Get.
Are you winning the right work?
Not the most work, the right work: pitches you should be in, priced with input from the people who'll deliver them, prepared in proportion to the fee.
Agency review
Get-gain-grow: a proper review of your agency
Most agencies I review are busy. Busy is rarely the problem. The problem is what the busyness hides: pitches that cost more than the fees they chase, projects that grow while the price stands still, good clients drifting because new logos get all the attention. The owner can feel it, usually years before the accounts prove it.
Get-gain-grow is a structured review of your whole agency. It finds where the money is leaking, tells you honestly, and gives you a prioritised plan to stop it. I've spent more than 25 years inside agencies, including running online delivery at a 70-person Digital Agency of the Year, so I know where to look and I know how the official version of a process differs from what actually happens on a Thursday afternoon.
The problem this addresses
Agencies almost never fail from a lack of talent. They fail slowly, from leaks. The pitch that took forty slides and two weeks for an eight-grand project. The scope that grew three times without the invoice moving. The fifteen tools that don't talk to each other. The retainer client who left, politely, because nobody had asked them a question in six months.
None of these shows up as a line in the management accounts. They show up as the feeling every agency owner knows: turnover is fine, everyone is flat out and somehow there's no more profit than three years ago.
You could work harder. Most owners already are. The alternative is to find the leaks and fix them in order of what they cost you, which is what this review is for.
What get-gain-grow is
Three words, three questions every agency has to answer.
Gain.
Does the work pay?
Scope that holds, projects with an owner, delivery that doesn't burn unbilled hours, tools that earn their place.
Grow.
Can you rely on next month?
Existing clients developed rather than just serviced, retained income you can plan around, growth that improves margin rather than just turnover.
The review itself is a full audit of the agency: systems, processes, projects, reporting, proposals, financials and the communication between them. Not against best-practice theory, against what actually happened on your recent work, won and lost.
How it works
What it costs
From £5,000; scoped and fixed, agreed before we start.
That covers the workshops, the interviews, the evidence review, the written report, the presentation and the prioritised plan. If your agency is unusually large or spread across sites I'll tell you before we agree anything, not after.
Support through implementation is scoped separately once you've seen the plan and decided what you want to change.
What agencies have got from it
Every agency is different, so I won't promise you a number. I'll show you theirs instead.
Each block below links to the full case study.
Retained client revenue up 166%
A Leeds full-service agency rebuilt around the clients it already had. Project efficiency rose 230% and retention became its main source of revenue.
Pitch conversion up 40%, then an acquisition
A stalled eight-person agency stopped pitching for everything, took long-term client income past half of turnover and was bought by a larger agency.
A £120k win with the same size team
A West Yorkshire agency fixed how it chose and ran work, then won a £120k financial services project well above its usual bracket without hiring anyone.
Proposal time cut in half
A ten-person Leeds agency rebuilt its pitch and delivery process through coaching, halved the time spent on proposals and freed the capacity to take on more.
Its biggest project, shipped on time
Fuse8, a 70-person Digital Agency of the Year, rebuilt its delivery around agile and landed the Charles Church website on time and to budget, opening the door to the Persimmon Group.
Public sector bids without bought-in help
A South Yorkshire agency learned how government tenders are scored and built reusable bid templates, so every opportunity after that cost days less to chase.
Most of these agencies stay anonymous, which I think is right: you wouldn't want your review discussed by name either.
Who this is for, and who it is not for
For
This is for agency owners and managing directors who suspect the business should be more profitable than it is, who are prepared to hear findings they won't all like and who want a plan ranked by money rather than a hundred-page report ranked by nothing.
Not for
It is not for agencies looking for someone to validate a decision already made, or for a quick opinion by Friday. The review works because it looks at evidence, and evidence takes a bit longer than an opinion.
Questions agency owners ask
Will you just tell us to hire more people?
Almost never. In most agencies the capacity already exists and is being spent on leaky pitches and loose delivery. Hiring is sometimes the answer. It should never be the first answer.
We already know some of what's wrong. Why pay for a review?
You probably do, and the review usually confirms some of it. What it adds is evidence, the things the team will tell an outsider but not the owner, and an order. Knowing your ten problems is different from knowing which two are costing you the most.
How much of the team's time does it take?
Less than you'd think. Interviews and workshops are scheduled around client work, and the evidence review is mostly me and your records. The disruption of a review is nothing next to the disruption of another flat year.
Do you implement, or just report?
Both, but they're separate decisions. The review ends with a plan you could run without me. Plenty of owners want me involved while the changes land, and that's scoped as its own piece of work once you know what you're changing.
Why are the case studies anonymous?
Because a review like this sees the inside of a business: pitch records, financials, what the team really thinks. I don't trade on that, so with one exception the agencies are described but not named. Yours would be treated the same way.
How are you different from an agency coach?
A coach works on you. I work on the agency: the pitches, the projects, the numbers, the process. I've run agency delivery myself at serious scale, and I'd rather show you evidence from your own business than a framework from someone else's.
Start with the free conversation
If your agency is busy and the profit doesn't show it, start with the free conversation. Worst case, you lose half an hour and gain a second opinion.
Half an hour, no deck, no obligation. I reply personally, usually the same working day.
Prefer to book straight into the diary? Book a free 30-minute conversation. Or email info@1968ltd.com.