We, at oDesk often receive complaints from service buyers and professionals providing the services for them, unhappy with the progress/results of their projects – and in most cases it all roots back to not having discussed the project properly.

I hope you don’t mind me including a link to your post in our community forum – it will be so useful for a lot of our professionals.

If you someone asked YOU to quote to build them a house what would you say? Do ALL houses cost the same? Or would you have questions about what type of house they want? Hey would an idea of their budget give you a better idea of what house you could offer?

Jesus half the time its do they REALLY want a house – we’ve built MANY sites were half way through it turns out they needed a 20 story office block not the bungalow they requested.

We only do option C (giving a rough ballpark to save timewasters/those with stupidly low budgets) – and I’ve learned the hard way those who are only interested in the lowest $$ aren’t worth working with.

Certainly not, but you’d never go into a mechanic and say “It’s making a funny noise, how much is that going to cost me to fix?” without getting a look under the hood. This is the consultation process.

I don’t tend to ask a client’s budget unless I really can’t get a read on their local market or technical savvy (some people understand the cost of a quality website, some don’t). We have solutions for almost any budget, and we need to know if we should offer custom code or prepackaged thingamabobs.

Actually when project is big there are a lot of options of how to get it done (for example, building from scratch or customizing some available script). So if someone wants to save money the best way is to say about it. There is an old Ukrainian proverb: “Cheap fish makes bad soup”… I think that it’s better to pay more to developer you trust when you have a big project. It will definitely pay off.

I’m not opposed to meeting and talking about the project with a viable vendor. But I still fail to see how much I’m interested in spending has any effect on how much you’ll charge.

This is a good example. I agree with you, but only in situation when project is small. Just imagine a client who comes and ask to make him a great car. How should I do this not knowing what exactly he wants and what is his budget?

But most times, it’s not one task. There has to be a pre-meeting as clients are usually very unclear about what they want at first meeting – and reasonable, mutually understood expectations are not made on just a price.

I can’t tell you how many times I’ve gone to meetings because a prospect “wants a website” or “wants a podcast” but doesn’t know how big, what the point of the website is, who the target market is, where they’re going to host it, who’s going to host it, who’s going to write the content that goes in the site/podcast, do they have a logo, etc. etc. – most clients do not think about these details that are critical until prompted.

I think back to a few years ago when we took a job like you said, phone call, price in an email, client didn’t want to meet. I outlined clearly that the package included four microphones for a podcast, but no wireless mic as the client didn’t want to pay extra.

We get to the job, set up – an the client goes, “where is the wireless microphone?” She stood in disbelief as I showed her the paperwork she signed saying she didn’t need it. Client still blamed us for their error, but that’s life.

A pre-meeting would of avoided that because I could of explained what a wireless mic is for and how it’s used, and it might of connected that the little bit of extra money at the time would of saved lots of headache and extra charges for us going back and getting gear they had said they didn’t want.

You, Peter, may be the perfect client and write detailed RFPs/RFQs, and have a perfect handle as you may be experienced. There are clients like that, for sure, but they are few and far between, even at large agencies.

Most do not – even companies that do write RFPs or RFQs are missing critical information to determine how much of something they may need.

It’s not that we’re trying to game the system – it’s that we need to know how much of something is required so that you can be properly serviced and walk away a happy customer.

If anything, 4 of 5 times, the client pre-meeting LOWERS the end price of the job because I can take things out or modify to fit their specific needs.

Unless you are trying to work me, there is absolutely no reason that my budget should have any effect on how much you would charge to do the work. Can you imagine taking your car in for an oil change and having them ask you, what’s your budget to get this done?

Everyone should charge a fair price for what they do, and let the buyer decide if it’s a good fit for their needs and budget.