Pricing
The retainer is 20 hours. The average month is 31.
Nobody approved the extra eleven hours, and nobody ever will: which is exactly why they keep appearing, and why the client feels no better served for them.
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Operations
Every project is bespoke. The last twelve were 80% the same.
Service firms defend customisation they don't sell and can't price. The interesting question is which fifth of the work actually…
Growth strategy
Half the new business is referral. Six people send all of it.
Referral-led growth looks like a cheap, self-sustaining channel, until you count the people it actually depends on.
Operations
The role has been open five months. The spec has eleven must-haves.
A long requirements list feels like rigour. Arithmetically it is a decision to stay unstaffed, and it rarely improves who…
Pricing
Three tiers. Nobody buys the top one.
A premium tier that never sells is either the most efficient thing on your price list or a quiet admission…
Marketing
The quote takes six days. The buyer decided on day two.
Response time gets treated as a matter of courtesy. It behaves like a pricing lever, and the reason it slips…
Growth strategy
The pipeline is £2m. Half of it hasn’t moved since March.
A pipeline that grows while the forecast stands still is telling you something specific, and most sales reviews are structured…
Pricing
Gross margin is 38%. A fifth of the jobs lose money.
A blended margin is an average of two different businesses. Most firms only ever see the average, and act on…
Technology
The system went live in March. The spreadsheet is still the real one.
Every implementation leaves a spreadsheet behind. What that file contains is the most honest specification document a business will ever…
Pricing
The contract says CPI. Two thirds of your cost base is wages.
Annual indexation feels like inflation protection. When the index and the cost base measure different things, it quietly funds the…
Take it further
This is the general pattern. Your business is the specific case.
Everything here is free to read with an account, and always will be. What it cannot do is tell you which of these applies to your numbers, your market and your constraints. That is the work we do with clients.