Don’t Quote an “Hourly Rate” Upfront for Your Services
posted October 13, 2009 - 8:34pmHere is something I’ve learned the hard way: if you publish or quote right away a fixed hourly rate or a fixed fee for your services, you’ll end up attracting the cheapest and hardest clients and you’ll never make any serious money.
You might be the nicest person on earth, always ready to go the extra mile and ready to give in in order not to “miss” any clients. But money is made through Power and Control.
No matter how good a service provider you are if you don’t control your clients, and if you allow your clients to control you, you’ll starve. Because you won’t get paid or you’ll be paid just peanuts. And soon you’ll start looking around for another line of work for yourself.
The clients usually ask “what’s your hourly rate?” mostly because they don’t know what else to ask and they don’t know how else to justify the budget of their project.
If you quote a fee just like that on the spot, you either won’t get the job or you’ll get a very difficult client for yourself who will never be satisfied with the end product.
When you quote a price in any sales situation without first pre-selling the client on the VALUE that you will bring into the relationship, the price alone will never satisfy the client.
If you do not first convince your customer about the VALUE you’ll be injecting into the project, they will either dismiss you as a cheap amateur (if your rate comes across as too low) or will start hunting for a more “affordable” vendor (if your rate comes across as too high).
By quoting a fee upfront you’ll never be able to convince them that if they were smart enough they would not necessarily hire the vendor with the lowest hourly rate but a professional who is perfect for the job…
Unless you communicate that successfully, unless you insist on a meaningful opportunity to communicate that successfully, you’ll never make any significant money in your line of business.
Visit http://www.how-to-write-anything.com for tips and tutorials on how to write anything for success in life.
(Public domain photo courtesy of Wikipedia)
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Comments
Good Points
And great sales tactics. Hard to place a dollar amount on value.
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sorry oops
L Wagen, About getting an
L Wagen,
About getting an upfront resume fee, it's not an easy task. I was once handed a very poorly written resume by a friend and she asked that I perfect it. I did just that and took a great deal of time to make it look professional. However, it's been about four months since I handed over that resume and I still haven't been paid in full. This taught me to never mix business with pleasure; friends take advantage of your services.
As far as emailing me goes, it's not a problem. Feel free to email me at xomba or info at samswriting dot com. As an entrepreneur I am always looking for new opportunities.
Thanks,
Sam
http://samswriting.com/
Life is So Sweet
Sam, I have to agree mixing tutoring and writing, and editing was a poor marketing choice.
But getting an upfront resume fee didn't work either.
I ended up working as a substitute teacher and for an Educational consultant firm in a seasonal position for the "teaching of writing."
Life is so Sweet. My company has offices in NYC and New Jersey. I am going to xomba email you those addresses, and websites. If you aren't interested just ignore it.
Thank you for your advice
Hi Uakinci,
I am grateful for your advice and have saved it on my desktop for future reference. I could see how having all those services mixed together would be an issue; however, I can't afford to put in the time to moderate three different websites right now. I do have access to backend resources and will use them when I decide to upgrade, but I am not ready to do that yet.
My goal was actually to make the site look sort of comfy and less professional as it mostly serves high school and college students. I figured a professional site would scare them away. However, I am currently trying to reach a larger population, so a make-over sounds like a great idea. It's funny you should mention the centered text because I just set that up yesterday as a test. Since I built the site over a year ago, it has undergone many make-overs; sadly I still have not found the "perfect" look. Maybe it's about time I hire a professional to do this for me, as web design is not exactly my strong point....
Sam
http://samswriting.com/
Thanks for all the great feedback
Thanks for your kind words, folks. I'm glad my article helped you with your efforts to make a better living.
Sam, I visited your web site. A couple of unsolicited recommendations: 1) Separate the service offerings that require totally different levels of competence and fetch different levels of compensation (like Typing and Tutoring, for example). Mix apples and oranges and you'll end up selling neither. If I were you I'd have one web site only for tutoring, another one for Typing, another one for Copy Writing, etc. 2) Your web site needs a make-over to make it look more professional. At least get rid of the centered text and make it left-adjusted. Also -- the image of a seal does not make immediate business sense. Why not put a bright photo of students enjoying tutoring, or a writer helping a client? How about your own photo, working at your computer? Human touch. Always helps.
The next step after not publishing your rates is to ask at least 1/3 of your fee upfront so that you won't have to sit on a resume after you spend hours working on it. That's not fair, is it? I know it's not easy to ask for an upfront good-will deposit but trust me, your clients will respect you more if you do that and you'll start attracting the customers that take you seriously and pay you willingly.
My best regards to all my fellow writers!
Learn how to write anything you want at http://www.how-to-write-anything.com
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Thanks
T
hank you for your advice L Wagen; it definitely has been a struggle. Once I went into the city and waited for an hour for the student I was supposed to tutor, but she never showed up. I was never compensated for my hour commute and hour wait. There are many issues that will always arise, but I guess that's the business.
My site states that tutoring is available in NYC; however, I agree, I think I need to be more specific.
By the way, I am a female.
Thanks,
Sam
http://samswriting.com/
Great Ideas
Thanks for the good advice. I am thinking of starting a small service business and I will keep your advice in mind.
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Mmmm
I think sometimes it works not to quote by the hour. Sometimes by the project is better or by the page if you are a writer. I think it depends on the service you are providing. In the case of Sam in Sams Writing, I clicked on his/her website. If he/she tutors than you need to give people more contact information like the city and state that Sam lives in, because tutoring is usually done in person, and people who live 3 states over or down the street don't know where Sam lives? Maybe tutoring by the hour, writing, and editing by the page. That's the way I did it when I tried that business. My problem in tutoring was that I spent 1 hour with the child and then 3 hours with the parents discussing the child and was paid for you guess it 1 hour. Charging by the page for resume writing turned out better. And if they didn't pay for the page they wouldn't get the resume.
College students would make appt for tutoring and then never showed up.
Excellent and sound advice...
You have laid this out very well and it makes sense. Thank you for sharing.
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