These 3 blind spots that weigh down your agency or practice profitability

Your team is on all fronts. Project after project, consultant after consultant, and yet… your margins are not keeping pace. Worse still: you feel like you’re running on empty, chasing a profitability that eludes you despite your best efforts.

It’s not just a feeling. Three shadowy areas are silently undermining the profitability of agencies and consulting firms, without anyone realizing it on a daily basis. Pre-sales, which mobilizes entire teams with no guarantee of signature; staffing, which is perpetually juggling overload and intercontracts; and invoicing, which drags, gets lost or arrives late for customers who pay when they want.

The figures are stark. Lost productivity and poor lead management cost companies at least $1,000 billion a year, according to an industry study. In France, 82% of companies experienced late payment in 2023 according to Coface, and the country even recorded the sharpest deterioration in payment times in Europe in 2025, with an average of 14.1 days late according to Altares.

Deciphering these three black holes, with concrete solutions for regaining control.

I. Pre-sales: the phantom time budget

A colossal investment… often invisible

Pre-sales is when it all comes down to it. You mobilize your best profiles: sales people, creative people, strategists, sometimes even external freelancers. You invest time, energy and financial resources… for an uncertain result. And all too often, without any visibility of what it’s really costing you.

Every minute spent on a file with no guarantee of return represents a potential loss. The time of your sales manager, that of your marketing teams, the hours of your strategists… all this has a cost. But how many agencies and consultancies are able to say exactly how much this or that lost pre-sale cost them?

The equation is brutal: we often look at a budget without taking into account everything we’ve invested to win the contract. If you win, you’re happy. If you don’t win, you move on to the next one, without learning from the figures. As a result, it’s impossible to know where resources are really going, let alone optimize the process.

Sales statistics reveal just how complex pre-sales can be. The average salesperson makes 52 calls a day and spends 15% of his or her time leaving voicemails. Even more edifying: 92% of sales reps give up after four “no” calls, while 80% of prospects say “no” four times before saying “yes”. This asymmetry between effort and results explains why pre-sales can become an abyss without clear visibility.

Hidden costs add up

Beyond pure sales time, pre-sales mobilizes resources that you probably don’t count:

• Time spent in-house preparing pitches, refining strategic recommendations, producing mock-ups or moodboards
• Purchasing external services to reinforce your proposal (studies, visuals, prototypes)
• The impact on the workload of operational teams, who have to juggle billed production and unbilled pre-sales.
• Travel, representation costs, sometimes even investment in specific tools for a prospect

Without precise decision-making traceability, it’s hard to know what’s being spent month after month. And without this knowledge, it’s impossible to adjust your approach, refuse certain time-consuming competitions or redirect your efforts towards the most promising prospects.

When pre-sales becomes a bottomless pit

The real danger is the absence of warning signals. Without clear indicators, how do you know when risk is becoming excessive? How can you spot projects that consume too much time or resources in relation to their potential for success?

Some pre-sales mobilize considerable energy while the conversion rate is low. Others require financial investments (subcontracting, paid studies) that will never be recouped in the event of a loss. In the meantime, your teams are working for free, to the detriment of projects that generate revenue.

Actionable solutions for regaining control :

Pre-sales provisioning is essential. You need to determine in advance how much time and resources you are prepared to invest, and then monitor these investments scrupulously. By setting up warning signals, you can identify time-consuming projects before they impact on your profitability.

Calculating a salesperson’s transformation cost is also essential. How much does each signature cost? What is the ratio of time invested to contracts signed? This data will enable you to arbitrate between different opportunities and say no when necessary.

Finally, defining budget thresholds by prospect type helps you rationalize your efforts. A local SME doesn’t need to mobilize as many resources as a major international account. That’s why it’s important to formalize your approach.

II. Staffing: the perpetual balancing act

The sinews of war: every minute counts

Staffing is the heart of your profitability reactor. Knowing who works on what, when and for how long directly affects your margins. Every hour must be optimized, every consultant assigned to the right project at the right time. Ideally.

