You are a consultant. You’re an expert at what you do, and you expect to get paid for it. So how do you avoid working for free? How do you handle clients that expect you to give away your valuable time?
The worst thing you can ever do is to doubt your level of expertise or ability to help an organisation. If an organisation is considering utilising your consulting expertise then obviously they need YOU for what they can’t do or can’t do as well themselves. Always remember that.
Do they want to pay top dollar? Of course not, would you? Should you demand top dollar? That depends on how good of a consultant you are and how much you’re pretty sure you can help them. But you need to eat and there are only so many hours in the day. Here are three strategies to help you avoid giving your valuable knowledge and time away for free. Why? Because you’ll be asked to, and it may not be obvious. Try these methods out and you’ll likely be much happier.
Bill in advance
This one may be tough and if you’re a new consultant with no real history or reputation you will scare off some good potential clients. However, if you have a great reputation, have some testimonials or are known or have some great searchable work on the internet, then your clients should be fine paying you in advance or paying you on a retainer. This is especially true if you are doing custom consulting work for them.
Think wedding photographer. You’re going to pay at least half upfront for a wedding photographer even if yours is their first wedding. Getting paid upfront keeps you from not getting paid at all by those deadbeat clients who come to the end of the agreement and say they need more time to pay, which stretches from a couple days to a couple of months. Remember, you have to feed your family just like they do and you deserve to be paid….so get it first.
With existing consulting clients, in order to get them to quickly buy-in to the change, either reduce rates a bit to pay in advance or offer them a free add-on service one time to make it happen. It will be a fairly smooth transition. Just think it through in advance and consider what has value to a good client and offer that to make the transition. But again, don’t give away too much to make it happen…remember – you’re the expert giving custom service and this is how that area of the business world works.
Get paid for brainstorming/proposals
Clients frequent requests to “talk” to marketing and discuss ways they can help them and see if something “sticks.” Or, send us some content for free and we’ll see if it helps us and then we can consider working together. Hmmm…sure. Here is one consultant’s take. “I’m busy five days a week…often seven days a week. I’m up at 3am answering questions for a client halfway around the world because that’s when they are working. I can’t give knowledge away for free.”
So work something out – offer a per hour rate to do a brainstorming call and get paid up front for a one hour call to start it out. You know that if you don’t, half the time they are going to take the good advice you gave them for free in a “brainstorming” call that you didn’t ask for payment for and you’ll never hear from them again.
Get paid for this type of brainstorming up front. $100, $150, $250…it isn’t much to them, but at least it gives them something to feel accountable for and now they have a vested interest in your consulting skills. Trust me, they’ll be more likely to retain you if you don’t give the brainstorming away for free.
Get paid for the constant requests for help
Many experienced consultants with an online presence get asked nearly daily for their advice on something within their area of expertise, or sometimes even their advice on starting out down the consulting path and how to set up shop. This isn’t a 5 minute adventure. It takes time to offload this type of knowledge – especially if you’re passionate about it, which you are or you wouldn’t be successful and no one would be asking you for this advice.
Don’t give out this advice – not even by email…at least not at first. Plan out a process where you can get paid for this type of brain dump. Not everyone that asks for help or advice will take you up on it, but some will. And you can just point them to the contact form on your website to send in this type of request. Here’s what I do:
Plan a one-hour call where they can ask you anything and you’ll tell them what you know. For this, charge your highest rate. Whether that’s $50/hour, $100/hour or $250/hour…it’s up to you. Get payment in advance via PayPal or whatever means by which you prefer taking payment.
Allow for follow-up email questions/support. You can do this for free, but for a limited amount within reason. If it gets to be too often or too much, suggest a follow-up call and they know then that you are cutting them off. It doesn’t take much to cut them off…I’m busy.
For follow-up calls, charge less. And you can pick your minimum call length. For the initial call some always go with one hour. On that initial call you can fill an hour fast. For the follow-up, maybe charge by the half hour and charge a lower hourly rate. Maybe. (businessknowhow.com)
Summary / call for input
Consultants…what’s your experience? Do you agree with these suggestions? They’ve worked well for some, but they may not be for everyone or for every type of consulting. What works for you? Let’s share and discuss. Scroll down to comment.
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