The Handbook: The Operations Podcast

BenchPress 2025: 4 Big Agency Opportunities You Need To Be On Top Of

• Scoro • Season 1 • Episode 26

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How do agencies stack up in 2025?

The results are in for BenchPress 2025. The UK’s largest benchmarking survey for independent agencies has revealed some surprising (and shocking) trends about the state of the industry.

To break it all down, Rory Spence, Head of Commercial at The Wow Company, joins us to unpack the data, trends, and opportunities that agency leaders need to know.

In this episode, we cover:

  • Why 2024 was a brutal year for many agencies (and how to bounce back)
  • Profitability trends and how top-performing agencies maintain strong margins
  • AI’s growing role in agency operations (and the pricing mistake you must avoid)
  • The power of confidence in agency success - and how to build it

If you're focused on making your agency more efficient and financially stronger, these insights will help you drive meaningful change. 


Additional Resources:

Download the full BenchPress 2025 report at thewowcompany.com/BenchPress

Follow Rory on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/rory-spence-63023884/

Follow Harv on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/harvnagra/


Stay up to date with regular ops insights. Subscribe to The Handbook: The Operations Newsletter.

This podcast is brought to you by Scoro, where you can manage your projects, resources and finances in a single system.

Harv Nagra:

Thanks for listening to The Handbook, the agency operations podcast. This podcast is brought to you by Scoro. As an ops director, something that was super important to me was consistent pricing. I mean, I've witnessed people copying and pasting each other's quotes as standard operating procedure, and it's not good. When I brought in Scoro at my agency, I loved that I was able to create a library of mix and match quote templates that allowed our account managers to quickly build budgets for our clients, which all had standardized pricing, consistent language on scope, and which had healthy predefined margins. Scoro even allows you to create an approval workflow, so team leads can sign off quotes before they're sent to clients. I loved all of this. And it meant that inconsistent pricing was not something I had to worry about any longer. Sign up for a free trial at scoro.com or if you arrange a demo call, tell them Harv sent you. Now, back to the episode.

Hi all. Welcome back to the Handbook. The most important thing that you can be doing is running a smart, efficient agency, But knowing what's happening amongst your agency peers keeps you sharp. Today we've got a special episode. We're diving into the findings from the 2025 Benchpress Report. The UK's largest benchmarking survey of independent agency owners. If you've ever wondered how your agency compares, whether it's on pricing growth or what's keeping other agency leaders up at night, this report has the answers. Since launching BenchPress has become the go-to resource for insights into the trends shaping agencies across the uk and this year's findings, they're as interesting as ever. Here's a few headlines I had the chance to preview. A third of agencies made redundancies last year up from 26%. The year before. Only 38% of agencies ended 2024 larger than they started Agencies using tiered hourly rates fell for the first time. I mean, I've never heard of that happening before. The number of agencies at risk with less than one month of overheads in their cash reserves rose from 9% to 12%. Agencies with six plus months of overheads as cash reserves dropped from 28% to 23% To break it all down, and in particular, shed light on the opportunities. I'm joined by Rory Spence, head of commercial at the WOW Company, The accounting firm and the team behind the BenchPress report. Rory leads, Wow's sales, marketing, and commercial strategy helping agencies navigate the challenges of scaling sustainably. So let's dive in to see what's really happening in the agency world and what you can do to stay ahead.

Harv Nagra:

Rory, welcome to the podcast. Thanks so much for being here.

Rory Spence:

Thanks so much, Harv. Thanks for having me. I've been excited for today.

Harv Nagra:

Absolutely. It's a pleasure. so we're here to talk about BenchPress today, which has been running for a while now. I think it was 2012 when it started, which is quite a while for a survey like this, right? Is is that true first of

Rory Spence:

Yeah. it absolutely is. It started back in 2012 and I think that report might have been eight pages long. Uh.

Harv Nagra:

Okay.

Rory Spence:

one that is about to go live in 2025 is certainly closer to 40 or 50, so it has changed a lot in that time.

