Reply to: Sanity check / thought experiment

[vwdan]

I've been down this road - in my experience it gets fuzzy very very quickly.

I think you have to treat each relationship individually, and to some degree follow your heart. In other words, what's the likely end result of this effort.

I'm actually going through a similar thing at the moment - working with a consultancy, who are starting to send more and more unbillable e-mails and requests. I'm basically going to tread carefully until I work out whether it's going to work out via them chucking a decent amount of work my way, or whether they're confusing me for a permie.

[LondonManc]

Are you attending the conference while under contract to the client?
If so, are they expecting to not sign your timesheet for this?

[malvolio]

It's not just about attending a conference. It's the whole package of consultancy of which being at conferences is one small part.

True. The other thing that is routinely forgotten (or ignored) is that the consultant needs to be able to talk knowledgably about the various departmental roles, be it HR, accountancy, shop floor or emergency control room (and in one gig I had all four...) and in different cultures (civil service, banking and industry all have their own world view). That's why a degree, an MBA and two years with DeLoitte does not make you a consultant.

[ladymuck]

My view is that in any case, it's raising my profile with potential clients AND strengthening my relationship with the existing client. I'm not averse to billing a client for it but that's not my first inclination. Depends on the client, conference, client relationship, etc, I suppose.

It's not just about attending a conference. It's the whole package of consultancy of which being at conferences is one small part.

[WordIsBond]

My view is that in any case, it's raising my profile with potential clients AND strengthening my relationship with the existing client. I'm not averse to billing a client for it but that's not my first inclination. Depends on the client, conference, client relationship, etc, I suppose.

[ladymuck]

Well it looks like I lost the argument but it was good to get extra opinions. And, it's not my business (in many senses of the word) to worry about.

[BlasterBates]

I think #3 is the expectation which then lends itself to them awarding the work to a cheaper supplier...

In that case I would advise negotiating an agreement or a contract for the sales work. This could be an hourly rate or an agreement that you would be the exclusive supplier. If you are not the exclusive supplier this would be a good argument to put to them before you get involved, i.e. what is in it for you.

[ladymuck]

If shouldn't be done for free, there are 3 options:

1) Charge them an hourly rate, but agree the terms and conditions before you get involved.
2) Negotiate a commission on each contract you're involved in selling.
3) Earn a higher daily rate on the subcontracted work, so the hours you put into sales are recouped.

I suspect the consultancy expects option 3.

I think #3 is the expectation which then lends itself to them awarding the work to a cheaper supplier...

[BlasterBates]

So you wouldn't bill for regular chats about how they can make their business work better, or for reviewing and updating documents / producing materials they will use for sales? If the company sells something you've helped put together but you have no guarantee that you'll be on the delivery team is a bit of a kicker. It's a big package of consultancy in my eyes and I just don't see why it should be given for free.

Occasional freebies always smooth things over but not regular, ongoing effort.

If shouldn't be done for free, there are 3 options:

1) Charge them an hourly rate, but agree the terms and conditions before you get involved.
2) Negotiate a commission on each contract you're involved in selling.
3) Earn a higher daily rate on the subcontracted work, so the hours you put into sales are recouped.

I suspect the consultancy expects option 3.

[ladymuck]

So you wouldn't bill for regular chats about how they can make their business work better, or for reviewing and updating documents / producing materials they will use for sales? If the company sells something you've helped put together but you have no guarantee that you'll be on the delivery team is a bit of a kicker. It's a big package of consultancy in my eyes and I just don't see why it should be given for free.

Occasional freebies always smooth things over but not regular, ongoing effort.

[ladymuck]

Buying a beer might be business entertaining which is not quite a cost of business although the business foots the bill. It’s treated differently for tax though.

[BlasterBates]

This is sales and you either earn commission or you earn on delivering part of the service. You don't normally charge a daily rate for that. You need to include the costs in your daily rate. You could agree some sort of commission for each successful lead, but that might be too complicated and therefore probably easier to simply earn on the service you provide.

[wattaj]

Option A: one is working on behalf of oneself and it is a cost of sales.
Option B: one is working on behalf of one's client and should be billed... but there's nothing to stop a bit of schmoozing on the side that might help one's business.

[jayn200]

It's difficult to have a very straight answer because there are too many variables but generally speaking I wouldn't do either option without some kind of compensation. The compensation could be new business gained as in Option A.

Under Option B when you might not secure the business I would expect to get paid in some other way usually. There are cases when I could do Option B and get no compensation though it's really hard to tell without any further detail.

[malvolio]

It's not that smple - somewhere along the line you have to come up with some sort of high-level solution to build further work around.

One of my gigs I took on for four weeks (to hit a hard tendering deadline) at a fairly low rate with the client's expectation that their £!7m a year service was going to be lost to their rivals (mostly on the basis of bad tools and poor perceived performance) but with my services moving to the new people to design and build (and handover) the shiny new service. At a rather more lucrative rate (i.e. roughly double the current one). Which meant 18 months work at serious money,

Only snag was my initial work highlighted some quick fixes and my questioning around how the service was being delivered now led to the team realising they could actually do the job properly. Net result was I won the re-tender for the client. Result!

Well, no, not really, since I didn't get the follow on work. What I got was a pat on the back and shown the door. And my permie main report got all the credit. Win some, lose some.

But expenses, including meeting costs and the odd evening entertainment and all the rest are cost of sales. I got some back, but the overall margin was tiny so I barely made a profit on the whole thing, as opposed to somewhere around £150k as per the original plan.