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What agents want from you is a clearly written query.
The pathway to an agent request for your manuscript begins with the query letter first paragraph. Crafting this first paragraph could be making you feel stressed and more than a little crazy. If you need assistance, you'll find it in my  36-page "Sales Pitch" Query Tutorial/Workbook.
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TUTORIAL includes:
WHY your query first paragraph is a make-or-break situation.
HOW and why to shift from "telling" to "selling"
WHAT agents want you to tell them
HOW to write story paragraphs to help you write all the sales documents you need (query, synopsis, first page, book proposal)
AWARD-winning first paragraphs to study
WRITING exercises that teach you how to write an effective  "sales pitch" paragraph that will motivate the agent to read your entire query
COST? $14.95 -- less than a movie ticket, gallon of chemically flavored cola, and bucket of trans-fat laden popcorn, and a whole lot more beneficial to your writing career.
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About agents

You may feel intimidated as you begin your quest to locate the most perfect agent to represent you. Fortunately, there is a great source available to help you: agentquest.com. Hundreds of agents are listed on this incredible site, along with contact information and specific interests. 

Search the site, then take the next step and check out the websites of agents who represent your genre, and double check on their submission requirements. In other words, do your homework before you begin to submit your query letters.

Who reads what 

In today's competitive marketplace, your best route to publication is to align yourself with an experienced sales person—a literary agent.

Most publishers (in most cases, this means editors who work for publishers) don’t accept unsolicited anything. Fortunately, almost all agents will read unsolicited submissions (or query letters) because they're always looking for potential clients--writers with projects they can sell to a publishing house. 

Publishers think of agents as "Dragons at the Gate." They understand the agent's job is to screen queries and manuscripts to discover those with the greatest sales potential, sign them up as clients, and then contact suitable editors at various publishing houses.

What to expect from your agent

Once you and an agent agree to work together, this places your foot in the door of the publishing world. When your manuscript is delivered (by your agent) to an editor in a publishing company, it will be read instead of tossed into the "slush" pile (the mountainous stacks of unread and unsolicited materials).

The most obvious benefit of working with an agent, besides access, is that they have their fingers on the pulse of many publishing companies.  They know exactly who is looking for what.

When an editor at a publishing company expresses interest in publishing your manuscript, contract negotiations begin. Your agent becomes the buffer between you and the publishing company. They negotiate terms for you and represent your best interests in the event of a dispute. They take care of your business, handle any disputes, thereby freeing to write your next best seller (s).

How do you pay your agent? Actually, they pay you. The publisher sends your advance and royalties to the agent who arranged the relationship (made the sale). The agent deducts an agreed-upon percentage, (usually 15% on domestic sales, more on foreign), then send you the balance. If any issues arise, like late royalty payments, your agent is "on it" and handles the situation with the publisher. 

Your best interests are your agent’s best interests.

One area of slight disagreement among agents is that some want to know how or where you’ve heard about them. If that's the case, tell them. If you met them at a conference, remind them about your conversation. Then leap right into the subject of your manuscript.

When I was a publisher, I never cared about how the writer had found my name, whether in Writers' Market or elsewhere, UNLESS we had met at a writers' conference. In that case, I'd place them near the front of the queries-waiting-to-be-read closet.
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This is the slush pile of unopened queries and manuscripts publishers  face every day. Yikes!

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NOTE: Your manuscript, when submitted to a publisher from an agent, will "fast track" more quickly from the slush pile bottom to the top than if you submit it without an agent.
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