Play the pricing game

Project Daisy – Part 3: to quote for a small freelance project

Pricing a project is a task haunted by dilemmas.

Every single line on an invoice must make sense to the client, meaning: add obvious and direct value for the money. So the hourly rate needs to factor in time and expenses that won’t be charged directly. On the other hand, small home-based businesses are easy to scare off with fees.

This post continues from A 1st client meeting and its time management dilemma and addresses the pricing aspect of managing a meeting with a new client*.

 

 
Downscaled project brief

The preliminary quote I brought for the 1st client meeting I wrote about in my last post was soon rendered irrelevant, because the client (Daisy*) used my inputs as an opportunity to revisit her options and decide what to do.

She realised that it would cover her need to revamp the content of her existing website and add ecommerce functionality with PayPal Website Payment Standard buttons, rather than switch to an ecommerce platform.

The new down-scaled project brief requires the following tasks done:

Rewrite the website text, replace photos, make sure it all looks pretty, and add PayPal buttons for all the products so the clients can buy them online… with shipping cost to be added during check-out and so on.

A 1st client meeting and the time management dilemma

Project Daisy – Part 2: 1st client meeting

Last week I met the potential client I mentioned in ‘New online store prospect: ‘Project Daisy’’. Let’s call her ‘Daisy’*.

The meeting went well in the sense that I think I came across as professional and well organised and helped the client to clarify her needs.

I followed the meeting up with a proposal based on what was discussed, and Daisy came back a few days later and accepted it. I am now just waiting for the signed contract and up-front part of the payment and expect to begin the work tomorrow morning. Yay!

 
Business meeting = a political game

The meeting itself though, although it went well, left me drained and on edge for a couple of days… which is typical. Meetings are hard.

They are easier as team work. My husband calls the good teamwork ‘to play good cop / bad cop’**. I am the bad cop because I ignore all the sales fluff and bullshit artistry (as diplomatically as possible) and cut directly to the point.

However, when I meet a potential client by myself then I have to play the good cop AND the bad cop – help the client and be as friendly as possible, and in the same time look after my own interests. A self-contradicting and demanding situation.

 

 
A business meeting is a bit like a game of chess, except you have to be on your opponent’s side as well and many of the pieces are hidden from the start. Also, there are always pieces missing… information gaps, budget gaps, all sorts of gaps.

Here is my somewhat messy analysis of the meeting structure and how I tried to cope with the aspects of meetings I find most challenging, namely:

• Time management
• Pricing
• Non-verbal aspects of the conversation

This is the first of 3 posts inspired by the meeting. Each post will focus on one of the above aspects, and this one is about time management.

The last post will focus on non-verbal communication, which is the aspect I find hardest to cope with in meetings. It is also the most difficult topic to write about, partly because of the level of writing skills required to capture non-verbal tension with words, and partly due to the privacy dilemma.

New online store prospect: ‘Project Daisy’

Project Daisy – Part 1

A business acquaintance of ‘Max’* called and asked if I could redesign her online store. Max is the client I set up an online store for last year (the whole business is now for sale). The lady who called sells her products in a small store close to Max’s and wants to sell online as well. She said that she likes Max’s online store because it looks clean, neat and well organised.

I had to tell her that I am not a web designer and that the graphic designer I ‘usually work with’ is overseas.

However, Max’s online store doesn’t have a customised design anyway. I picked Max’s store front design from a selection of free templates which was part of the ecommerce hosting package. I customised it with photos and neat copy writing, a map for the contact form and so on.

A decent selection of neat design templates were one of the selection criteria when I chose the ecommerce host. Max didn’t want to spend a cent on the storefront design, and I don’t want to spend my time on an ugly online store that screams ‘We Are Unprofessional!’ to the visitors. The template was a decent compromise.

So I told the lady that if she is happy with a template design, I can help her set it up and we agreed on a time to have a chat about it.

 

I’ll nick name this prospect ‘Project Daisy’**

 
Yay! Does that mean I’ve got a new project? I am cautiously optimistic and trying to work out what to do.

To cure Telephobia with International freelance work

Curing Telephobia – Part 3

I started this serial declaring myself cured of Telephobia because although I still don’t like phone calls very much, I no longer fear or refuse to do them. That’s a declaration of great victory over a terrifying old enemy.

 

 
Through the last year I have worked to improve my phone manners and taken the opportunity to study what others do whenever I could; e.g. eaves dropped on the professional phone calls of my dear husband (with his permission) who runs his consultancy business from home.

I now feel fairly competent when I present myself on the phone. I think I sound normal or even professional, and that I can ‘get the job done’ whether I like it or not. So a phone call is a tool rather than a wall that hovers over my day and over-shadows its opportunities.

That is the victory. It materialised as a fact (or as close as it gets) after I undertook an International tele-freelance job in December:

 
International freelance tele-job

I was contracted to interview executives within a certain industry in my home country about their strategies regarding certain infrastructure and activities*. I was paid per interview and had to arrange the interviews myself, which implied an unpredictable amount of ‘cold calling’ to arrange the surveys – potentially unpaid.

Cold calling was the scary part of job – because of the uncertainty, lack of structure and potentially rude answers when interrupting busy executives to ask for their participation in a market survey.

What is said VS what is meant

The hilarious Anglo-EU Translation Guide outlines what the British mean VS what others think they mean (I suspect it applies to Australia as well).

Very funny – and elegant illustration of the fact that words often don’t mean what they appear to mean.

 

Anglo-EU Translation Guide

Re-blogged from Confusion with language by Missing Jigsaws & Excess Lego.