video discussions – pricing
content from Yahoo! groups http://groups.yahoo.com/group/razor_users/ addressing pricing issues
What I’ve found to work is actually generating a 3-tiered quote. Bare bones cheap & crappy, sort-of-OK and what I felt they should be doing. It’s a pain in the ass to do, takes forever to write-up. But, there was often (about half the time) client discussion and a fair amount of the time, up-selling. Often, people will spend more if they can justify it. Or, they ‘ll feel bad that they can’t spend more and that helps when the next thing comes up. If you can get them talking and keep them talking, it’s a positive thing.
In keeping with the old saying, it’s unwise to spend too much but worse to spend too little; try to show even tangentially related shows at the 3 budget levels. Again, a pain in the butt. But yet again, I’ve had people take a copy of the comparison to whoever is above them and come back with more money. It helps them feel like you’re on their side.
Of course, there are cheep f***s and that’s that. You’ll know not to even bother next time.
Oh yeah, dialog also helps you to get to know the client. When I was just getting started, I worked as a freelance creative for Paul French (a brilliant seller). He wanted me to put together a general corporate story for a textile company. He told me to forget the budget and do what’s right.
When he liked the script, it was about an $85K show. Then he told me that the budget he had was $35K. !@#%!!. He said don’t worry about it; these guys will be changing this show forever. I did the best I could and delivered the first cut for about $60K. Within the first 30 days, as the show was passed “upstairs” at the client’s, they ordered $35K in changes.
Over the course of revisions, they ended up spending over $200K. Paul’s tactic was to turn it into a vanity piece for the company’s president who was nearing retirement, but he had to start by getting it into the president ‘s hands. That kind of thinking is why Paul’s house was much bigger than mine.
Michael C.
—–Original Message—–
From: razor_users@yahoogroups.com [mailto:razor_users@yahoogroups.com]On
Behalf Of Blair Haness
Sent: Sunday, June 26, 2005 11:27 AM
To: razor_users@yahoogroups.com
Subject: RE: [-] O.T. Where have all the budgets gone?
* Interesting discussion. On the brighter side, there are still
companies out
there that pay for quality. Sometimes they pay too much under the banner of their advertising agency – which of course, farms out the work similar to the discussions on this thread. The opportunity is with those clients who rely solely on their ad agency for creative solutions.
I’m in my third year with a company that originally hired me for event production support. Since that time they have come to find they do not have to spend $2500 for (2) PowerPoint master slides to get agency quality work.
As their confidence in my services has increased, so has the work that would have been given to the agency – logo design, trade show marketing videos, even some print support.
At our most recent event in May, I was approached by the client regarding their training videos – currently produced by their ad agency. Ironic given the early days of this business (I started in 1978) when the corporate ad agency would never touch this area. I’ve seen their past training tapes.
I’d be hard pressed to charge in the $25-30k range without gouging the customer. Agency charges around $60k. Lot’s of room to negotiate.
Blair.
[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
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