How grateful are you for your clients?

Written by Karen Skidmore on - 9 Comments
Categories: Business Attitude, Marketing Small Business, Prices & Charge Rates

I met up with a new client last week and was blown away by her photography. A self-taught amateur turned professional, it was obvious – even from someone who knows nothing about the art of photography – that she had a real eye for capturing startling images.

But talent, a business does not make!

When she started to tell me about the story behind her business and where she was at today, it became clearer and clearer to me that it wasn’t a lack of business skills that was holding back her business.

What was holding her back was her business attitude.

Her pricing was so low, that even she couldn’t quite believe what her hourly rate really was once we divided her commission rate by the number of hours she took to do the project (and I know I was being generous with the actual time she spent!). What was her reason for charging such so low prices?

“I am just so grateful for any work that I can get,” is what she replied.

Grateful is very dangerous word to use when talking about your clients. Thankful and even appreciative are great words. But grateful – never!

Grateful puts you in a place where you secretly beg for a client to work with you. When you are on the phone to them, you find yourself crossing your fingers and talking randomly to fill up the silence while the potential client decides whether to hire you or not. And when you do get a “yes” from them, you throw yourself in to the project, nothing being too much for you to do, despite the number of hours you end up spending.

Grateful will make you bend over backwards for a client who never pays you on time.

Grateful will make you drive for miles just to have a cup of coffee with someone who picks your brains and then says goodbye, leaving you to pick up the tab.

A grateful mindset must be left well alone and you must be able to speak with potential new clients with a “I’ve got a full diary this week” mindset. Even if you have to pretend to flick through your calendar to arrange a meeting (I did this on many an occasion in my first couple of years!!), you’ll notice a huge difference to how your potential clients make their decisions and how much you are able to charge.

Have you found yourself being too grateful for clients? And how has a grateful mindset affected your business? It always great to read your comments, too.

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9 Responses to “How grateful are you for your clients?”

Comments

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Trish Gant

March 2, 2010 at 2:32 pm

This must be a photographer thing. We chew ourselves up inside because we’re constantly told there’s no longer any value in photography. But that can’t be right. We are living in a very savvy image conscious society now but not just anyone can take a great picture. What is it exactly we’re selling? We are selling ourselves, our knowledge, our eye. It took me 7 years as a freelance assistant before I went out there to get my own work. That’s some training! And I’m still learning with every job I do. That’s before I’ve even started to learn the latest technological thingermy.

So if you don’t value yourself, how can you expect others to?

[Reply]
Clive Walker

February 10, 2011 at 8:31 pm

I think the issue of low rates or undervaluing yourself is especially tricky when you are first starting out. What do you suggest? I did some competition research on prices which helped.

[Reply]
Karen Skidmore Reply:
February 11th, 2011 at 10:01 am
Competition research is a great place to start but don’t get caught up with the “they charge that so I couldn’t charge more”. It gives a good bench mark, but don’t let other people’s prices hold you back. I also wouldn’t recommend asking potential clients – you never get the truth! Ask someone how much they would pay, and they will always say a cheaper price than they may end up paying when presented with the full benefits : )

What I would recommend is you work out exactly how many hours you spend on working on a client project. In your case, Clive – it’s website design and hosting, isn’t it? So in theory it should be quite easy to work out exactly what you would do – remembering never to under estimate! Work out next what you feel you are worth in hourly rate and then do the sums. £30 to £75 an hour is perfectly acceptable for web work, depending on the level of expertise you are offering. And I know some who charge more.

One final recommendation is that if you feel the price of your packages start to feel too expensive – offer your clients 3 options: bronze, silver and gold (obviously not with those names!) – this way your client can decide on what level of service they are getting for the money, rather than try to negotiate you down on your price and hourly rate.

Hope that helps Clive and thanks for stopping by.

[Reply]
Fiona Humberstone

February 11, 2011 at 10:06 am

Clive I’d also recommend that you benchmark yourself against the competition. Is what you’re offering more or less valuable? Is your quality higher or lower? That will give you an insight into how your prices should differ from your competitors.

[Reply]
Karen Skidmore Reply:
February 11th, 2011 at 10:09 am
Thanks Fiona – that’s a very valid point. Bigger invoice doesn’t always mean more expensive. And low price often means less customer service and quality control. Depends on what a client is looking for, doesn’t it?

[Reply]
Clive Walker Reply:
February 11th, 2011 at 12:59 pm
Thanks for the comment Fiona. I have benchmarked myself against other UK and local companies in various ways, through surreptitious (heh heh) enquiries to competitior web designers (where I was in the middle of the range) and in online web designer surveys (I was at the lower end). I think I offer higher quality in some areas so I need to assess this again.

Based on Karen’s price range in her comment above, I’m at the lower end so that’s food for thought as well

[Reply]
Sadie Knight

February 11, 2011 at 10:31 am

Great post. this is something that I believe hits anyone in the service industry – certainly it did for me in the early days of setting up my web design business.

I pitched myself with low prices in order to build up a portfolio, but interestingly as I upped the prices it didn’t reduce the amount of work coming in – infact sometimes it seemed to increase!

Bear in mind the old adage ‘you get what you pay for’. If you price yourself too low then many people will believe you are not very good at what you do, even when they can look at your portfolio of previous work.

Value yourself and your skills & time.

[Reply]
Karen Skidmore Reply:
February 11th, 2011 at 10:37 am
Well said, Sadie – thanks for sharing your experiences : )

[Reply]
Clive Walker Reply:
February 11th, 2011 at 1:03 pm
Interesting point about no-one complaining when prices were raised. Have heard similar stories and even one where a well-known web designer doubled his prices on a random day every month. He found that they were accepted! Mind you, he is a talented guy and a bit of a web celebrity (now) so I am sure he’s worth it.

[Reply]