In reality, too many agencies and firms are still navigating by sight. Schedules are made by feel, assignments are decided at weekly meetings with no consolidated vision, and budget slippages are discovered too late. The result: projects that explode in the time sold, teams under pressure, and margins that plummet.

TACE (Taux d’Activité Congés Exclus) is the key indicator for measuring staffing performance. It represents the percentage of an employee’s working time devoted to billable tasks, excluding vacation periods. It is a major standard for all companies that sell the work of consultants: consulting firms, ESNs, agencies, design offices, etc.

Without this rigorous monitoring, it’s impossible to know whether your teams are under-staffed, overloaded or, worse still, working for free. How many times has a project gone over schedule without anyone noticing until closing?

The three pitfalls of blind staffing

First pitfall: if time is not tracked, it is not billed. This is the absolute rule. How many hours a month go by the wayside simply because they’re not tracked? Without a dedicated tool, you often discover too late that the time budget has exploded. The result: unbilled hours, slashed margins and evaporating profitability.

Second pitfall: constant rush without steering. In agencies, rush is the norm. Deadlines pile up, teams get busy… but working more doesn’t mean earning more. With no visibility on schedules, projects get out of hand, teams disperse, and overwork becomes the rule. You lose control, and your profitability suffers.

Third pitfall: chaotic schedules and impossible balance. Without a tracking tool, it’s hard to know who’s doing what, how much time is being spent on it, and above all whether these hours will be billed. Some consultants are overloaded with work, while others are in between contracts. This uneven distribution penalizes overall productivity and fuels frustration.

High consultant turnover can even force firms to refuse or put projects on hold, with a direct impact on profitability. Not to mention the hidden costs: recruitment, training, loss of productivity during the transition period… all factors that degrade the ROI of staffing.

Staffing in a post-Covid context

The macro context is not helping. According to the Banque de France, labor productivity in France is down 8.5% on its pre-Covid trend. This loss can be explained in part by workforce composition effects: the explosion in apprenticeships (positive for employment) is temporarily impacting average productivity, as is the integration of less experienced profiles.

Companies now have to juggle complex equations: meeting employees’ expectations (flexibility, work-life balance, meaning at work) while managing the urgency of customer projects and the imperative of profitability. Staffing has become more complex, and competition more intense.

Indicator	Without staffing tool	With staffing tool
Real-time visibility	❌ None	✅ Complete
Hours not billed	🔴 Frequent	🟢 Minimized
Drift detection	⏰ Too late	⚡ Instant
Team planning	📊 By intuition	📈 Data-driven
Load/resource balance	🎲 Random	⚖️ Optimized

Regaining control of staffing

Concrete actions to be implemented :

Keep track of every hour spent to make sure nothing slips under the radar. This is the basis. If you don’t measure, you’ll never be able to optimize.

Receiving alerts in the event of overruns means you can adjust schedules before it’s too late. You regain control and avoid unpleasant surprises at the end of the project.

Comparing the time sold with the time actually spent will help you to detect drifts before they become costly. This comparison should become a weekly reflex, not a post-mortem analysis.

Color-coding your schedule simplifies management: at a glance, you can see who’s under-staffed, over-staffed or perfectly balanced. Visual clarity saves precious time.

III. Invoicing: the final stretch… full of pitfalls

The obstacle course of invoicing

You delivered the project. The team has hit the ground running. The customer is happy. And yet, the money isn’t coming in. Between errors, delays and endless reminders, invoicing is becoming an obstacle course that’s suffocating your cash flow.

The figures are alarming. According to a Deloitte study, 30% of companies suffer from errors when issuing invoices, resulting in longer processing times and additional costs to rectify these errors. According to BPI France, 60% of French companies suffer from late payments.

But what’s most worrying is the trend: 82% of French companies experienced late payment in the last 12 months in 2023, according to the Coface survey. Worse still, these delays are getting longer. The average delay is 42 days for VSEs and 38 days for SMEs. Some VSEs are even experiencing delays of over two months in 20% of cases.

The time lost is considerable: small and medium-sized businesses spend 14 hours a week managing overdue invoices, according to Clockify. That’s almost two working days dedicated to reminders instead of producing value.

