What Percentage Should You Charge? 5%, 10%, or 15% of Revenue

When a marketing agency prices its fee as a share of the revenue its campaigns bring in, the hardest question is which rate to put on paper.

There's no single right number. A fair revenue-share percentage comes from the deal's own facts. Those are the trade's benchmark, the client's close rate, and their typical job value. A process reads those inputs and picks the rate, so you back a number instead of guessing one.

You know the moment. You're writing a revenue-share proposal for a home-services client, and you're stuck between 8%, 12%, maybe 15%. Too high and the client thinks you're gouging. Too low and you're leaving money on the table. When they ask "why that number?" you don't have an answer.

Here's what moves a fair revenue-share rate up or down, and why you don't have to invent that number yourself.

You're Not Unsure Which Number to Pick: You're Unsure How to Back It Up

The choice between 5%, 10%, and 15% feels like a coin flip. Look at how agencies structure their pricing. Their advice says charge 5-25% of revenue, or 10-30% of projected value, and then figure it out. That's a range, not an answer. A number you picked from a range is a guess with extra steps.

The real problem shows up when the client asks, "Why that number?" A guess has no answer. You can point at the range and say it's within industry norms, but that only confirms the client's worry that the number came from a list, with no link to their business.

Billing by the hour doesn't fix it. That's why billing for tasks caps what you can earn. A twelve-year consultant does the same work in a third of the time and bills $4,000 less than a two-year consultant (ConsultFees). Getting better at the work means earning less. It's like a plumber getting docked for fixing the leak in twenty minutes instead of two hours.

A rate tied to outcomes escapes that trap. But it only works if the rate itself comes from somewhere the client can check.

Every Field That Charges a Share of Value Sets It with a Schedule or a Benchmark, Not a Hunch

If pricing by value sounds arbitrary, look at how other fields handle it. Across M&A, franchising, federal energy contracts, and healthcare, nobody who charges a share of value makes up the number fresh each time. It comes from a published schedule, a benchmark, or a set process. The two schedules below show what that looks like.

The Schedule Model: A Published Table Sets the Rate

M&A runs on the "Lehman schedule," which charges 5% on the first $1M of deal value, 4% on the second, 3% on the third, 2% on the fourth, and 1% above $4M. Two advisors using the same schedule on the same deal get the same blended rate, 4.0% on a $3M deal and 2.0% on a $10M deal. The table set the number (Auxo Capital Advisors).

Franchise royalties work the same way. Across 137 brands, quick-service restaurants run about 5.2% (high volume, thin margin) while education sits at 8.5% (lower volume, higher value per dollar). Those rates are "almost never negotiable" once set for a brand (FranchiseVS). Within a brand, tiered structures step the rate down as revenue grows.

The Measured-Baseline Model: A Process Issues the Number

Step outside marketing and the pattern holds. U.S. federal Energy Savings Performance Contracts pay contractors based on measured savings against a baseline built from the customer's own utility data. Four verification steps happen before any payment is set (U.S. Department of Energy). The dollar figure is the output of a process. Neither side proposed it.

The pattern holds in hospitals too. Physicians earn a share of cost reductions measured against an existing benchmark built from the hospital's own data, not a target either side invented. A federal study found the model cut costs 8.5% over three years (Becker's Hospital Review, citing AHRQ/CMS).

In every case, the rate is the output of a process that reads real inputs. A revenue-share rate picked from a broad range skips that process, which is why it's hard to back up when the client asks.

What the Schedule Reads Is the Deal's Own Numbers, and Bigger Often Means a Lower Rate

Fee schedules like the Lehman and franchise royalty tables read the deal's own numbers. And the most surprising finding across every field with live data is that a bigger deal usually carries a lower rate.

It shows up in the chart below. Redfin's Q3 2025 data shows buyer's-agent commissions running 2.52% on homes under $500,000 and 2.22% on homes over $1M (Offerpad, citing Redfin). A Federal Reserve study backs it up, finding that the doubling of home prices since the mid-1990s explains more than half the nationwide drop in commission rates. A smaller share of a bigger number still makes a bigger check.

Deal size isn't the only input that moves the rate. In recruiting, fees run 10-15% for entry-level roles and 25-30% for executive hires. Retained searches (20-40%) price higher than contingency (15-30%) because the recruiter carries more risk (RecruitersLineup).

Consulting takes the same idea further and builds the credit share right into the formula Fee = (Quantified Outcome x Attribution %) x Rate (ConsultFees). That credit share works like a client's close rate, capturing how much of the outcome the work drove.

For a home-services agency, those inputs have plain names:

• The trade benchmark, what a typical job is worth in your client's trade (what HVAC service calls, plumbing repairs, or roof jobs typically cost)
• The client's close rate, how many of the leads you drive become paid work
• The typical job value, the dollar figure on each closed deal

Say you're setting a fee for an HVAC client. Their benchmark says service calls run $300-$400. Their close rate (the share of leads that become paid work) sits around 45%. Those numbers tell you whether this client supports 7% or 12%, because they show how much revenue each lead is worth.

The honest rule is that the rate reflects what's true about this client. Bigger often means lower, but it can cut either way based on close rate and margin.

A Number Pulled from the Client's Own Numbers Reads as Fair; a Number Pulled from the Air Reads as a Grab

Whether the client accepts your rate depends on whether it's tied to something real. The size of the number matters less.

