"if you keep asking me questions I’m going to have to charge you a consulting fee"?
I don’t mind answering questions from people who are interested in becoming clients, and 90% of the time they either don’t ask questions or they ask a few and then hire me, which is fine. I understand. I ask a ton of questions before I hire anyone for anything. But you know there are people who just want to "pick your brain" and it takes a lot of time to answer their questions, and your time (and expertise) is worth money…
How do you guys handle this?
If we’re talking about email or IM questions, generally you would either be able to estimate how long a given question is going to take you to answer, or you should have a set of pre-compiled responses to common questions you get asked so it becomes a simple copy/paste operation.
My rule of thumb is that if I put more than about a half hour of working time in for a person who has not yet hired me, I’ll break into a sales pitch of "I would be happy to assist you with this further, however I will need you to sign a service agreement."
No reason to pussy-foot around it, and don’t feel ashamed to tell people you’re running a business and as such you’re not just going to keep working when the hours aren’t billable. If they don’t want to pay you, let them find someone else’s brain to pick.
A consulting fee that when/if hired gets applied towards the total cost of the project
It happens all the time. If your advice will make them money, you have to charge for it - don’t give up the details, and when they ask for them, answer with: "Here is how I handle this with my other clients…"
If it’s trivial stuff that is related to the service that you are already providing for them, put them in your schedule about a day in advance - "Could we schedule a 30 min call tomorrow, I’ll be glad to clarify…"
Hope this helps.
Didn’t you just make this thread a couple months ago?
^ I think I may have.
Always good to get fresh opinions though. Thanks guys.
This is as easy as closing the discussion. Don’t leave it open and available for your potential client to continue asking questions.
Can I be dense and ask how you do this? I answer their questions and then they fire back with more…
"ok, that makes sense, but what about blah blah blah?" type of stuff.
that’s the A B C’s of selling…
ALWAYS BE CLOSING
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Can I be dense and ask how you do this? I answer their questions and then they fire back with more…
"ok, that makes sense, but what about blah blah blah?" type of stuff. |
its the way youre answering their questions. You need to do more sales pitching…rebuttal/answer their question and continue with your sales pitch.
Can I have an example rather than a conceptual idea?
"Oh sorry, I thought you knew any questions get billed"
They could always just not pay it. But I guess they weren’t going to pay me anyway.
So what happens if they never pay their PayPal bill that I send them?