Archive for the ‘Retainers’ Category

Dear Danielle: Is There a Formula for Raising My Rates?

By Danielle Keister | January 30th, 2019

Dear Danielle,

Happy New Year! I hope all your dreams will be actualized in 2019! My question relates to raising rates with current clients and if there a formula to follow. In the past I have used the script you provided in your blog post Raising Your Rates, and I must say it has worked like a charm. I love all the advice you provide on the blog in this category, especially about not letting fear get the best of you when you offer high quality service. Over the last couple of years, I have restructured my administrative consulting business. I offer a core service in two niche markets. During this time, I have retained five clients and have had great success. With each new client,I have incrementally raised my rates. This gets me to my question: The first client I retained almost two years ago is THRILLED with my service. Not only did I meet the contractual obligations, but went above and beyond. I really hit the ball out of the park with this client. They are often singing the praises about my administrative consulting firm. Since their two-year anniversary is approaching, I was planning on raising their rates. Is there standard protocol to follow (like tipping a server at a restaurant)? I thought I would raise my rates (REMOVED)%. This is a number I picked because when I see a vendor, utility, or dental plan increase by this amount, I think, “that’s fair,” but any higher, I feel like I am being taken advantage of. Next, I looked up the cost of living increase on Google. It is 3% each year for 2017 and 2018. That makes me wonder, would I be undercutting myself with a (REMOVED)% raise and should I increase to (REMOVED) %? Vacillating to the other end of the spectrum, I am obsessed with client satisfaction. I don’t want to raise the rate so high they feel taken advantage of. We have a dynamic relationship. Would seeing the numbers help? The client’s current retainer is $(REMOVED)/month. As I solicit new clients, they will pay $(REMOVED)/month for this service. However, I am not ready to lose this client. I truly value your guidance in this situation. Thanks again for all you do for our community! —Name Withheld for Privacy

Thank you, and happy new year to you as well! And thanks for the great question which I’ve been chomping at the bit to answer for you.

First, congratulations on your well-earned growth and success. That is absolutely wonderful to hear!

I also want to let you know that I am keeping your name anonymous and removed certain info from your question for reasons I will explain below.

The short, quick answer is that there is no formula for raising your fees. I know people love to be given formulas, but it’s not that simple.

It’s also highly illegal for members of a profession/industry to discuss rates or setting standards or minimums or formulas when it comes to pricing as these things violate antitrust laws. Those kind of conversations constitute what is termed “collusion.”

The state and federal agencies that oversee these laws take violations very seriously so we never want to run afoul of them.

It doesn’t matter how big or small a business is, whether they are sole proprietors or big corporations, or how much money they make, we are all subject to these laws.

As they will tell you: ignorance is not a defense. This means you can be prosecuted for violations whether you were aware or not.

This is why I am always trying to educate our industry on this topic. Read this post for a bit more in-depth info: Dear Danielle: Why Can’t You Just Give Us a Ballpark Figure When It Comes to Pricing?

So for all the other colleagues out there, the bottom-line is this: STOP asking others what you should charge!

Not only are you putting yourself in danger, you are putting others as well as our entire industry in jeopardy. Your pricing is for you and you alone to determine.

The good news is that we don’t have to discuss specific numbers to help each other learn and grow in our business smarts and profitability.

Here are the things I would want you to give some thought to:

Don’t compare what you do to a utility. You are not a commodity; you are a professional service provider.

Your value is relative to how you improve the life and business of each of your clients, not how much they pay for a box of cereal on a shelf.

Here are a couple of posts to help people better understand and remember what their real value is to clients (hint: it’s not how much/little clients pay or how much money you save them):

How has your work helped them advance, grow and improve in their business? What goals has it helped them achieve or get closer to? How much more time and freedom do they have since working with you?

When it’s time to raise your rates, be thinking along these lines and taking note of them, not just how much your workload may have increased, although that is certainly relevant as well.

People know that when they get more, they pay more. The benefit of connecting what they have gained by working with you, however, is that it helps keep them in a positive mindset toward fee increases, particularly when they are increased for more abstract reasons (such as cost of living) and not necessarily increased workload.

How you determine your fee increases and how much to increase them by is entirely up to you. There is no right or wrong way to do it.

I’m concerned that you have one-price-for-all.

If you are providing administrative support, you are providing a variety of tasks, functions, and roles for each client, each of whom is unique and whose support areas, needs, levels, and objectives are all going to be different from the next client.

When you are providing a value-based service, there shouldn’t be anything cookie-cutter about your pricing. Each client’s needs and support plan should be evaluated and determined on an individual basis. This is something I show people how to do in my Value-Based Pricing Guide.

It doesn’t tell you what to charge or give you a formula. It will show you what factors to take into account, how to identify/categorize support plan areas and set parameters and boundaries, and give you as systematic an approach as you can get for determining your pricing around your support plans that is fair and profitable for both you and your clients.

Capture their “before” picture at the start of every new client relationship.

When you consult with potential clients and onboard new ones, be sure to include a step where you obtain as complete a picture as you can of their current challenges, difficulties, pain points, and obstacles, as well as their desired objectives and outcomes BEFORE you start working together.

(If anyone reading this doesn’t have a consultation process in place, you NEED one now! Get my Consultation Guide for an easy, step-by-step plan that shows you exactly what to do before, during and after.)

Not only does this help you create case studies/stories for your website, it’s also incredibly useful insight to have when it’s time to raise your fees.

By better identifying what each client actually values and what they’re trying to accomplish through your work together, you can use that information to set benchmarks and emphasize those accomplishments.

They also inspire clients by helping them remember what life was like before they had your support and how far they have come and what a smart decision they made in choosing you.

Survey clients for their feedback and suggestions on a regular, consistent basis.

This is something else that is useful when presenting fee increases as it can help you connect the dots from your work directly to what the client’s values, goals and objectives are.

I recommend getting client feedback at least every year for established clients, and more frequently (e.g., every three to six months) for new clients.

One caution, though: Don’t raise fees at the same time of year that you survey clients for their feedback and suggestions. Do these two things at different times of the year.

Similarly, if you have my Value-Based Pricing Guide, you know that I also recommend reviewing every client’s support plan at regular intervals.

