Agency work runs on pitches, retainers, projects, and utilization. Generic sales CRMs flatten this into deals. Strkr ships a CRM shaped around agency motion with pitch pipeline, retainer burn, project traffic, and AI drafting that writes like an account director.
Service agencies share a shape across categories (marketing, digital, PR, design, dev shop, media planning, content studio, brand consulting). They pitch for new business, win retainers, deliver on projects, and manage utilization across hourly capacity. The pain points below are what Strkr onboarding hears on every agency intake call, from a 9-person design studio to a 240-person integrated agency.
A new business pitch runs through RFP response, chemistry, strategy workshop, creative brief, pitch presentation, award. The cycle pulls account, strategy, creative, production. A standard sales pipeline flattens this to Discovery and Proposal. Strkr models Pitch as a first-class object with internal milestones, department assignments, and the pitch brief as a shared surface.
A six-month retainer at 180 hours per month is a commitment against hours, not a renewal date. The account team needs the running hours burn, the scope expansion requests inside the retainer, and the renewal risk. Strkr tracks Retainer with monthly hour budget, time-tracker draw, scope-change log, and renewal date on one card.
The traffic manager runs the daily traffic in Workamajig, Function Point, Asana, Monday, or a shared sheet. The CRM usually does not. The account director walks into a client call without seeing three projects in flight, two late, and this month retainer at 94 percent on day 18. Strkr ties into the project tool through the webhook and prints status on the account card.
Utilization across creative, strategy, production, and account services drives agency margin. Most agencies run a weekly utilization export from Harvest or Workamajig into Excel. Strkr pulls utilization data through the webhook and surfaces a live view by department, by team, by individual, with the current-week run rate and four-week trailing average.
An account director spends 2 to 4 hours drafting a SOW scope paragraph that reads in the agency voice, respects the standard engagement terms, and quotes the right fee. Multiplied across 60 to 180 SOWs per year the time cost compounds. Strkr AI drafts the SOW scope paragraph from the project type and prior similar engagements. The account director tunes two or three sentences before sending.
Referrals from existing clients, prior clients, agency alumni, and consultant friends drive 40 to 60 percent of new business invitations. Most of that network lives in senior partners' email inboxes. Strkr models Referral as a first-class relationship with warmth scoring, last-touch date, and automated nudges on a quarterly outreach cadence.
The default CRM schema does not reflect agency operations. Strkr ships a tunable agency schema with Account, Pitch, Retainer, Project, Scope-of-Work, Utilization, and Referral as first-class objects. The managing director can rename or extend anything.
An account carries brand name, parent organization, agency-of-record status, active retainer, project pipeline, and renewal date. The account view surfaces every active project, every open SOW, and the running retainer burn. The schema distinguishes brand from parent, which matters for conflict policies and portfolio reporting.
A Pitch ties to a prospect account and carries the pitch brief, pitch team roster, strategic insight, creative concept, pitch budget, pitch award date, and competitive context. Internal milestones log activities. Win-loss notes capture into the Pitch record on close for future reference.
A Retainer captures the monthly hour budget by department, scope paragraph, renewal date, fee structure, and escalation path for scope-change requests. The card shows month-to-date hours drawn, forecast run rate, scope change log, and renewal date. Past 95 percent of monthly hours triggers an alert.
A Project ties to an account and defines project type, deliverables, start date, delivery date, budget, assigned team, and project manager. Hours pull from the time-tracker webhook. Project status (on track, at risk, late, blocked) rolls up to the account card.
A SOW captures deliverable list, agreed fee, payment schedule, acceptance criteria, and change-order log. SOW signatures capture through the engagement letter workflow. Change orders attach to the SOW object with the fee delta and client approval status.
Utilization rolls up from the time-tracker feed with target utilization by department, actual utilization, and variance. The variance view flags under-utilized capacity (available for new work) and over-utilized capacity (burn-out risk and quality risk).
Agency communication is a craft. Strkr AI drafts in the voice the account director would use with the strategic framing and warm professional tone the client expects. The jobs below show up in every agency deployment inside the first two weeks.
Strkr AI drafts the RFP response from the agency capability library, the case story bank, and the client brief. The account director tunes the tone and the case references. An RFP that previously took two senior people three days drops to a one-day review on a draft that is 80 percent of the way there.
