Pixels For Pounds - Are We All Just Greedy?

Currently, I’m working on a personal redesign and I’ve been thinking over the contact aspect of the site. Having decided on including a form, I started thinking about what should be included within said form and along came the subject of budgets. The idea of including a field or list for prospective clients to fill in before we’ve even been introduced is a little disturbing to me. It kind of feels like I’m saying “Hi, I don’t care about your project much. I’m just interested in either seeing if you have enough money for me to bother replying or if you have plenty and I could overcharge you for very little effort”.

That may sound a little up front but if you’re being honest, is this not the reason for including a budget section? Those are the only reasons I can think of for having one and it says only one thing to me – we’re naturally greedy people who want to make as much as we can from a project regardless of the work involved. That is most definitely not the impression I want to give off and I hope it isn’t the impression we as an industry have on prospective clients.

To further this point, consider the following scenario. You are contacted by two separate people. One is the owner of a very small business and the other represents a large corporation. They both want projects that are very similar in size and technical requirements. Now, how much do you quote back to each person? I’m pretty sure you would charge the large corporation more.

Another scenario may be as follows. You have your site set up and the contact form includes a slider for budgets. Along comes a small non-profit who have a great cause which is important to you personally. Instead of hearing from them and working together on this great project, you never hear a word and have missed out on the opportunity to get involved. They seen your budget slider and were immediately intimidated by it. They decided to go elsewhere as they could never afford you anyway.

It may be the case that you’re perfectly fine with the previous example and don’t mind either way. It’s not the case with me. I would rather take on a project that I believe in or find interesting than one just for the money. I realize we all have bills to pay though too and need to get paid at some point but I would rather get to know the client and details of their project before discussing the money aspect. That’s just who I am.

You may have concluded by this point that I won’t be including a budget section in my contact form. I am, however, interested in hearing your thoughts on the subject. Do you currently have a budget slider or field on your contact form? What are your reasons for the answer? Feel free to chime in below!

Sep 08, 2009

Carl Smith said...

Great post and great questions.

I think we're all different, have different needs, motivations and desires. As the owner of a web firm that gets 7-10 inquiries a week I can't afford to spend time with each person that contacts us to see if they can afford our services. I really wish I could, it just takes so much time that in the end my company and family would suffer. Plus I still wouldn't be able to help those without enough money. That said, I do respond to each inquiry no matter what they put down for a budget.

The part of my job I dislike is telling excited people they can't afford our services. I always feel bad for them. But we're a business and we know after 6 years what it takes to stay in business. This isn't because we're greedy. It's because we have a 401k, pay 100% insurance for salaried employees and compensate everyone that works for us very well. So as an employer we're giving.

Charging companies different rates or padding numbers is a losing proposition. Eventually someone would find out. Plus it's not fair. You can strike different deals on fixed bid, time & materials or pro-bono rates if you want to do something to feel good and give back. Or you can offer a smaller hourly for a larger project because it promises ongoing revenue for a longer time period which is very valuable. None of those rip anyone off in my opinion.

For me Kelly Goto put it best in her book Web Redesign: Workflow that Works, "we charge what we can." It really is what the market will bear. Here's the formula we use to determine if we need to raise or lower our rates.

If we are over 70% of our potential billable hours we raise our rates to lower the amount of work and minimize burnout.

If we are under 50% of our potential billable hours we lower rates to increase workflow.

By staying in the 50% - 70% billable range we know we're making money and still have time for ourselves and our families.

So for us showing the budget ranges in a pull down helps everyone. It's like a restaurant posting it's menu with prices and choices outside the door. It helps everyone make a decision without any awkwardness or wasted time. Plus, you can always add "Pro-bono" to the pulldown if you're worried you'll miss a special opportunity.

Thanks again for the post.

Dave McNally said...

Thanks for stopping by Carl.

I guess there are going to be bigger differences in our options depending on the working situation. Being a sole freelancer, I not only don't have employees to look after etc but I also only attract smaller clients in general and so I think it's easier to avoid then.

If I had a budget slider for example, the values on it wouldn't be too important as there's not much difference from project to project for me. I do understand how a larger business must operate though, thanks again for the thoughts!

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