Why Your Agency’s Bespoke Approach Is Killing Your Margins

Andrew Radley, former WPP executive, on productisation, commercial models, and why creativity doesn’t mean chaos.

Across creative agencies and tech consultancies, the mantra is familiar: “Every client is unique.” Andrew Radley, CEO of consultancy A Few Good People, argues this belief is killing profitability—bespoke approaches commoditise services and reduce expert advisors to order-takers.

After nearly 30 years in product management across sectors from telecoms to martech—including building the integrated commerce and technology units at WPP’s Wunderman Thompson Technology (now VML), Radley has witnessed the same pattern. Agencies resist productisation, but the path to better margins lies in three critical shifts: selling value not effort, using methodology as a sales tool, and aligning everything behind value delivery.

Sell Value, Not Effort

The pressure is real. Rates are dropping. Clients treat agencies as interchangeable. Proposals take weeks because everything’s bespoke. But the root problem runs deeper.

“Selling time is fine so long as your cost base is predominantly time,” Radley says. “That’s not true now. You’ve got expensive technology, tooling, platform investments that aren’t being transferred to clients.”

When you charge by the hour, you’re trapped. Your AI tools cut project time in half? You just halved your revenue. Your automation platform eliminates manual work? You’ve eliminated billable hours. Time-based pricing punishes efficiency and leaves money on the table.

Worse, it changes the power dynamic entirely.

“Who’s the expert if the client is telling you how to do the work you’re supposedly an expert in?” Radley asks.

Andrew Radley, Founder & CEO of the consultancy, A Few Good People.

If you’re just executing what clients tell you to do, you’re not an advisor. You’re an order-taker. The solution isn’t ditching hourly billing entirely—it’s giving clients options based on where the risk sits.

“The risk moves around between these three models,” Radley explains. “There needs to be an incentive and value exchange for the risk being transferred.”

Input-based pricing (time and materials) works for clients who want control. Output-based pricing fits defined deliverables. Outcome-based models mean sharing commercial risk for business results.

Most agencies present one option in a proposal. One number, one set of assumptions. If the client doesn’t like it, they don’t buy. Three options give you room to negotiate and match different client risk appetites and steer the client towards the option that is best for both of you.

The metric that matters shifts too: revenue per head, not billability percentages.

“Say to teams, ‘I don’t care how billable you are—I want you to exceed £100,000 per head,’” he explains. “Enable commercial risk-taking and commercial creativity.”

Some teams might hit £150,000 through better commercial models. Others might use tools to triple efficiency with the same headcount. Either way, you’re not stuck charging hourly rates while your costs increasingly aren’t hourly at all.

Your Methodology Is Your Sales Tool

Here’s the paradox: agencies already have the methodology they need. They apply it daily. But they don’t market it, don’t package it, don’t use it to build trust.

Being able to explain to clients that they can trust your methodology as it’s been applied to 20 other clients similar to them will build trust and raise you above the price discussion. Your methodology becomes the evidence that you’re the expert worth paying for outcomes, not just effort.

Radley’s work with Oliver shows what happens when methodology isn’t clearly articulated. Their Marketing Gateway product—running project management, workflows, and client interfaces—was positioned as a freebie to win people-based work.

Result? Every customer had different ideas about what it did. Sales couldn’t articulate its value. Customers thought it benefited Oliver, not them.

“We created a narrative and product structure that made it easy for everybody to sell the toolset consistently.” “Then we taught their technologists to become product managers—how to think commercially about technology innovation.”

Andrew Radley, Founder & CEO of A Few Good People

The training covered portfolio management and commercial thinking, with ongoing mentoring because skills are “easy to transfer but difficult to apply.”

The lesson: your methodology is your competitive advantage, but only if you can explain it consistently and show how it delivers value others can’t replicate. That’s what enables value-based pricing—the confidence that you’re not selling hours, you’re selling proven outcomes.

Align Everything Behind Value

Selling value requires more than pricing changes. Your entire operation must align behind value delivery, not effort tracking.

This is where the restaurant test comes in.

“When was the last time you went into a completely generic restaurant that sold all food, all circumstances, to all people?” Radley asks.

Never, right? You went to an Italian place. Or Thai. Or a steakhouse. The menu was limited. Nobody walked in expecting kebabs at the Italian restaurant.

Yet agencies act as if every proposal must be handcrafted from scratch, and every service offering must be infinitely flexible.

“If you’ve spent an awfully long time believing something, it’s difficult to change those beliefs,” Radley says. “There’s this natural assumption that creativity only happens in the customer context. That’s wrong. Product thinking isn’t about less creativity.”

The beauty of a restaurant menu is that it presents your creative excellence, your value, your operational capability at its very best, all in one place. Ingredients are grouped together into the right ratios to make a good dish within the framework of whichever restaurant type they have chosen to be.

The restaurant test: if someone walked through your front door, would they instantly understand what you do, who you serve, what value you deliver? Or would they face a confusing array of ingredients and tools, uncertain what meal they’re ordering? Would they look in the kitchen and find equipment that isn’t relevant to their chosen specialism?

“ Yes, there is room for customisation - can I skip the anchovies on the Caesar Salad, or go easy on the mayonnaise’ but, you have a clear framework within which to negotiate.” “Would anyone argue that the menu in the restaurant is limiting the chef’s creativity? I don’t think so.” said Radley.

Start with business vision, Radley says. Get leadership aligned on what business you’re building, what customer experience you’re delivering, and what problems you’re solving.

“The more market-centric you make it, the easier it is. It’s hard to argue you don’t want to do something when customers want it.”

Then map your service portfolio. Where are you making money? Where are you giving away value without realising it? Create clear customer journeys—product A leads to B leads to C.

Again, this is not about removing creativity, but channeling it so that all customers have a consistent experience of your choosing, and that you think about creatively to improve upon.

Radley puts it simply: “Creativity should extend to your operating structure, commercial offer, and toolsets—not just what gets delivered to customers.”

For agencies watching margins evaporate while competitors undercut on price, that might be the difference between thriving and surviving.

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Andrew Radley is CEO and founder of A Few Good People, a consultancy helping organisations maximise their value through service and operational transformation.

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