“What’s Your Budget?” That’s typically one of the first questions most vendors (designers, writers, printers, etc) will ask when you start talking about engaging them in a creative project. I don’t know if this is a really great business strategy as they can milk the client for as much as they have available or they just don’t know how to price their services and they’re hoping the client will give them directly on this. This can be to your advantage or to your extreme disadvantage.

 Those who are savvy and secure multiple bids can get a great price. However, those who new to this can often get taken to the cleaners. Now, there’s some argument that a higher price is warranted for newbies as they need a lot of extra hand-holding through the process. But frequently, vendors go beyond what’s fair.

 When my business partner and I first started SmartsCo, we paid a fortune on designers and writers (and don’t get me started on what we paid to printers). The reason was, we didn’t really understand how to negotiate and we didn’t understand our requirements very well. But we learned quickly, and after finding a wide variety of vendors who we could negotiate with, we not only reduced our design and development costs by 40%, but also reduced our printing costs by more than 55%. For a small business, this can be the difference between success and failure.

Here are some tips we learned over time to help keep your project costs under control:

1) Create detailed requirements for your project. These will spell out your vision, scope, timeline, and other requirements (stay tuned: next week, I’ll publish an article on how to write a great scope of work)

2) Get multiple bids. You should have bids from all potential vendors for your project (and if you like one vendor’s quality better, you can ask them to meet another vendors price)

3) Never tell them your budget. Leave it up to them to figure out a fair price based on your requirements, not how much money you have.

4)  Check references. Don’t just assume references are positive if they provide you with names. Do your due diligence: talk on the phone with them, verify the references are legit businesses, Google or do a Twitter search on the business and see what people are saying about them.

5) Avoid hidden fees. Be sure you have a clear contract that outlines any hidden fees that may arise. Designers may charge you $10 for every page they print, printers may charge $1000s for proofs. Read the fine print.

Our goal is to draw out the vision and requirements for business owners and help turn their ideas into reality. If you need help getting your project going, contact us - we’re sure we can help streamline the process.

| More...