At 08:23 PM 3/17/01 -0500, Mike Reagan wrote:
>Abdul.
>Don't get me wrong I will do a small jobs for good or new customers. When
>I find myself doing to many small jobs for the same customer and they did
>not award me a large design, I quit responding to their next request for
>quote.
Send 'em my way.... :-)
Seriously, I'm willing to pay referral fees to independent designers, or to
subcontract work where the designer remains in between us and the client,
either in all ways (i.e., we do not talk to the client) or where we are
represented as working for the designer. The latter, of course, is far more
efficient.
[...]If I have to meet with a
>customer, go to his site, drink his coffee, eat his donuts, talk to his
>staff, then drive back and put together a proposal, I would rather do it for
>a larger job where it is easier to bury a 4 hour meeting, my travel time,
>marketing, and proposal.
Of course. But I strongly discourage face-to-face meetings with clients.
It's really a waste of time on both sides for printed circuit design. Email
and fax and attached files are, in my view, greatly superior because there
is an automatic record of all the communication. It's been years since I've
had a dispute with a client, "But I told you, .... No, you didn't." With
written communication, either I was told or I wasn't and it is really easy
to determine which is the case.
Most of my clients I have never met face to face. Yes, I have some
long-time clients where we've met, but the meeting was really more social
than working.
When work has been slow, I've done intensive selling, a lot of
cold-calling, etc. But the yield from this is rather pitiful, I do it only
when I'm forced to do it. I like meeting people, to be sure, but there are
a lot of companies out there who are happy to have you drive an hour to
meet them with very little intention of giving you the job. Last year I got
a referral to a company that was supposedly desperate for some immediate
design work. A bit reluctantly, I agreed to drive to meet them and discuss
the work. I hit some heavy traffic and arrived late. When I got there, the
engineer who was conducting the meeting said, rather sheepishly, "There's
someone here you know." Sitting in the conference room looking over the
material was Mark Koitmaa, who, it turned out, was regularly used by them.
I was glad to meet Mark -- it's the only time we've met face to face,
having passed each other in the night at PCB Design Conference West year
before last and I don't think he was there last year. But that was the only
value I got out of the trip, at least so far. Sometimes these contacts turn
into something later on.
Mostly new clients contact us, from referrals or from my visibility here.
Perhaps I'm revealing our trade secret. :-)
[...]
The changes are
>also factored into the proposal.
For us, a small level of change is accepted without additional charge, if
the job is fixed price. But we reserve the right to bill for additional
work made necessary by client error or oversight.
> I learned something long ago "the
>customer is always right"....that's allot of bull hockey. Only a few
>customers are always right, the rest are hiring me for my expertise to guide
>them thru what they generally don't have a clue to do and that's the
>confident cocky attitude I have unless someone knows a lot more than me.
Well, my attitude is a bit different. While most of our design is done by
electronics engineers who frequently have more experience than the client,
we simply offer advice where it seems appropriate. In the end, the client
is responsible for the correctness of the work: we guarantee to fix our
work where we failed to follow client specifications, but that guarantee is
limited in a very important way: we provide footprints to the client
sometimes before placement, and then we provide a placement for approval,
and then we finish off the board. If there is an error in placement, for
example, or in a footprint assignment, we will try to fix the whole design,
but the responsibility for checking that work is with the client, not with
us (unless checking has been included in the quote and it would be
expensive). It hasn't happened, but if a large design were ruined because
of a wrong footprint, we either have a record of the client's approval of
the footprints (and thus of responsibility for the subsequent wasted work)
or we *really* screwed up by going ahead without approval. Of course, we
often do go ahead without approval where we are willing to eat the work if
there is a problem. That doesn't happen much.
Of course, a very important part of our situation is that it's no longer
only me. I did the single-designer business for many years, too many,
really. I should have moved on long ago; but I didn't know how to get from
here to there, or there to here as the case seems to be. Working alone is
almost inherently feast-and-famine. All the truly independent designers
reading this know what I mean. Starting a full-blown service bureau with
employees etc. obviously has possibilities but it also requires heavy
investment and risk. And headaches. But a peer network, now that's interesting!
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
Abdulrahman Lomax
P.O. Box 690
El Verano, CA 95433
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
* To post a message: mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]
*
* To join or leave this list visit:
* http://www.techservinc.com/protelusers/subscrib.html
* - or email -
* mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]?body=leave%20proteledaforum
*
* Contact the list manager:
* mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
