> I know it kind of ticks me off when somebody says 'just ask for more money!' when I know damned well there's a lot more to it than that.What else is there to it? The company can afford it, or it can't. If you ask for more, they probably won't cease negotiations just because they can't afford it. If you're in the pipeline with them for a proposal/SOW submission, you can make several attempts at the sale. If you're finding that most clients refuse your higher rate, there are two possibilities: 1) you have actually hit the ceiling you can achieve for this industry and niche, or 2) you're dealing with suboptimal clients.
I'm just okay at sales (or at least, I don't really like it but I do it), but I am particularly good at a lot of billable information security services and software development. Every time I increased my rates, I did it because I decided to on a whim, during the kickoff call, just to see what would happen. I too thought that the mythical five figure weekly rate was preposterous, until I got it.
I know this probably sounds horribly insensitive to you based on what you just said, but when patio11 et al talk about raising rates and people push back against the feasibility of doing it, there's an element of talking past each other going on. There are a set of premises involved in successfully raising rates to the "mythical" scale you're talking about:
1. You are in an industry where you know established players are billing these rates.
2. You have the market outreach, salesmanship or network to capture a percentage (even if its small) or the existing market share from these incumbents.
3. You have comparable skills (both technical and logistical) to the consultants or shops your clients could be going to.
4. You are able to differentiate yourself (this is not even strictly necessary, just helpful).
If you don't tick all or more of those premises, then yes, of course simply asking for higher rates is unlikely to consistently work. But if you re-read much of the advice that is put out by folks like Patrick, you see that the unspoken subtext of, "You need to be good at this" is there, where "this" means technical and sales skills. This is why he wrote Don't Call Yourself a Programmer in the first place - the technical skills are important but insufficient. The "willing to ask" part comes after the fact, and just boils down to reticence.
It's a straightforward formula. If you know other people are doing it, and you know you're as good as them at doing it, you can do it too. In my experience, most of the people who push back against this are either 1) not as skilled as they think they are (to be blunt, but I'm not saying this necessarily describes you) or 2) not very good at sales, generally due to a natural aversion. The point people like myself try to make is that if you have the technical skills, just getting over the sales difficulty will significantly improve your income.