We moved our two larger tiers to rolling thirty-day terms in 2019. People assume this was a marketing decision. It was mostly an operational one, and it has been more expensive than it looks.

The cost

Revenue forecasting becomes genuinely harder, and hiring ahead of demand becomes a real risk rather than a spreadsheet exercise. We carry more cash than we would otherwise need to.

The return

Every month is a renewal, so nothing coasts. Client tenure went up, not down — the median engagement is now longer than it was under annual contracts, because the work has to keep justifying itself and it usually does.

The uncomfortable version: annual contracts protect agencies from the consequences of mediocre months. Removing that protection was the single most useful thing we did to the quality of our own work.