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Just realized I've been pricing retainers wrong for 3 years, and it took a lawn guy to show me
My lawn guy came by on Tuesday and told me he's switching to a flat monthly rate instead of charging per visit, so he gets paid in January when nothing grows. I run a small agency out of Sacramento and I've been billing every client hourly for 3 years, which means every slow week hits my bank account right away. I sat down that night and looked at my numbers, and my two best clients would have paid me about $2,400 more this year on a flat rate. Now I'm wondering how many other owners here have made that switch, and did it ever blow up in your face with a client who felt like they were overpaying in a quiet month?
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vera_roberts6d ago
Flat rate billing sounds great in theory, but the math you did has a hidden trap. Those two clients might have paid $2,400 more this year, but that only works if they say yes to the new deal and stay for the full year. A client who feels burned in a slow month will leave, and then you're not just missing the $200 in January, you're missing the whole year. In my experience, the fix is to keep some kind of floor under the flat rate, like a minimum monthly retainer plus extra for big projects, so the client still sees value in the slow weeks. Otherwise you swap one cash flow problem for a client retention problem, and that one is worse.
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