After the chemistry meeting Strkr AI drafts the recap with the client ask restated, the strategic territory agreed, the creative inspiration shared, and the next milestone. The account director sends same day instead of 48 hours later.
Strkr AI drafts the SOW scope paragraph from the project type, deliverable list, and prior similar engagements. The account director tunes two or three sentences. The paragraph lands in the agency voice because Strkr AI learns the tone from the first 20 approved SOWs.
Strkr AI drafts the weekly status update for each active account summarizing project status, upcoming deliverables, open client decisions, and current retainer burn. The account director approves and sends. The weekly cadence lifts from monthly or ad-hoc to actually weekly because drafting cost drops to minutes.
When a client ask crosses the scope boundary Strkr AI drafts the change order with the delta description, fee implication, timeline impact, and acceptance request. The account director reviews and sends. Scope creep gets smaller because the paperwork friction is minimal.
Strkr AI drafts the quarterly check-in for each referral relationship with a hook (recent work the agency shipped, a question about the referral's current project, a note on an industry event). The managing director approves and sends a batch per quarter.
Agency operations run on Monday-morning rituals. Strkr ships a weekly cockpit that pulls pitch status, retainer burn, project traffic, and utilization onto a single view. The managing director walks into the leadership meeting with the full picture.
The pitch section shows every active pitch with current milestone, pitch day date, team, and internal win-odds assessment. The managing director sees which pitches need senior-partner intervention this week and which are ready to deploy more creative firepower.
The retainer section shows each active retainer with month-to-date hours drawn, forecast run rate, and color-coded burn status. The managing director sees which retainers are approaching 95 percent and need an account director conversation before month-end.
The project traffic section shows every active project colored by status with project manager assignment and delivery date. The operations director sees the 11 projects at risk and the three blocked on a client decision. The daily traffic meeting runs faster.
The utilization section shows actual versus target with four-week trend. Creative at 72 percent against a 60 percent target signals burn-out risk. Strategy at 48 percent against 65 percent signals available capacity. Used in pitch-pursuit decisions and capacity-planning meetings.
The scope change section shows every change request in flight with account, project, fee delta, and client-approval status. The finance partner uses the view in the monthly P&L review. The account director pursues stalled approvals.
The new business section shows referral touches in the past 30 days, pitch invitations received, and inbound inquiries from the agency website. The managing director sees funnel health and the gaps that need outreach push.
The comparison below is Strkr's agency posture versus a generic CRM applied to the same agency.
| Feature | Strkr | Generic sales CRM for an agency |
|---|---|---|
| Pitch as first-class object | With internal milestones and pitch team. | Deal with manual workaround. |
| Retainer tracking | Monthly hour budget with burn flag. | Recurring deal with no hour context. |
| Project traffic integration | Workamajig, Function Point via webhooks. | Manual update. |
| Utilization dashboard | Live from time-tracker by department. | None. |
| SOW workflow | Draft, approve, change-order log. | PDF attached to deal. |
| Referral scoring | Warmth, last-touch, quarterly nudge. | Contact tag. |
| Creative review ties | Frame.io, Slack, Dropbox webhooks. | None. |
| Holding company versus brand | Parent-child account structure. | Flat account only. |
| Conflict check across portfolio | Automated at pitch intake. | Manual. |
The playbooks below are patterns Strkr onboarding sees across agency category deployments.
A 14-person digital marketing shop in Portland ran paid media, SEO, and content for mid-market B2B clients. The team ran Harvest for time, a shared sheet for accounts, and nothing for pitches. Strkr onboarding ran a 10-business-day migration. The pitch pipeline, retainer book, and utilization view landed on day one. Monthly new-business reviews shifted from quarterly to monthly because the data was finally visible.
A 48-person integrated agency running brand strategy, content, paid media, and PR as four practice groups ran Workamajig for traffic and a legacy CRM nobody opened. Strkr onboarding ran a 22-business-day migration pulling Workamajig through the webhook and configuring practice-group-specific pipelines. Cross-practice referrals grew 42 percent because shared account visibility made opportunities obvious.
A 22-person PR shop served pharma and medical-device clients with HIPAA-adjacent compliance posture. Strkr delivered the BAA on request and configured AI retrieval scope to exclude PHI fields. The migration ran in 16 business days. The PR team ran inside the compliance perimeter with the pitch pipeline, media list management, and press draft workflow intact.
