Most agencies prepare for the chemistry meeting like it's a shorter version of the final presentation. That's the wrong frame. The chemistry meeting is where the buyer decides whether they can work with you — not whether you're capable.
Capability was evaluated in the RFP response. The credentials deck got the agency in the room. By the chemistry meeting, every agency on the shortlist has passed a baseline competency threshold.
The chemistry meeting is asking a different question: Is this the team we want talking to our CEO, managing our crisis, and sitting in our war room at 2am?
What Buyers Are Actually Evaluating
Most buyers can't fully articulate what they're looking for in a chemistry meeting — but they know it when they see it. Here is what's being assessed, whether the buyer names it or not:
Is This the Real Team?
The question every experienced buyer is asking from the moment the agency walks in: are the people in this room the people who will actually run the account?
If the agency sends its chairman and CEO to a chemistry meeting for a mid-market retainer — and those people will never touch the account — sophisticated buyers notice. The tell is usually a junior person in the corner who hasn't been introduced, or a senior person who keeps deferring to someone else on basic account-level questions.
What to do: Bring the account team. If senior leadership attends, explain exactly what their role will be post-award — and at what frequency. Don't bring people to the room who won't be in the relationship.
Agencies that have done real preparation ask specific questions — about the buyer's internal dynamics, about what's been tried before, about what the budget is really meant to solve. Agencies that haven't prepare a set of generic questions that could apply to any client in any category.
Buyers register the quality of the questions immediately. Good questions signal that the agency already understands the problem better than the brief captured it. Generic questions signal that the deck was built from the brief and nothing more.
What to do: Before the chemistry meeting, identify two or three things about the buyer's situation that the brief didn't answer — and ask about those specifically. The questions are often more impressive than the answers.
Do They Have a Point of View?
Chemistry meetings reveal whether an agency actually has opinions — or whether they're in the business of agreeing with clients. Buyers making large communications investments want a partner who will tell them when they're wrong, who has a perspective on the category that goes beyond the brief, and who won't simply execute whatever they're asked to do.
An agency that agrees with everything the buyer says in the chemistry meeting is signaling that they'll agree with everything after the award too. That's not a communications partner — that's a vendor.
What to do: Come prepared with one or two specific opinions about the buyer's communications situation — things the agency genuinely believes, that may push back on assumptions in the brief. State them directly. The buyers who respond well to that are the buyers worth winning.
Can They Handle a Hard Question?
Most chemistry meetings include at least one hard question — about a past failure, about a competitor the agency also represents, about what happens when results don't materialize. How the agency handles it tells the buyer more than any prepared answer.
The agencies that impress in these moments are direct. They don't pivot to boilerplate. They acknowledge the tension, give an honest answer, and move forward without defensiveness.
What to do: Prepare for the three hardest questions a buyer in this category could ask — and practice answering them directly, without pivoting. Rehearse the uncomfortable moments, not just the highlights.
Does the Senior Person Actually Know the Business?
When the agency's most senior representative in the room doesn't know the name of the buyer's CEO, hasn't read the buyer's last earnings call or press release, and can't speak specifically to the competitive landscape — the meeting is already lost.
Buyers at the chemistry meeting stage have typically spent significant time evaluating the agency. The minimum expectation is that the agency has spent equivalent time preparing. When that prep is visibly absent, the trust required for the relationship doesn't form.
What to do: Every person in the room should have read the buyer's last six months of press coverage, their most recent communications, and anything public about their competitive situation. The chemistry meeting is not the place to learn about the client.
The Mistakes That End Chemistry Meetings Early
- Presenting instead of conversing. If the agency opens a laptop and starts a deck, the chemistry meeting has become a presentation. The format signals they prepared the wrong thing.
- Over-referencing the written response. "As we noted in our RFP response..." signals the agency doesn't have anything to add beyond what they already submitted. Chemistry meetings should advance the conversation, not recap it.
- Selling after the sale. The agency is already on the shortlist. Continuing to sell capabilities that have already been evaluated reads as insecurity — and erodes the confidence the buyer had after the written response.
- Ignoring the junior people in the room. Buyers often bring junior members of their team to chemistry meetings specifically to see how the agency treats them. Agencies that only engage the most senior person in the room fail this test every time.
What the Best Chemistry Meetings Look Like
The best chemistry meetings feel like the first working session — not a pitch. The agency asks specific questions. The buyer starts sharing information they hadn't planned to share. Someone in the room says something that reframes the problem. The conversation goes longer than scheduled.
That's the signal. Not the slides. Not the case studies. The moment when the buyer starts thinking "we're already working together" — that's when the review is over and the relationship has begun.
The chemistry meeting is the most underinvested stage in the agency new business process. Most agencies spend 80% of their preparation time on the written response and 20% on the meeting that decides the outcome. Inverting that ratio — for shortlisted agencies — would close more business than any other change in the process.
Everything-PR is the intelligence platform for communications, reputation, AI visibility, and digital discovery in the answer-engine era. Publishing since 2009. Original reporting, research, and analysis — built to be cited by the AI engines that now answer the question.
