How can I tell early whether a client can pay my rates?
You can tell early by asking what's already been spent and who owns the outcome, because both answers reveal whether the problem has a budget behind it. An organization that has never funded work in this area is a longer, riskier conversation than one that funded it badly last year.
Four things worth knowing before you're deep into a proposal:
- Has this problem been paid for before? Previous spending, even on something that failed, means the money exists and the need is recognized.
- Who is accountable if it stays broken? A named person with a stake moves faster than a committee with an interest.
- Is it on somebody's list for this quarter? A problem scheduled for next year is a relationship, not an opportunity.
- Is there anyone to carry out the work? Great recommendations die in organizations with nobody to execute them, and that failure gets remembered as your failure.
None of that requires you to interrogate anyone. It comes out of a normal conversation about what they've tried, which is where the questions you ask on a first call earn their keep.
What do I do when a client needs my help and can't afford me?
When a client needs your help and can't afford you, say no kindly and give them something useful on the way out. Wanting to help somebody doesn't mean you have to bend your business to do it, and stretching to serve a client who can't pay you damages both of you.
Why bending is worse than saying no
Louis Vuitton doesn't feel bad that some people can't shop in their store. The people who can shop there are their clients, and that's the whole arrangement. When you discount hard to make an unaffordable engagement work, you take on the full delivery risk at a fraction of the value, and you resent it by month three. Your client feels that. It's the worst version of the work you're capable of.
What to do instead:
- Point them to a resource, a smaller version of the work, or a colleague whose practice fits their budget.
- Tell them plainly what the work costs and leave the door open for later.
- Keep your fee where it was, because a discount here becomes the price you defend on the next one, and negotiating without dropping your price is much harder after you've moved it once.
Does company size decide whether they can pay?
Company size is a much weaker predictor than consultants assume, and plenty of midsize organizations pay more readily than large ones with heavier procurement. The consultants I work with sign contracts anywhere from $2,500 to $250,000, mostly with midsize companies, plus some large companies and some sizable nonprofits. The variation inside each of those groups is enormous.
What predicts payment better:
| Looks like it predicts budget | Predicts it better |
|---|
| Headcount and revenue | Whether the problem already has money assigned |
| An impressive brand name | Who is accountable for the outcome |
| Being a big organization | Whether anyone is there to carry out the work |
| Having lots of departments | Whether the problem is urgent this quarter |
The insurance client I mention often is the clean example. She wrote copy for insurance companies of every size, and her marker had nothing to do with size: there had to be at least one or two people doing marketing, because otherwise nothing she wrote got used. Small agencies with a marketing person were better clients than larger ones without.
Why does the same rate get a yes from one client and a no from another?
The same rate gets different answers because the two organizations rank the problem differently, and price is always judged against the cost of leaving the problem alone. Nothing about your number changed between those two conversations.
I teach this as the difference between a Painkiller and a vitamin. A vitamin is good for you, worth doing sometime, easy to defer when the quarter gets busy. A Painkiller is the thing keeping somebody up at night, and Painkillers get budget. When your work is positioned as a nice-to-have, your rate looks expensive at any level, because it's being compared against doing nothing.
So when you hear that your rate is too high, check three things before you assume the number is wrong:
- Whether the problem you named is one they were already worried about.
- Whether the person you're talking to owns the outcome or is passing it upward.
- Whether the value of solving it was ever made concrete, which is what pricing the value of the work to your client is for.
Most of the time the number is fine and the framing did the damage.
Leah's take
I talk to a lot of women who are trying to make it work with a client who can't afford them. The client needs the help badly. The consultant can see exactly what to do. So she carves the scope down, quotes something she can barely deliver on, and hopes it turns into something bigger.
I want to be careful here, because that instinct comes from being good at this work and caring about the outcome. It's generous. It also isn't a business decision, and it's the fastest route to resenting a client who did nothing wrong.
Here's the line I hold with my clients: needing your help does not meet the criteria of being your ideal client. Those are two separate facts. Somebody can have a real problem you're perfectly suited to solve and still be the wrong client for you this year.
And when you skip that criterion, the pressure lands on your price. You end up competing on tactics with whoever will do it cheapest, which is a race to the bottom, and the only way out of that race is not to enter it. Put the fee criterion on your list, keep it there when someone sympathetic shows up, and send them something helpful instead.
