Most agencies give away far more work than they realize.
An extra revision, an additional campaign, a quick out-of-scope request.
Each seems insignificant, but exceptions that keep happening become expectations, and you end up doing more work for the same revenue.
My advice: keep doing favors, but stop letting them become invisible, permanent scope expansions.
The simplest fix I've found is the $0 change order.
When a client asks for something outside the agreed scope that you're willing to do for free:
Document the work in a simple change order.
Price it at what you'd normally charge.
Apply a one-time 100% courtesy discount.
Note that future requests like this will be quoted separately.
Get the client's acknowledgement before you start.
Say they ask for an extra email campaign. The change order shows $750, minus a $750 courtesy discount, for a total of $0.
The client sees what the work is worth and that you chose not to charge for it.
Next time, you can say something along the lines of, "Remember the campaign we zeroed out? This one is $750. Can you approve it?"
Your account managers also get a repeatable way to handle these requests.
And that’s a very important point: fixes like this pay off most when they become systems your team runs without you.
That’s what we help you do inside the Agency Uplift coaching group: systemize and delegate improvements like this one, so your agency makes more money while you spend less time in it.