Should you pause, renegotiate, or fire?

Match the move to the diagnosis. Pause when the cause is yours (no news, a product slip, a frozen budget) and the agency is otherwise good. Renegotiate when the work is real but the scope or price drifted off your stage. Fire when the operator is the problem: junior staff on your account, no pitch log, no movement after a fair ramp. The expensive mistake is firing for a fixable cause, then paying a new agency another 60 to 90 days to climb the same ramp from zero. Surveys of why clients leave agencies show communication and value, not only weak work, drive a large share of departures, and those are causes a renegotiation can address.

If you have not sorted whose problem it is yet, do that first; the "Is the problem the agency or is it you?" page walks through the diagnosis, including the pitch-log test. If the agency cannot show its log, the cause is theirs, and a lower price will not fix invisible work. If the log is full but nothing landed, the cause is usually yours: there was no news for the machine to push, and a pause beats paying full retainer through a dry quarter.

Check your contract before you choose. A 90-day notice period quietly converts "fire" into "pause, then fire," and you should start the clock the day you decide. Month-to-month terms keep all three moves cheap, which is exactly why they are worth negotiating for up front.

Whichever move you pick, renegotiating and firing both run through the same meeting, and the hard-conversation page covers how to hold it. If you land on firing, the offboarding page covers how to leave with your media list and materials intact.