March 2, 2017
“How can someone who can’t be on call 24/7 offer retainers that aren’t defined as a block of hours?”
The other day, I got a three questions in Slack from UX Strategy Consultant David Parmelee.
David graciously agreed to let me share them with you. I answered his first yesterday. This is the second:
> How can someone who can’t be on call 24/7 offer retainers that aren’t defined as a block of hours?
Great question!
Context:
I have two little kids and a wife. I do karate 4 hours per week. I see a personal trainer 3 hours per week. I just starting getting Thai massage 1 hour per week.
I don’t do client work on weekends or outside of business hours. And still, I have time to handle two 24/7 retainer clients simultaneously on top of everything I do with DYFA and my own coaching.
Unless you have some extreme extenuating circumstances (e.g., you’re offline for weeks at a time in the mountains, for example), you can almost certainly handle a retainer client.
Here are a few tips:
- Don’t guarantee instantaneous response time. I tell clients that I respond to all messages within 24 hours, but usually within 90 minutes during business hours.
- Limit access to exactly one person, not a team. Any questions from the team have to come through the one person.
- Don’t offer an advisory retainer to someone you know to be unreasonable and/or a workaholic.
In the unlikely event that a retainer client is constantly contacting you for no good reason:
- Wait the maximum 24 hours to respond to each request
- Talk to them about the communication volume and see if there is a way to save both of you time by minimizing it.
- If they still continue to abuse your time, tell them it’s not working out and refund their most recent payment.
Tomorrow, I’ll answer David’s third question:
> Some of my clients are new startups who can’t accurately project how much value I’ll generate. Other than not working for them, how would you handle the value conversation and pricing for this kind of project?
Stay tuned!
Yours,
—J
P.S. Would you like a full year of 24/7 access to me in Slack? Slack access is FREE when you buy a 1-on-1 coaching call: https://jonathanstark.com/call