alongside the client. I help agency owners tap into their own thinking and pair it with advice drawn from my experience. The biggest part of the work is recognizing what keeps getting in their way, then helping them look more closely at the obstacle or find a practical way around it so they can stop circling the same problem.
Quality of focus: Are you solving the right problem?
Quality of focus is the one element that requires the client’s full participation.
For an agency’s clients, that means being willing to examine the root of a problem instead of repeatedly treating the symptom. It also means trusting the agency enough to let it look beneath the original request.
Brand is one of the clearest examples of this right now. In my conversations with people closely watching the industry change, brand recognition is becoming a larger part of the equation. A client may see every growth challenge as a lead-generation problem, but capturing more leads does not guarantee that those leads will convert. Brand equity still shapes whether people recognize the business, trust it, and choose it.
You can see this in the way people search, including when they use tools such as ChatGPT or Claude. One person might ask for the best running shoe for a marathon. Someone with an existing brand preference asks for the best Nike or Hoka shoe for a marathon. Brand loyalty changes the question itself.
The ROI question will always matter, but the longevity of that return deserves just as much attention. That usually requires looking beyond the immediate request. When clients treat an agency only as a pair of hands, execution is often the most they will receive.
Focus matters just as much in coaching. The sessions that move fastest are usually the ones where a client brings forward the issue that is genuinely holding them back. When we spend the entire conversation on a surface-level problem, we can leave with several ideas without creating meaningful movement.
Strategic counsel helps a client identify where their attention will have the greatest impact.
Accumulated relational wisdom: What does history allow you to see?
Relational wisdom develops through time, attention, and repeated experience with someone. The longer you work together, the more quickly you can recognize patterns and find a path forward.
For an agency, this begins with understanding how the client’s organization works, how decisions get made, and how the people involved tend to operate. That knowledge becomes even more valuable when the agency specializes. If you understand the client’s industry, you don’t need to spend every engagement relearning the context or asking them to explain things you should already know.
In coaching, relational wisdom means knowing how a client responds to challenges, where they tend to hesitate, and what helps them move forward. My niche is agency owners, and my years in the agency world give me the industry depth to get to the heart of an issue more quickly.
This is where specialized agencies have a meaningful advantage. Relational wisdom is built through proximity and focus. It cannot be generated instantly, and it is difficult to replicate.
Small agencies are built for this shift
When I moved from leading an agency into coaching, I found myself relying on many of the same muscles. The ability to listen closely, find the real problem, apply experience, and help someone move forward has always been part of the work.
Running a small, specialized agency turned out to be excellent training for advisory work.
That’s why I see small agencies as particularly well equipped for where agency value is heading. Their advantage is not their ability to produce the greatest volume of work. It’s their ability to bring depth, closeness, context, and judgment to the work that matters.
If you’re thinking about positioning your agency as a strategic partner, consider which of these four qualities is already strongest for you. Then ask which one needs to become more intentional.
