ROI Revolution has been running since 2002. Someone finally ran the numbers on its own revenue mix. Retainer: 95%. Project: 4%. Billed by the hour: 1%.
Timothy Seward started ROI Revolution in June 2002, a performance marketing agency for enterprise level sports and fitness brands. Asked how the firm prices, he started with a mistake he made in the first three years.
Like most young firms, the agency did everything: websites, search, early Google Ads. It sold time. Ten-hour blocks, bought up front. Two things went wrong with that, and neither was about the rate. Clients did not use the hours they had paid for, and every conversation about the balance was awkward. He describes it as his lesson in 2005 and 2006, not as a pricing tactic that underperformed.
So he changed the unit. Instead of billing for hours, the firm began charging against the media it was running for the client, which meant the fee moved with the client's own spending rather than with the agency's timesheet. Two decades later, that decision shows up as one number.
That is the benchmark worth sitting with. In a firm of that age and size, roughly one dollar in twenty has to be won again each year with a new proposal. The other nineteen arrive because a decision the client already made is still running.
Why it matters to you.
Most boutique firms are the inverse of this, and they do not know it, because almost nobody computes the mix. Work out yours this week: what share of next year's revenue continues unless somebody cancels, and what share has to be re-sold from a standing start. The money consequence is not the retainer itself. It is what a high renewing share does to the rest of the business. Selling capacity stops being consumed re-closing last year's revenue and goes to new accounts instead. Pricing conversations happen once and compound, rather than being re-opened at every scope. Delivery can be staffed against a knowable base instead of a forecast. Those are the three places margin quietly leaks in a project shop, and the mix is upstream of all of them. The lever was not a better retainer pitch. It was changing what the fee is attached to. This founder tied it to a number that recurs on the client's side, which is why it renews without anyone re-selling it. Time does not recur. Outcomes and volumes do.
Your one thing.
Split last year's revenue into two columns: renews unless cancelled, and must be re-sold. If column two is more than a quarter of the total, that is your real growth constraint, not lead flow.
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