When you sell time, the profit is decided before the invoice goes out.

In a firm whose cost base is people, the commercial outcome is settled by how their hours were used and whether that use can be billed. By the time it reaches the accounts the decisions have already been made. A finance or operations seat who only reads the accounts is reporting history, and in this sector history is too late to act on.

What is different here

Utilisation is the engine, and everybody games itThe proportion of paid hours that are chargeable decides the margin. It is also the easiest number in the firm to make look better than it is, by recording optimistically or by counting work that will never be billed. A seat worth hiring will ask how time is captured and who checks it before they discuss the target.

Recoverability is the honest version of revenueHours recorded are not hours billed, and hours billed are not hours paid. The gap between what the team did and what the client accepted is where agency and consultancy margins actually go, and it is usually invisible until somebody builds the report. Writing off work in progress is a painful month and a healthier firm.

Lock-up is the cash number that mattersWork in progress plus debtors, expressed in days, is the single figure that tells you how long the firm funds its own clients. Firms with good profit and bad lock-up are the ones that borrow to pay salaries. Bringing it down is unglamorous, unpopular and one of the fastest returns a fractional finance seat produces.

The pricing model decides who carries the riskFixed fee, retainer, time and materials and value based pricing each move the risk of overrun between the firm and the client. Firms usually drift into fixed fee because clients prefer it, without changing how they estimate. A senior seat's job here is to make that choice deliberate and to price the overrun somebody is already absorbing.

What to ask, that you would not ask elsewhere

How would you measure utilisation here, and what would you check before trusting the number?
What is your approach to work in progress that is not going to be recovered?
How do you bring lock-up down without damaging client relationships?
Where have you moved a firm between pricing models, and what broke?
How do you tell the difference between a client who is unprofitable and a team that is inefficient?

Where it goes wrong

Measuring the firm on revenue per head. It rewards busy and says nothing about billed.
Leaving time recording to goodwill. If nobody checks it, the numbers the firm runs on are optimistic by design.
Taking fixed fee work priced on an estimate nobody revisits after the third overrun.
Hiring a finance seat from a product business and expecting them to find the problem. They will read the accounts, and the problem is upstream of the accounts.

Which seat you are actually hiring

The sector changes the conditions, not the job. What each seat covers, what it costs and when it is the wrong hire is set out across the eleven seat pages, and the cost calculator will tell you whether the work you have described is really a fractional one. If the job turns out to be five days a week and permanent, we find full-time executives too.

Common questions

Utilisation is the engine, and everybody games it?

The proportion of paid hours that are chargeable decides the margin. It is also the easiest number in the firm to make look better than it is, by recording optimistically or by counting work that will never be billed. A seat worth hiring will ask how time is captured and who checks it before they discuss the target.

What should I ask when hiring for agencies and professional services?

How would you measure utilisation here, and what would you check before trusting the number? What is your approach to work in progress that is not going to be recovered? How do you bring lock-up down without damaging client relationships?

What goes wrong when hiring into agencies and professional services?

Measuring the firm on revenue per head. It rewards busy and says nothing about billed. Leaving time recording to goodwill. If nobody checks it, the numbers the firm runs on are optimistic by design.

The bench

Operators who have worked in agencies and professional services

Filter the bench by sector: Professional services, Media & entertainment. Every operator checked by hand against their LinkedIn and CV, booked direct, with nothing taken from their rate.