About client relations, 1...
Mar. 3rd, 2008 06:07 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
alexpgpBack when I was a newly minted, first-week-on-the-job control system engineer, my boss dropped by my desk to tell me about a new job that had just been awarded to the company, in which the role of the control and instrumentation group was going to be significant.
There was one wrinkle, though, continued my boss. The company had deliberately bid low on the job, not with the intention of renegotiating the contract price later on, but in order to give our group the experience so we could go out and bid on other jobs (at the "normal" price) and have a good chance of winning them.
My boss then said something I found curious, to the effect that our current client (the one on whose job we had bid low) was going to be doing a whole series of such jobs. What made it curious to me was this: assuming our current client was willing to hire us to do more work, what made us think we could change our price (past, say, a cost-of-living escalation)? I voiced my concern.
I was told not to worry, that the best minds the company would look to such matters.
(FWIW, within five years, the company was in bankruptcy. For the job in question, I had to fight to get the most rudimentary support and ended up bringing my Osborne into work to help with the basics.)
That escapade taught me a valuable lesson: Working for cheap (or for free) may be a valuable way of breaking into the business, but not of acquiring a client.
Cheers...
There was one wrinkle, though, continued my boss. The company had deliberately bid low on the job, not with the intention of renegotiating the contract price later on, but in order to give our group the experience so we could go out and bid on other jobs (at the "normal" price) and have a good chance of winning them.
My boss then said something I found curious, to the effect that our current client (the one on whose job we had bid low) was going to be doing a whole series of such jobs. What made it curious to me was this: assuming our current client was willing to hire us to do more work, what made us think we could change our price (past, say, a cost-of-living escalation)? I voiced my concern.
I was told not to worry, that the best minds the company would look to such matters.
(FWIW, within five years, the company was in bankruptcy. For the job in question, I had to fight to get the most rudimentary support and ended up bringing my Osborne into work to help with the basics.)
That escapade taught me a valuable lesson: Working for cheap (or for free) may be a valuable way of breaking into the business, but not of acquiring a client.
Cheers...