Harv Nagra:

nice. And the number of agencies, I guess, has expanded as well in terms of, how many people respond and all that kind of

Rory Spence:

It certainly has. a few years ago, we tipped over the 500 mark for the first time, and this year we got 677, which was

Harv Nagra:

Wow,

Rory Spence:

a very minor increase on last year, but an increase nonetheless. So we were very happy with that.

Harv Nagra:

that is really impressive. So you've been at the Wow Company for a few years. I'm just wondering, what you're seeing in the results this year, any major shifts in the kind of challenges agencies have been facing that kind of jump out to you?

Rory Spence:

It is an interesting question. Yes and no. So to be honest, we always ask what the number one challenge is for agencies and really without fail new business is always the number one challenge. So

Harv Nagra:

Mm-hmm.

Rory Spence:

I guess in that sense, no, the challenges haven't changed too much. What I would say though is it's just got harder. See that you can sense that from the conversations we have with agency owners and how competitive the industry as is right now, there are so many agencies out there that it makes it incredibly tough to differentiate, incredibly tough to compete on price and be competitive because there are always cheaper options out there, and that is making it so, so difficult to, yeah, to compete and to win work.

Harv Nagra:

Absolutely. Um, just went live with an episode today where that was the theme that, there's so much competition out there and then you've got the pressure of AI and what, how that's gonna change The industry as well. So I'm sure some of that stuff will be coming out in your research that we'll be talking about today. But, before we dive in, did anything jump out to you as like the most surprising thing that you saw in this year's results?

Rory Spence:

surprising is probably not the right word for it, but I, I, I'd say quite shocking, to be honest with you, was, was the key word. When we started getting this analysis back from all of these agencies that had kindly taken part in the survey, we knew that 2024. Was immensely tough, Right. We're well connected with agencies. We've got a number of agency clients and so we could see firsthand that it was difficult, but just how difficult it was. I don't think we were necessarily expecting. you know, we saw drops in profitability, drops in cash levels, drops in growth rates. Increases in redundancies frankly, it was a pretty brutal year. So, it's not all doom and gloom. There are plenty of opportunities out there for agencies going into 2025 and, and reasons to be positive, I think. But in terms of reflecting on 2024, yeah, just, just a really brutal year.

Harv Nagra:

Mm-hmm. Okay. So, from our chat, earlier I understand that several interesting trends or, or, or themes emerged and, some opportunities that you saw. So excited to get into some of that stuff. would love for you to introduce the first, and, and let's, let's hear about

Rory Spence:

Yeah, absolutely. Well, one of the things that we saw from the report was, we always ask people what their number one focus is for their agency. when we asked this last year. building an asset was number one, and then

Harv Nagra:

Hmm,

Rory Spence:

the second was operating with purpose, but they were quite close. There was actually not a huge gap between those people that were trying to build an, an asset to ultimately sell, and those that were just trying to do the right thing and, and operate with clear purpose. Now, when we asked that this year, that gap broadened massively. There was a huge increase actually, and a shift to agencies saying, you know what? We are ready to exit the business now. And we're building something that we are looking to to proactively sell. And I think unfortunately, that is off the back of such a brutal year and a real hit on people's energy levels and saying, actually enough's enough, like I want out of this, which I. We know is tough because of course the worst time to sell a business is when you really wanna sell it. And the best time to sell a business is when you have no interest. And why would I sell this? This is a cash cow. So it is challenging in that respect. But to get to your question and point Harv around opportunities, there is a huge opportunity there now for agencies who are either looking to buy or who are

Harv Nagra:

Yeah. looking

Rory Spence:

to exit. We're gonna see an increase there.

Harv Nagra:

that number was 58%, wasn't it? agency owners looking to say selling their business was their number one priority. that definitely surprised me when I read that. That is, that was quite huge actually. So super, super interesting. I was reading that it was up from 44% a couple years ago, which

Rory Spence:

Exactly that from, from the year before. Yeah, exactly. So quite, quite a big jump and, and most of those percentages that jumped onto that had dropped off that I'm building something with purpose

Harv Nagra:

Hmm.

