The Retention Risk Audit | The Retention Studio LLC
Retention Intelligence Audit  ·  $1,500
We show you who on your team is at risk of leaving, and which clients you lose if they do.

Find the leak before it becomes a loss.

You are running lean. Fewer people, heavier workload per person, less backup than twelve months ago. The Audit tells you exactly who is at risk, exactly which client relationships become vulnerable with them, and exactly what it is costing you before a resignation makes it obvious.

Why this matters right now

The firms most at risk in 2026 are not failing. They are running lean and carrying more risk per person than they realize.

You restructured. You ran the math. You made it work. On paper, with the people you have. But what the spreadsheet did not show is what happens when one of those people leaves. Not the easiest person to replace. The one who holds three client relationships, six months of institutional knowledge, and the unofficial trust of two other people on the team who are now watching to see what happens next.

That is the 2026 retention risk. It is not about culture or engagement scores. It is about business continuity when you have no margin for the wrong exit at the wrong time. Every person you lose now costs more than it did two years ago, because the team around them is smaller, the backup coverage is thinner, and the client relationships are more concentrated in fewer hands.

The firms that come through this period intact are the ones who identified both the person and the client relationship before the resignation landed on the desk. Not after. The Audit gives you a specific list of names, roles, exposed accounts, risk levels, and dollar figures, so you are acting on information instead of instinct.

What makes this different

The intelligence that no other product produces.

Most retention work picks a lane. Employee. Or client. But the exits you do not see coming tend to live at the intersection of both. The Audit reads both sides simultaneously, and maps one to the other.

Lens 1

People Risk

Who on your team is at risk of leaving. Which roles carry the most exposure. What signals are already present in behavior, performance, and leadership patterns you may not have named yet.

Lens 2

Client Relationship Health

Which client relationships are at risk. Which depend on a single person on your team. Where silent churn is already building, weeks or months before the non-renewal email lands.

The Connection Layer

For every high-risk employee, the Audit maps which specific client relationships become vulnerable if that person leaves, and what that exposure costs in revenue. That mapping is the deliverable no HR audit and no client-success consultant produces, because it requires reading both signals at once.

This is what Retention Intelligence means. Seeing both. Simultaneously. Before either becomes a crisis.
Is this the right fit

Built for the leader who senses the risk but cannot locate it.

You are the right fit if
  • You are the person who would notice if a senior relationship manager started going quiet in team meetings. You do not have a system that tells you when that starts.
  • You know which two people, if they left tomorrow, would take client relationships with them. That exposure is not documented anywhere.
  • You lost someone in the last 18 months. The real cost surprised you, and it changed how you think about who else might go.
  • You carry retention risk as a feeling, a low-level anxiety about a few people and a few clients, and you are tired of carrying it without structure.
  • You want to act on information before a resignation or a non-renewal email makes the problem obvious.
This is not the right fit if
  • You are looking for HR compliance support or policy documentation
  • You want a team workshop or a company-wide engagement program
  • You have a dedicated people team already running structured retention processes
  • You are not willing to be candid in a 90-minute diagnostic conversation
What you receive

Five working documents. Delivered in seven days. Built to act on immediately.

Nothing in this package is theoretical. Every deliverable is a tool you can use the same week you receive it, shared with a leadership partner, used to prepare a conversation, or put into a plan your team does not need to know about.

01

Leadership Intake Review

A structured document you complete before the session that surfaces what you already know, recent exits, at-risk roles, at-risk accounts, and the instincts you have been carrying without a place to put them. It makes the 90-minute session significantly more precise and ensures no time is lost on context-setting.

02

5-Touchpoint Gap Map

A scored diagnostic across the five retention touchpoints, Connect, Align, Place, Invest, Amplify, showing where your firm is structurally strong, where it is fragile, and which gaps are generating the most risk right now. The map reads both the employee experience and the client experience against the same five touchpoints, so the primary leak is identified across both tracks at once. Most leaders see two or three things they did not expect.

