
How “We’re booked” was ruining our business - RickDT
https://bigswing.squarespace.com/blog/2013/5/13/how-were-booked-was-ruining-our-business
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patio11
One option which is more constructive than "We're booked, let me exit from
this conversation" is "We find ourselves in very high demand at the moment.
Can I interest you in an offering which isn't the partners personally
delivering this entire engagement?" That could be the partners doing e.g. a
design/wireframe and then the client shopping that out (or the partners doing
so), a training engagement, a product offering ("I have no availability in
December to write an email campaign for you for $20k, but you can have me tell
your team all about the campaign they could write for you, it will only cost
you $2k, and you can keep the video"), or (at the waaaaaay low end of
engagement) just sign them up for an email list to have you stay as their top-
of-mind team on your problem space.

There's a few other options, too. There is no zeronary
Consultancy#are_we_booked? method. It's ternary:
Consultancy#are_we_booked?(price, schedule, scope). _For a price_ you can
virtually always take on a new client starting tomorrow. (I mean, you can't
physically be on two continents at once, but if you're scheduled in New York
one week and a client in Germany wants the same week, if they're willing to
pay 5X what New York is, then you call New York and say "Hey guys, have I got
a proposition for you: how about we delay this engagement N weeks and in
return I'll discount 20% off the invoice.")

You probably retain scheduling flexibility with clients unless they pay extra
to get scheduling predictability (p.s. ask Thomas about this in more detail,
it's a great hack), so if you're scheduled above 80% and a lucrative gig comes
in, you might be able bump everything back N weeks without blowing any windows
even without having to renegotiate things, especially if you are capable of
hiring and ramping someone in that time. That is, of course, the ultimate
consultancy scaling mechanism.

P.S. In parallel with any, all, or none of the above advice, if you find
yourself above 80% utilization, raise rates.

~~~
nobodysfool
If you are at the point where you are so busy working on your backlog that you
can't build up your backlog, it might be worth it to pay a 'technical sales'
person to build your backlog for you, and set expectations with the clients.

~~~
tocomment
Would it be a full time employee? Where would you find such a person? How does
a technical person who doesn't know much about sales evaluate potential hires?

~~~
msellout
I think the first step is to sell yourself to learn about sales. Then you'll
know enough to hire someone. You find that person the same way you find
clients.

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tptacek
This is the fundamental challenge of all professional services businesses. It
has a name: "Feast or Famine".

Raise your rates.

Another thing that is true of many professional services businesses: clients
_hate_ it when you say "No", and unless they have a process in place to
balance work across multiple vendors, will prefer vendors that reliably say
"Yes" to all their project requests.

Good luck, welcome to the big leagues.

~~~
RickDT
This was the biggest "oh crap, what did we do to ourselves?" moment.
Effectively saying "no" took us off those people's radars permanently.

~~~
graeme
Have you tried recontacting them? A lot of people are open to a sincere mea
culpa announcing a policy change. I suspect you'll win back more than 0% of
those clients, on good terms.

~~~
svmegatron
This is great advice, AND it dovetails nicely with the advice I've been seeing
here a lot lately: send more email to prospective customers :-)

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pud
In my experience freelancing, if you say "yes" to all new clients instead of
"no" -- even if you're too busy and feel guilty for taking work you think you
can't do -- you find a way.

When it happened to me, I went from solo freelancer to hiring 6 full-time
engineers, which essentially means I created an agency.

It was great. The only challenge then, was convincing clients who'd hired me
specially, that "someone _else_ from my team may work on it, but the quality
will be just as high."

The worst-case scenario: If you take on too much work, you may end up
delivering late. Usually not the end of the world. But if that's not an
option, you'll still manage to find a way.

~~~
RickDT
This is the mindset we're trying to adopt now. Say yes, because too much work
is a much better problem than not enough work.

~~~
random42
This might be the wrong lesson to take. You CANNOT deliver quality work if you
are over booked. To me, it looks like you need to raise your rates, not accept
more work at the current rates, it wont be sustainable.

~~~
StavrosK
Well, it depends. I'm fully booked myself, but I hired a good programmer to
take on another project. He's not as experienced but is a very fast learner
(also he's diligent), so with a few minutes of extra work per day, I managed
not to shut the door to am opportunity, and the deliverable is turning out
very well indeed.

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timgl
I used to work for a wordpress shop. All these other shops we're basically
just a one-man show, but the one I worked for was flourishing, with 12
employees. When I asked why, the director explained that they used to only do
business development when they didn't had clients, and stopped doing it when
they did. The moment they hired a full-time sales manager, whom was doing
business development constantly, the business thrived and grew faster than all
the other shops.

This is another viewpoint to the same morale in the article...

~~~
cosmie
Another benefit of hiring a (good) sales manager is that they have mastered
walking this tightrope and know how to prioritize client requests and set
expectations, both for clients (timelines) and you (expected capacity).

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JangoSteve
For what it's worth, we've been in the same position lately of being pretty
booked up, but we took the approach they're suggesting from the beginning.

No matter how busy we are, I never say "no" to an opportunity to talk or sit
down to coffee with new people, whether they be a potential client or just
someone seeking advice. I'll even go through the discovery phase and
estimate/quote out their project, and only after the quote do I bring up our
timeline. Most of the time, they are fine with the timeline (though I've
always found a way to make it sooner than "next year", usually a few months
out at most). If they need it doen sooner, then I'll find a way to get it done
with our partners by sub-contracting. The rest have been fine with that. If
they weren't, then I'd simply help them find someone else who can do it.

