The Perils of Experience IV: Working More & More for Less & Less

In recent posts, I've talked about how one learns, after perhaps decades of consulting or subcontracting, to very quickly size up familiar situations, and their predictable outcomes, with new clients. Perhaps a client is bewildered by a new need or confusing circumstances, but you recognize it as quite similar to problems you have solved for clients in the past.

Your experience gives you a sort of 'direct perception' of the client's situation, the roles of the various players involved, and the way things are likely to play out. You can probably predict not only how you will end up addressing their needs, but even some of the most likely bumps you will encounter along the way.

The "perils of experience" I mentioned previously mostly had an impact on the client. When you don't let the client work through the process, or you jump too quickly to the conclusion that this new client's situation is just like others you've handled, your client can be shortchanged.

But being "shortchanged" is exactly the peril the freelancer faces, if you are not careful to think about pricing with this experience in mind.

The risk is that as you become more and more efficient, you'll be spending less and less time on these projects . . . and producing less and less revenue. (If you're afraid to raise rates when appropriate, or to charge for fair value, read no further.)

If you have accumulated the experience (and learned from it!) to recognize both problems and solutions more quickly than a rookie, you should be charging higher rates for your time. Combined with your increased efficiency, this can still produce savings for your client -- but don't let the client take all the savings out of your pocket!

Here's what happens. A rookie can do a certain task in 15 hours. It is not at all inconceivable that, with a couple of decades of experience (my case), you could perform that same task in only 10 hours.

If you charge the same rate as you did when you started out, you'll now be producing a better product for the client, faster, and getting paid one-third less to do it! And don't imagine that you can just use that time to book more work and make up the difference. First, time doesn't work that way, and second, why should you have to find more clients and work more time just because you do a better job than someone who doesn't know what you do?

Keep in mind that your experience usually saves the client money and resources. I know that when I work on a writing project, for example, clients soon discover that they need fewer reviews by fewer people, and they often end up cancelling meetings they thought they would need when they started the project. Plus the final product is simply more effective than rookies can produce, no matter how much time they put into it.

So I charge more per unit of work, but do the work faster. The client's expenses are not much different from what they would pay to have someone work at a lower rate, but put in a lot more time, and their internal costs (staff time, etc.) are much lower.

In effect, we share the savings my experience and efficiency bring to the project. But don't even think of asking me to hand all of the savings over to the client. I provide additional value and benefits, due to all I've learned from many previous clients, and I charge for it.