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Blended rate

Blended rate is an agency's average fully-burdened cost per delivery hour across every role that touches client work, weighted by the hours each role contributes. Each role's input is salary times 1.25 to 1.4, divided by roughly 1,700 productive hours a year, so the blended figure runs 25% to 40% above a salary-only rate.

It is the number an account's effective hourly rate is compared against. An account earning below blended rate per hour was underpriced at signature, and delivery efficiency cannot recover a price that was wrong on the contract.

Weight it by hours actually spent rather than by headcount. A senior strategist who touches every account for two hours a month and a junior producer who spends forty are both in the blend, in proportion.

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