Background

Although our services are reasonably price, they may still seem somewhat high to someone new to the field of quality iPhone app development. We’ve generally not had a problem with this, as we’ve usually had more work than we could really handle. Unfortunately, recent economic issues have made people extremely cost- and risk-averse, and we’re starting to lose more business than we really feel comfortable with.

Normally what we do is look at the work people want done, figure out a reasonable amount of time to do it, plug in our usual rate ($125/hour) and present the customer with a fixed bid for the entire project. At this point, people usually either move ahead with us to start the work, or simply cut and run because they feel that they can’t afford us.

We usually make an effort to close the loop with these people, and most of the time what we hear is “we went with someone less expensive.” More than one of these customers come back later and asked us to fix a product that the lower bidder made a complete mess of.

Have people lost the ability to haggle?

In agreeing on a price point, someone has to draw an initial line in the sand. For us, that’s our initial, flat bid. This is how much money we want to make. We’re not going to ask for less, because it’s what we think is a fair cost for the work we’re going to have to do.

We will, however, consider a counteroffer.

We often write particularly interesting customers back and, once we’ve established that they want us to do the work but feel that they can’t afford us, we’ve invited them to tell us what their actual budget is to see if we can find some happy middle ground.

Last week this happened with several customers, and when we contacted one of them and mentioned that we would have considered a counteroffer, they were quite despondent about it. They hadn’t realized it was an option, and would have definitely preferred to work with us over the company they went with.

Tell us what your budget is

If you think our bid is expensive, tell us what your budget is for the work, and if we can find a middle ground, perhaps we can make things work out after all. But if you walk away, we can’t do anything.

We will always entertain a counteroffer – but we may not always accept them – it depends on our own workload and how interested we are in doing the project. But if you think you’d like to work with us, and the price is too high, it’s always worth it to give it a shot.

Conclusion

Our work is worth what we charge for it, but we can work on a sliding scale if the project strikes as as particularly interesting. Above all, if you’re going to go with someone else, or are thinking about it, tell us why. It’s a more professional way of handling the situation, and it gives us all a chance to work things out.

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