We really try and go the extra mile for our clients. I have, on occasion, driven in to the airport to pickup producers and artist for sessions here (RT 40+ miles) and most people reward that kind of service with repeat business. We also give our clients a lot of value added services when they do mastering with us and that too has paid off well.
We just did some voice over work for the History Channel and the American Symphony Orchestra which was a lot of fun plus they were blown away with our hospitality and facilities and plan to use us again in the future. They paid us our normal rates without a fuss and were really GREAT people to work with.
This is the kind of business I run and the kind of businesses we like to work with.
What somewhat pisses me off is the local "talent" that never seems to have any money and are always crying poor mouth even when they arrive here in their Audis and BMWs. We try and give them the best deals we can and they still want us to cave in and give them "better" deals.
I have done exactly what others are suggesting and have told these potential clients that they should find someone else who will do what they want at our quality level for what they want to spend and of course there is no such operation around here so they come back and try to "bargain" down our rates. Just in the past three weeks I have people calling me offering me $15.00 per hour for my time since they were broke, I had someone ask me to do their mastering for free for the experience (?????) and I had one gentlemen ask me to basically dummy up an invoice to the production company for our normal rates while he wanted to pay me what amounted to minimum wage and when I refused he got VERY ugly.
As to qualifying clients. Some clients talk a good line on the phone and when they show up they say completely the opposite of what they said on the phone. I had one guy that was all gung ho to have us do his mastering for our normal rates but when he showed up he immediately tried to get us to do the mastering for 1/3 of our normal rates saying that the recording and the CD release party were really expensive and he did not have the money to afford our normal rates. I told him that I understood completely BUT that he knew coming in what it was going to cost and that is exactly what we would be charging him.
As I said earlier. I am no longer letting this get to me since I have learned over the years and from some help here on this web forum that people will do what they want to do when they want to do it and I have no control over any decisions they make. So I tell them what we can do for the amount they want to spend and if it is agreeable to them I do the mastering. If it is not agreeable to them then they are welcome to find someone else.
Peace!