Research backs that up. One study of 437 business buyers found that their willingness to accept a share-of-results deal is driven by fairness, not by risk, even between deals that pay out the same (ScienceDirect). How the number is explained matters on its own.

Pricing research on what reads as fair shows why. Both sides walk into a deal feeling entitled to a reference price, a number anchored to what they've seen before. Buyers accept a price that tracks a real change (a benchmark shifting, costs rising) but push back when it moves only because they have fewer choices.

Charging more for snow shovels after a blizzard is the everyday version. Same product, same seller, higher price. Only the reason for the higher price changed, and the buyer can tell.

Real estate played this out at industry scale. When the 2024 NAR settlement forced commissions into the open, the fix was transparency, and agents now state "the amount or rate of compensation... or how this amount will be determined."

A rate you can trace to the client's trade benchmark, close rate, and job value sits on the fair side of that line. A number pulled from a range and typed into a blank field sits on the other.

There's No Single "Home Services" Number, Which Is Exactly Why You Need Live Inputs

So the rate needs to come from the client's own numbers. You'd expect a clean "home services" benchmark to exist. It doesn't.

The spread below shows four trades side by side. Notice the blanks.

HVAC books roughly 40-50% of inbound calls, with tickets from about $200 (service only) to $600-$700 (tech pitching a system swap). Booking scales with shop size (BaaDigi, citing ACCA/BLS).

Plumbing runs higher. Jobber's 2026 survey found over 45% of plumbing shops close 70-plus percent of their quotes, the highest pricing confidence of any trade surveyed (Jobber).

Roofing data is thinner. One contractor cites 20-40% close on sat appointments, with a typical shingle job at $5,000-$10,000 (Allied Emergency Services; RoofLink, citing HomeAdvisor).

Landscaping is the thinnest of all. No close-rate data from any source checked, and the one spend figure (roughly $300/month per homeowner, per Angi via Jobber) measures monthly spend rather than a single job.

Close rates from the low 20s to 70-plus. Job values from $200 to $10,000-plus. No flat table can price a client across that spread.

Here's what that looks like inside one agency. Picture an HVAC client (mid-40s booking, $300 tickets) and a roofing client (30% close, $8,000 jobs). Same agency, same pricing model, but each client needs its own rate because the close rate and job value are different. [Composite, not a named customer.]

A Forecast-and-Audit Process Turns Those Three Inputs into One Rate

Every field in this article points the same way. The rate should come from the client's own inputs. Doing that by hand, client by client, means becoming a pricing expert, which is the job you were trying to avoid.

A forecast-and-audit process takes those three inputs (trade benchmark, close rate, typical job value), runs them, and picks a rate. The number arrives with its math behind it, so you don't have to be the pricing expert.

The flow below shows the concept, three inputs in and one rate out. Each input is shown, which is what makes the result one the client can check.

To see how those inputs play out for a real client, the tool below walks you through all three. Pick a trade, ballpark the close rate and job value, and see which way the numbers push.

If you'd rather run the numbers yourself, the manual path works on its own:

1. Find your client's trade and look up its benchmark range
2. Pull their close rate from your lead data (or ballpark it from booking and sales patterns)
3. Figure their typical job value
4. Run all three through the tool above or a forecast-and-audit process to see where the numbers land

You could reach the same number on your own. What the process adds is speed, since one run of the math works across a full client list.

Those inputs get sharper when you attach a real dollar value to each lead and track which ones close. The guesses become real numbers the process reads. The WhatConverts Forecast and Audit tool picks the revenue-share rate from those three inputs, and that's the moment the rate stops being a guess.

Is 10% High? It Depends What It's Attached To

Once you've got a rate built from real inputs, the next question is how it compares. The table below shows where a revenue-share rate sits next to other fields that price by results.

Is 10% High or Low?

Only next to what it's attached to. The table puts it in context. Consulting fees run 10-20% of the value created (ConsultFees), franchise royalties sit near 6% (FranchiseVS), and M&A blends to 2-4% on mid-size deals (Auxo Capital Advisors). Recruiting runs 15-40% of first-year pay (RecruitersLineup), and insurance runs 3-20% of premium (Mira Health). A revenue-share rate on delivered value sits in a well-known, fair range.

Won't Bigger Clients Just Pay a Higher Rate?

Often the opposite. In real estate and M&A, the rate eases as the deal value rises. A smaller share of a bigger number still makes a bigger check (Offerpad, citing Redfin). It can cut either way.

Do I Need to Become a Pricing Expert to Back This Up?

No. The know-how lives in the process that reads the three inputs and picks the number. Your job is to show the number and its inputs. You don't need to have figured the rate out from scratch.

The Number You Can Back Up

You came in asking whether to charge 5%, 10%, or 15%, and whether it's fair. The answer is that the fair rate is the one the client's own economics produce, picked by a forecast-and-audit process from the trade benchmark, the close rate, and the average job value.

Three steps to get there:

1. Find the trade benchmark for your client's field (close rates and job values in their trade)
2. Pull the close rate and typical job value from your lead data, or estimate from booking and sales patterns
3. Run those three inputs through the diagnostic above or a forecast-and-audit process and present the recommended rate with its inputs on the table

You walk into the talk, name one rate, and say where it came from. That's a number the client can check, which makes it one they can accept.

Where this piece covers what the rate should be, the companion piece below covers why a number that comes from a process is one a client trusts.

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