The 4 mistakes that kill your cash flow

First mistake: keeping track of hours, a constant headache. In many consulting firms, keeping track of the hours worked on each project is a major challenge, not to say a constant headache. Without an efficient process in place, it becomes difficult to accurately account for the hours worked by each consultant on each project.

This lack of rigor leads to billing errors, late payments and customer dissatisfaction. Inadequate tracking of time worked also affects costing and resource planning for future projects, leading to inefficient use of available resources and a consequent drop in profitability.

Second mistake: opaque invoices. If your invoices are opaque to your customers, if they struggle to decipher them, you run the risk of errors, dissatisfaction, late payment and confusion. Whether your projects are priced on a fixed-price or time-and-materials basis, clarity and transparency are essential.

Invoices must give precise details of the services rendered: nature of the service, date and duration of the intervention, name of the consultant in charge. The rates applied must be clearly indicated, with the unit price, the total amount and the pricing method. An incomprehensible invoice is an invitation to dispute or delay payment.

Third mistake: late mailing is expensive. Some firms still keep their invoices and wait until the end of the month to send them to their customers. A strategic mistake. Late invoices lead to late payments and have a direct impact on cash flow.

The rule should be simple: issue invoices as soon as the service or delivery has been completed. Scheduling automatic reminders to send invoices on time prevents oversights. In busy periods, it’s easy to forget to send an invoice. And that can sometimes mean months of delay simply because the document was never issued.

Fourth mistake: relaunching is a full-time job. Failure to keep track of payments leads to unidentified overdue or overdue invoices. Systematic tracking of invoices sent, paid or overdue becomes essential. Scheduling automatic reminders for overdue invoices ensures that situations do not drag on.

But why the delays? The DGCCRF inspected 1,219 establishments in 2022, with an anomaly rate of 33%. The shortcomings in terms of accounting organization are glaring: invoice validation circuits that are too long or complex, shared service centers located abroad. Large companies are particularly affected by these malfunctions.

On the customer side, 41% of delays are deliberate, according to Coface, with a view to managing their own cash flow. 27% of companies attribute delays to their customers’ financial difficulties.

We’ve been using Furious for just over two years now. (…) Since we installed Furious, we’ve doubled our sales in two years. (…) It allows us to manage our business and get people working together, so that they can see what’s being done and we can really gain in fluidity.

Amaury Bataille – Managing Director Monet + Associés

The French context in 2025: record degradation

The situation is deteriorating. According to Altares, France recorded the sharpest deterioration in payment times in Europe in 2025, with a one-day increase in one year. Less than half of all organizations now pay their suppliers on time: only 45.2% meet their deadlines.

In the private sector, delays average 13.3 days, compared with 12 days at the start of 2024. Even more worrying: over 9% of players are now experiencing delays of over a month, a four-year high.

There is, however, a glimmer of hope. The consulting and business services sector passed a milestone in 2022: for the first time, its lead times fell below the 60-day threshold set by law, according to the Banque de France report. But with the general deterioration in 2025, this improvement could be called into question.

Take control of your billing

Solutions to secure your cash flow :

Implementing reliable, integrated time tracking software is the first step. It enables precise tracking of hours worked, avoids billing errors and ensures rigorous accounting.

Issuing invoices as soon as the service or delivery is completed automatically shortens payment times. Not waiting until the end of the month saves precious days in your cash flow.

Precise details of services rendered in your invoices limit disputes. Nature of service, date, duration, name of consultant: every element counts to ensure transparency.

Clearly defining delay penalties in contracts from the outset sends out a strong signal. It’s also a practical way of limiting deliberate delays.

Systematic invoice tracking with a visual dashboard enables you to spot overdue invoices immediately. Scheduling progressive reminders (friendly e-mail reminders, followed by calls or registered letters) structures your process and saves you considerable time.

Don’t let these black holes suck away your profitability

Uncontrolled pre-sales, blind staffing, chaotic invoicing: these three black holes are not inevitable. They are the result of a lack of management, visibility and appropriate tools. But they are not inevitable.