A 72-person dev shop ran six-month engineering retainers at 320 to 640 hours per month per client. The partners could not see which retainers were drifting into over-burn until month-end. Strkr configured burn alerts at 95 percent and the scope-change log on each retainer card. Scope creep that previously ate margin converted into change orders. Change order revenue lifted 180 percent in the first full year.
An 11-person brand studio ran purely on new business with no retainer book. Average pitch cycle 11 weeks and 24 pitches per year with 18 percent win rate. Strkr configured the pitch pipeline and referral network tracking. Partners started the quarterly outreach cadence that previously was ad-hoc. Pitch invitations grew from 24 to 42 per year at a flat win rate, which doubled new revenue capture.
Book a 30 minute call. We will walk through the agency schema, the pitch pipeline, and the retainer burn view with your actual account book and department structure.
Strkr integrates with every major agency operations tool through its REST and GraphQL API, outbound webhooks with HMAC signing, and a published OpenAPI spec. The typical setup pulls project status, time entries, and resource allocation from the operations tool on a 15-minute cadence. For Workamajig, Function Point, Harvest, Asana, Monday, and ClickUp the integration lands in roughly one engineering sprint. Strkr becomes the client-facing CRM and relationship layer while the operations tool stays as the traffic and time system of record.
The retainer object supports any renewal cadence (annual, semi-annual, quarterly, project-based, open-ended). The renewal date drives the renewal workflow with Strkr AI drafting the renewal letter at 60 and 30 days before renewal. For project-based retainers that renew when the current project book runs down Strkr tracks hour burn and triggers the renewal conversation when forecast lands below 42 hours of remaining budget. The flexibility matches how most agencies actually structure their book.
Yes. The parent-child account structure (brand under parent) drives conflict policies at the right level. On a new pitch invitation Strkr runs an automated conflict check against the full portfolio across every brand in the parent plus direct competitors in the same category. Potential conflicts flag with context (prior representation, category overlap, exclusivity clauses) and route to the compliance officer or managing director for approval. The conflict check history logs to the audit log.
Strkr prices flat per seat at $29 on Starter, $59 on Pro, and $119 on Scale per user per month with a 14-day trial. For a 42-person agency on Pro the monthly spend runs $2,478 for seats plus $49 for AI Enhancement. Workamajig prices around $50 per user per month on the SaaS tier plus a mid-five-figure implementation. Function Point runs similar. Clients and Profits is a legacy on-prem license. Deltek Vantagepoint is enterprise-tier. Strkr sits mid-range on seat price and adds the AI drafting, the CRM-grade pitch pipeline, and the retainer tracking.
Strkr integrates with Frame.io, Slack, Dropbox, and Gmail or Outlook through the webhook spec. Review activity on each surface logs to the project card. The account director sees the thread history across every tool without reconstructing manually. Strkr AI drafts a review summary before the client review pulling comments from every source into one agenda. The creative director walks into the review with the full context.
Strkr is HIPAA compliant with a BAA available on request (relevant for healthcare advertising where PHI touches audience or creative data), GDPR and CCPA compliant today, and SOC 2 Type II is in progress with a target of 2026-Q4. Integration tokens live in AWS KMS, platform credentials live in AWS Secrets Manager. The audit log captures every record read and write with 90-day default retention tunable per tenant. SSO (SAML and OIDC) is live on Scale tier through Clerk, MFA with TOTP plus text-based verification is live across all tiers.
Yes. The flat per-seat pricing ($29 Starter, $59 Pro, $119 Scale per user per month) scales as the agency grows with a self-service tier upgrade from the admin console. Starter covers the core CRM and pipeline. Pro adds the retainer tracking, SOW workflow, and AI drafting. Scale adds SSO (SAML and OIDC), Verified Domains, and the role-model configurability a 100-plus-person agency needs. The 14-day trial covers Pro so the agency sees the retainer and SOW capability before committing to tier.
No sales call, no migration consultant, no four-month implementation. Enter your card, get 14 days of the full Pro tier, cancel any time before day 14 with zero charge. Spin up a workspace, import your CSV, and have something useful before lunch.
