The opposite problem of the agency in review and losing business is winning business that your agency can't handle. Your new business team's job is to go out there, pitch and win new business. Most of the members on that team do not care about who gets overloaded when the work hits because they are not affected.

Who is affected? The AE who is now juggling an extra client, with promises of a new hire soon to handle the workload. And if they at least do a marginal job at handling both, the possibility of that new hire starts drifting away into the ether, and their complaints get greeted with a pat on the back and a, "You're doing fine."

The problem is that this affects the great AE more than it does the bad one. They get the work simply because they are that good. They get penalized for being more competent. This is probably one of the most dangerous situations for agency management. The immediate problem? They are not worried. The bigger issue? They should be.

Not knowing how you can staff new business can have a cascading effect on other clients. Teams of people are internally stressed with work, and the highly competent resources get stolen outright. Contention between various internal teams heightens, and core clients get neglected. If you do not want to run into the situation I just described, listen to your AEs.

This brings me to the next point that has agency execs convulsing into a full-blown Paxil high…