Rory Spence:

do that. so. A really, you know, interesting step that we are starting to talk to our clients about right now at Wow. Is actually thinking about, well, you know what? If you are thinking about selling your business, start doing that thinking really, really smartly. Now actually think about if you were to sell your agency, what would be some of the key things that a buyer would really value, and what would be some of the potential challenges that would prevent a sale or that would reduce the value of, of your agency? And a really smart way to look at that quite simply is if you bought your own agency today, What would be some of the key areas? How would you analyze those different things? Thinking about, for example, what is your client portfolio, how healthy is that? How much of them maybe, are on retained contracts? For example, thinking about your team as well, and particularly some of the key people within your team, you know, actually, like, are they assets? Have you got the right people in the right places within your team? And just think there's a fantastic opportunity to really look internally at your business and go,

Harv Nagra:

Mm-hmm.

Rory Spence:

if II bought my business tomorrow, what would be the areas that would be positives and what would be the areas that are negatives? And then what can you go and do about that? Because it's gonna be the best way to ultimately prepare for a sale for those 58% that are thinking of doing that.

Harv Nagra:

Absolutely. And you know, audience for our podcast here is operations Leaders and it's all about building a mature, efficient agency. And you're, you're absolutely right. In order to get into that position to be able to sell, you want it to be running really, really well, to be attractive to a buyer. So. Really good

Rory Spence:

Yeah.

Harv Nagra:

so why don't we go into the next, next trend sorry, what should I call them? stats

Rory Spence:

Yeah. Yeah, yeah, Yeah. Like, Yeah. The next opportunity, so a, again, in terms of reflecting on the stats from 2024, we, we saw profitability was down again. So, when we talk about profitability usually at Wow here, we're talking about gross profit, and we've got a very specific way that we would recommend you track your gross profit to keep it to headlines today in the for the sake of this podcast, it is using your billable staff salaries or freelance costs in your gross profit calculation.

Harv Nagra:

Okay.

Rory Spence:

taking your sales, your revenue, and then subtracting the cost of the team that are delivering on that work, that's gonna give you your gross profit. Okay. So, if you are listening to this and that's gone over your head and you're really, interested in this, but confused, like, give me a shout and I'm really happy to go through this process, but that is how Wow would recommend you calculate your gross profit margin, and by using that formula. We know that the top forming agencies are exceeding 50% gross profit margin when using that calculation, that methodology,

Harv Nagra:

Okay.

Rory Spence:

we know that last year the average agency for over a million pound turnover was at 40%. This year, that dropped again to 39%, so might only be down by 1%, but it's going in the wrong direction because really we should be going up. 40% was already too low, we've gotta be getting back to that 50% mark.

Harv Nagra:

Hmm.

Rory Spence:

Now, why is it smart to track gross profit in that way? Well, first of all, so you can benchmark yourself and know where you are at compared to these stats, so that's really useful. But B, it's gonna give you a really clear indication as to why your profitability is up or out, So what I mean by that is if you only ever looked at your operating profit, well frankly, what's gonna impact that is your overheads.

Harv Nagra:

Right.

Rory Spence:

should be a straightforward task to review of ads, right? And be able to see where am I potentially overspending. And there's limited opportunities to do too much there anyway. When looking at gross profit in this way, you can see, am I charging enough? Are the team actually like, are they utilized fully? do I potentially have too much staff cost. And is that because either I've got too many staff or I've got too many senior staff that are on high salaries and my ratio of kind of senior to junior members isn't quite Right. am I overdelivering for example? You know, it's gonna give you clues as to what's causing potentially a low gross profit or what's causing hopefully a high gross profit margin.

Harv Nagra:

Right. Super interesting. So, one thing I was gonna ask you on that is that I feel like that does differ from the standard definition of gross profit, if I'm not mistaken normally.

Rory Spence:

No, great question. So you are absolutely Right. if you are working with an accountant and they say, no, no, your gross profit should include that, it should cost, it should only include direct costs of sales, which might be some software costs, for example, that the client is buying. they wouldn't be technically incorrect for the record, I'm not suggesting that that accountant doesn't know what they're doing. What I'm saying is that isn't going to give you meaningful information,

Harv Nagra:

Mm-hmm.

