General Consultant Discussion

Do you have prospective customers calling asking you all sorts of free ""quick questions""? Do they want the bottom of the barrel service level with no pre-planning yet they keep sending questions outside of the scope of what they've requested. I found a 100% foolproof method to get around this. Send them a proposal with an invoice. You'll never hear from them again. Works every time for me...

What kind of proposal do you send them? When they call do you answer the questions, then send a proposal later? This happens a lot to me from a couple of clients... usually they are emails with ""a few"" ""quick"" questions... many times they are in the form of possible future projects (that 99% of the time never happen).... then there are many rounds of follow up emails and questions and a couple of more rounds of ""just to clarify"" emails.

Out of necessity I find that I must get to the chase right away. For example currently I've proposed for an upgrade. Last night the user sent me an email : Hi Wayne Can you please send us a check list and time line of what needs to be completed by us and by your team also by our target date of 5/15/14? We will be setting up a drop box folder to share with you and everyone involved so that we can all follow the progress and the ""to do items"". We would also like to know if SAGE 2013 allows for electronic forms delivery via e-fax or my-fax. Thank you Now mind you these folks last year had already pulled the rug out after I spend several hours staging their upgrade (for which they never paid a deposit). I don't let mistakes happen twice - I emailed back to the above and mentioned that they hadn't indicated which option they'd like to select. I also will not under any circumstances begin an upgrade without payment. I made that mistake twice (including above customer) last year and will never do so again even if it means I go work at Walmart as a greeter. Basically I am finding more and more that I must be right up front and also let people know that I'm not starting or scheduling anything without a down payment.

LOL! .... I might be at Walmart too...

We've been requiring full or nearly full payment (90%) upfront for nearly a year. I see this analogous to training a dog; once they accept that This is Life, they're fine with it. We haven't yet lost a customer that we cared about with this policy.