Klassen Communications Blog

While the following scenario hasn’t happened to me, it has happened to others I know.

When you’re a beginning designer (or copywriter), you may run across a potential client who responds to your proposal price with: “Since you’re new (or since we’ve never used you before), we’d only like to pay you (a significantly less price). If it works out, we’ll raise the rates back up for future jobs.”

Sometimes this scenario is a test…to see how confident you are in yourself or if you can be pushed around on price.

While I’m not sure I’d ever say this out loud to a new client like this on the phone, here’s something to consider. Would the client walk into a grocery store, take a box of cereal to the check-out stand and say, “I’ve never tried this cereal before, so I’d like to pay only 50% of the price. If I like the cereal, I’ll pay the full price next time.”?

Of course not. He’d be laughed out of the store.

You say, “Yeah, but there’s a cost to get the cereal to the market…there’s the actual cereal production, the packaging, the shipping…the whole manufacturing process that a designer doesn’t have sitting at his or her computer.”

But to me, your time is your manufacturing cost. Without your time, the end product doesn’t get made. Unless you feel there’s a really good reason, you shouldn’t discount your time because once it’s gone, you aren’t getting it back. And you run the risk of continuing to discount your time on future project if the client gets comfortable at that lower price level.

If you’re brand new with no samples to your name, you may feel the need to give in if you really want the job. Or maybe you take the advice of copywriting master Bob Bly who said, if I’m remembering correctly, that when you break into a new area, don’t worry so much about the money on the first couple of jobs…just make sure you’re walking away with samples and testimonials. After that, charge full price.

However, while not impossible, I think you’ll generally find it difficult to significantly raise the price on a client for a particular type of project once the level has been set at a discounted price, even if they’ve said they expect you to raise it in the future. So if you accept the “first-time discount”, be prepared for the worst-case scenario of staying right around that price for a while.

Here’s my advice. Whatever you claim you can do on your website, be it sales letters, magalogs, postcards, etc., have sample of them on your site. It doesn’t need to be from a paying project…just take some copy and turn it into a variety of great samples. Even then, you’ll still run into clients who want to see tons of samples. But at least you’re in a better bargaining position with a single sample in a variety of categories.

So when the client calls and isn’t sure if you can handle the job, point him or her to your samples that relate to their type of job. If that’s not good enough and they still want a lower price, you have a decision to make. My point here is that if you accept a lower price, be prepared if that’s what the client is going to expect from that point on.