Rory Spence:

okay? So we at Wow, are all about giving you data and insights that will allow you to analyze the performance of your business and make improvements. And by tracking it this way, you're going to get better data and you're gonna be able to make better decisions to build a better business. So

Harv Nagra:

Sure.

Rory Spence:

why we recommend tracking gross profit in that way.

Harv Nagra:

That makes sense. So, Rory, with regards to profitability, is there an opportunity there as well? And, and can you shed some light on what agencies could be doing

Rory Spence:

100% massive opportunity here. So we've just seen and and shared that gross profit margins are down again. And if I was running an agency right now, I'd absolutely be looking really in detail at what level I'm at right now, what is my overall gross profit, but then how detailed can you get with this as well?

Harv Nagra:

Hmm.

Rory Spence:

Can you look at your gross profit by department? Can you look at your gross profit, by service line, or that might be the same thing. Can you look at, even gross profit by individual? For example, can you look at gross profit by client? there's a whole load of real detailed data that you can go to here to see quite simply, where is your agency making money and where is your agency not making money? And you can then make really smart decisions. one example of this might be that you look and go, well, this particular service that we provide in our agency actually isn't highly profitable, it's at below

Harv Nagra:

Right.

Rory Spence:

it's down at 40 or 30%. But you might say, well, that's the thing that gets clients in the door. That's how they find us. So we need to offer that. Now of course there might be something you can do to make that more profitable, but what you might also look at is go, well, yeah, that one is down there, but when we then provide this service for clients. Our margins are up at 60, 70%. So this is our premium service. Now, what does that tell you? Hopefully you can figure this out. But what it tells you is you need to be speaking to every single client that buys service A from you, they also need to be buying service B from you.'cause this is where you make your money. This is where the margins come from.

Harv Nagra:

Mm-hmm.

Rory Spence:

So that's just one example of where getting this really detailed information can help you to make smart decisions. It will also enable you to look in detail at your pricing. Are you being paid what you are worth? And if you can get obsessed around your profit margins on a gross profit basis, that will take over from revenue. Right? We've always, we've always been ingrained to be obsessed about turnover and revenue. Right? But believe me, you will start forgetting about that when you get obsessed about gross profit and this is the number that should really matter.

Harv Nagra:

It matters

Rory Spence:

Yeah, yeah, yeah. so I'm sure you see this all the time as well, right? Harv?

Harv Nagra:

Absolutely. And I think some agencies, you, you're right, get very obsessed, especially in the earlier stages of maturity, about turnover, but ultimately that can lead to, problems if that's all you're focused on. And it's like leaky bucket,

Rory Spence:

exactly right.

Harv Nagra:

Yeah.

Rory Spence:

A hundred percent. I, I, I'm a big believer, there's only one thing worse than not winning, work and, and that's winning unprofitable work. So actually if, if we are obsessed about revenue, there's a risk that we will win unprofitable work because we're just trying to bring stuff in, at the top end. If we can get obsessed about gross profit to the point where we start saying no to projects because they are not profitable for us or not profitable enough, that's a brilliant place to be. That is more important. so yeah, get really, really detailed around this. Look at how much it is costing you to deliver work and then how much you are actually making as a result of that. And if there's a disparity there, like what can you do about it? That's the big opportunity. When it comes to profit, I think.

Harv Nagra:

And a really nice reminder Rory as well, that you need to be tracking all this stuff and being able to report on it as well. And that's so important. I, I'm wondering, like, I, I don't know if you can comment on when, agencies are coming to yourselves and starting to get involved, whether you, you have to take them on that journey of maturity and, and get them to a place where they can see and measure all of that stuff. Or if you think generally, people are doing a decent job?

Rory Spence:

Such a great question, Harv. So a lot of the agencies we will work with, they're all over a million pound turnover. So they'll often come to us as like their second accountants. They've worked with an accountancy firm that has got them so far and they've done a fantastic job of filing their accounts and doing their taxes and keeping them compliant. And then as you get to that sort of million pound ish mark, you realize I need this sort of data, the stuff we're talking about Right now. Actually that accountancy firm maybe are not best positioned to do that. So that is often, most frequently where Wow, then comes in and we start working with people in that scenario. And so they don't have this data, they don't have these, these reports set up,

Harv Nagra:

Mm-hmm.