For new clients, you are going to do this more frequently because there is a lot of ramping up and getting to know the work and each other and fine-tuning of things in that first year of working together.

For them, I suggest reviewing their support plan internally every two to three months initially in that first year.

You want to make sure you are honoring the parameters you both agreed to and identifying any scope creep that you have not have taken in account and then adjusting accordingly at the next fee increase.

With established clients, you may decide that an annual support plan review is sufficient for your purposes.

Keep clients informed upfront all along the way with plenty of notice.

Let new clients know that there may be a period of adjustment in the first months/year of working together and that you will be reviewing their support plan every so many weeks or months.

If there are areas that have been or need to be added on or increased (or been eliminated or significantly decreased, for that matter), let them know that the fee they pay may be affected.

And let established clients know that their support plans are reviewed regularly as well (e.g., annually or every six months).

The key is to inform all clients upfront that their support plans are reviewed at specific intervals and that there will be periodic fee increases as you deem necessary or appropriate

You want them to understand that what they pay is relative to the support areas and parameters you have agreed to, and as those change and evolve or increase, you will be examining them and adjusting pricing accordingly.

At a very basic level, all I can say is this: You know your clients. You know what you do for them. You know when you feel like you are doing more than what you are charging for. You know how they are benefiting from your work. And you know when it’s time for raise fees for the profitability of your business and in keeping with the value you are providing.

When you start to feel those nigglings, that is always the correct time to review and adjust.

Always be reviewing and evaluating internally, and then on whatever regular schedule that you determine, implement your fee increases.

For Example

Let’s say you like to go through your annual feedback process with clients around May or June when business generally tends to slow down somewhat for everyone and they have more time to reflect.

You could then time your annual fee increases for January.

Whenever you time these events, I suggest you always give clients 30-60 days’ notice of any support plan adjustments/fee increases.

This gets them used to the idea, gives them time to ask any questions they have, and ensures no one is surprised or caught off guard. That’s the only thing that would really create ill will.

By giving courteous notice, it’s only going to help you adjust things in the best way possible for both you and each of your clients.

The bottom-line: Never surprise clients with things coming out of left field.

Everyone appreciates a heads-up so they can plan and budget accordingly, and your fee increases will be far more well-received.

Interview with Danielle Keister, Founder of the Administrative Consultants Association

By Danielle Keister | April 18th, 2018

4 Comments

Last month a colleague asked for an interview with me, and I thought I would share my answers with you here as well.

Your Name:

Danielle Keister

Name of Your Business:

I am the founder of the Administrative Consultants Association (ACA), a professional organization for those running administrative support businesses. I also run my own administrative support business supporting solo attorneys who practice in the areas of business, intellectual property and entertainment law.

Years in Business:

I’ve been in business since 1997 when I officially took out my business license; longer if you want to include the years I did this work on the side informally. I originally started the organization now known as the Administrative Consultants Association (ACA) in 2005.

Q1. Tell me about starting your business. Why did you start it?

My husband died without warning in 1995, leaving me a young widow with a daughter to raise on my own. An unexpected loss like that really makes you question life and what you want out of it, how you want to live, what you want for yourself and your children, etc.: Are you living life on your own terms? How happy are you in the 9-to-5 grind? Is my child really getting the best of me if I’m tired and working all the time just to make ends meet? What kind of life am I providing for her? Is this really all there is?

I had previous forays into a few side businesses that I never really took anywhere. It was after the loss of my husband that I decided to get serious about taking the skills I had and turning them into a real business I could make a viable income from to create a better quality of life for myself and my daughter. I didn’t want to be a 9-to-5’er the rest of my life.

Q2. What is your role/job? What sort of responsibilities do you have?

I would say “job” is the wrong terminology to be using here since we are business owners, not employees. Some people may think that is pedantic, but consciously understanding the difference between employment and business ownership and having a business (not employee) mindset begins with using correct terminology.

In all my years of mentoring, what I’ve found is that those who never truly get over employee mindset and continue to work with their clients as if they were still employees don’t survive long in this business.

This is why I continue to clarify the distinction and make sure everyone I come across “gets” it. I want people to succeed in this business, which really starts with developing that all-important business sensibility.

As a solo business owner, I wear three hats: 1) I’m the CEO responsible for the development and direction of my business and making important decisions about the business; 2) I’m the manager responsible for managing all the moving parts and taking care of administration of the business; and 3) I’m the service provider — the craftsperson whose skills are the stock and trade of my business services.

Q3. What is your typical day like?

Very generally speaking, on a typical day, I wake up according to my own internal clock (I haven’t used an alarm clock in years).

Once I get up, I do a little yoga and stretching, eat, and then get cleaned up and dressed for the day. I fully admit to working in my bathrobe every once in awhile if I don’t have any plans to go anywhere that day, lol. But most of the time, leggings or long skirt with a comfy but stylish tee is how I roll.

I don’t like to rush into the day and prefer to check emails and get things sorted in my in-box as the first thing I do.

There is a lot of talk in many online places that discourage this, but I prefer the opposite and find this email clearing and organizing step much more conducive to my productivity for the rest of the day.

I then tend to dive into client work around 10 or 11 am (I always joke with people that my brain doesn’t get juiced up fully until around 11 am).

Depending on what’s on my plate for that day, I may work until between 4 and 6 pm. But it really varies, depending on the day’s workload, what priorities are in the queue, and what else I’ve got going on.

If the work in my queue gets done early, I don’t jump into the next day’s pile. I go enjoy life!

It does take discipline, though, not to fill your free time with work, work, work.

I think for most of us, our first instinct is to get as much done as quickly as we can. But that is really counterproductive and keeps you on a hamster wheel. It’s not good for you and ultimately it ends up not being good for clients.

You have to be diligent about respecting your own boundaries (which in turn trains clients to respect them as well) and give yourself lots of breathing room so you don’t burn out in this business.

At some point around noon or 1 pm I’ll knock off for lunch, maybe go somewhere to eat.

I also try to get a good walk/hike on most days (try being the operative word here lately). Depending on the weather, sometimes that’s first thing in the morning, sometimes it’s around midday, sometimes it’s later in the evening.

