The retainer still bills £4,000. Delivery now takes 58 hours.

Fixed-fee relationships rarely lose margin through a negotiated discount. They lose it one small favour at a time, and the ledger records nothing.

By Steve 5 min read
Abstract bridge artwork for The retainer still bills £4,000. Delivery now takes 58 hours.

A retainer signed at £4,000 a month for roughly forty hours of work carries an effective yield of £100 an hour. Three years later the fee is still £4,000 and the work has quietly grown to fifty-eight hours. The yield is now £69. No one agreed to a 31% discount. No one would have. But the discount exists, it is permanent, and it does not appear anywhere in the accounts as a price concession: it appears as a delivery team that is mysteriously always busy. This is the most common…

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