I’ve no doubt that everyone in agency land will recognise elements from this witty YouTube video in their negotiations with some prospects.
Thanks to our FD Gemma Curtis (@GemmaCurtis) for forwarding.
The agency client relationship
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[...] to Steve Waddington for pointing it [...]
I remember back in the dot com boom being approached by a number of businesses who basically wanted us to work for free on the basis that “when we are successful later, we’ll pay you”.
Every time I suggested making this a formally binding contract (eg if we work for free now, you guarantee to commit to us and pay us later) or sharing in the profit of the business, or giving us shares in the business, they all started to moan. “Oh, we have to have flexibility to choose our suppliers, etc”.
In short, we were being asked to shoulder all the risk, without any kind of commensurate reward for taking on that risk. In every case I told them – politely – to try elsewhere. Strangely enough, I don’ think any of those businesses are talked to then are around now – I wonder why.
Working for free is the ultimate concession – and any concession loses its value almost immediately – and a concession that has no value in the first place has nowhere further to fall – the client will therefore view the “service” provided as virtually worthless from the start.
Giving away free trials when you are selling a product is fine. However, whilst goods are consumed, services are experienced.
May I therefore recommend the following Harlan Ellison video on the subject of working for free:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mj5IV23g-fE
“They wouldn’t go 5 seconds without being paid”