I have to agree 100% with you, when I was pricing my work low to try and get
more work I hardly received a response, ones I up my prices I started
getting a lot more clients and better response to proposals etc. The
psychology of it I don't understand completely, I guess some of these
decisions makers take the saying that you get what you pay for to heart,
but hey if some one wants to pay me more for work that I was willing to do
for less, I don't complaint, I just say thank you and move along to the next
project.
ER
_____
From: web-design@yahoogroups.com [mailto:web-design@yahoogroups.com] On
Behalf Of Joni Mueller
Sent: Tuesday, October 18, 2011 5:34 PM
To: web-design@yahoogroups.com
Subject: RE: [web-design] how do you fire an abusive client?
This may be a sensitive topic, but it's been my observation -- and I learned
this the hard way myself -- I got treated better by clients when I upped my
rates. I don't know what kind of psychology is involved here, but once I did
that, the tantrum-throwers disappeared. How I figured out I wasn't charging
enough was that whenever I'd submit a bid on a project and the person was
nice enough to tell me that they hired someone else, I always asked them
what was missing from our proposal that caused them not to choose us? I
feared our price was too high and may have scared them off. After having a
large percentage of those folks tell me that they thought our prices were
too low and we couldn't possibly do the job for the price quoted (and mind
you, none of our bids were for anything in three figures, it was low four
figures), I decided to increase our rates and my proposal acceptance rate
has improved dramatically since I did that, two years ago.
Dealing with non profits and small business owners and utility districts
(which is our main client base), seems to help as well. Individual clients,
musicians, writers, bloggers, etc., even solo lawyers, seemed to be so
cost-conscious (penny-pinching is what I REALLY mean!) and they attempted to
wring every last bit of work out of those pennies, and us. It had to stop.
So once I began marketing to a different niche, the client base changed and
things are much more enjoyable now as well.
I hope you can all find that "sweet spot" where you have a nice collection
of clients who value and respect your talent and don't mind paying well for
it. :)))
And to a yelling client, I would suggest that you tell him/her the same
thing I told a crochety lawyer boss of mine years ago who tried the same
thing with me. I told him, "There are only two people on this earth who can
talk to me like that. One is dead and the other one is NOT you." Never had a
problem with that boss again.
Joni Mueller
Pixelita Designs
http://www.pixelita.com
________________________________________
From: web-design@yahoogroups.com <mailto:web-design%40yahoogroups.com>
[web-design@yahoogroups.com <mailto:web-design%40yahoogroups.com> ] On
Behalf Of B Schwanke [schwankeb@gmail.com <mailto:schwankeb%40gmail.com> ]
Sent: Tuesday, October 18, 2011 4:24 PM
To: web-design@yahoogroups.com <mailto:web-design%40yahoogroups.com>
Subject: Re: [web-design] how do you fire an abusive client?
Thanks everyone.
Joni, I totally agree with you that this was a lesson I needed to learn b/c
I let the scope get insanely out of control b/c everytime I said no, the
client just said, well, I have to have it, and I don't have anyone else to
do it, and it's too late in the game to get someone else, yada, yada, yada.
And I let that guilt get to me--like an idiot- until it just got to the
breaking point. Lesson learned.
Bill and Jon, I dumped the client. I will feel guilty about it for ever, but
the yelling and disrespectfulness just took it's toll, and the money just
wasn't worth it. If I ever grow a backbone, I'll look into freelancing
again--until then, my day job is enough design and development for me!
[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
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