It really all depends, and this is the beautiful thing that I’ve created in my business: the freedom and flexibility to be able to listen to my own natural rhythms, structure my business around my life, and do what I want, when I want, while still taking great care of my clients. (I never sacrifice their needs; it’s all a matter of setting proper expectations and boundaries.)

I’ve also created what is essentially a 3-day work week (you can get my entire business management system here):

Mondays are my Admin Days where I take care of the admin in my own business or working on my business.
Tuesdays are my meeting days that I reserve for telephone meetings and appointments with clients and others.
Wednesday through Friday is when I do client work.

For the past few years, my life has been extra stressed caring for a sick, elderly dad. In full disclosure, I’ve really let my own self-care down. I’m beyond grateful I’ve built a business that allows me to do this for my dad, but it’s not easy and still comes with a cost that has taken a toll on me. Making my own self-care a priority again is something I wrestle with on a daily basis and am currently working to improve.

(For a more in-depth snapshot of my typical day, check out this post.)

Q4. What is the best thing about owning your own business?

As touched on above, the freedom and flexibility to live a less rushed/forced life; the ability to live according to my own natural rhythms and internal clock; and the ability to structure my business and its policies, procedures, and protocols so that I have plenty of time for life (or whatever is most important at any point in time; for me, right now, that is my dad).

I never ever want a business where I am living to work instead of working to live.

One of the things I’m always saying to my clients and colleagues is that your business should support your life, not suck the life from you. It took a lot of fits and starts, trial and error, and course correction, but I’m very proud of the business and income I’ve created today.

I also love that my daughter was able to see that self-sufficiency and determination modeled and be a part of my business journey.

Q5. What is the hardest thing about owning your own business?

Well, I’ll be frank with you: business ain’t for sissies, that’s fo sho!

I was extremely fortunate to have had some opportunities come up that gave me the financial means to take care of myself and my daughter while I started my business.

And later I was also fortunate to have a significant other to lean on during the rough spots, of which there were many, make no mistake.

It takes an extreme amount of perseverance, determination, self-motivation — and time —to get a business to a point where it’s actually solvent and sustainable and eventually profitable.

And, of course, everyone’s mileage and set of circumstances will vary. You just take advantage of everything you’ve got going for you, figure out the rest, and if you can get past all that, the rewards are amazing!

Q6. What advice do you have for someone wanting to start a business? What do you know now that you wish you had known when you started?

One of the reasons I started the ACA was to provide others with the knowledge and easier path in starting their own administrative support business that I didn’t have way back when. I did it all without knowing there were others doing what I was attempting to do.

One thing that was pivotal in my success was realizing that a secretarial service is not administrative support.

Secretarial services are project-based businesses where the person does something here and there for drive-by clients.

It’s an inherently volume-driven business, one that requires you to always be on the hunt for your next clients and projects, even while you try to complete the work in front of you.

It’s a plodding, exhausting way to try to make a living and extremely difficult to get profitable.

Once I realized that, instead of project work, I could provide administrative support being an ongoing right-hand to a handful of regular clients on a monthly basis instead of a constantly revolving door of one-time or sporadic clients and rinky-dink projects, that’s when I cracked the revenue code.

But it took me a few years to get to that realization and figure out how to structure things properly.

Now, I base all my training and business education products around that basic tenet so that others won’t waste so many months or years.

I show them how they can build a business based on retainer clients (which is where the bread-and-butter is) while still taking advantage of project work that comes along that is of interest to them (which is gravy).

Another bit of advice I have for folks is not to take shortcuts with the business startup process. Every step helps build your business mindset and sensibility.

People get impatient with the process and want to jump ahead of themselves and it’s really to their detriment and that of their clients.

I’ve seen more businesses shutter their doors because the owner didn’t put the proper foundations in place before taking on clients.

Don’t rush things. There is a little bit of back and forth involved as you figure things out, but beyond that, there is a basic step by step process involved in any business start-up. Don’t skip those parts:

Do the business plan.
Learn how your local, state and federal taxing and licensing works and what your responsibilities/obligations are.
Don’t take on clients before you’ve got at least a basic website up and mapped out a rudimentary set of policies, procedures and protocols. Your website is an incredibly important tool in properly educating clients about the nature of the relationship and bridging understanding so that you attract your right, most ideal clients. You will find that having something there to start with is going to be incredibly helpful in building, growing, and honing your business from there.

These are all exercises that help you create the strong foundations you need to be able to get — and keep — clients. The problems with clients and not getting the right ones happen when those things are absent.

If you were interviewing me, what other questions would you have for me? Let me know in the comments!

Dear Danielle: Client Wants Me to Cut My Fees By $200 a Month

By Danielle Keister | March 21st, 2018

4 Comments

Dear Danielle:

I recently had a contract client who could no longer afford to pay me the regular contracted amount because of a slowdown in her business so she asked that I drop my price about $200 until she was back on her feet. How should I deal with that? She’s been my client for 3 years and she’s always paid on time and every penny. I agreed to the cut but not sure for how long. Any words of advice? —KP

It sounds like this is a good client with whom you’ve had a happy, healthy business relationship thus far.

It also sounds like this client is paying some sort of monthly fee, if I am surmising things correctly.

And there’s no reason to throw all that away.

BUT there’s also no reason why this client’s financial woes should be your problem. Especially since you aren’t sure how long it will continue.

There IS a compassionate, client-centric way you can offer to help this client out during what I assume is only a temporary predicament without sacrificing your own business needs and well-being.

And it starts with this handy phrase: You don’t get what you don’t pay for.

That’s obviously not very client-centric the way it’s phrased, but the solution in its meaning is, very simply, to take something off the table.

What that means is, if you are selling hours, take $200 worth of hours away from their retainer. Only work up to the number of hours they have paid for.

If they can only pay for 15 hours instead of the usual 20, then they should only get 15 hours of support, not 20.

Alternatively, if you are using my value-based pricing methodology (which is a faster, more effective way to make an impact and give clients more readily apparent, targeted results), take a $200 task/function/role away from the monthly support plan.

