Why Marketing Operations teams stay with the same Consultancy (and why that loyalty quietly holds them back)

Most enterprise Marketing Operations teams have a familiar pattern: Once they’ve picked a consultancy, they stick with them. For years. Sometimes for many years. There’s a kind of unspoken rule that if nothing is on fire and invoices arrive on time, then continuity must be good. Safe. Sensible.

But here’s the uncomfortable bit: Playing it safe can be the very thing stopping teams from evolving. While the world around them accelerates... new tech, new data expectations, new pressures from sales and finance... many teams are still working with agencies that deliver “maintenance,” not momentum. And all the while, there are consultancies out there that operate on a completely different level: More forward-thinking, more experienced, more measurable, and frankly, more enjoyable to work with.

So why stay put? And what would actually happen if they didn’t?

The emotional comfort of the familiar.

Let’s start with the psychology behind long-standing vendor relationships. People don’t cling to their current consultancy because they believe it’s the perfect one, they cling because it’s the known one. They know who to email. They know who will pick up the phone. They know roughly what they’ll get, and roughly what they won’t. That sense of predictability feels secure.

There’s also the fear factor: Switching partners can feel like opening Pandora’s box. Procurement steps in. Onboarding takes time. Senior stakeholders ask questions. There’s a risk, imagined or otherwise, that things might dip before they improve. And then there’s internal politics: Someone in the business championed the incumbent years ago. Changing course can feel like announcing they backed the wrong horse.

It’s not irrational. But it isn’t strategic either.

The quiet cost of staying where you are.

What rarely gets acknowledged is what companies give up by staying with the same consultancy too long. It’s not just the cost of the retainer, it’s the cost of opportunities missed.

A consultancy that’s comfortable will rarely be the one pushing you to adopt new technologies, rethink your data model, or redesign your measurement framework. They’ll keep your dashboards ticking along and your automations functioning, but innovation? Transformation? True optimisation? Not likely.

Over time, teams end up operating in a slow decline without noticing it. They deliver campaigns, but don’t learn. They manage workflows, but don’t evolve them. They get reports, but not insight. And the team morale quietly flattens, because working with an uninspired partner makes even the most capable internal people feel like they’re treading water.

Stability is only useful until it becomes inertia.

Why pushing back is a feature, not a flaw.

The consultancies that genuinely move organisations forward are the ones that challenge them. They ask “why”, sometimes repeatedly, until the real blockers surface. They poke at assumptions that have been sitting around like old furniture nobody wants to move. They force conversations about data quality, attribution gaps, workflow bloat, and KPIs that look impressive but mean nothing.

This isn’t being difficult. It’s being valuable.

Teams don’t improve because someone nods politely. They improve because someone cares enough to test the logic, the process, the tooling and the expected outcomes. A good consultancy is part technician, part coach, part business economist, and absolutely not a “yes-machine.”

What the best modern consultancies actually look like.

The top-tier firms today don’t behave like traditional agencies. They don’t treat clients as project tickets, and they definitely don’t believe short-term wins are the whole game. They immerse themselves.

They’re the kind of partners with decades upon decades of accumulated experience, not just senior figureheads on slide decks, but full teams who’ve lived through migrations, integrations, restructures, global rollouts and the occasional dumpster fire that only a true ops veteran can clean up. Picture nearly 500 combined years of Marketing Operations experience, stretched across 12 and a half time zones, 11 languages and more cultures than can fit neatly into a PowerPoint slide. That’s not diversity for the sake of it, that’s perspective you can’t buy off the shelf.

These firms treat your team like an extension of their own. They get embedded. They train. They transfer knowledge. They build capability instead of hoarding it. And because they’re comfortable having real conversations, they bring energy into the work - which matters more in B2B marketing than most people admit. When the work is complex, dry, or relentless, the right partner can make it feel manageable, creative, even enjoyable.

And yes, in B2B, “enjoyable” actually matters.

Why enterprises hesitate to switch, and how to break the stalemate.

Even when leaders know something isn’t working, switching can feel like a huge leap. But it doesn’t have to be.

The simplest route is a controlled test - a pilot that focuses on one specific problem area: Attribution clarity, lead quality, nurture performance, marketing–sales alignment, whatever hurts the most. The incumbent handles the day-to-day while the new partner runs a tightly defined experiment. The risk stays low. The insight goes up. And if the new partner proves they can deliver measurable improvements in a short window, everyone suddenly becomes a lot braver.

If an incumbent consultancy can’t clearly articulate your architecture, your processes or your success metrics, that’s already a sign you’re relying on people rather than systems. And if they’re unable, or unwilling, to document handover plans, then they’re serving their own retention strategy, not yours.

The ROI conversation most consultancies avoid.

The modern consultancies that actually drive value don’t hide behind vague language. They talk in commercially meaningful terms: Revenue influenced, conversion velocity, operational cost savings, CAC reduction, sales productivity, margin impact.

They measure. They hypothesise. They improve. And they do it out loud, with transparent dashboards and experiments you can audit. That’s the difference between a partner that delivers activity and one that delivers outcomes.

If a consultancy can’t show you precisely how they move one core business metric in the next quarter, the red flag is already waving.

So why choose a partner like Sojourn Solutions?

Because Sojourn is built in that modern mould, not the “keep things tidy” version of consulting, but the “help us grow, challenge us, integrate with us, and be part of the team” version.

We bring almost half a millennium of combined Marketing Ops expertise, which is an absurd amount of lived experience to have on your side. Spread across 12.5 time zones and fluent in 11 languages... we can support global programs without the usual cultural or logistical headaches. We don’t arrive with a cookie-cutter playbook; but instead adapt to each client, and we’re not shy about saying when something doesn’t make sense.

Most importantly, we behave less like an external supplier and more like an internal capability accelerator. We push. We guide. And we get into the weeds. We surface opportunities others overlook. And know exactly how to make the work feel lighter without ever losing rigour.

If your team wants a consultancy that integrates like a partner, challenges like a strategist and executes like an operator, we are what that looks like.

The one question every Marketing Ops leader should be asking...

If your incumbent consultancy has been “good enough” for years… is that actually good enough for where you need to be in the next 18 months?

The market is evolving too fast for passive partnerships. You don’t need to fire your existing agency tomorrow. You don’t need to leap into a radical transformation. You just need to start with one metric you care about and ask your consultancy, in fact any consultancy, to show you the exact experiment they’d run next week to move it.

If the answer is vague, slow, or wrapped in excuses, then you’ve already outgrown them.

And if you’re ready for a partner who asks better questions, drives measurable progress, brings real experience, and makes the journey more enjoyable along the way.

You already know where to look.