Dual-track
03

Critical Roles + At-Risk Accounts Report

An identification of the five to ten people in your firm whose departure would materially damage revenue, delivery capacity, or the stability of the people around them, with a risk rating for each. Every high-risk person is then mapped to the specific client relationships, workstreams, or institutional knowledge they hold, so you see both the person and the clients who become vulnerable if they leave. Most leaders have an instinct about one or two names. This surfaces the others, and the client relationships nobody was protecting.

Dual-track The moat deliverable
04

Cost of Inaction Estimate

A plain-language dollar figure showing what your current exposure is costing you, calculated across seven components. Salary-based components for the employee side, recruitment, vacancy, ramp time, productivity drag on the team. Revenue-based components for the client side, relationship value at risk, sales cycle to replace, concentration exposure. This is not a projection. It is a present-tense number based on your actual team, your actual client book, and your actual situation.

Dual-track
05

30-60-90 Day Action Plan

A sequenced, prioritized set of moves against your highest-risk areas, with distinct tracks for the people side and the client side. Written specifically enough to execute this week. Structured so you can act on it with your current team, no outside involvement required. If you choose to continue working with us, this becomes the roadmap for what gets built next.

Dual-track
An illustrative example

One person. Four clients. No documented transition plan.

What the people-to-clients mapping looks like in practice, drawn from our diagnostic model.

A managing partner engaged the Audit with three senior people on her mind and a vague sense that one or two of them carried client relationships she was not fully seeing.

The diagnostic surfaced a Senior Advisor rated Critical for flight risk. When we mapped her to the client book, she held four of the firm's top ten client relationships, including the two highest-value accounts, with no documented transition plan. That mapping had never been written down.

The Audit named the person. Named the four clients. Estimated the revenue exposure. Gave the managing partner a prioritized move to protect both sides before a resignation or a non-renewal email made the problem obvious.

Illustrative Drawn from the TRS diagnostic model. Your Audit names the specifics of your firm.
On the investment

We know $1,500 is a real spend when you are already running lean. Here is the math.

The real cost of losing a mid-senior person in a lean firm is not the recruitment fee. It is the recruitment fee plus the weeks the role sits open while your remaining team absorbs the work, plus the client relationship that goes quiet during the transition, plus the onboarding time for the replacement, plus the two or three people who watched it happen and started doing their own math.

That full number typically lands between $75,000 and $150,000. Sometimes higher when the person who left held a client relationship or a piece of institutional knowledge that did not transfer with them. Across the U.S., employers are projected to lose $1.3 trillion to attrition in 2026 alone, and 42% of that turnover is preventable.

The Audit costs $1,500. That is one percent of the low end of what one wrong exit costs. Most clients identify at least one high-risk situation they did not know was critical. In most cases, addressing that one situation pays for the Audit many times over, in the same quarter.

The numbers, side by side.

One regretted mid-senior exit $75K – $150K
One lost client relationship $25K – $90K+
The Retention Risk Audit $1,500
Your time commitment 2 hours total
Delivery 7 business days
The Audit is 1% of the cost of the problem it is designed to prevent.
42% of turnover is preventable. The Audit identifies which part of yours falls in that category, and what to do about it first.

The question is not whether you can afford the Audit. It is whether you can afford the exit you are not seeing yet.

The process

Three steps. Seven business days. Nothing that disrupts your team.

1
Day 1-2

Intake

You complete the pre-audit document at your own pace. 30-45 minutes. We review everything before the session, so the 90 minutes go deeper than they would otherwise. No prep calls. No pre-work meetings.

2
Day 3-4

The Session

A 90-minute diagnostic conversation, just you and us. We work through your five touchpoints across both tracks, map the gaps, identify your critical people and the clients tied to them, and put a dollar figure on your current exposure.

3
Day 5-7

Delivery

All five documents land in your inbox. Ready to use. Written for a leader who needs to move, not a consultant who needs to justify their hours. Most clients act on at least one finding the same week.

What comes next

The Audit stands on its own. What you do with it is your call.

Act on it yourself.