Rory Spence:

is the number one role for us straight away. First two, three months. Let's get you set up on this and let's get you educated on this. Let's talk through why we should. Change your p and l layout to from how it is at the moment to, to this, approach. Let's start looking at gross profit in detail and let's do that analysis of what your most profitable offerings are, what your most profitable clients are, what are the clues there, what's causing them to be highly profitable?

Harv Nagra:

Yeah.

Rory Spence:

so there is absolutely this really exciting. 2, 3, 4 month periods with all new clients that we work with, where we go through this kind of education piece and we get them harnessed with this data where these opportunities are like, it's just suddenly appear out of nowhere. It becomes obvious, ah, if I pulled this lever over here, it's gonna make a big difference to my gross profit margin, which has a knock on effect to my operating profit as well.

Harv Nagra:

Such an important part of the journey of maturity. Alright, so let's go into the, the next kind of opportunity.

Rory Spence:

Yeah, absolutely. I think the next opportunity we are seeing, and I, I wanna caveat this with, I'm certainly no expert on AI. But absolutely AI is, is the opportunity ahead in 2025.

Harv Nagra:

Mm-hmm.

Rory Spence:

what was really interesting is we asked agency owners how they felt about AI a couple of years ago in our BenchPress survey from 2023, I believe. And some said we see this as a little bit of a threat. A lot said we are not currently using it. well now it's very different. The results from 2025 survey said 95% of agencies are using AI in their agency, and most of them are using it in a client facing capacity as well, which I think is hugely, encouraging and and exciting at what those opportunities are now. personally I have a nervousness around this. So I was at an event that we ran in London very recently, and a conversation sparked up, where people said, ah, there, there, there was a question asked, and they said there, I'm curious when using AI and it making it easier to deliver on projects and you are, you are able to save time, do you pass that cost saving onto the client?

Harv Nagra:

I've heard that question as well, for, for a couple years at this point now, so, but I'll let you

Rory Spence:

Harv. Like I thought, oh, this poor person, okay, well let's help them.

Harv Nagra:

Mm-hmm.

Rory Spence:

to my shock, several other people around the room piped up, said, yeah, yeah. I'm interested about this as well. And, and Harv, you just alluded to it as well, you've heard this a lot over the years, but I'm shocked because that makes no sense.

Harv Nagra:

Mm-hmm.

Rory Spence:

If as an agency you're investing your time and money in AI tools that can make you more efficient in delivering client work, however you are then passing that time saving and cost saving onto the client. What is the point in you investing in it in the first time? If we use really simple terms here, if you are operating at an hourly rate of a hundred pounds and you've got 10 hours to sell, you've got a thousand pounds of time there. Now if you've just suddenly used an AI tool and this thing has only taken you four hours, but you're now only gonna charge 400 pound for it because it's four hours at a hundred pound, you still need to fill those other six hours in order to make the same amount of money as you would've done before. So. I passionately feel that we need to be smart with how we are positioning our use of ai. And if you, as the agency are investing in this tech to streamline your own processes and how you deliver work for clients, I'm not suggesting you keep a hundred percent of that benefit, but Absolutely you should be rewarded for your efficiency, because otherwise, we are only helping the client and we're doing that for free. It makes absolutely no sense. So.

Harv Nagra:

Yeah, I, I, I think you're right. And I think maybe part of the problem is not knowing how to, defend yourself in that argument When a client says, oh, your X times more efficient, shouldn't you be passing on the savings? So just making sure that you're able to challenge that and say, well, we're able to do so much more now, and you're getting so much more value out of the work we're doing, and be prepared to answer

Rory Spence:

Exactly right, and I think there's an excellent quote. Which I wish I could remember word for word, but I can't. About how, if you know the answer to a question that a client has asked, and you've only needed 10 minutes to figure it out and give them the answer, you shouldn't be rewarded for the 10 minutes it took you to find the answer. you should be rewarded for the years it took you.

Harv Nagra:

Yeah.

