A: What's your budget?
If you chuckled at this, then you know how agencies work.
Most agencies are less interested in achieving business goals for clients (such as building revenue) then they are in achieving made up metrics such as press clips. This forces agencies into pitching business backwards. To be fair, clients are part of the problem because they tolerate this nonsense.
This needs to change. To be effective, agencies need to align the programs they execute for clients to the goals of the organization. Only then will they pitch programs that are based on results instead of budget numbers available.