Been referred to a $100mil+/year company any advice?

[Sharksfan]

If everyone were so lucky to score a federal contract or sub on a contract vehicle. I found out early on that you can easily get away with charging $250/hr and how they won't even blink at six figure contracts.

Pretty much this -we do it every day.

Now I read your posts and dream of tripling my income.

 

[runner0o]

First of all, Congrats on the deal! Second, they were reffered about your business by someone obvsly right? So they must be really interested in the services you provide..think about how you did it with small clients..in terms of the concept you used to deliver service..such as figuring out what they need to get done, how much time needs to get allocated in what areas..and how you are going meet your milestones..Large company would have shorter deadlines I think..so organize your work according to their specifications..I guess you need to have contingency plan too just incase you are not able to get results in time...well..what then? Develop back up plans based on that.

 

[JoseArmando]

So you were interested when the price was ostensibly high, but now that the CEO told you the other firm was "too expensive" you are not?

With all due respect - do you have ANY idea what it means when a CEO says someone was too expensive?

They do NOT mean they cost too much.

They do NOT mean the price was too high.

What they mean is that they were not seeing enough success - quantifiable or not - for whatever the price is.

I've been doing IM for 3 years. I am a total hack at it, because I also own a consulting company and that is my bread and butter and has been for 16 years.. We have between 15 and 20 employees/1099's at any given time and do about 3.5 MM in revenue a year with Fortune 500 companies and the US Federal Guv'mint.

None of the people in charge CARE how much anything costs if it brings in more revenue than it produces or solves a problem that causes scads of money to disappear. If you charge them a million per day and bring in 2 million per revenue it's no problem to them. Obviously that's a gross exaggeration but the principle is true.

Anyway, if the CEO told you the other firm was too expensive -and we are assuming this isn't some very rare family owned Fortune 1000 company like Walmart - he was testing you to see how you'd respond.

The appropriate response in that scenario is something like "What kind of value/revenue/income/sign-ups/etc do you need to make it a worthwhile investment?"

Ok get this, you're making assumptions that would be valid if my case weren't as specific. The current company that manages their social presence is paid measly $60k/year and they wanted to work with us specifically to get in for a contract that's more affordable than this. Also, AFAIK social presence is hard to quantify in terms of effectiveness like we do in direct response campaigns - maybe I'm wrong since I have no experience with clients like this.

If you read my responses from before I was cautious of getting into client management from the beginning but since it's such a big company I let it blindside me even though I hate working with clients. Maybe your ultimate motivation is cash but I simply don't operate like that. Thanks for the tips though, I'm sure you're killing it.

 

[Fiver]

Do companies ever ask what you're charging other companies for the same services? Or what they're paying you for leads if you're doing that?

And what should your answer be to these questions?

 

[rusvik]

Interrupted intercourse is the name of the game with corporations. Always some lame thing happening to stall and delay. But I guess that's why startups even have a chance.