OK, this is a tough one and depends a lot on the compensation arrangement with your agency.
Unfortunately for agencies, it is always a buyer's market. Other agencies will do thousands of dollars of work trying to get your business, conduct research studies, anything to get their foot in the door. The more desirable an account you are, the more this information can be obtained for free. Your agency needs to understand this. If you are doing a comprehensive research study then fine, pay for it, but your entire agency team, every individual person on your account, creative, strategy, production, and media team should be able to give a presentation on your business, the competitive landscape, and the challenges to adoption or usage.
Quiz them
If an agency wants your business, they should learn it. Randomly stop people at the agency who work on your account. Ask them a question about your business that should have a short quick answer. Challenge them. Make them fearful when you visit that they will be picked on. And remove the people from your account who cannot answer those questions. Replace people who do not think. Do not tolerate it. Employees will take it upon themselves to learn your business on their own time, rather than be made to look like an idiot in front of their colleagues.
Enable learning
Now, you have a job, too. You must enable the learning. Offer answers when you can to anything that they want to know about your business. If it seems like they are neither asking nor -- when you make the opportunities available -- having more than a couple people show up, then you probably should be looking for a new shop.
We just enabled a three-hour product immersion session where 14 people from our interactive agency showed up-- including people I didn't even know had ever touched our business. We had our chief technologist explain what makes what we do different, and had our product teams run though current, launching and future products. The number of people from the agency showed both a commitment by them and a desire to deepen the relationship. Eyes wide open, an excitement for working on our business.
The value that emerges from sessions like that? Much more than just the information-- thinking.
Now, it could have been the fact that I'm new, and restructuring the relationship, but too often agencies don't put in the effort to learn their clients business and convey a genuine interest in their product.
The more your team at your agency understands your business and product, the better the work you get out of them. Make sure your agency is hungry and that when you feed that hunger they want more, otherwise start looking.
Things to consider
At the end of the day you get what they pay for. Often it is the smaller agencies that are hungry, trying to get their foot in the door, and coming to you when they have an idea to do it. Or, it's a bigger agency that really wants your business and is willing to invest in business development.
You have to ask yourself: are they a different style of agency? Will they continue to invest in me once I am their client? Am I going to be in the same position in three months as they ramp up? Or worse?
Be careful. Clients earn reputations. If you are constantly seeking "free" ideas, the major agencies quickly identify you and ignore you. Don't be that client. You will end up in a situation that the only people willing to pitch your business are second-tier agencies.
Microsoft fell into this category until a few years ago. They finally learned that they were ending up with second-tier agencies and second-tier ideas. Since then, they consolidated all of their business with McCann and they are working hard with MRM (McCann's in house interactive agency) to build out an effective digital marketing team that is totally immersed in their products.