Everything in the deliverables package is designed to be executed without us. The 30-60-90 Day Action Plan does not require a follow-on engagement. You will have a specific list of names, clients, risks, costs, and moves, and everything you need to act on it immediately with your current team.

Or let us build it.

If the Audit surfaces a gap that needs full infrastructure built around it, automated early-warning systems, stay conversation frameworks, critical role succession coverage, client relationship continuity protocols, the Critical Roles Stay System is the next step. Scoped to your team size and depth of need. $500 of your Audit investment applies as a deposit on the build.

$500 Audit Credit  |  Deposit on the Stay System
Outcomes

What the Audit produces.

Risk you can see. Both sides.

Most leaders carry retention risk as a feeling, a low-level anxiety about who might be drifting and which clients might be slipping. The Audit turns that feeling into a specific list of names, roles, client relationships, and risk levels, so you are acting on information instead of instinct.

Diagnostic outcome

Cost you can quantify.

The Cost of Inaction Estimate puts a present-tense dollar figure on your current exposure across both tracks. Not a theoretical model, your actual team, your actual salary data, your actual client concentration. Most leaders discover the number is larger than they expected.

Financial outcome

Moves you can make this week.

The 30-60-90 Day Action Plan is sequenced against your highest-risk areas across people and clients, and written specifically enough to execute immediately. No outside involvement required. No waiting for a follow-on engagement to start protecting what matters.

Action outcome

Actionable. Or fully refunded.

Complete the intake and show up to the session. If you do not find the deliverables actionable, we will refund the investment in full. No conditions, no partial credit, no back-and-forth. The only thing we ask is that you show up prepared to be honest about what is happening in your firm.

Questions

What leaders ask before booking.

How is this different from an employee survey?

Surveys measure satisfaction after the fact, and they signal to your team that something is being assessed, which changes how people respond. The Audit is a leadership-level diagnostic. Your team is not involved. We are mapping structural risk in how your firm is built around its most critical people and its most critical client relationships, not measuring whether people feel good this week.

Do my employees or clients know this is happening?

No. The Audit is entirely between you and us. No surveys, no interviews, no announcements. Your team does not know anything is being assessed. Your clients are not contacted. The intake, the session, and all five deliverables stay at the leadership level unless you choose to share them.

How does the people-to-clients mapping actually work?

In Deliverable #3, the Critical Roles + At-Risk Accounts Report, we take each of your five to ten highest-risk people and map them to the specific client relationships, delivery workstreams, and institutional knowledge they carry. The report names the people, names the clients or accounts at risk, estimates the revenue exposure, and gives you a prioritized move. Specific to your firm. Specific to your book. (The illustrative example near the top of this page shows what the mapping looks like in practice.)

What if I already know which person is at risk?

Then the Audit gives you the documentation, the cost framing, the client-exposure mapping, and the prioritized action plan to do something about it, rather than continuing to carry it as a feeling with no structure around it. Most leaders who think they know the single problem discover the root cause is one layer deeper, or that there are two or three other risks, or that the client-side exposure is much larger than they had realized.

I am already cutting costs. How do I justify $1,500?

The same way every leader we work with justified it: by comparing it to the cost of the problem it is designed to prevent. One regretted exit at the mid-senior level costs $75,000 to $150,000. One lost client relationship can run $25,000 to $90,000 or more. The Audit is one percent of the low end. If it surfaces one risk you did not know was critical, and it almost always does, it pays for itself before the end of the quarter. When you are already running lean, the last thing you can afford is the exit you did not see coming.

What happens after I book?

You receive the confirmation page immediately. Within 24 hours, the intake document, the Observable Risk Indicators checklists, and your scheduling link arrive by email. The 90-minute session is scheduled at a time that works for you, typically within the first week. All five deliverables are in your hands within seven business days of the session. Most clients act on at least one finding the same week they receive the package.
Know before they go

The risk does not go away because you are not looking at it.

Seven business days. $1,500. A specific list of names, clients, risks, costs, and moves, so you are acting on information before a resignation or a non-renewal email makes the problem obvious.