How to get your consulting fee upfront | Hacker News Reader

How to get your consulting fee upfront

joshrichards.net

55 pointsjtrtoo9 comments

That link just sent me into a 2 hour web hole that was insanely productive.

After reading some more of the original authors work, I was linked out to the ebook Breaking the Time Barrier [0] (by the CEO of Freshbooks which I'd never heard of) which instantly helped me reframe my approach to consulting.

And this is why Hacker News is addictive; Occasional and random large rewards.

[0] https://www.freshbooks.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/03/breaki...

I just started reading the book out of curiosity, and it's so good I can't seem to stop!

Nice!

If you enjoyed Breaking the Time Barrier, you may also want to check the material put out by Alan Weiss. In my case, the real-world proposal examples he published years back (and pulled from his own solo practice) have easily been worth six figures to me. I believe I first ran across them in his book Million Dollar Consulting, but they are covered more specifically in two of his later proposal specific publications.

[1] https://alanweiss.com/ [2] https://alanweiss.com/store/books/

This article makes great points about basic negotiation. One other point for people not used to sales is that you get way better with repetition. Getting a particular price once gives you the confidence to ask for it again. Conversely there's a lot less push-back if you forthrightly state your terms instead of dithering. These are both the product of experience.

For people starting out I think it's fine to low-ball a few deals to gain experience and get insight into what the market will bear. But you need to learn from that process as quickly as possible. The most important learning for me was to ensure that clients put money on the table to close the deal. At that point they are invested in your success, especially if they had to push for it from their own management chain.

Personally I would negotiate my hourly fee based on the project extension in time, e.g. a six months consulting contract has a lower hour rate that a few days contract. I tend to not negotiate the payment terms though, which are always 7 days following the receipt of my invoice. In Italy very often delayed payments are an issue, but for my type of consulting the customer knows that's better not to delay my payments due to the confidentiality of the matters which I deal with.

That seems fine, but it doesn't really change whether you should ask for some of the overall fees upfront. :-)

I've moved almost entirely away from hourly billing, but where it does pop up there is generally a different fee for clients who have retainer agreements with me (which are usually annual in nature).

I agree with you, my comment is not totally relevant to the subject, sorry for that. Personally at the moment I don't feel/need to ask upfront payments for my services, but in the event I'd feel that the payment should be upfront, I'd ask simply ask for it. I agree with the fact that often asking for something just works.

But you sometimes don't know upfront how much you'll actually work for the client for the thing they need to accomplish. Guess this won't work then.

I respectfully disagree. That situation is common in hourly billing certainly. That doesn't mean you can't require a deposit upfront based on some sort of rough estimate. The point isn't necessarily the amount, but that there is something. The client needs some skin in the game. Otherwise they're not actually a client. Plus it helps with your own cash flow, which is often far tighter than the client's (or prospect's) and, in any case, far more important to you than it is to them. :-)

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