Re: Should I still charge a kill fee in this instance?

[Mike Cohen] "If you charge by the project, you charge enough that the client can work on their schedule and you are compensated enough to not worry about cancellations.

If a client cancels on me, I get to spend that time doing something for myself (learning), for my business (marketing) or for another customer who will be happy to see their next deliverable a day sooner."

I added some boldface to Mike's quote because it nailed my own view on this.


1) The only clients of mine who charged hourly were lawyers, and they KNEW they were constantly angling. Talking on the phone while driving allowed them to charge twice for the same minutes. Their clients might not have witnessed this double billing, but every one of them understood that incremental billing always worked in the lawyer's favor.

Other than them, none of my clients earned their own livings hourly. None of their secretaries got paid hourly. Their electricians and dock hands were all on salary. Even waiters worked on tips, not unlike the commission that their salespeople worked on. The only people in their sphere who worked hourly were the cleaning staff and temps.

Shifting away from hourly billing completely changed the dynamic of my client relationships. It established that I wasn't a hireling. Working as one professional to another, I found that the client tried harder to keep up their end of the deal. Work got done more quickly, with fewer hassles.

b) I thought of cancellations kind of like snow days. You still have to go to school for the same number of days, but an unexpected cancellation FEELS like a vacation....even if there's a ton of stuff to do.

My top things to do during cancellations, in order: banking/post office/shopping; chatting up/buying lunch for prospects; working on my tan. Downtime can be your friend.

Third, no first-time clients got any grief for me for anything. We have no relationship yet. The project hadn't begun.

And once the relationship/project got started, there was no upside in being the one to turn the thing into a line-item hassle.

Why? Because once you start line-iteming, incrementalizing, minutely detailing your billing, you give them permission to do the exact same thing back to you.

In other words, the level of detail of your billing is directly proportional to the number of things they get to argue with you about.

Don't open this door if you don't want to go allllll the way through it.