Pricing help required

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Gerard Meszaros

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Jun 10, 2020, 1:17:14 PM6/10/20
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It's been incredibly quiet on this e-mail list of late. I hope everyone is just so busy moving their business life online that they haven't had any time for chatter here. ;-) Or maybe you are all just chillaxing with your families enjoying a well-deserved break from business travel?

A serious question for you all. I have a client in China that is having me do a "virtual" equivalent of an onsite presentation. They call it a "course" but it's only a half day. The topic is "Strategies for Refactoring Legacy Code." It will be based heavily on presentation material from my "Testing for Developers" course that I normally deliver over 2 or 3 days. 

They have asked me to record the presentation part of it (up to 2.5 hours) so that they can add Chinese subtitles so the non-English speakers can follow along. They will schedule  the showing internally and we'll do a 1 hour Q&A live right afterwards. We've agreed on a price for the one session.

They have now asked me how much I would charge if they put it up on their internal website for up to a year so that their 10,000 employees can view it.  How would I come up with a price for this? It's a reasonable request and I appreciate that are asking and prepared pay and not just do it without asking.

My past experience with a large Chinese company involved "coaching" a 500 person team! So they were really trying to maximize the "value" they got for the money they were spending. Of course, Gerry Wienberg's "Law of Raspberry Jam" says that spreading it that thin isn't very effective at transferring knowledge.

My naive thinking is,

  • I don't want to be greedy but my business is to deliver training so this is essentially giving away my service.
  • Maybe it would lead to other training work, but maybe it wouldn't.
  • "Hmmm, 10,000 people, $1 each seems like a, how about $10,000?"
  • Given they will already have the recording, they could just put it up on thier website without paying if they think the price is too high.

How much would you charge? And what factors would you take into account?

Thanks,

Gerard

Yves Hanoulle

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Jun 10, 2020, 1:36:50 PM6/10/20
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a few crazy idea's:

- I like your 1 dollar per person, yet that really depends on how many people look at it
maybe 1 dollar per view + maximum of xx.000 dollar

- make sure the video contains your contact details at the end

- ask a testimonial per video in return from a C person / series of people
- ask an introduction to another company
- make sure you can use the video yourself (aka that the copyright stays with you)
- upload the video on your own youtube channel and let them embed that one
so you keep the traffic 













Op wo 10 jun. 2020 om 19:17 schreef Gerard Meszaros <gmka...@gmail.com>:
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                Michael Hill

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                Jun 10, 2020, 2:25:26 PM6/10/20
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                I also like $1 per, but why maximum? I'd be inclined to say $1 per and a minimum of $3,000 or something.

                BTW, Huawei once wanted to tape one of my sessions for this purpose, too, but wanted to do it without payment. When I spoke without mention numbers of figuring out how to price it, they decided not to do it. So you're a step ahead of me, Gerard. :)



                To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/lonely-coaches-sodality/CAJWRDbq6CTNqkybV4q3baBQqzsyxj9tfUDCnUFQDdW3X37s0sA%40mail.gmail.com.

                Allen Holub

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                Jun 10, 2020, 2:28:51 PM6/10/20
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                Hi Gerard,

                My reasoning is: what would you charge for an online course of that length? $1 seems too low. If it’s $25 (for the sake of argument), then I’d start my thinking at $25OK (given 10,000 viewers). If that’s too high, I’d suggest starting the discussing about fees with a reasonable per-person cost so that the focus is on value rather than cost.

                As for “don’t want to be greedy,” it’s not being greedy to get paid for value. Don’t know about Chinese salaries, but $250k is the cost of hiring a single programmer for one year in the Bay Area, and that doesn’t include overhead, benefits, etc. Surely you are providing more value than that.

                Re “given that they already have the recording,” I do not permit recording my classes unless we have a prior arrangement. It’s in the contract.

                Re. Leading to other training work. I’ve had that happen exactly once in 30 years or so.

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                Yves Hanoulle

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                Jun 10, 2020, 2:44:33 PM6/10/20
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                Op wo 10 jun. 2020 om 20:25 schreef Michael Hill <GeePa...@geepawhill.org>:
                I also like $1 per, but why maximum?
                 
                On a public website, what if it is viewed 1 million times?
                they have to think about that for a contract

                y
                 

                Kent Beck

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                Jun 10, 2020, 2:50:04 PM6/10/20
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                Gerard,

                First howdy! It's been way too long. 

                You said something that sounded bizarre to me: "I don't want to be greedy". I don't see any way that you could possibly "be greedy". If you set a price that they don't want to pay, they won't pay it. If you set a price that they pay, then you weren't greedy, per definition. (definition of greedy: "having or showing an intense and selfish desire for something, especially wealth or power"). The lens of "greed" just doesn't seem to apply in this case.

                My experience working with Chinese companies has been frustrating, to say the least. I quoted Huawei a price for 3 days, they said that's too much how about half, I said for half you get 2 days, they said okay, I got there and was presented a full 3-day agenda, I cancelled all the first day meetings. I would consider their behavior greedy or at least untrustworthy. I hate having to be on my guard to avoid a client violating our agreement so I won't do it again.

                tl;dr charge every damn dollar you can get away with. They will still be getting a bargain.

                Kent

                To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/lonely-coaches-sodality/0f6aafac-6f64-4ae0-8dc7-4875ed67679e%40Spark.