Have a conversation with the client, identify what the most important functions are to their operations during this financial lean-time, and then offer to remove/temporarily suspend a $200 value task/function/role that is least necessary and will have the least impact on their continued smooth functioning and profits.

Give them two or three options of what could be removed for $200 less a month, and let them decide which one to sacrifice.

It’s also possible during this discussion that the client realizes even more the value of what you do for their business and decides to find the money to keep paying your full fee for full services to continue.

If this were me, I would also be curious about the reasons for this client’s financial down-turn.

If they were open to sharing, it’s possible I would have some ideas and insights on what we could do and where we could focus our work to create some new/fresh revenue.

Perhaps you even saw this coming, but the client had previously been resistant to exploring your ideas, trying something new, or doing things a little differently than they were used to that might have helped them improve financially. They might now be a bit more receptive to hearing you out.

I would, however, certainly expect to be paid for any additional work/consulting I provided. It’s up to them to decide where their priorities are.

No reasonable client would expect you to work for free.

And despite any client’s best (or unrealistic) intentions, they don’t have a crystal ball no matter what grand promises they make.

So the best policy is to go about things in a way that serves your business interests.

Keep in mind that you have an obligation to safeguard your financial well-being and business profitability not only for yourself, but for your other clients as well.

It doesn’t serve them for you to be giving away time, energy, and work for free to someone who isn’t paying fully for it.

And don’t even think about letting this client pay on credit (a la “I will gladly pay you tomorrow for a hamburger today”).

You won’t be doing them, yourself, or your other clients any favors by letting them go into debt to you.

If they are already in financial straights, owing you or anybody else more money is only going to bury them further.

Remember, you teach people how to treat, value, and respect you.

Lower your fee for this client if you want to help and keep them on your roster; just make sure you also take away an equal amount of work from what you provide them with.

And have another conversation with this client to reset the expectations around what they will and won’t get for the reduced monthly fee.

I also suggest giving the client a definite time limit on this special arrangement.

Give it a month or two and inform the client that you will need to review and discuss things again at that time to determine whether or not it’s still feasible/profitable/in your business interests to continue the arrangement.

If there’s no improvement in sight, you may even decide that, while you wish this client well, keeping them on your roster is no longer profitable for you.

If any of this is helpful, one way you could return the favor is by letting me know in the comments. I would truly value that.

And if you or anyone else has more questions on this, please feel free to ask in the comments, and I’ll be happy to continue the conversation and share my further insights and advice.

How to Manage Last-Minute Work Requests at the End of the Month

By Danielle Keister | December 17th, 2016

0 Comments

In view of recent inquiries from colleagues, today I’d like to point you to one of my classic posts that relates to setting and managing client expectations through the policies and procedures you institute in your practice, and working with clients in a way that honors your standards and boundaries around self-care, effective business management, and quality of work and client-care.

Dear Danielle: How Can I Handle Last Minute Work Requests at the End of the Month?

The Heartbreaking Reality for Most Businesses in Our Industry

By Danielle Keister | November 16th, 2016

0 Comments

I came across something utterly heartbreaking a few weeks ago.

I’ve been sitting on it for awhile, going back and forth about whether or not to have a conversation around it.

I never want to discourage anyone from this business or have anyone take things the wrong way. Because if you set things up right, it is an AMAZING business and lifestyle.

However, it’s a cold, hard truth that no one ever talks about in our industry.

And the problem with not talking about things that are uncomfortable, that aren’t all “rah, rah, kumbaya” all the time, is that you can’t fix what you don’t acknowledge.

What was this thing I came across? An ad for a “Virtual Assistant Business For Sale.”

And what is this cold, hard truth I speak of? It’s that most people in our industry are not profitable and not making the kind of money they can actually live on.

You see, the sad thing about this ad is that it isn’t an exception. It’s actually a very accurate example reflective of what most of the businesses in our industry look like.

Now, before I dissect this for you, I first want to make it absolutely clear: It is not that people can’t make more money in our kind of business; they absolutely can! YOU absolutely can!

It’s simply that they are being taught by the industry at large in all the worst possible ways to price, operate and market themselves (like calling yourself a “virtual assistant”). And it’s keeping them poor, overworked and overwhelmed.

The fortunate thing is that YOU always have the possibility to learn better so that your business can do better for you.

And that always benefits your clients because you can’t take good care of others if your needs aren’t taken care of first.

Here is the ad:

Let’s examine the problematic issues here:

We see that the business has been around for 11 years. Great! After that amount of time, you’d expect them to be earning really well.
Yet in the first bullet we see they are only making £1900/mo (British Pound) which is $2363.98/mo USD. After that many (11) years, why are they still making that little money? Those are poverty-level wages. Did they mean perhaps that this is the average value per client?
Unfortunately, no, we see in the next bullets that after 11 years they have only 1 retainer client at only £350 GBP/$435.39 USD per month. The rest of their revenues come from 15 regular (but uncommitted/non-retainer) clients and 20 ad hoc clients, which I’m interpreting to mean an average of 20 project clients each month. The problem is that at this number of clients they should be making several thousands of dollars per month! I can’t even imagine (well, actually, I can) how overwhelmed and overworked they are… and for such a paltry sum on money! To give some context/frame of reference, I make more with just one of my retainer clients than they make in an entire month from 36 clients.
They also mention having relationships with two typists. This business owner is barely making ends meet at these figures, where on earth is there any margin to pay anyone else? (Answer: there isn’t.) It means that they are doing all this work at a loss! Especially at gross figures that don’t even account for expenses, operating costs, taxes, etc.
This is not a profitable business in any way, shape or form. What has most likely happened is that burnout caught up to them (no wonder!) and they are now trying to unload the sinking ship. But there are no assets of any value to sell here. The clients it has are being charged such an ungodly little amount, there is almost no way in hell to ever reset those kind of expectations. They’ve branded and positioned this business as “cheap” and there is just nowhere you can go with that. It would be faster, easier and less costly for you to create a business from scratch and establish the brand based on properly set foundations and expectations and charging higher, more profitable professional fees.

Don’t misunderstand me. This examination is in no way a denigration of the business’s owner.

Rather, it’s utterly heartbreaking to me that they have made so little money working with too many clients with basically no commitment and constant churn. I wish I’d had the opportunity to help them early on.

