Bad Prospect!

On the surface it looked good. A phone call came in asking if I “knew of any software”. I wrote my own application to solve a similar problem.

We had a meeting downtown and a demonstration. I sent an email.

There followed two short emails and two long (up to 5 minute) voice-mails, which I dutifully transcribed to a document so that I had a permanent text record of what was said.

Then this morning a 70-minute phone call from the prospect dithering about whether they should do it themselves, and whether the project warranted one, possibly two meetings to establish a few facts and lay out some specifications.

To date I have spent 8.20 hours on this project, with no sign of any revenue being promised.

I quoted a low rate for the two meetings, and assuming they go ahead and I spend two hours writing up both meetings, my billing rate drops to $30 per hour.

This for a project that will reduce their estimated costs from about $80,000 p.a. to about $8,000 p.a. (I will reduce a 60-minute job to a 1-minute job).

I am glad that I track my time, phone calls, travel, writing, because it lets me see this prospect as a not-very-serious about values prospect.

If they feel OK about burning my time thus far, they aren’t going to care about my time in the future, and they certainly don’t value it at this stage.

Talk to Me !