Struggling with not being paid when you’re done with your projects and not sure if your clients are great fits? Here’s a hack: 100% Upfront.

Charge 100% upfront. Simple.

It’s not to only get paid in advance and avoid the hassle of collection. It’s a way to lead the conversation to different terms. From “Why are you so expensive?” to “How can we get this work done?”

Change the way things work. Might take a lot of [mental] work, but it’s simple.

Change the conversation

Moving into 100% upfront is aimed at focusing on talking about payment terms rather than price.

To see if it’s worth working on this new project.

To see if there’s trust. If they don’t trust you, why work together?

To get you to be [more] profitable. The less time and resources it takes you, the more profitable you are.

To weed out the bad fits.

Why 100% upfront

The ideal scenario with your new policy is to get paid full upfront. The less ideal, about how to break it down or how to make it doable (installments, early pay discount…). Did you notice you’re not talking about how to cut down your price?

Pro-tip: instead of working on payment on milestones (if you have scope creep, you’re kinda screwed because it can take forever), set fixed dates that are reasonable for you and your prospect. This way both you and your client will know when payment is due. A different level of commitment. (And they’ll be more eager to get the job done, instead of infinite rounds of revisions)

One thing you need though: You have to be willing to walk away. If not, all this will be hard to work on — and you’ll be back on the hamster wheel.

Take a different path

Own your responsibility to your clients and to yourself. Now you don’t get to procrastinate. Not if you’re professional. You’ll be more aware of what makes sense for you — and if you can really help them out.

At the end, this is a small step to help you gain confidence.

If you never ask, you’ll never know.

This post was created with Typeshare