I think you’ll find that most clients will push back hard on a 100% up front payment, unless you already have a trusted reputation. As with any advice, measure how it applies to your situation before heeding it. And then test it.
There’s no benefit to the client to an up front payment over say, a 50%/50% schedule. They are absorbing all the risk. And if your fee is over $X000 for a typical small business, it’s a large risk to take. Sure, you can say you’ll give all their money back if they aren’t satisfied and want to part ways, but can they really trust you on that?
You might have better luck offering a 50%/50% or even 33%/33%/34%, with a 10% discount if they pay 100% up front. (The author says he charges a 10% fee for a 50%/50% split.) Framing it this way gives them a small incentive to pay up front, but they don’t feel penalized for not trusting you.
I agree with this and can’t think of any client that would accept this. Maybe if you’re doing someone’s taxes or painting a picture, but if you work in IT as a designer/programmer/whatever why would you agree to this? It means if you go over schedule/budget or they make a bunch of changes you’re screwed, and it’s going to reduce the chance the client will accept if I ask for thousands of dollars up front.
I think you’ll find that most clients will push back hard on a 100% up front payment, unless you already have a trusted reputation. As with any advice, measure how it applies to your situation before heeding it. And then test it.
There’s no benefit to the client to an up front payment over say, a 50%/50% schedule. They are absorbing all the risk. And if your fee is over $X000 for a typical small business, it’s a large risk to take. Sure, you can say you’ll give all their money back if they aren’t satisfied and want to part ways, but can they really trust you on that?
You might have better luck offering a 50%/50% or even 33%/33%/34%, with a 10% discount if they pay 100% up front. (The author says he charges a 10% fee for a 50%/50% split.) Framing it this way gives them a small incentive to pay up front, but they don’t feel penalized for not trusting you.
I agree with this and can’t think of any client that would accept this. Maybe if you’re doing someone’s taxes or painting a picture, but if you work in IT as a designer/programmer/whatever why would you agree to this? It means if you go over schedule/budget or they make a bunch of changes you’re screwed, and it’s going to reduce the chance the client will accept if I ask for thousands of dollars up front.
You should use a factoring company to do risk assessment and provide credit limit for customers.