January 25, 2025
What exactly is a monthly retainer?
For years, advisory retainers were responsible for the vast majority of my income.
They are a fabulous way to deliver high amounts of value on a subscription basis with a relatively low time commitment.
I could (should?) probably write an entire book on retainers, and you can read a bunch of articles on the subject here.
TL;DR:
The word retainer is used differently by different people. Here’s the definition I use in my coaching program:
A specific type of productized service where you offer your clients 24/7 access to your advice on a subscription basis - typically monthly but sometimes quarterly or even annually. A client asks you a question over an agreed-upon channel (e.g., phone, email, Basecamp, Slack, etc.), and you answer within an agreed-upon time frame (e.g., “within 90 minutes for requests made during business hours, next business day for after-hours requests”). Think of it as a hotline to your brain.
Here’s what my retainer is NOT:
- It is not prepayment for a block of hours
- It is not a maintenance contract
- It is not a support contract
Some common questions:
Q: Do you price retainers based on value?
I have value-priced retainers in the past, but I gave it up because it increases the marketing and sales effort. Eventually, I switched to a fixed-scope productized service that I offered at a published price.
Q: Do you write proposals for retainer engagements?
No, the sales page functioned as the proposal. I’d usually get an email from a prospect, set up a meeting, and maybe tweak the offering slightly based on their specific needs (e.g., how much travel, access for additional client contacts, etc).
Q: Do you answer the phone/email/comms outside of regular hours and weekends?
Yes, but it was extremely rare to get a request outside of business hours. My retainer was only of value to folks who were fairly high up in successful organizations. These folks typically don’t have a desire to ping me at night or on weekends.
Q: Do you do dev work for that time or just consultancy?
I explicitly DID NOT author shipping code in my retainer engagement. I would sometimes do a proof of concept to determine feasibility, but that was pretty rare. If deliverables were ever requested, they were usually things like a mobile usability report, a system architecture diagram, an interface teardown, etc. In short, stuff that wouldn’t need to be debugged ;-)
Q: How do you manage it when the client demands too much of your time?
I never once felt overwhelmed by a retainer client. I used to do two or three of them concurrently without working anywhere near full-time hours. Busy people are busy - they don’t have time to bug me for no good reason. When they have a question, they want an answer pretty quickly. When they don’t, I don’t hear from them. I’ve had retainer clients go for months at a time without contacting me.
Got any more questions about retainers? Hit reply and let me know :-)
Yours,
—J