DBA Members’ Forum | November Summary

Here’s a summary of what was discussed in the meeting, prepared under Chatham House Rule:

• If you have one golden ratio to monitor that is your income to staff cost ratio – how much of your fee income are you spending on staff costs? Adam discusses this in detail in our last webinar which you can now watch on demand.
• The gap between London and regional agencies in average fee income per head has narrowed by a significant £10k this year. We’re keeping an eye on this trend as we look ahead to 2026 and beyond.
• Freelancer use is down 5% this year. Do you know your unique tipping point between continuing to lean on freelancers and recruiting a permanent team member? Are there other ways you can flex your existing team to cover the work? This is an important consideration in managing your freelancer use and it’s important to have someone senior watching over this alongside and the peaks and troughs in your work flow. 
• Businesses maintaining profitability in light of client budget cuts are those who are confident in their pricing models and working at the high-end, strategic consulting level – and this is the same across all of marketing services.
• What value do you add to your clients business and how efficiently are you using your team resource to service your clients? Striking the balance between these two areas will keep profitability high. 
• Carefully consider how you communicate this to your clients, and how you charge for that value.
• How do you qualify your prices with your clients? Have these conversations face to face and as early as possible in the process to save yourself time and money.
• We had an interesting conversation around staff churn rates – too low and you end up fat in the middle, too high and that’s a big knock on the bottom line. Often the reasons people leave are easy to fix – so making sure training isn’t forgotten and your benefits packages stack up against the wider industry is a good start. 
• What’s your write off rate? Recovery rates hover stubbornly around 80% – so flipping how you talk about over-servicing clients internally was suggested.
• But be careful not to focus on recovery rates in isolation. Set utilisation rate targets too. The report and microsite can help you with this. Knowing your own figures is important, then you can make a plan to incrementally shift that while targeting reductions in your write off rate. 
• Under quoting, scope creep and over servicing are the top three issues that impact recovery rates. You can read more about recovery rates here.
• And hot off the press, an article about how to become indispensable to your clients from DBA Expert Joanna Anthony. 
• We’ve seen steady growth in the past decade in members working internationally. We’re going to cover this in more detail in our 12 January & 2 February 2026 forums, so hold 4-5pm GMT in your diary now. 
• If you need expert financial advice or a fractional accounts team in your business – check out the DBA Experts Register. DBA Experts have sustained and relevant experience in supporting the design industry, so you can rest assured that you will be getting sound, high-level support. 
• The DBA In Focus Survey will open in May 2026, so mark this in your diary now and make sure your financial data is included in next year’s DBA In Focus Report. You should have access to all the data we need, and if you’re not sure what you need to be tracking now, book in a chat with Adam and make sure you’re reporting on the right things. It’s completely anonymous and it’s your data that enables us to map out the trends and signals for the industry as a whole. 

Our next DBA Members’ Forum is on Tuesday 2 December at 4pm GMT.