Rory Spence:

Are the years of experience and training to get to this point where you knew that answer within 10 minutes, and I think this is the same. So you shouldn't be punished because you've found a way to deliver this work quicker. And I think we need to be really smart in how we position that to clients as well, anyway. yes, we need new terms and conditions and the like that need to go out to clients to say that you are using ai, to handle their data and things like that. And there's all this legal stuff, which clearly I'm no expert on. So yes, you need to be transparent in that you are using AI in that sense, but we need to be smart in terms of how we position the use of it, that you are not just, Sitting and putting your feet up while the robots, deliver everything basically.

Harv Nagra:

Alright, Rory, so let's talk about the next kind of opportunity, that came out in your research.

Rory Spence:

Yeah. The, the fourth big opportunity that, that we've identified, having digested all of the data is, that actually like confidence really matters. So every year in this BenchPress survey, we ask agency owners how they're feeling on a scale of zero to a hundred, if you are 50 or neutral. If you are less than 50, you are not feeling good about the year ahead.

Harv Nagra:

Mm-hmm.

Rory Spence:

more than 50, you are feeling positive about the year ahead. It's been really interesting to see how that's gone up and down over the years. And agency owners can always sense what is coming because when that is up, we have good years and when that's down we have bad years. But what was really interesting is we actually analyzed those agencies that took part last year

Harv Nagra:

Right.

Rory Spence:

and had high confidence scores.

Harv Nagra:

Mm-hmm.

Rory Spence:

Considerably outperformedd those that had lower confidence scores, lower than 70, in terms of their growth, their profitability over the year ahead, that then that then happened. And so I know you could argue that, well, of, of course if you are more confident it's'cause you think you're having a good year and then you have had a good year. But actually I think it's a really interesting way to look at it to say, well, actually, confidence does really matter. If you've got confidence in your business, positive things will happen as a result, and you are more likely to get great results. And so I think there are things that we can all do as leaders in the business to build that confidence ourselves, but also build a confident team around us and actually build a really great mindset in the business of there are these opportunities ahead. Yes, it's been really tough. It's been a brutal year for agencies, but there are all these opportunities and how do we go and tackle those? So I think some things that can work really well in terms of building that confidence. One, get really thorough with like targets. big believer, weekly targets is a great way to do this, right? And focus on the controllables, right? There's a bunch of stuff you can't control as an agency owner, particularly on the sales front, right?

Harv Nagra:

Mm-hmm.

Rory Spence:

a lot of business owners, agency owners will be doing the new business themselves. You can't force someone to sign a contract, right? You can't force a proposal out the door. But what can you do? You can control. How many LinkedIn messages you're sending in a week. You can control how many events you're attending in a month. You can control to a reasonable degree, how many speaking gigs you are maybe doing over the course of a year.

Harv Nagra:

Mm-hmm.

Rory Spence:

get really hyperfocused around that. And I'd encourage you to build weekly targets around that. Right. Monthly. There's only 12 of those in a year

Harv Nagra:

Mm-hmm.

Rory Spence:

and actually once one is gone, you're almost 10% of the way through the year. Like

Harv Nagra:

Yeah.

Rory Spence:

three have gone, you're 25% of the way through the year. So imagine you have three bad months in a row kind of, it only takes you that long to maybe realize and analyze it and go, we were behind where we needed to be. It's too late. You've lost 25% of the year. If you put that into weeks, three weeks go by

Harv Nagra:

Mm-hmm.

Rory Spence:

you, you're nowhere near even you. Can't do the maths frankly, but you're about 5% of the way through the year. So you can make changes really quickly that are gonna get results, get really focused around weekly targets. It's a great way to build momentum and therefore to build confidence for yourself as the leader, but also, within your team as well. So that's one thing that I love that can just really help to bring a bit of energy, bring a bit of confidence back. The other is like celebrating these wins, right? Celebrate even the little wins. We don't need to wait any longer to win a hundred K deals in order to celebrate with the team.

Harv Nagra:

Mm,

Rory Spence:

make this a daily ritual, something that happens all the time.

Harv Nagra:

so important.

