Re: FN-FORUM: am i being too soft or harsh?

date posted 1st June 2006 11:06

Paul,

Thinking "outside the box" it seems to me that you are approaching or have
met that classic stage in business when you need to review your own
structure. The bigger a business gets the more those "administrative
freebies" creep in. And yet this area provides a route for VAB (Value Added
Business).

As someone pointed out, client contact, PR, leads to that next contract. You
may need to balance this against the realistic probability that beyond a
certain amount of PR you are losing money.

You can roughly gauge from how long you have been in business and the
current trend of new contracts per quarter what likely business you will
have in one, two and three years time. You can accordingly guesstimate the
likely effect of having a VAB structure.

I suggest, politely, you set up a set of contracts covering each part of
your service provision. The primary website contract allows you to charge
for extra work; a maintenance contract covers support; and a small works
contract covers an amount of time in each year for add-ons, say £100 for up
to four hours work. The latter two contracts repeat by tacit relocation (if
clients don't cancel they repeat the contract year upon year at the
appropriate fee). This methodology often results in clients paying each year
"just in case" and tends to lock them in to your services - for why should
they go elsewhere when they have already paid you.

All this may direct your mind to other channels of business too.

One good use of the second and third type of contract is the quid-pro-quo
that you can then say to clients that the annual fee will be waved upon them
sourcing a new client which results in business for you at any time before
the new contract premium arises.

If you do undertake review, start it by taking a long (two hour plus) walk
well away from your daily business environment and with mobile switched off.
Don't be surprised if your thoughts seed something else leading to stronger
income security and drastic improvement in business.

HTH.

Mike A.

Paul Bryant wrote:
> Many of my clients are B&B's and independent hotels. I fully
> understand that their business changes and that fees need to be
> altered annually. So I'm quite happy to update their sites for free
> when required. Normally this isn't a problem.
>
> However, I have a particular client who has begun to request changes
> to their site on a regular basis. Their site has been running for
> about a year now but in the past month, they have suddenly started
> asking for alterations. For example, I have now changed their fees 3
> times in less than 4 weeks. Today, in an email thanking me for the
> last change, she has asked for something else to be done. Now, ok,
> each alteration literally takes less than a minute. We're not talking
> about major issues here. But it is a complete pain in the arse. And
> if every client did it, there certainly would be a problem.