                Stephen Senkomago Musoke

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                Jun 10, 2020, 2:50:04 PM6/10/20
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                Gerard,

                Why not create the course (without captions), and price it like other courses in the sector then for pricing, giving the company a huge probably 75% volume discount but make sure you pay for the captioning (so that you own the IP and can use it for others)

                Stephen

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                Gerard Meszaros

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                Jun 10, 2020, 3:01:03 PM6/10/20
                to lonely-coac...@googlegroups.com, Yves Hanoulle


                On 2020-06-10 12:43 p.m., Yves Hanoulle wrote:


                Op wo 10 jun. 2020 om 20:25 schreef Michael Hill <GeePa...@geepawhill.org>:
                I also like $1 per, but why maximum?
                 
                On a public website, what if it is viewed 1 million times?

                They proposed to put it on their internal website. I don't know whether they could track unique viewers nor do I know if they could be trusted to provide that information on an ongoing basis.

                Thanks,

                Gerard


                James Grenning

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                Jun 10, 2020, 4:21:47 PM6/10/20
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                Hi Gerard

                I bet your advice is worth way more than $1. There were lots of good suggestions in the thread so far.

                If you price it too high for them, you could bundle a lower per head price as part of a package with some live activities. Suggest their leaders will need to interact directly with you regularly or need your in depth training. The masses could watch the video, but if they are serious about improvement there need to develop some technical leaders with the skills. Maybe you could also offer them an exercise to accompany the video content.

                Huawei was mentioned a few times in the thread. It took a year to get paid from them. If it 's Huawei, it's probably too late :-)

                Cheers, James

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                iamandre...@gmail.com

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                Jun 10, 2020, 4:26:49 PM6/10/20
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                Suggestion 1: Haggle!  Pitch it as high as you can, they’ll counter, go from there.

                 

                Suggestion 2: Host it on YouTube and generate some income if it gets a million views!

                 

                Suggestion 3: Ask the what benefit they expect to receive, and what that would be worth to them in the long run.  Then ask for a percentage of that.  The chances are high that will be a conversation they won’t be entirely willing or able to have.  However, it does set the stage for maybe taking up suggestion 1 with more context.  “Let’s say your intention is to save $10M dollars.  Which would be reasonable for an organization your size.  So would it be worth $100,000 to you?  I mean, why would I want to offer you something that wasn’t worth at least that to you, otherwise I’d be concerned that we both be wasting our time and effort.”  Pick your own numbers, but this can be a great way to reach agreement.

                 

                • Andrew

                iamandre...@gmail.com

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                Jun 10, 2020, 4:28:25 PM6/10/20
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                Oh, and another thing – put a copyright notice on your proposal.  There’s a strong chance that you’re being used as a stalking horse for the proposal to be given to, say, a Big Six consultancy.  I know it might be hard to enforce, but it’ll show you’re not a novice.

                 

                • Andrew

                 

                From: lonely-coac...@googlegroups.com <lonely-coac...@googlegroups.com> On Behalf Of James Grenning
                Sent: Wednesday, June 10, 2020 1:22 PM
                To: lonely-coac...@googlegroups.com
                Subject: Re: [LCS] Pricing help required

                 

                Hi Gerard

                Jeff Langr

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                Jun 10, 2020, 4:31:22 PM6/10/20
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                Yes to that--add a clause indicating they cannot resell or rebroadcast the video, i.e. it will only be posted on their internal site.

                Jeff

                iamandre...@gmail.com wrote on 6/10/20 2:28 PM:

                Allen Holub

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                Jun 10, 2020, 4:35:57 PM6/10/20
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                I wouldn’t let them host it on their own internal site, given all the talk about how unreliable they are. You can host it yourself on Vimeo for next to nothing (and provide access only through a URL you provide—they have a feature that allows the video to be accessed only from designated URLs. Designate your own server). That way, you can keep track of how many times the video has actually been viewed and from where. You can also provide password access that way.

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                Glenn Waters

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                Jun 10, 2020, 9:23:15 PM6/10/20
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                Since there's a worry about trust it doesn't really matter where it's hosted. It can be downloaded. Look at youtube-dl, which is openly available.

                Seems like the best bet is strike the best deal you can, get the money, provide the course/content, and be OK that they will do with it as they please. Besides if they like the content chances are they will want some more.

                To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/lonely-coaches-sodality/2293ff2b-fcd3-4610-acb8-cf09813d046f%40Spark.

                Gerard Meszaros

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                Jun 10, 2020, 10:20:22 PM6/10/20
                to lonely-coac...@googlegroups.com, James Grenning

                It's not Huawei; I worked there off & on for 6 months about 10 years ago. And yes, it took a while to get paid. But they paid eventually.

                Gerard

                Allen Holub

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                Jun 10, 2020, 10:42:42 PM6/10/20
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                More and more, I get less and less willing to put up with the disrespect of being paid “eventually.” Lately, I’ve been asking for payment in advance. I rarely get pushback.

                -Allen

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                On Jun 10, 2020, 7:20 PM -0700, Gerard Meszaros <gmka...@gmail.com>, wrote:

                It's not Huawei; I worked there off & on for 6 months about 10 years ago. And yes, it took a while to get paid. But they paid eventually.

                Gerard

                On 2020-06-10 2:21 p.m., James Grenning wrote:

                Hi Gerard

                I bet your advice is worth way more than $1. There were lots of good suggestions in the thread so far.

                If you price it too high for them, you could bundle a lower per head price as part of aMore a package with some live activities. Suggest their leaders will need to interact directly with you regularly or need your in depth training. The masses could watch the video, but if they are serious about improvement there need to develop some technical leaders with the skills. Maybe you could also offer them an exercise to accompany the video content.

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