Your Fee & T&C benchmark and analysis

The report that shows you exactly where the money leaks — and how to get it back.

Below are three of the analyses from a real engagement, walked through for Whitfield & Rowe — a fictional 25-person retained search firm in London. Your numbers will differ. The method won't.

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Free 30-minute consultation, incl. a written benchmark of your terms vs the market. No preparation needed beyond a recent proposal.
Whitfield & Rowe
Retained executive search · London
25
team members
54
mandates / year
£5.0M
fee revenue
30%
standard headline fee
12
fixed-fee mandates
Fictional example
01 The concession map

Five concessions your team keeps making — each with a price tag.

We read the negotiation email trails behind W&R's 14 discounted mandates. Not to grade anyone — to count the patterns. Five concessions recur, and every one of them has a measurable average cost.

The most expensive habit isn't a bad clause. It's conceding without a counter-ask: in 11 of 14 threads, the fee moved after a single question from the client, with nothing asked in return.

Every pattern above is measured and priced from your own threads, then benchmarked against your market — so you see which concessions actually cost money and which the data says clients would have accepted without.
Analysis 1 — concessions in 14 discounted threads · frequency × avg costfrom your own emails
Fee % cut without a counter-askmoved on the client's first question
11 / 14
−£9.2k
Salary base narrowed mid-thread"to keep it simple" — bonus dropped
9 / 14
−£7.1k
Guarantee extended, nothing traded6 → 12 months as a sweetener
7 / 14
−£4.3k
Retainer schedule relaxed50/25/25 given up to ⅓·⅓·⅓
5 / 14
−£3.2k
Research fee waivedoffered before the client asked
8 / 14
−£2.1k
Across the year's discounted mandates ≈ −£62k / year
Measured from the client's own negotiation trails — this analysis uses your data, not market averages. Fictional example, no real client text.
02 Fixed fees, back-calculated

A fixed fee is still a percentage — typically a much lower one.

Analysis 2 — effective fee % vs actual first-year package, per mandaten=54
Green: percentage-model mandates. Gold: fixed-fee mandates, fee ÷ realised package. Dashed line: benchmark median effective rate for flat fees. Fictional example — client and benchmark figures illustrative; the underlying benchmark is not public.

Every W&R fixed fee was divided by what the role actually paid in year one. The pattern matches what the benchmark shows across the market: a fee that's fixed up front typically lands well below what the same firm would sell as a percentage. Eleven of W&R's twelve landed under the % book — anywhere from 5% to 19% effective, with no pattern anyone planned. One landed above it.

It happens because the salary is guessed low, components are left out, and there's no reference point in the room. The report hands you two fixes:

  • 1Anchor on your own past searches. Walk into every fixed-fee negotiation with two or three anonymised, comparable placements — real packages, real fees — as the reference point, instead of last year's number.
  • 2Represent the full compensation accurately. Set the fee on a proper estimate of base + bonus + 13th month, checked against salary data — not on the client's opening guess.
Twelve fixed-fee mandates, repriced with those two fixes: ≈ £65,000 / year.
03 Non-fee terms vs your market

Guarantees, retainers, research fees: what your other terms cost per year.

The fee % gets all the negotiation attention; the terms underneath move just as much money. The analysis prices every non-fee term in your standard agreement against the benchmark for your market — the relevant geographical cut, not a global average.

For Whitfield & Rowe, five terms sat below the market median or best practice — each priced from their own mandate volume, per year:

  • 1The guarantee is the biggest line. A 12-month full refund, where the market mode is a 3-month replacement — unpriced risk on every placement.
  • 2The retainer schedule leaks on stalled searches. Flat thirds realise less than the front-loaded 50/25/25 that best-practice firms write in as the default.
  • 3The research fee simply isn't charged. A large share of comparable firms bill one — W&R waives it before anyone asks.
Five non-fee terms against your market: ≈ £98,000 / year — before touching the headline %.
Analysis 3 — non-fee terms vs market median / best practiceyour market cut
TermYour positionMarket£ / yr
Replacement guaranteeon every placement
12-mo full refund 3-mo replacement −£42k
Retainer scheduleexpected value when searches stall
⅓ · ⅓ · ⅓ 50 / 25 / 25 −£24k
Research feeper search
Not charged Charged by a large share of firms −£19k
Exclusivityon retained mandates
Given, unpriced Priced as standard −£8k
Own-candidate discountwhen the client brings the hire
Full discount 0–2pp, often none −£5k
At W&R's mandate volume ≈ −£98k / year
Market column: median or best practice from the benchmark, for the client's geography and segment. Fictional example — client and benchmark figures illustrative; the underlying benchmark is not public.
Then the report tells you what to do about it

Every finding ends as a specific, actionable recommendation — with a number on it.

Not "consider reviewing your terms". Contract language, named clients, meeting scripts. One sample from each recommendation set — the rest is what the engagement delivers.

Standard terms · new clients

Patch the standard proposal

Sample: write the research fee and the 50/25/25 retainer into the standard terms — draft clause text plus the one sentence that sells each to a client.
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≈ +£102k / year
Top existing clients

Renegotiate the frameworks

Sample: reopen the 2024 framework with your largest client at renewal — swap the full-refund guarantee for 12-month replacement + 33% refund, hold the 25% but on the loaded base.
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≈ +£78k / year
Partners · every negotiation

What works in your market

Sample: the counters that measurably worked in your own past threads — identified from the data, priced per clause, and written out verbatim for reuse.
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≈ +£45k / year
≈ £225k / year identified for Whitfield & Rowe — ≈4.5% of fee revenue, or roughly 9% added to a ~£2.5M profit. Same searches, same team.
Fictional example. Recommendations in a real engagement are drafted as contract language and scripts, per client, against the live benchmark.

How an engagement runs.

Three steps. Free first — we prove the gap on your numbers before you spend anything.

01

The benchmark consult

Free, 30 minutes. Your headline fee, salary base, guarantee and retainer terms against the 500+ firm benchmark — with a written report, yours to keep.

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02

Your Fee & T&C benchmark and analysis

Everything above, on your own mandates: the concession map, the fixed-fee repricing, your terms against your market — and the full set of recommendations with a number on each.

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03

Your custom negotiation co-pilot

The analysis becomes the training set for a custom agent that supports every proposal and counter your team sends. Offered to analysis clients first.

About the co-pilot →

Your version of this report already exists in your files.

Start with the free 30-minute benchmark consult — a written report of your terms against the market, yours to keep. If nothing's leaking, you'll know that too.

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