Mental Floss » Should you really be chasing that client?

9th February, 2010

Should you really be chasing that client?

Posted by Navin Harish - 2 Comments

Like everything else in life, the interactive work is available in varying quality. While it is easier to spot rotten apples before you make the purchase, it is not so easy to spot a poorly executed interactive project before even starting it.

Quite a few times we have lost clients because the price quoted by us was not the lowest. Last Saturday I called up a client who wanted a site to be done. We had met a few days ago and they wanted to get a site done in a very short deadline. To speed up the process, I provide them an approximate cost. When I asked about the price, he said it was too high “We have spoken to someone else and they are offering to do the same site for a much lower cost, they are charging less than 30% of what you are asking.”

What is important is how a website affects your bottom line. If your Profit and Loss account depends directly on the performance of your website, you will spend time in finding the right people to do it and pay them the price they ask for doing it. It is money well invested.

Do we charge too much? No, not at all. The price we quoted was based on the time required and the cost of that time for various profiles required for that project. The cost for the sale site done by anyone else should be same, give or take a small percentage. So how can anyone quote a price so much lower than ours? The answer is in selling rotten apples. We have seen in past, the work done by other agencies at a significantly lower price than ours never matches up with what we provide to our clients. The important question now is “does it really matter?”

Thinking about it, may the other agency was not selling rotten apples, maybe they were not selling apples at all. Let’s see how. I have seen ads for companies designing websites on a “per page basis” where the rates are as low as Rs.350/page and I often wondered how can those people managed to make a site for such a low price.

One day I got an SMS for designing a website for Rs.7500 and I decided to call. I asked how much a site for a photographer would cost and they gave me a reference of a website they did for a photographer. The cost of the site was Rs.20,000. Sure the site was not something even a half decent designer would be proud of creating but there it was. The website may have its problems but it served the purpose of the photographer who probably only wanted a site to showcase some of her work, have a bit of info about her and have a contact form. The other aspect of the site didn’t matter, neither to her, nor to her clients.

You see, what is important is how a website affects your bottom line. If your Profit and Loss account depends directly on the performance of your website, you will spend time in finding the right people to do it and pay them the price they ask for doing it. It is money well invested.

On the other hand if your business is not affected by the website, you won’t want to invest serious money in a website. You are making a website so you can have a URL in your business card; you know, to keep up with the time.

So the next time you get a call from a client who wants to have a website and wants to pay you 30% of your regular fee, ask yourself if it is worth chasing that client and trying to convince him why he should pay your fee, or is it better to look for clients who are already aware of the value you bring to the table and are willing to pay for it.