Depending on the type of services you have agreed to in your contract, you may also end up with overly prescriptive clients. These clients might start treating you less like a consultant and more like an employee. They will not come to you for their creative consul, but only for their technical implementation. These types of customers also tend to be the ones who will begin to expect near-instant response on requests and will act confused, or even angry, when you don’t drop your other commitments when they ask for something. You can help avoid those kinds of situations by clearly outlining the scope of your retention within your agreement, which we’ll cover later. Your retainers can get in the way of other projects The advantage of retention work is that you have guaranteed projects and income.
But this can also become a challenge when that same job competes with other projects. Let’s say you’ve promised a client 40 hours of your time per month over a four-month period. When broken down weekly, that’s an average of ten hours per week (or more than a full day) that you’ll spend just on your company and no other client work. Depending on the size of your team, as well as your personal commitments, it can be difficult to balance your retention responsibilities with other Sudan Email List client projects. As you can imagine, this challenge can become a serious hurdle once you start attracting multiple clients under retainer agreements. That’s why you should always diligently assess your existing commitments before bringing in new clients, just to make sure you can actually manage all of them.
Keep Your Web Design Business
You may become dependent on your retainer In extreme cases, some freelancers and agencies end up depending on their retainers. They will come to expect that this income will always be there. And they will include it as absolute values in their financial forecasts. This can be a big mistake, and if something changes between. You and your customer. It can have serious financial implications for your business. If you end up working on a retention service for a long-term period. Be sure to keep launching new projects and expanding. Your client list to protect yourself in case a long-term client decides. You’re ready for a change. How to pitch retainers to your existing clients. Given the fundamental differences between retainers and standard project work. You’ll need to slightly modify the way you approach presenting your long-term agreements.
Unless you are one of the most prolific developers in the world, it is significantly more difficult to start a relationship with a client with an advance. This is for a very simple reason; you still have to prove your skill and impact. That’s why I recommend reserving most of your retainer conversations for existing clients who have already had success purchasing your services. Before you even tackle the subject of retainers, make sure you have some quick wins under your belt, completing a few unique projects that will help prove your worth and earn their trust. Once you’ve had a chance to showcase the potential impact of your services, persuading a client to hire you becomes much easier. A perfect example of this situation is probably something you are very familiar with.
Working on Retainer
Let’s say you have a client who hires you to create, redesign, or update their website or online store. You put in hours, launch a beautiful and functional website, and the customer is over the moon. You get paid for a job well done and you both go your separate ways. This is a great missed opportunity. Instead of accepting your payment and moving on to the next job. You could offer to expand your services to support. your business goals through services like conversion rate optimization. Or digital marketing management. When starting this conversation. You need to focus on the value and benefits to. Your business rather than specific tasks or associated costs. Remind them of the impact your previous work brought them, and communicate all the potential ways you can add even more value.
