When To Talk About Money
Today I want to explore with you when you should be talking about fees and getting paid for working with your clients.
The simple answer is as soon as possible and as early as possible in the process.
This week I was working with a client in my CLIENTS coaching program and they were in a bit of a situation with their client.
You see - a whole bunch of work had been done on a project and they were then tasked with trying to get paid for the work that they had already done.
Asking for money and trying to get paid for work once you’ve already started - or even worse once you finished - gets harder and harder the longer that you leave it.
A lot of the times we don’t like talking with our clients about fees and getting paid for work because we view it as an uncomfortable conversation and we don’t want our clients to not like us.
The simple fact of the matter is - if you don’t talk about fees and you don’t talk about getting paid for the work that your client has asked you to do - they will just assume that you are doing it for free!
It’s obviously in your clients’ best interests if they assume you’re doing it for free - because then they are getting the work done for free!
Very few clients when they ask you to do something will also ask you for your fee proposal or ask you "How much is this going to cost me"?
Unless of course, you condition your clients over the years to know that you don’t work for free!
So the simple answer is I know it’s uncomfortable and I know it can be a difficult conversation at times but you are WAY better off talking to your clients about fees and getting paid for work upfront and when they ask you to do something - as opposed to waiting down the track. Then it becomes a much harder discussion.
I liken it to the concept of short-term pain for long term gain.
Have the conversation upfront, condition your clients that you don’t do work for free, let your clients know that this will cost them money for you to do work on this element of the project.
So have the conversation early. Remove the need to have hard conversations with your clients throughout the project or at the end of the project about how are you going to get paid.
Stand your ground. Know your worth and know the value that you bring to your project. Adopt the stance that you expect to get paid for the work that you’re doing.
Josh 'Getting Paid' Stone
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