Getting Paid for Your Smarts: Creating Lucrative Consulting Retainer Contracts For Management Consulting Firms That Want to Leverage Their Work by Getting Paid for Access to Their Brainpower

Dear Colleague,

Have you had enough of labour-intensive retainer contracts in which you have been regarded as a part-time labourer?

Consulting Retainer agreements can be very effective for your clients and very lucrative to you if you set them up correctly.

Sadly, for most consultants consulting retainer agreements mean a certain amount hours of pre-paid manual labour.

That is called conventional wisdom and common sense, but since we know that common sense is for common people, and most common people are miserable, unhealthy and broke, let's follow some uncommon sense here for a moment.

There is one caveat though. Here we are talking about making some good money without doing any manual labour type work. So, if you have a hard time to accept some serious money for what is between your ears, the message on this page will either piss you right off to the extent that you may have a go at your computer with a pickaxe, or you regard it as something valuable and even consider changing the way you set up your retainer contracts.

Personally I believe buyers use consultants for what they know, not for what they do in the form of manual labour.

In the cartoon strip Family Circus by Bill Kaine, a little boy, maybe six years old, is holding his homework out to his mother. She looks at him, a bit annoyed, and says, "You misunderstand. I'm a homework consultant, not a homework subcontractor." That is, she can work with him to get the homework done, but she won't do it for him. She would be doing a great disservice for her boy by doing the homework for him.

Also remember the Great American Radical, Saul Alinsky's Iron Law for consultants: "Don't ever do nothing for nobody that they can do for themselves."

Since so many consulting firms have positioned themselves as "let me do it for you" handymen and handywomen, they have an ethical conflict for receiving money for their applied brainpower.

However, you must feel at ease with the fact that your value to your clients lies in access to your brainpower. If you mismanage this baby, your clients end up demanding your being physically on site whenever they need you and once you are there and get paid anyway, why don't you clean the toilets as well?

So, let's look at some conditions for consulting retainer gigs, and end the madness about pre-paid manual labour once and for all.

Just to emphasise what I mean by messy and financially limiting retainer agreements, here are some horror stories I have collected from the web. Just see how badly misinformed most consultants are about retainer contracts, and how badly they position themselves as competitively-priced hourly labourers. I hope these examples can serve as the proverbial 2 by 4 hitting you on the forehead, realising that you too can improve your ways of dispensing wisdom.

So, here are some retarded examples:

"The fee for the retainer package as described above is $750.00 a month plus postage/shipping and other supplies (such as padded envelopes) as needed. This package includes 10 hours a month of support."

"The work of XXXXXX XXXXXXX is charged at the rate of $195 per hour, plus costs. You must deposit an initial retainer of $2,500 before we do any work."

"All work will be charged against the retainer and be billed at an hourly rate of $165 per hour. You will be billed at this rate anytime we work on your project, including but not limited to time spent on writing, re-viewing and editing documents, researching, preparing or responding to requests for information, telephone calls, meetings with other experts, travel time from the office and return, any waiting time, etc."

What do you see here? These folks charge either for manual labour (detrimental to you) or for silly activities, like travelling time, which pisses off the client. The problem is that they are talking in terms of features, not benefits or value. Why would anyone sign such a retarded agreement?

The big problem is that most consultants set up their retainer agreements as pre-paid hourly agreement at an agreed rate that is drawn against as billable time increases.

But that's insane.

A retainer contract is (or ought to be) a collaborative process in which you get compensated for access to your smarts, talents and accumulated experience from the trenches for a specific period of time, so your client doesn't have to "figure it out", but you are available to answer questions.

It is like a library. You go when you have unanswered questions. Librarians won't chase you and offer you help. It is up to you to seek help.

If You Want to Be Perceived Differently, You Must Reinvent the Proverbial Wheel...

...starting with the 10 main criteria for retainer contracts. Four of them are...

1. Your value to the client lies in having access to your talents regardless of the number of working hours and personal appearance at the client's office.
2. Specify in advance who exactly has access to you. If more than one person, then drastically increase your fees.
3. Always require full payment for a specific time frame. If you allow instalment payments, start the program only after the full fee has been paid.
4. Establish boundaries for your engagements. The client has access to your knowledge and that is all. You can put in some personal face time when you see fit, but make sure clients don't demand you to show up "to deserve" your fees. You are a consultant not a professional visitor.
5. Plus six more...

There are two important considerations for timing your gigs. If you get them wrong, you end up with a drawn out painful and pretty labour-intensive process.

You Can Use Ten Great Ways of Creating High Value Retainer Contracts...

Four of them are...

1. Clearly define who has access to you and how. A retainer contract is not about offering instant and constant access for the whole world.
2. Request direct access to your clients without gatekeepers, secretaries and other low-level flunkies.
3. Be careful with promises. This is not a project. You are totally out of control, thus you cannot guarantee outcomes (which you should never do anyway), for it is the client who makes the final decision)
4. Push back if you have to. If the client wants a sympathetic friend, s/he can buy a dog. You are there to help the client, even if there is pain involved (almost always). Risk the relationship because this process also filters out inappropriate clients. if you are a hard-arse, tough-as-nail of a consultant (like me), wimps won't tolerate your approach regardless of how helpful it is.

So What Else Will You Discover from This New Creating Lucrative Consulting Retainers Booklet?

You learn...

• How to manage your retainer contracts
• How to market your retainer contracts
• How to educate clients on working with a service professional
• How to craft options, so you empower buyers
• How to craft a successful consulting retainer agreement - sample included

There is a lot of good stuff written about retainer contracts. They are good in a way, but many of them are financially limiting and labour intensive for consultants and limited in value for clients.

However, if you have done a great initial interview and your prospects are sincere people (no tyre kickers), then they prospects should be naturally inspired to take action to bridge the gap between the existing situation and the future they have told you about during the interview.

Order now and learn how to rejection proof your proposals and keep your life free from freeloaders, tyre-kickers and plate-lickers who just want to pick your brain free.

Creating Lucrative Retainer Engagements may hold the answers you have been seeking on your journey from transforming your consulting work to something less labour-intensive for you but more valuable for your clients.

So, if your firm is grappling with some abused retainer agreements where you work too much for too little, then treat yourself to "Order now your copy of Getting Paid for Your Smarts: Creating Lucrative Retainer Engagements"

You receive the product as soon as your payment is verified and accepted. The product is a PDF document and an MP3 audio file. Buy it at ClickBank. Your investment is $39.95US. Clickbank now handles Paypal payments as well.