The hidden cost of winning new business

Leading a service business often means keeping an eye on every variable that could jeopardize productivity, revenue and retention. However, even with committed teams, happy clients and respected deadlines, money may still end up being lost. That’s a frustrating scenario for agency and consultancy leaders. So where could the losses be coming from? Research from Toggl suggests response time, poor project scoping and unconfident pitching may be to blame. When that data is spread across different tools and teams, no one has a clear, up-to-date picture of how project hours are being allocated, which can lead to unnecessary expenses.

In Toggl's 2025 Productivity Index, 86% of surveyed C-suite leaders said they were confident in their ability to measure team productivity, yet 39% still relied on hours clocked as their primary measure. Additionally, 80% believed that shifting their approach to productivity measurement could increase revenue by up to 20%. Here are some factors worth optimizing and bringing up in your next strategy conversation to start bringing that money back.

Speed can translate into a revenue event

Not responding quickly enough to potential customers' online queries can cost companies business. One way to start securing deals more consistently may be to reduce response turnaround time without compromising quality.  Accordingly, a strong first impression, combined with a timely invitation to connect, can help turn a potential customer into a secured transaction. 

Consistency in this approach may prove fruitful for overall attraction and retention efforts, which, according to the 2025 Productivity Index, remain a concern for many business leaders.

Leading a pitch with data to benefit everyone

Turnaround time is key, but so is the capacity to respond and show up with real numbers that back up internal capacity to take on different challenges. A confident, data-driven approach to prospecting can translate into more consistently secured deals. Toggl’s Productivity Index highlights the value of using real numbers rather than relying on instinct and guesswork during new-business pitches. Accurate, trustworthy data can lead to better marketing pitches and greater certainty about whether the company can meet an expected deadline, benefiting both ends of the process: Clients have a clear outlook and can set expectations accordingly, while teams don't have to scramble to meet unreasonable promises.

Keeping track of the impact this has on customers in real time can also clarify their behavior and preferences, helping optimize the ongoing process of maintaining healthy relationships with them.

The money you lose after you win the deal

The project-scoping and planning process can often be a costly step. Clients are often sold on a specific vision, but internal misalignments may arise due to projected staffing needs and capacity. This specific issue has been identified as a leading challenge for businesses when planning and executing projects. Project scoping and scaling accordingly rank as the top two challenges in planning and executing a project, according to the Toggl Productivity Index. These numbers are tied to missed expectations and inconsistent delivery, issues that may take root at the start of the scoping process, and that can lead clients to eye a competitor's services.

One way to begin mending these problems is to evaluate how projects are planned in the first place. Employees may overestimate how long they spend on specific tasks, which can lead a team to plan poorly when starting a new project. A 2025 study published in PLOS ONE on time-on-task estimation found that 79% of the time, people overestimated how long they spend on a task by nearly 45%. The study attributes this to how human memory works. It places more weight on important events, which can make people overestimate how long a task took. . If those estimates are tracked with the same level of overestimation over the years, they may lead to budgets and spending that don’t accurately reflect the work they put in.

Teams are often asked to track this time retrospectively and on their own, using calendars or end-of-project time sheets, which can introduce this variable into the time-tracking equation. Real-time tracking software is one tool that may assist with this issue and help address inaccuracies that can arise when manually filing time sheets, thereby clarifying whether a project was profitable more accurately. Beyond real-time tracking, some firms build in regular team check-ins. Others may invest in training managers to ask directly about workloads. While none of these fixes the problem alone, they are all pieces of a puzzle.

Closing the gap between plan and reality  

Losing revenue on a project often has to do with internal processes that aren’t optimized to spot workflow gaps, as opposed to productivity, effort or talent alone. The solution may lie in being more efficient in planning how time is spent on tasks, budgeting accordingly and maintaining strong, honest communication with prospects. Efficiently tracking a project's progress helps flag potential hiccups and enables team members to be proactive in their work, making them more productive and reinforcing confidence for everyone involved.

This story was produced by Toggl and reviewed and distributed by Stacker.