When we talk about these things, there are always a certain number of people who don’t understand why it’s so important to have these conversations.

But bringing this consciousness to the fore is integral to being able to improve things so you can better earn in your own business.

It’s why I’m always talking about money, how you are marketing and positioning your business and brand, how not charging profitably sets you up for failure, about how the expectations and perceptions you create in clients directly affect your ability to charge properly and earn well.

These are the topics that will make or break your business.

It’s this fundamental business education — and not the latest, greatest software or tools — that is key to creating a profitable, sustainable business where you can get, work with and keep great clients (clients worth having who value you, not cheapos looking for a free handout), make great money and that works around and enriches your life and what’s important to you (instead of the business running you).

What could this person have done differently?

Business planning. Going through the exercise of business planning forces you to think through and get clear and conscious about all the important details of your business such as your needs, goals and intentions around money, what kind of clients you want to work with and are worth working with, and what business standards, policies and procedures to establish accordingly.
Getting off the project work merry-go-round. A business based on project work needs a shit-ton of clients and work in order to stay alive. It’s a constant, never-ending hamster wheel of marketing, even while you already have clients and work to take care of in front of you, and you never know where your next meal is coming from. Nothing wrong with project work, but think of it as secondary income, the gravy to the meat and potatoes where you make your “real” money.
Expecting a commitment. Retainer clients (clients who pay a monthly fee upfront for a plan of support) are where the real money is at. A commitment of working together each month allows you to do your best work and gives you something to actually work with to achieve a tangible, demonstrable value and results for clients. But of course, if you don’t ever expect a commitment, you’ll never get one. That’s why it’s so important to set standards in your business around what’s important to you. An expectation that clients must make a minimum commitment to be given a place on your client roster is a standard that will serve you (and your clients) well, even if some of them might not understand that at first. (You’ll have a far easier time getting commitments if you learn how to set up and navigate the whole consultation process and pricing conversation.)
Get clear and conscious about the money. Charging fees based on what you see others charging (who are more often than not just as lost as everyone else) is the worst way to set your fees. It’s not about what everyone else is charging (stop looking at them!). It’s about knowing what your target market values, how you can improve their circumstances with your support and what they gain from working with you, and learning how to articulate that value to them in the context of their business and goals.
Choosing a target market. This business is all over the map when it comes to who their clients are and the work they’re doing. And that is a huge part of the problem. Very simply, a target market is an industry/field/profession that you focus your administrative support on. This specialization is key to making the big bucks. That’s because when you know who it is you are focusing on, you can determine very quickly and clearly what they do in their business and what their common needs, goals, challenges, values and interests are and then develop your support solutions around those things. Your offerings will be much more interesting and compelling that way, and you’ll be able to charge more (because there will be more relevant, specific, higher perceived value) and get clients more quickly and easily.
CHARGING MORE! At the poor fees this business would have to charging to account for so little monthly/annual revenue, it’s a clue that the business owner is not understanding the economics of business. You simply can’t charge rates that amount to employee wages and expect to earn well. Business is a completely different ballgame. It’s why I’m constantly reminding people, you are NOT an employee, you’re a business. There’s also this crazy, but nonetheless immutable law of business: The more you charge, the better clients you get. And what do we mean by better clients? Client who value you and what you offer. Clients who are invested and make the commitment to working together. Clients who aren’t looking for the free buffet. Clients who are loyal to you and the good work and results you provide them with, not how little they can pay. When you have better clients who make a monthly financial commitment to working together toward established goals, you can make more money working with fewer clients and have more time for your own life in the process.
Stop calling yourself an “assistant.” One of the reasons people have a hard time charging more or seeing their value in a different light (and gaining some business self-esteem and confidence) is because so many of them insist on calling themselves “virtual assistants.” This keeps them thinking of themselves as employees and seeing things through that lens instead of from an entrepreneurial/business mindset. Here’s what you need to understand: Assistant is a term of employment, not business. Terminology (just like pricing) is a part of marketing. How you price and the words and terms you use to describe yourself have a direct influence on how clients perceive you and the expectations, perceptions and understandings they come to the table with. When you call yourself an “assistant,” they don’t look at you as a business owner and advisor. You are teaching them to view you as a type of subservient employee, and what they expect to pay is based on that wrong, harmful perception. When you call yourself an “assistant,” you are predisposing them to value you less, not more. If you want to be able to charge higher, more appropriately profitable fees, you have to create the proper context. The verbiage and terminology you use directly impacts that context.

I have a couple of complimentary (as in free) business-building tools that shed a ton more light on all of this and will help you course-correct in your own business. If you don’t have them yet, be sure to go get them now.

***

How about you? Why did you go into this business? I’m assuming a large part of it is that you love putting your administrative talents to use and helping clients and truly making a difference in their businesses and lives.

I can’t imagine that it gives anyone joy to be broke and working too hard for too little money. So over and above that, how do you want your own life enriched and improved by owning and running your own business? What are your money aspirations? What does “profitable” and “financially successful” mean to you?

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Retainers and Packages Are the Same Thing

By Danielle Keister | July 7th, 2015

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Just FYI: Retainers and “packages” are the same thing.

If you sell hours, a retainer is a package of hours.

That said, I’m not an advocate of selling hours because it limits your income potential. (Video: Why Selling Hours Is Killing Your Business)

I am a proponent of a methodology called Value-Based Billing, which I’ve adapted for those in the administrative support business.

In the case of this billing method, a retainer is a package of administrative support with clearly defined parameters that you determine based on your consultation with a new retainer client.

What’s more useful for you to understand instead is the difference between project work and ongoing support because those in fact are two different animals.

Retainers are used for ongoing support relationships with clients paying an upfront fee every month, whereas a project is a one-time “event” that ends upon completion of the project (designing a website is an example of a project).

There are all kinds of methods people use to bill for project work. Some people think they are only allowed to bill at the end of a project.

First of all, being “allowed” has nothing to do with it. YOU make the rules in your business.

Also, it’s not true that you can only bill after the fact. You can decide to charge clients for the entire fee upfront if you are so inclined. That is a perfectly legitimate and standard business practice.

