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Marketing School - Digital Marketing and Online Marketing Tips

How to Handle Clients that Always Want More for Less | Ep. #533

Marketing School - Digital Marketing and Online Marketing Tips

Eric Siu and Neil Patel

Business, Marketing, Careers

4.61.4K Ratings

🗓️ 15 January 2018

⏱️ 8 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

In episode #533, Eric and Neil discuss how to manage clients who are never satisfied and ask for work above and beyond their contract. Tune in for some great advice on how to satisfy clients and remain profitable. Time-Stamped Show Notes:  [00:27] Today’s Topic: How to Handle Clients that Always Want More for Less [00:43] In the early days, Neil would give his clients whatever they asked for. [00:47] However, the moment you give in to unnecessarily demanding clients, you find that your margins decrease and it becomes a vicious cycle of rewarding complaints. [01:05] What he learned from this, was that it is of the utmost importance to structure your deal properly from the get-go. [01:18] When a company asks for something above and beyond the terms of the contract, tell them it won’t be possible, but that you can renegotiate/draw up a new proposal. It is important to set boundaries! [01:58] Once you do too much for free, you will lose money, and you will always have unhappy clients. [02:20] You have to track how much time you spend on each client to determine profitability. [02:40] You can always draw up a Zero-Dollar Change Order, just to have a written trail of the changes in terms. [03:15] The third of fourth time the client tries to adjust the terms, point to the free Change Orders, and tell them you will have to charge them in the future. This way, you are protecting yourself. [03:49] iProspect charges based on an hourly rate. They will do whatever the client wants, because they are still getting paid for their time. [04:41] The hourly rate model is simple and straightforward, which prevent confusion and hard feelings. [05:27] Neil still does flat-rate pricing, but internally they track client hours and the ensuing costs. [05:42] Hubstaff is an invasive time-tracker, but works well for Eric and his company. [06:02] Toggl and Harvest are other great time-tracker options. [06:17] Ogilvy will charge by the hour, but will charge additionally for face-to-face work. [06:56] That’s all for today! [06:58] Go to Singlegrain.com/Giveway for a special edition of Crazy Egg, the heat mapping tool. Leave some feedback: What should we talk about next? Please let us know in the comments below. Did you enjoy this episode? If so, please leave a short review. Connect with us: NeilPatel.com Quick Sprout Growth Everywhere Single Grain Twitter @neilpatel Twitter @ericosiu Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Transcript

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0:00.0

Get ready for your daily dose of marketing strategies and tactics from

0:06.8

entrepreneurs with the guile and experience to help you find success in any

0:11.4

marketing capacity. You're listening to marketing school

0:14.5

with your instructors Neil Patel and Eric Sue.

0:19.4

All right guys before we start we got a special message from our sponsor.

0:27.0

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0:31.5

The faster your website loads, the better off you are. With

0:34.4

Google's core vital update, that makes it super, super important to optimize your

0:38.5

site for low time. And one easy way to do it is use the host that Eric and I use dream

0:44.5

host so just go to dream host or Google it find it check it out and it's a great way

0:49.7

to improve your load time.

0:52.3

Welcome to another episode of Marketing School.

0:55.0

I'm Erriku.

0:56.0

And I'm Neil Patel, and today we are going to talk about how to handle clients that

1:01.0

always want more for less.

1:02.8

So I'm curious, Neil, I mean, you are the one

1:05.0

that started your consulting company a long time ago, ACS,

1:08.0

and now you have another one.

1:09.7

So, you know, what are your thoughts around this?

1:11.0

How do you deal with this in the early days?

1:13.6

In the early days I just kept giving them whatever they asked for, but it's a slippery slope.

1:17.6

And the moment you do that, you're going to find that your margins are going to end up going down.

...

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