#freelance-talk
Thread
I pitched a client this week and told them I could start on Feb 1st, based on my capacity. They asked if I could start sooner (Jan 1) as this is high need for them and they need to get executing first thing in 2025. I certainly could, but would need to shift some priorities around with other clients and likely work overtime (longer hours, nights and weekends, etc.) It would not change my scope with them, I would just be a bit over my normal capacity...
Could I / should I charge a premium for this? Something like an extra $2,500 for a "prioritization fee"?
Is this a thing? What do you call it? How much do you charge?
I've seen people call it a rush fee
Plus one for rush fee
is $2500 a lot? not enough? I guess it depends on my own opportunity cost
🤷🤷🤷
I usually put rush fee as a percentage of the total project amount (if you know that already)
This thread just made me an extra $1,000. I added a 25% kicker to a rush project, and they said 'let's do it' an hour later. Thank you, chat. (cc @Eric Doty (Superpath))
(next time I'll do 33% 😆 )
@Jason Faber what was their reason for needing to start executing first thing in 2025? was it arbitrary? was it strategic?
I think premium fees and asshole add ons like that are hilarious, but not necessary.
Your services should be productized / value based priced to the point that you have set scopes of work set to set solutions set to specific outcomes. Then the price will be firm, as will your scope of work/resource commitment and there's really no push back since that would be discussed during discovery.
@Ken Please don't call business decisions that other people make in this community 'asshole add-ons.'
@Ken the client simply wanted to get things kicked off right at the start of the year for both budget and strategic reasons.
Not sure why you’d consider this an “asshole add on”. It's directly correlated the the value that I am providing them, which in this case is prioritizing their project and helping execute sooner then when I had communicated. They knew my capacity and timelines when they asked if I could start sooner, so shouldn't there be a premium on that?
What would Alan Weiss, father of value-based pricing do?
He'd charge a premium fee because the client has a premium need on a tight timeline.
Amazon: Free shipping by Wednesday, or get it today for $9.99
Haha, I was moving too quickly. Eric just sent me a message about this and I realized that my message didn't come across properly.
Genuinely sorry everyone. 😅 My actual message said properly:
> Life is super hard as a freelancer/consultant/agency owner and clients try and get away with a lot. And in the past for my own consulting work i've done 10 or 20% increases to pricing for rush jobs or unreasonable requests. I was referring to the client in these situations who can be unreasonable.
>
> At my old agency, my boss used to call those upsells "A-hole fees". Not becuase WE were the A-holes, but because he referred to the unreasonable client request as such.
>
> My hope was that we can dive in deeper to the ask by the client, if and when it's unreasonable, and have standard playbooks / solutions for each situation versus being reactive or stressed out.
I'm gonna go give myself a timeout and 10 demerits now and hope we can all be friends later.
All good man, thanks for clarifying! An yeah, I have had to pay the a-hole fee as a client before (happily!)
Ironically, I have too. 😂