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Dropping his hourly rate will likely get him more of the kinds of clients that he does not want. Your advice goes very much against the grain of what others who

by akulbe 9y ago

Dropping his hourly rate will likely get him more of the kinds of clients that he does not want. Your advice goes very much against the grain of what others who are very experienced in this field would say (which is to raise your rates). What is your basis for suggesting he lower his rates?

ameister14 9y ago
He's not saying lower the rates. He's saying charge by the project or by the week/month, not by the hour.
- richardknop 9y ago
  I'd also suggest daily rate or weekly rate as alternatives. Seems like a better unit to bill consulting services in than hours or months. Easier to sell clients 20 days of your time or 4 weeks of your time imho. It is easier for companies to budget x days or x weeks of consulting services with fixed daily / weekly rate.
Cozumel 9y ago
I didn't say for him to lower his rates. I said for him to stop charging by the hour, charge by the project instead. An hourly rate is a fundamentally broken system.
- richardknop 9y ago
  Charging fixed price per whole project might not be a good idea. Software projects usually never finish completely in a certain predefined deadline so it makes it very hard for you to plan and price your services. There will always be issues that will delay the project that you couldn't have predicted and priced in at the start, requirements will often change during the project, there can be new feature requests which will further push the deadline. Much better to instead sign a contract for fixed amount of time (6 months of consulting services for example). You will work on the project for the time defined by signed contract. A month before your contract ends sit down with the client and estimate the current state of the project and see if additional time will be needed in which case you can negotiate contract extension. This approach is much more agile actually so most clients would prefer it I'd imagine. Clients can keep extending your contract by 3 month chunks if they need to. If you finish everything early clients will easily find you some more work while they are paying for your consultancy services. If not you can have short notice period in the contract like 1-2 weeks so contract can be cut short.

by akulbe 9y ago

ameister14 9y ago

He's not saying lower the rates. He's saying charge by the project or by the week/month, not by the hour.

richardknop 9y ago
I'd also suggest daily rate or weekly rate as alternatives. Seems like a better unit to bill consulting services in than hours or months. Easier to sell clients 20 days of your time or 4 weeks of your time imho. It is easier for companies to budget x days or x weeks of consulting services with fixed daily / weekly rate.

Cozumel 9y ago

I didn't say for him to lower his rates. I said for him to stop charging by the hour, charge by the project instead. An hourly rate is a fundamentally broken system.

richardknop 9y ago
Charging fixed price per whole project might not be a good idea. Software projects usually never finish completely in a certain predefined deadline so it makes it very hard for you to plan and price your services. There will always be issues that will delay the project that you couldn't have predicted and priced in at the start, requirements will often change during the project, there can be new feature requests which will further push the deadline. Much better to instead sign a contract for fixed amount of time (6 months of consulting services for example). You will work on the project for the time defined by signed contract. A month before your contract ends sit down with the client and estimate the current state of the project and see if additional time will be needed in which case you can negotiate contract extension. This approach is much more agile actually so most clients would prefer it I'd imagine. Clients can keep extending your contract by 3 month chunks if they need to. If you finish everything early clients will easily find you some more work while they are paying for your consultancy services. If not you can have short notice period in the contract like 1-2 weeks so contract can be cut short.