Or, you could choose to charge an upfront deposit to be applied to the final invoice.

Or, depending on the size and kind of the project, you could break it up into stages/phases and charge the client either upfront or upon completion of each stage/phase and only continue to the next stage once the prior stage’s invoice is paid in full.

The reason it’s important to understand the distinctions between the two is because an ongoing support relationship creates actual, consistent cashflow whereas project work and the money you make from it is more sporadic and incidental.

Understanding these distinctions, you can more intentionally decide which kind of business you want to be in and plan and prepare accordingly.

For example, let’s say you’ve gone the project-based business route (the correct term for these is “secretarial service”) and find it difficult and exhausting to market and keep enough of a constant flow of work and clients to earn a living.

Recognizing that you can earn a more consistent monthly income in advance each month (and potentially more money when you learn how to do it right), you might decide you’d like to be in the admin support business instead and can focus your attention on building that kind of practice.

The nice thing about an admin support business is that you can make an extremely comfortable income with just a handful of clients.

It’s also a much easier business to run because there isn’t that constant churn of clients and projects and administration over and over that you have in a project-based business.

Plus, when you have a base of dependable retainer income, any project work that comes your way becomes gravy.

When you aren’t dependent on project work to survive (and the feast and famine cycle that comes with it), you have more freedom to be selective about the projects you take on that interest you.

You might even be doing as well as you please financially with your retainer clients that you find you have no interest or need to take on extra project work (other than that which you might do occasionally above and beyond your monthly admin support retainer for current clients).

Either way, you always have the choice to decide what kind of business you want to be in. You’ll be more successful at either of them by being aware of the differences.

Related:
What Is a Retainer?

What’s Better: Charge Clients Upfront or Collect on the Backend?

By Danielle Keister | March 18th, 2014

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This question was asked by a colleague recently:

“Hi! So I’m looking at signing my first services agreement with a client. There will be a big kick-off project and then a monthly retainer. Do I charge the client half up front for the kick off and then have them pay the rest once I deliver? For the monthly retainer, do I have them pay me at the end of the month once my work is done or the beginning before I start? I’m trying getting burned as much as possible. Thanks!”

Here’s my advice:

Upfront, upfront, upfront!

It’s important to remember that you’re in the administrative support business, not the credit and loan business.

As a service provider, you’re not obligated to extend anyone credit.

Which is what it would boil down to by you doing all work upfront and billing later.

The problems with billing after the fact include:

You deprive yourself of cashflow, which is the lifeblood of every business.
Clients will take you and the work less seriously and abuse your time more frequently. It’s too easy to blow things off and rack up debt on that which they haven’t paid for yet. When they have made an actual financial investment (skin in the game, as they say), they are more compelled to focus their attention to it.
You’ll have more late/non-payers.
Having to chase after and deal with those late/non-payers adds to your administrative burdens, creates stress, zaps energy, reduces your morale and spirits, and deprives good clients of your full, positive attention.
It doesn’t do anyone any good (including clients) to go into debt to you. The more they owe, the harder it will be for them to get caught up while you’re the one who suffers and pays the price for that.
You’re in a far worse position if a client doesn’t pay after you’ve expended your time and business resources helping them than if you were to mitigate possible losses by getting at least some money upfront.

So here’s what I recommend…

RETAINERS

Retainers, by their very nature, are always upfront. That’s the whole point of them. They are typically due on or before the 1st of each month.

In my practice, instead of having retainers due on the 1st, they are due (and processed) on the 25th of the preceding month. For example, April’s retainers are due on March 25.

This is because I don’t want my billing and being paid (along with all that beginning of the month work and bills we have to contend with in our own businesses) competing with the 1st of the month work I do for clients.

I also process my payments automatically… and I never pay myself late. 😉

To do this, I have clients sign a Credit Card Authorization Agreement (AGR-30) at the start of the relationship. By signing this agreement, clients give their consent for you to keep their credit card information on file (because you can’t do that without a consent agreement in place), and for you to automatically process their regular monthly charges.

Once I process the payment every month, I put a courtesy PDF copy of their paid monthly invoice up in a shared Dropbox folder for their business records.

Retainers are the holy grail in this business because it’s where the bigger, more consistent money is. To learn how to make retainers profitable and build a business where you can earn a great living working fewer hours with fewer clients (and get off the nickel and dime project hamster wheel where you always have to chase down your next meal), I highly encourage you to get my Value-Based Pricing & Packaging Guide (GDE-39).

PROJECT WORK

A project is different from ongoing support in that it is self-contained and ends upon completion of the work.

Designing a website is an example of project work because it’s not ongoing. Once the site design is complete, that’s the end of the project.

With project work, clients should definitely be paying at least something upfront, and 100% is entirely acceptable business practice.

With projects, there are a number of ways they can be charged. Getting a minimum or deposit upfront works like earnest money and helps clients respect your time and take the work more seriously.

Requiring payment upfront also helps weed out those who are not serious prospects.

I hate to say it but it’s nonetheless true: there are dine-and-dash clients that new people in business often fall prey to who engage them to do a bunch of work, and then disappear when the bill shows up. You want to avoid that.

The rule of thumb in my business is that if it’s $1,000 or less, I charge 100% upfront.

If it’s a larger project, we break it up into logical phases and they pay for each phase upfront. If you do it that way, you get paid for work you were engaged to perform and complete, and work only continues beyond that once the next phase’s payment is met.

While you’re at it, if you want to learn all my secret policies and procedures that allow me to run my business 3 days a week while earning a full-time income working with just a handful of clients, be sure to get my Power Productivity and Business Management Guide (GDE-41).

Is this information helpful or eye-opening to you? Let me know in the comments. 🙂

Why Conduct Consultations?

By Danielle Keister | April 29th, 2013

1 Comment

I am so absolutely stoked and enthused about the new and improved version of my famous client consultation guide!

I added a ton more educational content while streamlining and simplifying the information into more easily digested chunks. Getting the knowledge and skills to confidently conduct consultations (and get those prized retainer clients nearly every single time) has never been easier.

I’m the type who doesn’t rest and will continue to hone and improve things until I am satisfied. And I am so totally pleased as punch with this latest incarnation!

