I feel like mistakes are a necessary evil because they help you grow. Below is a situation and solution that I recently came across. Hopefully my mistakes will prevent you from making them.
Recently a potential client approached me and laid out the work that they wanted me to do, and I gave them a retainer that I thought would be fair. Then we got on the phone to discuss further with some other members of the team, and I realized it was going to be a lot more work than I originally thought it would be. At the end of the call, my contact asked me if I still thought I could do all of the work for the price I laid out. I panicked in the moment and just said yes. I didn’t want to lose the client or have him get mad or look unprofessional in his eyes. However, I knew that if I took on the client with all the additional work, I would be losing money.
Never talk about money on the phone, in the spur of the moment. Side note: I never really understood the value of a mentor, until I had one. At our weekly, meeting I ran the situation by my mentor to get her feed back, and she quickly told me “if you feel pigeonholed, then you don’t have to answer in that second” instead say something like “let me get back to you” or “let me think it over.” This would have given me time to really think about how much time this additional work was going to take.
My mentor gave me the advice of being honest when it comes to discussing money. This is actually more difficult than it seems. Despite the difficulty though, I took her advice to heart and wrote an honest e-mail about how with this new part of the project I would have to do it for a higher rate.
In the end, yes, it was awkward because I am sure the client wondered why I was brining this up now, so late in the conversation. However, we worked it out. Instead of raising the rate, I told them what I could accomplish for what they wanted to pay me. Lesson Learned.
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