It's worked pretty well so far. But I can attest, it is very hard to go talk
with someone for an hour when you know there's actual work you should be
doing. I feel the same way though when I'm doing taxes or keeping our books.
They have to be done. You just do it anyway.

~~~
nthj
> I'll even go through the discovery phase and estimate/quote out their
> project

I've started charging for this process. Partly because otherwise I'd spend all
my time consulting for free, partly because it's a huge value add to their
business, and partly one-to-many "oh great, thanks for estimating this. I took
it to your competitor and now they're willing to underbid you by $5K because
all the hard work is done for them." scenarios.

~~~
JangoSteve
That's a very good point. We haven't had the problem of them taking our quotes
to our competitors very often. We've had several people who took our quotes to
our competitors, they undercut the quote, but then they ended up choosing us
anyway even at the higher price, almost always because we "inspire more
confidence than anyone else" in our ability to execute.

That being said, it usually only takes us another couple hours to quote a
project once we've gotten to that stage, and we have started billing for it
when it seems like it will take longer, or if they want more detail or
revisions.

------
programminggeek
It seems like the bigger problem they will have in their business is that they
are going to be continuously busy "doing work" instead of "building the
business". Such is the way of consulting. If you can't take on more work by
hiring more people, then you can't scale. If you can't scale beyond the team
you have, you haven't created a business, you've created a job.

There's nothing wrong with creating a job for yourself, but know that it's not
the same as a business even if you call yourself a business.

~~~
patio11
_If you can't scale beyond the team you have, you haven't created a business,
you've created a job._

This meme has little entanglement with reality. A one-man consultancy's chief
concerns are almost entirely alien to a W-2 employee's chief concerns: as a
W-2 employee your chief economic objectives are work-performance, as a
consultancy your chief economic objectives are almost certainly external to
the actual delivery of your professional skills. A one-man consultancy can
unilaterally offer themselves a pay-raise of 25%+ every 6 months if market
conditions support it; this happens in vanishingly few salaried jobs. A one-
man consultancy can build intellectual and other forms of capital which are
absurdly portable; this is possible as a salaried employee but their access to
capital formation is markedly inferior. (For example, it is exceptionally
difficult as a salaried employee to licitly walk away with your employer's
take on your core job function and then implement it for competitors. That's
pretty much the default in consultancies, and deviating from it costs the
client extra money.) A consultancy has significant work-related expenses in a
way that a salaried employee does not. A consultancy has a vastly more
complicated tax, compliance, insurance/risk-mitigation, etc etc, situation
than a similarly situated employee.

Perhaps most relevant to someone who thinks headcount is the only meaningful
way to scale things: a consultancy, even a one-man consultancy, even a one-man
consultancy which outside observers believe is impossible of maturity required
to scale, _has a permanent call option on growing headcount_.

------
nthj
"We're booked until the end of the year" sounds suspiciously like "We're not
charging enough money."

~~~
wvenable
Charging more money doesn't create more time, especially if you're already
solidly booked.

Now it's great to quote a really high rate when you're totally booked because
there is almost no risk but then it can be challenge when the client then
accepts it.

~~~
Moto7451
I believe his point is you shouldn't find yourself in that situation in the
first place.

~~~
wvenable
Wouldn't that require the ability to predict the future.

------
phirschybar
We've been overbooked for years and while it can be very stressful at times it
is of course better than having no work. The reality is that we sometimes come
in late on delivery but in the end our clients like us, stick with us and
refer us because they like our work and the end-product is good.

Two points I would add to the discussion are:

1) that in addition, or in lieu of raising rates consider lengthening the
project time-line. You can often push a project out further in time which both
softens the expectations and gives you more time to deliver quality and deal
with more iterations.

2) to take the time to feel out the client. If you are really in demand and
becoming overbooked the LAST thing you want is a terrible client who can
potential swamp your resources. Work only with people who will respect you and
your team and never settle on this even if it means you can make more money.
It can be worth the extra 2 or 3 meetings before a work agreement to see if
you will have a productive relationship before committing to the project.
Being over-busy is a great opportunity to be picky about the projects you
decide to take on.

------
ziko
You were basically being cocky saying: "We're doing fine without you and we
don't want to work for you."

That's not how business works.

------
jvictor118
"We're booked" saved my business. I was taking on too much business and
finally decided to make a waitlist. I would tell people what # they'd be on
the list and about how long it would take until delivery. That way I was still
adding about 50% of the prospects to the list, since they didn't mind waiting.
Had I not done this, I would've risked all my clients -- and my reputation.

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howeyc
You need to charge enough of a overhead that you can afford to have a person
or two that can handle all the impromptu calls, feeler emails, coffee
meetings, etc.

------
Macsenour
When I signed a new game developer I always asked them, how do you "mind the
gap?" The gap between projects is much harder for game devs than making a
game. If I look back at all the devs, the ones that are gone had no gap
financing.

Don't ever stop Biz Dev even if your publisher LOVES you.

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CodeCube
This is 100% the reason that I haven't jumped on the independent contractor
wagon. I know that's probably not considered very ambitious ... but I just
know that I'm not the kind of person that can focus on bizdev while at the
same time busy with shipping software.

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yason
It's not about saying "yes" or "no" per se but the terms of a "yes": "We have
time for your project after the summer. If you want it sooner, I can look if
that could be arranged but I'm afraid it's going to cost you quite a bit."

------
jamesjguthrie
I did exactly this last year and ended up with no new for January-March. It
was a terrible idea and I'm now operating with the 'Open for Business' mindset
too.