(If you don’t have it yet, you can get it now for only $47, but it goes back up to it’s regular full price of $67 on Friday.)

So what is this guide all about? Why do we conduct consultations in the first place?

Because we’re not selling hotdogs, right? 😉

Providing ongoing support is a bigger relationship that requires more of a commitment from clients. Therefore, it requires a bigger conversation.

The consultation process plays a vital role in creating your ideal business for a number of reasons:

To prequalify prospects;
To break the ice, establish rapport and get to know each other;
To better understand the client’s business and his or her unique needs, goals and challenges;
To see how you might help and where your support can be best leveraged in their business;
To determine chemistry and fit;
To provide context for your fees so clients more clearly see and understand the value of working together;
To educate clients and set proper expectations and understandings;
To set the tone of the professional relationship; and
To demonstrate professionalism and instill trust and credibility.

The other reason to conduct consultations is to get the kind of clients you want—like those all-important retainer clients.

Retainers are the holy grail of most service-based businesses because it’s where the bigger, easier money is:

Retainers provide you with more consistent, dependable cashflow every month;
In a retainer-based practice, it only takes a handful of clients to earn well;
A retainer-based practice is simpler, easier and less hectic to run because you’re working with fewer clients, there’s less administration, and you aren’t having to constantly chase down your next meal like you do in a project-based business;
You always want to maintain a marketing presence even when your client roster is full, but marketing a retainer-based practice is far less frantic because you only need a handful of client to earn really well;
Because it’s an easier, less frantic business that requires fewer clients to earn well, you have more room to grow and be more at choice in taking on side projects and developing other income streams; and
With a retainer-based practice, you will have more time for life beyond your business. That’s one of the biggest reasons most of us went into business for ourselves, right?

There is no reason for you to continue struggling with getting clients or conducting consultations. My guide takes all the guesswork out and tells you exactly what to do and how to do it, including those two biggees: how to talk about fees and how to deal with the most common client objections. And just having a step-by-by process to follow (complete with diagrams and checklists) will infuse you with greater confidence. You be gung-ho to conduct your next consult!

Check it out here >>

Get Paid to Market Your Biz with Info Products and Multi-Layered Revenue Streams

By Danielle Keister | October 30th, 2012

0 Comments

Do you want retained clients, but aren’t sure how to get them? If a roster of well-paying clients who pay you an advance monthly fee for your administrative support and expertise is what you long for, your entire website and marketing message must be geared toward that goal.

You want to think of your whole website as a sales page with a singular goal: to get those retained clients. From there, it’s a bit of a dating process that happens a lot like this:

You catch your prospect’s eye somewhere (through your marketing and networking).
They observe you from the across the room (by visiting your website and taking a look around).
They like what they see and hear and ask you out (by requesting a consultation or more information).

At this point, it’s important to understand that most people aren’t going to hire you right off the bat any more than anyone is going to be proposing marriage after one date.

Relationships develop and transpire over a course of time and interaction. Different prospective clients will have varying comfort levels initially.

This is the where most people aren’t sure how to proceed. Clients want them to “audition” by trying them out with small projects.

The problem with that, however, is when you fritter away your limited time and energy on nickel and dime projects, you are chasing after pennies instead of hundred dollar bills.

That small project might buy dinner that night, but it does nothing to help you achieve your long-term goal of achieving a well-earning practice. It only distracts you from building your real business and the work and focus needed to establish a retained roster of clients.

Some folks think: “Yes, but if I do a good enough job, maybe the client will eventually hire me on a retained basis.”

That almost never happens.

Your business and income can’t depend on hopes and maybe’s. You’ll never build a roster of well-paying monthly retained clients by chasing after penny-ante “sample” projects and letting the wrong prospect lead you around by the nose. To get a commitment, you must expect one.

On November 29, I’m holding a class to show you how to do just that by offering products and services that support your overall goal and marketing message to get retained clients AND create multiple revenue streams for you at the same time.

You’ll learn how to:

Nurture those prospective client relationships and lead them toward the retainer commitment;
Eliminate auditioning and the need to chase after penny-ante project work and carrots on a stick so you can stay focused on building your retained client roster;
Provide selective demonstrations and “proof” to prospects of your skills and expertise that they seek;
Create passive income streams;
Establish you as an authority and expert in your field;
Set a more respectful tone for the relationship where prospects and clients treat you as a trusted advisor, not a cost to be managed or some kind of gopher;
Create an easier business to operate that affords you more time and space for your support work to happen;
Provide the foundation for a more flexible and freedom-filled lifestyle and business;
Get PAID to market your business!

Join us! Click on the link below to get the class details and secure your registration:

Get Paid to Market Your Biz with Info Products and Multi-Layered Revenue Streams >>

How to Respond When Clients Ask “How Much Do You Charge Per Hour?”

By Danielle Keister | September 21st, 2012

12 Comments

A week ago I promised my mailing list community that I would share with them a script for responding to prospects when the first thing out of their mouth is What’s your hourly rate?

I feel you!

It can be the most irritating question in the world when it’s pretty much the first words they utter right out of the gate.

But guess what? You have a lot to do with why they are asking that in the first place.

And no, it’s not because you don’t have pricing on your website. Pricing for professional services doesn’t belong on your website.

But we’ll discuss that in a moment.

First, I want to preface things by saying that the response to that kind of question is different depending on the context.

For example, selling products is a completely different ballgame than selling professional services.

There’s a completely different context, different process, and different conversation involved for each of them respectively.

On my blog, we’re always talking about retained ongoing monthly administrative support. This is what is known as a collaborative partnering relationship.

This is not the same thing as selling products or piecemeal project work (i.e., secretarial services).

So, it’s important that you understand that the scripts I’m going to share with you are for the context of retainer clients (i.e., clients who pay a monthly fee for ongoing, monthly administrative support).

Unless you are selling a cheap commodity, clients need have context in order for your fees to make sense.

If there’s going to be any kind of mutually beneficial relationship, you can’t answer that question off the cuff. There’s a bit more to it than that.

There are simply things you need to find out first from the client before you can even begin to understand their needs, goals and challenges, and then devise your support plan recommendation for them.

