How to defend a renewal when the other agency sells 'AI positioning' and you don't yet
The line lands in the middle of the renewal negotiation: "The thing is, the other agency has shown us some AI positioning stuff, which they say is the future. You don't do that, do you?".
And it stings twice over, because they're partly right. The demand is real: frequent use of ChatGPT in Spain has gone from 4% to 28% in two years (Funcas, III Survey on AI, 2026), and 37.9% of the population used generative AI in the last quarter of 2025 according to the INE. Your client hasn't lost the plot; they've been shown a genuine problem. What's still to be seen is whether the other agency's solution is genuine too — and that's where this renewal is won.
You have three moves: audit the rival offer, neutralise with honesty, and, if you decide to offer the service, bring it in fast. In that order.
Move 1: audit the rival offer (with the client in front of you)
Don't rubbish the offer without seeing it — you'll come across as the one defending their patch. Do the opposite: take it seriously and ask to examine it with the client. "I think it's good that you're exploring it; it's a real topic. Shall we look together at exactly what they're proposing?" That sentence already repositions you: from accused to expert witness.
And then, the questions. There are four, and most opportunistic offers don't survive the first two:
"What exactly are they going to measure, and how?" If the answer is vague ("your positioning in the AIs"), there's no service: there's a PowerPoint. A serious offer specifies how many queries it monitors, in which AIs (just ChatGPT, or also Gemini, Perplexity and Claude?), how often, and with what evidence. AI answers change between queries; without periodic, documented measurement, any "result" is anecdotal.
"What do they promise, specifically?" Here's the definitive hot-air detector. If they guarantee "appearing in ChatGPT in 60 days" or "being the first recommendation", you've half won the renewal, because no one controls a model's answers and whoever guarantees it either doesn't know or isn't honest. Say it to the client just like that, with that calm: "No one can deliver this promise. Ask them what happens if it's not met."
"What's the baseline?" Have they measured where the client appears today, or are they selling the plan without having looked at the starting point? A proposal with no prior diagnosis is a prescription with no examination.
"What concrete work does it include?" Source correction, structured data, citable content, listings and directories... or "AI optimisation" with no breakdown. The real work of AI visibility looks a lot like SEO done well with new layers on top — if they can't describe it, they're not doing it.
Notice the side effect of this questioning: you're educating the client in how this service is evaluated. They'll apply those criteria to your proposal too when you have it — and that's good, because you're going to build it to exceed them.
Move 2: neutralise with honesty
Comes the awkward conversation: "And why don't you offer it?". The worst answer is to play it down ("that's a fad") — if the client has already taken an interest, dismissing it pushes them away, and the data isn't on your side anyway. The best answer is the truth, well told:
Key data
"Because until now we've prioritised what was getting you the most results, and this market has just matured enough to offer it with rigour. Here's how it is: AI visibility is real and worth working on. What isn't real is promising you guaranteed results in ChatGPT — no one can deliver that, whoever promises it. I'll bring you our proposal in two weeks, with an audit of where you appear today, done, so you can compare the two offers with data."
This answer does three things. It acknowledges being behind without dramatising it (clients forgive "we didn't offer it yet"; they don't forgive you pretending you did). It plants the honesty criterion exactly where the rival offer probably wobbles. And it commits to a date and a concrete deliverable, which is what actually halts a defection: the client doesn't leave over the rival offer, they'd leave over your silence.
And play your incumbent advantage, which is enormous and often forgotten: you know the business, the sector, the history and the client's sources. The other agency starts from zero. AI visibility is built on the sources that have been worked on for years — the website, the content, the authority, the listings — and that, in large part, is your work. "The work we've done over these years is precisely the foundation this is built on; throwing it away and starting from scratch with another agency is handing over the advantage." In fact, a good part of GEO (Generative Engine Optimisation, the discipline of working a brand's presence in the answers of AI search engines) is quality SEO with new layers — here's the honest breakdown of what changes and what doesn't.
Move 3: bring the service in fast (if you decide to offer it)
The honest defence buys you two weeks. What you can't do is turn up to the next meeting empty-handed. The good news: building a serious, minimal version of the service is faster than the situation makes it seem, precisely because the foundation is work you already know how to do.
Week 1 — the client audit. Measure where they appear today across the 4 AIs with the questions their audience would ask, with dated screenshots, and do the same with their two competitors. This is your ammunition for the meeting: real data against the rival PowerPoint. The context will favour you — in our study of 9,865 Spanish SMEs across 30 sectors, 91% appear in only 1 of the 4 AIs (full study) — so there'll most likely be a clear gap to show.
Week 2 — the proposal. A service defined by what you can deliver from the first month: weekly monitoring of N queries across 4 AIs, source correction, citable content, a monthly report with progress and a comparison. Commit to work and coverage, never to the model's decisions — the exact line between the promisable and the non-promisable is here, with sample clauses included.
And the machinery? You don't need to hire anyone or build anything: the heavy part — launching the prompts every week in ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity and Claude, keeping the history, generating the PDF report — is exactly what Surfeo for agencies automates: €20/month for the account and €35-79/month per client depending on the plan, with trial workspaces to audit a client before selling them anything. If you'd rather pilot it with this one client before offering it to the whole portfolio, here's how to run the test with a single client.
The closing play: the client receives, within two weeks, a proposal with their real audit done, from the agency that knows their business, with no impossible promises and with evaluation criteria the rival offer probably doesn't meet. That renewal gets signed.
Frequently asked questions
What if the other agency's offer turns out to be serious?
There are serious ones, and lying about it burns you. If the offer is good, your defence shifts from "theirs is hot air" to "ours starts with an advantage": knowledge of the client, prior work on the sources, and the cost — in time, context and risk — of switching agencies. You still hold the better cards; play them without smearing the rival.
Doesn't admitting I'm behind make me look bad?
You look better than pretending. The client already knows you didn't offer it — what they're assessing is how you react. "Not yet, and here's my proposal with a date" conveys more soundness than an improvised "yes, of course, we already do that" that falls apart at the second question.
Do I lower the price to retain while I build the service?
Better to add than to discount. Lowering the price validates the narrative that your current service is worth less. Adding the AI visibility audit and a three-month pilot to the current retainer shifts the conversation from "what do you cost" to "what do you cover" — and leaves you the full price for when the service is up and running.
How much does it really cost me to start the service?
With a tool: €20/month for the agency account plus €35/month per client on the Starter plan (40 prompts, 3 AIs, weekly tracking) or €79/month on Growth (75 prompts, 4 AIs). For a pilot with one client, under €100/month in cost — the usual sale ranges for the service are in how much to charge for AI visibility services. The plan details, in pricing.
If the renewal meeting already has a date, don't turn up without data: run the free AI visibility test on your client's site and walk into that room knowing more about their AI presence than the agency trying to take them from you.