Rory Spence:

do you have any tips or, uh, you know, we do something at wow, Harv that works really well. Do you have any tips in terms of how to sort of celebrate those?

Harv Nagra:

when you're busy, it's so easy to forget to do that, and, and projects sometimes either stretch on forever in an agency and feel like they never end, or when they do end, there's just like 10 more that need your attention. So taking the time is easy to forget. one thing I think that works really well is having like a celebration channel in, in

Rory Spence:

Yeah.

Harv Nagra:

you shout out a new pitch win or project close or, or whatever, big milestone or launch or web launch, whatever it is. I, I think that's super important. And of course, if you can take your team out for, for drinks or a lunch or something like that, that's even better. What, what kind of, uh, kinds of things do you hear

Rory Spence:

Totally agree. Ah, look, both of those things, absolutely. We've got a celebration channel at Wow as well. We call it our Wow Stories channel. And even as simple as client emails to say. Thank you so much. You're a lifesaver. or, whatever it might be. It could be the smallest thing. Someone will screen grab that, stick it in that channel and go, Hey, go Harv, you know, good for you. and that's, that's amazing. We use Office Vibe, which is a brilliant piece of software that allows us to track, Employee NPS, there's a load of benefits to doing that, and maybe that's a conversation for another day. But within Office Vibe, there's a great feature called Good Vibes where you can send someone, it's like a postcard to be like, Hey, I admire your leadership. And I could go, oh, I'm gonna send that to Harv with a little message. And it just happens privately. But there's nothing better than when you get that email and, the email subject is, you receive some good vibes. you are like, and there's this suspense. Who's it from? What is it? And it's just a lovely feeling. And so we actively encourage that. And I think there's a bunch of stuff you can do, but if you can get really obsessed around this and get the team doing this, it doesn't have to come from the leaders. Everyone can do this. Uh, that's where

Harv Nagra:

It builds like really positive kind of sentiment in the team and gives everyone that energy. But you know, what you were saying about confidence, I think it's also important to remember that like, it doesn't come from nothing, right? It, it takes effort. Like you're saying, good habits give you confidence when you're, you've got that sales funnel running efficiently. When you've got good operational and financial foundations in your business, you can naturally be confident because you have some visibility of where you're gonna be going and what you're, how you're meant to be running your business and all that kind of stuff. So all the more reason to make sure your foundations are in place. You have good habits in place.

Rory Spence:

Absolutely. Yeah. I mean, what brings confidence at the end of the day? It, well, confidence comes from the predictability that the times ahead are really good. that's, that's why we're confident. We feel confident.'cause we're like, yeah, next week's gonna be great. Next month's gonna be great. Next quarter's looking good. if you don't have that predictability. If it isn't clear what results you're gonna get, if you don't have leading indicators that are giving you insight into future performance, then no wonder you are not gonna be feeling confident. It may well end up that things go well.

Harv Nagra:

Right.

Rory Spence:

It doesn't mean you are, you are gonna fail if you don't have these things, but it,

Harv Nagra:

Mm-hmm.

Rory Spence:

have the insight, how can you have the confidence to go, Harv, I know that the month ahead is gonna be really positive for these reasons. We're doing all the right things.

Harv Nagra:

Yeah. You live in anxiety and it's a bit of a surprise the way things turn out rather than kind of a calculated journey. Really, really good point. Excellent, Rory. So that's really interesting hearing about some of the opportunities that you've seen and kind of inspires us. So what is next for BenchPress?

Rory Spence:

Yeah. great question. So this is just report one of three that we're gonna be releasing in 2025. so this is what we call our State of the Agency Nation Report, which you can now download for free. what's coming next is in May we're gonna release our people and salaries report. So there'll be a bit in there around recruitment, around retention, the roles that people have within agencies and also salaries, which is gonna be the first, which is exciting. and then in July we're gonna be releasing, our agency milestones report, which is gonna give insight into, what size was the business when they first hired a salesperson, or how long had the business been running when they won their first a hundred K deal, for example.

Harv Nagra:

Right.

