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... the hope is that it will be like a gym membership - you count on some people never to use your service. I think that any consultant who has been in the gam
by ScottWhigham 13y ago
... the hope is that it will be like a gym membership - you count on some people never to use your service.
I think that any consultant who has been in the game for many years has worked out a recurring monthly "relationship" with some customers for exactly that reason. The difference is that (a) those consultant deals have a minimum of x hours per month (where x >= 10), and (b) there's a dollar amount per hour that you bill for time over that base. As a result, you the consultant have a strong bias towards helping that customer ASAP. But it has to be at least a decent amount of money per month - say $1000 at a minimum - for you to put aside other projects 2-5x per month to help this customer. $50 though just doesn't cut it - am I going to stop working on this major project with a deadline three days away so I can earn $50 one time? No. I have 50 unread emails and they represent $5000 this month - am I going to ignore those right at this moment and answer the one that's worth $50? No. With your recurring consulting client though, you would do that - not only are you getting $1000 per month from them, but there's the potential every month to make much, much more if we go over x hours.
"But, Scott - I don't actually have any of those customers doing that with me right now."
Maybe not, but everything has an opportunity cost. All it takes is you not answering a $50 email in what the customer thinks is an appropriate amount of time and bam - bad reputation. Or all it takes is 2-3 customers in a row who ask for things that can't be completed in an hour or who don't like the advice/help you've given them and bam - bad rep. Or all it takes is one customer asking a problem that you don't know the answer to and you also have a major project deadline looming and so you "miss" the question (wrong answer, bad advice, forget to answer, etc) and bam - bad rep. Just not worth $50 to me.