How to increase your freelance rate without losing clients
March 25th, 2011
A common question I receive from designers is how do I increase my freelance rates without losing clients? This is an ongoing problem, but not as hard to solve as you might think.
Customer service first
The key to keeping clients is to provide top notch customer service. An unfortunate generalization about designers is that we are unreliable. The more unfortunate part is that this is true in a number of cases. Therefore, to set yourself apart, follow through on your promises and deadlines and you will become indispensable to your clients. In fact, the quality of your work is secondary to the level of service you provide. Here’s a few tips on providing excellent customer service:
- Always deliver on time.
- Don’t promise unrealistic timelines, under promise and over deliver.
- Respond to emails and phone calls in a timely manner.
- Be honest, don’t mark up services like printing without telling your client.
- If a job is outside your area of expertise, don’t take it on. Refer your client to someone who can better help them.
- Care about your client and their business, not just your pay check.
How to increase your rates
Your clients average work day doesn’t revolve around what you are working on. They are focusing on running and building their business; design is just one part of that. Therefore, the last thing they want to do is babysit a designer or chase them for work that is late. You need to be dependable, the guy or gal who always delivers on time. Believe me, it might not seem like a big thing to you, but it is one of the best services you can offer a client if you plan to keep them.
Anyhow, getting back to raising your rates, let’s create a sample scenario. Let’s say your hourly rate is $50/hr and you’d like to raise it to $75/hr. Now that is not an insignificant hike, and your clients will definitely notice a difference. Instead of being worried about how they will react on their next quote, get out in front of the problem and let them know that the price of doing business has just changed. When you email or call them, you need to hit a couple of key points:
- Thank them for being a great client.
- Let them know why you are raising your rates.
- Let them know when the new rates will go into effect.
That might not seem like much, but if you have been doing a good job of being indispensable that is all it should take. The reality of the situation is, your client has an established relationship with you. They like you (hopefully), they know what calibre of work you are capable of, and they know you give excellent customer service.
As long as you are providing good work and awesome service, the client is not going to want to go to the trouble of finding a new designer. They don’t want to jump through all the hoops of finding someone new, testing out their quality of work, etc… Bottom line, you’re not selling your work, you’re selling yourself. Therefore, if you’ve been doing a good job of meeting their needs, they will not balk at the price increase.
The exception to the rule
There will be some clients who will have a problem with the rate increase. Much of the time this might be small business clients, who don’t have a huge design budget. In these cases, if it’s a long established client, I would recommend offering them a discount. This technique is a judgement call you need to make. Some of the factors you should consider are:
- Are they a good client?
- Do they pay on time?
- Are they easy to work with?
- Do they provide you with a regular stream of business?
If you answered yes to one or more of those questions, I would recommend offering them a discount. Good clients can be as hard to find as good designers. Reward your good clients by offering them a compromise. In this case everyone wins because you still get to increase your rates and you make the client happy by showing that you care enough to be flexible so you can continue doing business. As far as how much of a discount to offer, I’d recommend 10-25% off.
Well that’s it. I hope this post has been helpful for all the freelance monkeys out there. If you have any questions, or would like to share some techniques that have worked for you in the past, please leave a comment below.
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