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Why most agencies mis-price retainers
The rate is almost never the problem. Scope creep is, and it starts in week three — here is where we watched it happen across three years of our own retainers.
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If you're re-pricing a retainer that keeps losing money, the answer is usually not a higher rate. It's the four hours a month nobody agreed to. We went back through 38 months of our own retainers and the pattern was the same every time.
Scope creep doesn't arrive, it accumulates
Agencies bill an average of 62% of the hours they work, and the gap is almost never one big unbilled project. In our own numbers it was requests under 40 minutes — the ones too small to raise, arriving twice a week, for eleven months.
[NEEDS: the median overrun figure from the 2024 cohort] — left blank on purpose. Your Brain didn't hold it, so nothing was invented to fill the sentence.