[consulting] Gouging Stupid Clients

[Joshua Brauer]

There seem to be two separate questions here to me.

For the question of whether it's proper to pad time so as not to leave money on the table I personally don't believe it is.

To answer the "how do I not leave money on the table" question it seems there is often more work that could be done that would provide value to clients. A happy client upon seeing that they were charged only half an hour at a reasonable rate for a task they needed done is much more likely to listen to, and fund other enhancements to their site that bring them value. In the end though it may take a bit longer to get this additional work the client will be much happier and they will tell others about how awesome their consultant is which leads to yet more work and more money on the table. 


Thanks,
Josh

Twitter: @jbrauer | Linked In | joshuabrauer.com

On Feb 23, 2012, at 9:26 AM, Fred Jones wrote:

> OK the subject is exaggerated--that was just to get your attention. :)
> 
> I recently spoke with a client who told me his woes about how he had
> to wrestle a site away from unscrupulous site builders who built and
> hosted it and charged exorbitant fees for any change to their
> (hard-coded HTML) site. He was looking for assistance with his new
> rebuild in Drupal. According to what he claims, I think his
> organization was gouged previously.
> 
> Now I have a client myself who has no understanding whatsoever about
> what I do. When they ask for a change (and I even ran a training
> session with them (twice) to tell them how to do little things
> themselves, but anyway they like to ask me) they ask how much time it
> will take and what's the price. Usually I say it looks like a half
> hour job and so I will charge you for a half hour. I don't want to
> discuss rates here, but let's just say my rate is 100 Yen per hour. So
> I charge them 50 Yen.
> 
> But I realize now that if I would say two or even four hours, I am
> fairly certain they wouldn't flinch, and even if they did, I could
> whip out a few big words and explain why it's complicated and they
> would accept that. They would then pay me four hours for a half hour
> of work. So what I could do, to be honest, is to say, "This will cost
> 400 Yen" and not mention that it's a half hour job. They don't really
> care about the time--just the price.
> 
> I'm sure others have such clients.
> 
> I'm wondering what others think about this. On the one hand, it may be
> unscrupulous, because no one (not even Lullabot) takes 800 Yen per
> hour. On the other hand, however, they are willing to pay 400 Yen for
> this job and the business majors would say "don't leave money on the
> table." Wouldn't' they?
> 
> Fred
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