How do I know if my agency is working, or just burning my money?

This one comes with a knot in the stomach, because you can feel that money is leaving and you can't tell what's coming back. The good news: you can settle it with a short list of questions, and the answers tell you as much about your own setup as about the agency.

What should my agency be able to show me?

Outcomes, tied to source. A working agency shows qualified leads and pipeline they produced and how those trend month over month, not a wall of reach and engagement. Ask three questions: How many qualified leads did your work produce last month? What's the pipeline or revenue tied to them? And can you show me that in my CRM, not just your deck? Confident partners answer plainly. Ones selling activity get busy explaining why revenue "isn't the right metric yet."

Why can't I grade them right now?

Usually because you don't have your own source of truth, so the only scoreboard is theirs, and no vendor grades itself harshly. Without a CRM and source tracking you control, you're taking their word for what worked, which is a bad position to negotiate or decide from. This is why grading an agency and telling which channel drives revenue are the same problem: both require that you, not the vendor, keep score.

What should I own that the agency shouldn't?

The source of truth and everything attached to it: your CRM, your data, your source and UTM tracking, your domains and ad accounts, and the reporting that ties source to revenue. Let the agency run campaigns on top of that foundation, but the foundation is yours. Own it and two things become true at once: you can grade any vendor honestly, and nothing critical walks out the door when a contract ends.