When the first thing a prospect asks is What’s your hourly rate?, that’s a clear sign that:

they have not bothered to read your website (and, thus, are not a good prospect), or
your website has not properly educated them, and failed to provide them with the right information in the right way (which is more commonly the case).

When you don’t provide your site visitors and prospects with thorough information, you don’t give them any other criteria with which to evaluate the value.

They will always resort to the pricing question when that’s the case.

This is something you can correct:

Stop parroting the same tired, boring, homogeneous (and ineffective) party line that EVERYONE else in the industry is reciting chapter, line and verse. You’ve GOT to stop this people, seriously! This is your business, not a high school clique where you’re only allowed to belong if you conform with the crowd. Blending in is NOT what you need to do in business; you need to STAND APART from the crowd, come up with your own message and speak in your OWN voice).
Adding more thorough content and information. Because you don’t want them asking How much? You want them saying, I’m intrigued. I can see you understand the business and profession I’m in and the kind of challenges and issues I face in moving forward. I’d like to schedule a consultation to find out more about how you can help me achieve X, overcome X or solve X.

In the context of your business, as an Administrative Consultant who works with clients in an ongoing support relationship, your goal is to find retainer clients.

What you need to do in that case is gear all of your information toward that goal, educating clients about what you’re in business to, how you help them, how it works, how you work together, etc.

Think of your website as a form of mini or pre-consultation itself. Have it answer all the questions a potential client could conceivably ask you or want to know.

The more information you provide, the better you prequalify your prospects (because the ones who are not a fit will weed themselves out) and the more likely your ideal prospects will take the next step (i.e., scheduling a consultation).

You want to provide a nearly exhaustive amount of information on your website — everything except pricing.

There are many reasons why pricing on your website works against you as a professional service provider:

You are not a cheap commodity that can only be quantified by price. When you portray yourself as nothing more than something on a shelf that they can get at one of a thousand other places (the only differentiating factor being your rates), you actually create the very price-shopping mentality you seek to avoid. You want clients who are truly interested in the value of the work in helping them move forward, achieve their goals, overcome challenges and grow their business. By insisting on that standard and holding yourself and what you do in that esteem, you weed out the cheapskates and those only looking for quick fixes. If you make people who can’t pay, don’t want to pay, or who are impatient with your process your clients, you will be the engineer of your own business unhappiness, unprofitability and unsustainability.
You cut your nose to spite your face. Some people argue that posting prices helps get rid of the price shoppers who waste their time. But when you do that, that’s the thing nearly every visitor to your site zeros in on to the exclusion of everything else that’s more important — including all the information that conveys your value. There are far better ways to prequalify clients, my friends!
You throw the baby out with the bath water. Here again, when you try to get the price-shoppers to weed themselves out, you’re also scaring off all kinds of other perfectly suitable client candidates who may simply misunderstand what things would really cost and mistakenly think they can’t afford this kind of support relationship. They need context, but they’ll never get that far if you scare them off before that can happen.
It’s not the time and place. Ongoing administrative support is a bigger relationship. It requires more of an investment and commitment from the client, and, therefore, requires a bigger conversation. Prospects need context in order to make sense of your fees and that only happens in consultation, not on your website.

So this is what you’re going to say when the first thing out of a prospects mouth is What’s your hourly rate?:

I can’t answer that question off the cuff because my goal is to ensure you get the best support you can afford. Your business needs, the challenges you face and your underlying goals and dreams are unique. We need to meet first in a consultation where I can gather more information and learn more about those things before I can create a support plan just for you and tell you what it would cost.

There is a way to provide a frame of reference for potential clients that doesn’t promote price-shopping. You do that by simply letting them know the minimum monthly investment they would need to make in order to work together. So what you would add onto the comment above would be this:

What I can tell you is that the minimum monthly investment any client would need to make in order to have my ongoing monthly support is $X per month.

And on your website, instead of listing fees, you would instead talk about your pricing methodology and its benefits, how and why you bill as you do, and include that statement about the minimum monthly investment they would need to make.

Remember, the goal is to get them in consultation and talk to you further, not your website, so that you can provide needed context for your fees.

When prospects ask the rate question, the other thing they’re trying to determine is whether or not they can afford it.

Letting them know the minimum monthly amount helps them do that in a way that gets them to look at fees from a more value-based perspective and encourages the opportunity for further discussion.

My wish for you would be to get away from billing by the hour (selling hours) entirely because it cheats you and cheats the client by putting your interests at odds with each other.

It’s a very archaic, UN-beneficial way of charging for your value — for you and the client — and actually discourages prospects from seeing your value.

Your goals for getting paid for the value of your time and expertise should be in sync with the kind of goals and results the client is looking for from the work and how that work achieves their objectives and helps move them forward in their goals and the pursuits they’re aiming for.

You don’t want that question boiling down to how fast you can kill yourself doing the work so that the client doesn’t have to pay as much. That will be the death of you and your business.

When you employ my value-based pricing methodology, here’s what you get to add to all of the above:

I don’t charge by the hour and here’s why: hourly billing cheats you because it puts our interests at odds with each other. Billing by the hour, I obviously make more money the longer things take, and you, naturally, prefer things to take the least amount of time possible so that you don’t have to pay so much. That’s a horrible dynamic for us to work together in! And so I don’t. The work that’s going to truly get you results, move you forward and keep your business humming along smoothly can’t be dependent upon a clock. And when you work with me, it doesn’t. I want to achieve real results and progress for you. That can’t happen by selling you hours. Your needs, goals and challenges aren’t cookie cutter and so I don’t offer cookie cutter solutions. Instead, what I do after we meet in our consultation is come up with a support plan recommendation. From there we can hone it until it’s just the right fit. And you will pay one simple monthly fee for that support. That’s it. No worry about hours running out. No overages. It’s easy to budget for and all our focus will be on the work and accomplishing your objectives, not on the clock.

There’s much more to learn and understand when it comes to pricing and how to talk about fees with clients. I’ve packaged all that up for you in my Value-Based Pricing and Packaging Toolkit, which I encourage you to check out. (Be sure to read the testimonials and success stories.)