September 4, 2020
How To Ask For Payment Professionally & Ensure You Get Paid | Webinar Recap
There are two essential things every web professional should know how to do exceedingly well. The first is your primary job — SEO, design, copywriting, development, etc. Whatever it is, you should constantly strive to improve and expand on your chosen skill set. The second is how to ask for payment professionally in a way that ensures you will, in fact, get paid.
It’s the latter and more universal of the two that Duda VP of Content & Product Marketing Chris Carfi and HoneyBook Customer Success Manager Mac Hughes focused on in our recent joint webinar, “How to Make Sure You Get Paid.”
Here is a brief summary of the best practices we covered for how to ask for payment professionally:
- Use a contract
- Accept online payments
- Ask for a retainer
- Set up recurring payments
- Send reminders
- Manage clients with email templates
- And now that the table is set, let’s dig into the details of our recap…
USE A CONTRACT
According to Freelancers Union, 71% of freelancers struggle to collect payment for work at least once in the course of their career. However, there are some steps you can take to keep from being counted among them. Perhaps the most important of which is to use a contract.
A contract lays out the bounds of the professional relationship between you and your customer. A good contract will outline payment structures, timelines and responsibilities for all stakeholders involved with a project. Be sure to have a signed copy of the contract before you start any work.
For a good head start on creating a professional contract between you and your customers, check out the contract templates provided by HoneyBook.
ACCEPT ONLINE PAYMENTS
In this day and age, who wants to wait for a paper check in the mail when you can get paid right away online? Solution providers like Honeybook enable creative entrepreneurs and freelancers to book clients, manage projects and get paid at scale — all in one place online.
Here are a few of the benefits a solution like HoneyBook will bring to your business:
Industry-leading invoicing & payment capabilities
Centralized management of client communications in one place
Automation of repetitive tasks
Read-receipts that show you when your client has viewed your invoice
Complete control over the platform to ensure your brand is front and center
When shopping for a solution that allows you to accept payments online, it’s important to work with a platform that doesn’t have exceedingly high fees. A 3% transaction fee is considered the industry standard, so just bear that in mind before selecting a specific tool to incorporate into your business operations.
ASK FOR A RETAINER
It’s never a bad idea to ensure that your customer has as much skin in the game as you do. Negotiating a retainer is one of the most effective ways to do this. A retainer allows you to collect money upfront in the form of a non-refundable payment before you start any work.
A good rule of thumb is to ask for 33% of the project total for larger projects and 50% for smaller projects. Asking for money before you have even started working may seem a little forward, but just remember that you are providing a valuable service and most clients will understand this is totally normal at the beginning of a professional relationship.
SET UP RECURRING PAYMENTS
Question: What’s better than getting paid once?
Answer: Getting paid again and again!
Setting up a recurring payment schedule at the beginning of your professional relationship ensures that you have a stable source of revenue from the client and they can plan out their payments ahead of time.
Here are a few ways to set up a recurring payment schedule:
Installments based on project milestones you decide — e.g. 25% due after phase 1, 25% due after phase 2
Installments based on how long the project is estimated to take and bill each month — e.g. 3 payments for 60-day project (one-third down [non-refundable], one-third at 30 days, one-third at 60 days)
For engagements billed hourly, bill every 2 weeks until the end of the project
Again, a solution like HoneyBook makes the process of setting up recurring payments incredibly easy, so don’t be afraid to lean on a technology solution to help you put a structure in place.
SEND REMINDERS
Like most people, your customers most likely lead busy lives. Even the most attentive people may occasionally forget about an upcoming obligation or payment due date, so it never hurts to send out gentle reminders to your customers.
Reminder messages are a great tool for ensuring there are no surprises for anyone involved in the project and most customers will see them as a professional courtesy.
MANAGE CLIENTS WITH EMAIL TEMPLATES
Collecting payments can eat up a lot of your time if your operation is set up to manage the process at scale. Creating or working with email templates with information about payment structures, contracts, timelines and more can go a long way towards ensuring you’re not spending too much of your time trying to get paid.
These emails don’t need to be overly-detailed and have the same rigid language you would use in a contract. Remembering this is part of your customer’s communication with your brand, so keeping these templates as friendly and personable as possible is highly recommended.
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