Rory Spence:

So, a little bit around kind of timings and what you could achieve at different sizes of agency

Harv Nagra:

Super interesting. Is that July

Rory Spence:

July That one is coming out. Yeah.

Harv Nagra:

And you're calling it the agency Milestones? Is,

Rory Spence:

that's it?

Harv Nagra:

Nice. do you already have your hands on that data and, anything interesting, that you can

Rory Spence:

I don't have, really my hands on the data yet. so I don't know what is coming. but I'm excited to see. I'm really curious to see the balance between senior and mid-level and junior staff within an agency. And see how that's structured. I think that's gonna be really fascinating. really intrigued to see the salaries because we've never done that before and it's been requested countless time. So we are doing

Harv Nagra:

Right.

Rory Spence:

the people want, which is gonna be exciting. the agency milestones report. I'm really fascinated to see when people hire salespeople

Harv Nagra:

Yep.

Rory Spence:

when people hire marketing people, because of course we mentioned this earlier in the podcast, but the number one challenge for agencies is always new business without fail. So it'd be really fascinating. I know, and I'm sure you've heard this countless times, Harv, that it's difficult to hire new business people if you're an agency. And often it has to be the agency owner that is delivering that work. And so I am fascinated to see what size does that maybe happen, how many people have done that or not done that? And I think some interesting insights will come out of that.

Harv Nagra:

Mm-hmm. Yeah. Similar to ops folks coming into agencies as well. It often comes a little bit too late, later than it should be. And, might pay dividends if, if it wasn't always so, so late in the game. But yeah, really, really interested seeing that. so we're coming up to the end of our discussion. can you tell us before we go a little bit more about what the Wow Company does?

Rory Spence:

Absolutely. So the Wow Company is an accountancy firm that works with agencies and consultancies over a million pound turnover.

Harv Nagra:

Okay.

Rory Spence:

So yes, we will do all of the standard things you'd expect an accountancy firm to do, but

Harv Nagra:

Hmm.

Rory Spence:

we also do more than that. We allow you to outsource your finances to us. So a lot of our clients don't have financial controllers, finance managers in their business because we'll do all of that for them, which is a huge perk. But we also deliver strategic advice to those agencies where we work with so many and we've got our BenchPress data. We're able to really see this is what makes agencies tick. This is what the top performing agencies are doing and how can you do that? What are some of the levers that you can pull and how can we get you the insights and the data to make those decisions?

Harv Nagra:

Excellent. That sounds really, really great. So if people want to learn more about the business and get in touch with yourself or your team, where where can they reach out?

Rory Spence:

Yeah, so come to our website, the wow company.com. come to my LinkedIn and drop me a message because honestly, I love chatting to agency owners and leaders and hearing what challenges you have and how you're tackling them. And. I love that because I learn more than anybody else. I think during that process. I just love chat to people, hearing what they're up to. So if you are listening to this and you fancy reaching out to have a chat, let's grab a virtual coffee, and I would love to do that.

Harv Nagra:

Amazing. We'll put a link to your website and your LinkedIn in the show notes, so please do go check that out. Rory, it's been an absolute pleasure. I'm really excited to see the more detailed report come out. by the time people hear this conversation, that will be out. So excited to see all the headlines and dive into it and see what we can learn. Thanks again for coming on

Rory Spence:

Thanks so much for having me, Harv. I've loved it.

Hi everyone. So while the past few years have been tough, as Rory pointed out in today's chat, there's plenty of opportunities for us to take advantage of and when business is slower, it's our jobs as operations leaders to figure out where we can make things leaner and more efficient to ensure we remain profitable. By the time you hear this episode, BenchPress will be available to download. So go to the wow company.com/BenchPress to get a copy of the report and see all of the results for yourself. Remember, we send a biweekly newsletter with takeaways from the podcast conversations, so you have something to reference in your inbox. Go scoro.com/podcast. Scroll down and you'll see the newsletter sign up form. And finally, if you enjoy the handbook, there's three things you can do right now. Rate the podcast on Apple or Spotify. Share the episode with a friend or colleague and connect with me on LinkedIn and join the conversation when I post about each episode. I'll be back with the next episode soon. Thanks so much.

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Harv Nagra

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