Every minute invested in pre-sales without traceability, every hour worked without follow-up, every invoice that drags on represents a leak in profitability. And these leaks accumulate, month after month, until they become abysses that eat away at your business.

The real cost of inaction is considerable. But the good news is that solutions exist for each of these three areas. Digitalization and the right tools can help you regain control. The challenge is simple: to move from “firefighter” mode, which puts out fires on a daily basis, to “strategic pilot” mode, which anticipates and optimizes.

Managing an agency or consulting firm should no longer be done blindly. An integrated management tool gives you greater clarity over resource allocation, time tracking and the profitability of each assignment. No more guesswork: you can visualize in real time who’s doing what, detect deviations before they become costly, and assign the right people to the right projects.

Don’t let these three black holes suck away your profitability. It’s time to get back in the driver’s seat with a complete picture of your business. Your cash flow will thank you.

Youmay be asking yourself
these questions.

01 How to calculate the real cost of a pre-sale?

To calculate the real cost of a pre-sale, you need to add up :

• Time spent by each team member (sales, strategist, creative) multiplied by their hourly cost
• Purchases of external services (studies, freelancers, prototypes)
• Travel and entertainment expenses
• Specific tools or licenses used for the pitch

Ideally, you should plot these elements in real time in a management tool to get an accurate picture. You can then calculate your transformation rate (number of pre-sales won / total number of pre-sales) and your average cost per signature.

02 What is TACE and why is it important?

TACE (Taux d’Activité Congés Exclus) is the key performance indicator for staffing. It measures the percentage of an employee’s working time devoted to billable tasks, excluding vacation periods.

TACE is important because it allows :

• Measure the real profitability of your consultants
• Identify overloaded and underloaded employees
• Optimize resource allocation to projects
• Compare performance between teams or periods
• Making strategic staffing decisions

Optimal TACE varies from sector to sector, but is generally between 75% and 85% for consulting firms and agencies.

03 How can I reduce my customers’ late payments?

To reduce late payments, adopt these best practices:

Upstream :

• Clearly define deadlines and penalties in your contracts
• Ask for advance payments on major projects
• Check your prospects’ financial health before signing

During the project :

• Issue invoices immediately after the service (not at the end of the month)
• Make sure your invoices are clear, detailed and error-free
• Offer several payment methods to facilitate settlement

After dispatch :

• Set up systematic monitoring with a visual dashboard
• Program automatic reminders (friendly reminder on D+7, then escalation)
• Don’t hesitate to call us directly for long delays.

Automated invoicing software can manage these reminders, saving you up to 14 hours a week according to statistics.

04 What tools can I use to improve my agency’s management?

To improve the management of your agency or consulting firm, choose integrated tools that centralize :

For pre-sales :

• A CRM to track your opportunities and calculate your conversion rate
• A time-tracking tool to allocate pre-sales hours by prospect
• Dashboards to view costs per pre-sale and per signature

For staffing :

• Real-time visual planning with color coding (available / staffed / overloaded)
• An automatic alert system in the event of budget overruns
• TACE tracking by consultant and team

For billing :

• Billing software connected to time tracking
• Programmable automatic reminders
• A cash flow dashboard with pending invoices

The ideal is to opt for an all-in-one solution that connects these three dimensions, rather than juggling several disparate tools.

05 Is it normal to lose money on certain pre-sales?

Yes, it’s normal to invest in pre-sales that you won’t win. That’s part of doing business. The real question is: how much are you prepared to lose, and how can you optimize this ratio?

Statistics show that 80% of sales require five follow-up calls, and that 80% of prospects say “no” four times before saying “yes”. Pre-sales is therefore a risky but necessary investment.

To limit losses:

• Better qualify your prospects upstream (budget, decision, timing)
• Set investment thresholds by prospect type
• Analyze your conversion rate by customer segment
• Don’t hesitate to turn down time-consuming competitions with little chance of success.
• Capitalize on lost pre-sales (content reuse, learning)

The aim is not to achieve a 100% conversion rate, but to optimize the investment/return ratio across your entire sales pipeline.