Sage 100

I rarely have this conversation, but I'd start with: an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.  The cost of your involvement at the planning / design stage will be well spent, and avoid a much bigger bill when it comes to getting a derailed train back on the tracks.  (Follow that up with no discounts on any efforts after-the-fact... zero attempts at quick-fixes without proper due diligence... stepping back and looking at things from the beginning).

HAs anyone bene able to find on YouTube or wherever the old FRAM oil filter commercial with the older mechanic holding up an oil filter and over his shoulder two young guys tearing apart an engine, with the tag line "You can pay me now or you can pay me later"?

I rarely have this conversation, but I'd start with: an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.  The cost of your involvement at the planning / design stage will be well spent, and avoid a much bigger bill when it comes to getting a derailed train back on the tracks.  (Follow that up with no discounts on any efforts after-the-fact... zero attempts at quick-fixes without proper due diligence... stepping back and looking at things from the beginning).

HAs anyone bene able to find on YouTube or wherever the old FRAM oil filter commercial with the older mechanic holding up an oil filter and over his shoulder two young guys tearing apart an engine, with the tag line "You can pay me now or you can pay me later"?

I rarely have this conversation, but I'd start with: an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.  The cost of your involvement at the planning / design stage will be well spent, and avoid a much bigger bill when it comes to getting a derailed train back on the tracks.  (Follow that up with no discounts on any efforts after-the-fact... zero attempts at quick-fixes without proper due diligence... stepping back and looking at things from the beginning).

How do 90 Minds consultants communicate your fee with the customer when these after-the-fact, we didn't need your help before, but we want it now situation arises?  How is your fee structured?  How do you arrive at the fee?  Get a feel for how screwed they are and pull a number out of the air?

It almost always cost more to bring us in later.  Not just our fee.  There was the cost to do it incorrectly, a cost to research what someone did incorrectly, and a cost to do it correctly.  Yepper.... You should have paid us to do the job correctly. Now you're paying three times what you should be paying.

HAs anyone bene able to find on YouTube or wherever the old FRAM oil filter commercial with the older mechanic holding up an oil filter and over his shoulder two young guys tearing apart an engine, with the tag line "You can pay me now or you can pay me later"?

I rarely have this conversation, but I'd start with: an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.  The cost of your involvement at the planning / design stage will be well spent, and avoid a much bigger bill when it comes to getting a derailed train back on the tracks.  (Follow that up with no discounts on any efforts after-the-fact... zero attempts at quick-fixes without proper due diligence... stepping back and looking at things from the beginning).

We always try to use the FORD model for setting up a project. The Findings part is the most important, and for anything more than a minor one, we charge for it.

If a customer comes to you saying, "We want to implement a better system in our warehouse" you would first make a significant effort to figure out what they need, why, what's in the way, and what the value of implementing something could be.

Just because a customer jumped into a project that failed doesn't mean they can skip your Findings step. So, that's what you'll quote them first. After an initial call with the principal (the underling who f*cked it up will never be rational about it) you will have a good idea of what they've paid already, expect to pay, and other broad factors, so you can imagine a $$ range that you might have charged to do it right the first time. Double that project $$ WAG and say your price would have been somewhere around that to it right the first time -- with a money-back guarantee.   

You don't know if they will go forward with anything you suggest, so you must charge something significant for this Ford project. Why? Because both your effort is valuable, and the business clarity it can bring to the customer is valuable to them. You may choose to apply part of the fee to one or all of the project options that come later, but first, you must get them to agree to the fee for the Findings part.

If your customer is on an annual agreement with you, you probably won't have too much trouble getting an agreement to this Findings project; they already understand much of your value and the way you work. Other customers will be harder; this is not the way they are used to "buying" this sort of 

Many times the reason a project like this fails is due to the customer's attitude toward the consultants doing the work. Getting this initial payment up front is a key part of you figuring out whether and how you can be successful with them.  In this process, you focus on the price of the Finding; the price of the rest of the project will be one of the 3 options you might develop out of the Findings effort, and those prices are TBD until then.

How do 90 Minds consultants communicate your fee with the customer when these after-the-fact, we didn't need your help before, but we want it now situation arises?  How is your fee structured?  How do you arrive at the fee?  Get a feel for how screwed they are and pull a number out of the air?

It almost always cost more to bring us in later.  Not just our fee.  There was the cost to do it incorrectly, a cost to research what someone did incorrectly, and a cost to do it correctly.  Yepper.... You should have paid us to do the job correctly. Now you're paying three times what you should be paying.

HAs anyone bene able to find on YouTube or wherever the old FRAM oil filter commercial with the older mechanic holding up an oil filter and over his shoulder two young guys tearing apart an engine, with the tag line "You can pay me now or you can pay me later"?

I rarely have this conversation, but I'd start with: an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.  The cost of your involvement at the planning / design stage will be well spent, and avoid a much bigger bill when it comes to getting a derailed train back on the tracks.  (Follow that up with no discounts on any efforts after-the-fact... zero attempts at quick-fixes without proper due diligence... stepping back and looking at things from the beginning).