On Wed, 13 Feb 2013, Chris Schafer wrote: > Curious to what people think the rates for long term and for short term > are in town. Clearly there are ranges. Also curious about general rates > for SMB consulting. In Maui desktop support by the hour was in the $125 > area and servers and networking was easily $140.
Chris, For the past decade or so I've worked for a flat rate whenever a project has a defined end point; e.g., preparation of a permit application, environmental impact assessment, hydrologic modeling for flooding prediction, analyzing surface water chemistry data for changes over time. Only when the project has an indefinite term (e.g., expert witness in litigation) do I charge by time and effort. There are many benefits to you and your clients of working for a fixed fee. Remember, if your client had the skills and experience to do the project you'd not be hired. Therefore, he has no idea how much time and effort are required to deliver a project with which you are both satisfied. You probably have an idea how much effort is involved, but that total dollar amount can scare your client. Agreeing on a fixed fee means he knows in advance what his cost is and he accepts it. And you are comfortable with that amount, too. By working for a fixed fee you align yourself with your client's interests: getting the desired results as quickly as is consistent with the high quality on which your reputation is based. In my industry -- environmental consulting -- too many providers drag out a project to keep the cash flowing in. Whether this is really the case, clients think that it is and they don't like it. Put yourself in their shoes. Working for a fixed fee sets you apart from the competition. Too often when working on a time-and-expense basis we under-bill the client because getting the job done right takes a lot of time, and we know the client will be bothered by a invoice for a large amount of money. So we short-change ourselves (literally) or we risk really ticking off the client by asking for a lot of money. A fixed fee eliminates this problem, even if we would be working for minimum wage (or less) if we actually tracked the time. Working on a fixed fee means you know just how much revenue you have. You do not need to spend time entering the hours you worked (and writing a justification for each entry) and you can focus on producing a high quality product. If the project is long term (by your definition), write a retainer agreement. This gives you a known amount of revenue each month regardless of how much time you put in. You can define the term of the retainer agreement at a mutually-agreed time (say, three months) with quarterly renewals upon mutual consent. This gives your client both a known cost and a way out after each period, and it gives you a known revenue and the same out if you determine that the client should be fired. Yes, I've fired clients in the past and I'm working now on two projects with monthly retainers and I like that very much (despite the long hours I put in.) There's more of course, but this should get you thinking. HTH, Rich _______________________________________________ PLUG mailing list [email protected] http://lists.pdxlinux.org/mailman/listinfo/plug
