Case studies
A Yorkshire agency of eight had been stuck, flat on turnover and profit three years running and unsure what to do next. I reviewed the business end to end and coached the team through a rebuild of how it pitched and how it delivered, with one hard call underneath it: stop trying to be everything. Pitch conversion rose 40% over the following year, more than half of turnover came from long-term clients, and a larger agency offered to buy it.
The agency had gone stagnant. Eight people, turnover flat three years running, profit with it, projects that were not really being thought through and a creeping apathy towards clients.
The owner put two problems on the table. Pitch conversion was low and inconsistent, so a lot of effort went into work they never won. And the projects they did win kept growing, in time and in deliverables, without the profit growing to match.
It is the classic trap: busy all the time, and somehow no better off for it.
I started with a full review, a proper deep dive rather than a quick opinion. I went through recent projects and past pitches, the ones they won and the ones they lost, and talked to the people doing the work. It surfaced a lot, some of it already suspected by the owner and some of it new.
The pitching was leaking time and money. Briefs were not being interrogated for the real objective, and client-supplied data was taken at face value even when it did not match reality. No single person owned a pitch. Preparation ran wildly out of proportion to the fee, with forty to seventy slide decks and two-hour presentations going into eight-thousand-pound projects, padded out with sixteen "standard" pages nobody had updated in months. Pricing got set without ever asking the teams who would deliver.
Delivery was no tidier. There were no real scope documents or client sign-offs, so developers built what they thought best rather than what the client had asked for. Work was handed from sales to delivery with almost no knowledge transfer, project management ran off basic spreadsheets with no alerts or dependencies, nobody mapped resource cost against the budget, and client expectations went largely unmanaged.
From there we rebuilt both halves, in phases. On pitching, a new template approach, a proper structured framework for running an opportunity, an honest look at the resources each pitch deserved, and a method for selling again to clients after a project rather than always chasing new ones. On delivery, rebuilt documentation, a clear project structure for the team and the client, a cull of the system sprawl down to a defined set, new platforms where they earned their place, and a skills audit that fed training and, where needed, recruitment.
Running underneath all of it was the hardest call from the first review: stop trying to be everything, commit to one clear focus, target higher-value work, move existing clients onto retainers, and let the small, draining clients go to agencies better suited to them.
Pitch conversion rose by 40% over the following twelve months, because the agency was now pitching for the right work, properly, instead of everything, badly.
More than half of turnover came from existing clients, including long-term contracts, so income was finally something the owners could plan around rather than chase every month. Profitability improved as the new systems and a team restructure put real project management at the centre of the business.
The clearest verdict of all came from outside: a larger agency, looking at the improved profitability and the strength of those long-term relationships, made an offer to buy it.
Most struggling agencies are busy, not short of talent. The money leaks in two places: the pitches they should never have chased, and the projects that quietly grow while the price stands still. Fix how you choose and how you run both, build income you can actually rely on, and profitability follows. In this case a buyer followed too. Doing less, and doing it properly, was the whole answer.
The review behind this is get-gain-grow. On where the pitch money actually goes, see the hidden cost in your agency's pitch process.
It is common, and it is rarely noticed, because the effort is spread across a team in afternoons rather than showing up as a line item. Preparation out of proportion to the fee is one of the two places a small agency's money reliably leaks.
It did the opposite here. Letting the small, draining clients go to agencies better suited to them freed the capacity to pitch properly for higher-value work, and moving the remaining clients onto retainers took long-term income past half of turnover.
Pitch conversion moved 40% over the following twelve months. The delivery changes take about as long, because they only show once projects run end to end under the new structure rather than the old one.
Most clients begin with a conversation. No pitch, no hard sell.
Just a straightforward discussion about where you are and whether I can help.
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