You Wanna Be A Timeshare? Or Earn Client Loyalty?
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- They may want to be certain that you are setting aside capacity on their behalf, ready to be used at any point, with a real reservation. By the way, time is not a renewable resource, so dispense with this notion of rolling unused time forward. And of course you might not want to be selling hours, regardless.
- Some of the work that you do requires time to grow. You can make instant oatmeal with water and heat, but you can't plant an oat seed, pour water on it, and expect to harvest oat right away. An arrangement like this sets expectations appropriately and ensures that the client is serious.
"We only have a specific number of slots on our roster, and we usually prefer to reserve them for clients who are looking for a deeper relationship. This billing arrangement helps us manage staffing, outlays, and workflow. We'll sometimes slide a project or two in when we have the capacity, but that's an exception to the way we normally do things."
So both sides of this argument have merit. But let's not:- Try to keep bad clients around.
- Burn bridges with punitive policies.
- Passively-aggressively work out our emotional frustrations and hurt, masked as corporate policies.