Over the years, I’ve found that clients typically fall into two extremes when it comes to pricing: the “I don’t care” crowd, and price-sensitive clients. Of course, my favorites are the ones that don’t care about the price, but these are few and far between. Generally speaking, most clients seem to fall into one of these two categories:
- I Don’t Care: Some clients simply don’t care about the price. In reality, they do, but they likely have experience with what they’re asking you to do and know what it will cost before they send in a request for a quote.
- Price-Sensitive: These clients may have never worked with a designer or developer before and don’t know what to expect. Sticker shock is normal and sometimes extreme.
In this article, I’ll give you some insights into dealing with price-sensitive clients – the folks that tend to express consternation when they see how much it’s going to cost to get the job done.
Provide Details
First and foremost, I use the process of sending the client a quote for my work to achieve several things in at once: clarify the work, break the work into discrete chunks, and show the client how various parts of the project affect the pricing.
First of all, a quote provides a great way for you to clarify what your clients want you to do. I usually include a 2-3 sentence summary of what I think the client is asking me to do. For example:
“Update the homepage of your site with the new logo and change the colors of the links and headers to match the new color scheme.”
This description provides a simple, plain-English statement of the work to be done. They may not know what CSS is or image formats like PNG and JPG mean.
Next, I’ll break the work down into chunks. This is for my own benefit as well as my client’s. If my job was to both design and implement a new logo on a client’s site, as well as update their site’s colors, my quote may look something like this:
| Description | Hours | Rate | Total |
| Research logo ideas | 3 | $ | $$$ |
| Design logo | 5 | $ | $$$$$ |
| Upload logo to site (PNG) | 1 | $ | $ |
| Change H1, H2, H3, AHREF (visited, hover) CSS | 2 | $ | $$ |
| TOTAL | $$$$$$$$$$$ | ||
The client can now also see what costs them the most and have an opportunity to discuss how they can reduce the costs of various parts of the project.
Providing details empowers your clients, but it also does something far more important — it develops trust. When they can see why your project costs what it does, they’re much more willing to discuss concerns. Handing them a total with no explanation is a great way to get a very frustrated response from price-sensitive clients. Or worse, no response at all, as they may just get a quote from someone else.
Be Willing to Explain Yourself
Once you have the quote in their hands, be willing to explain how you came up with your figures. You’d better have a pretty good idea as to why it’s going to take you so long to design the logo, using the above quote as an example.
You know your clients and their knowledge-base. Talk to them in terms they understand — avoid industry jargon. Most clients just don’t know how you do your job and may need an explanation of the quote.
When they’re experiencing sticker shock, often they’re looking for a way to justify the cost in their own heads. Giving them a calm, rational explanation can go a long way towards calming them down or at least helping them understand the price.
Give Price Sensitive Clients Options
If you are getting aggressive push-back from the client regarding your price, you may have to give them some options. Using the quote from above, ask them to send you some logo ideas and cut your research down to one hour instead of three. Possibly cut your logo design time with the understanding that you may not be able to get all the details they need with less than your quoted time.
I also like to offer pricing options. Maybe spreading payments out over a few months or even giving them 60 days to pay can be the difference between a concerned client and a content one. Small businesses especially are sensitive to cash flow, so giving them payment options can really help them decide to pull the trigger on your project.
Know Your Limits
Lastly, make sure you know what you’re willing to do or not do. I’ve had to turn down projects because I couldn’t do the job for the price the client wanted. In other cases, the projects got to be so small that it wasn’t worth my time.
Know what you’re willing to do. If you need research for a logo design or testing/debugging for a development project, put it in your quote. If the client doesn’t want to pay for that, you may need to decline the work. The last thing you want to do is put out sub-par work that could bite you in the backside later.
In Sum…
You’re going to eventually run into price-sensitive clients. This is especially true with small businesses where cash is critical to daily operations. Providing a detailed quote can help establish what it is you’re doing, the parts and pieces of the project, and how much each part costs. This springboards into discussion points.
Flexibility is the key, but know your own limits. Don’t get yourself into a situation where you can’t pay your own bills or have to compromise your own professional standards. It’s never worth compromising your standards and rarely worth cutting your price way back. So, stick to your standards and be gracious if they just can’t afford you.
Have you had any experiences with price-sensitive clients? How do you approach delicate matters like project cost vs. complexity?
Justyn HornorWhen he's not being a complete goofball, “they” drag Justyn into the office where he pretends to be a Senior Editor and Content Engineer at Creative Content Experts — a content marketing firm out of NW Arkansas. He has 10+ years’ experience in technical writing and geek-related fields. He loves WordPress, coffee, and peanut butter a little too much.
