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in this episode we're going to be talking about how to charge a consulting retainer [Music] welcome to the consulting business podcast my name is russell pearson and this is episode number four the consulting business podcast is your opportunity to actually speak about a tactical strategic thing that's going to help you in your consulting business and today we're going to be talking about retainers uh the the pros the cons how do we go about getting a retainer that's an interesting subject because there are a lot of people especially uh new to the consulting space or even people who've been working in the project space but are moving more to a consulting activity that are looking at retainers as this sort of golden goose this thing that would be oh this would be magical if i could get retainers and they can be amazing but we're going to get into all the bits and pieces about what makes retainers good how they can actually be getting in the way of results at some points and the things you need to be mindful of when you're putting retainers in with clients so let's talk about what it is well what a retainer is it's a regular payment it's a regular payment to you and there are multiple ways that you can receive that regular payment but usually they are monthly based retainers now there are quarterly based retainers there are retainers that come in at certain dates uh and there are weekly retainers but yes most of the time it's a monthly retainer and that could be anything from five thousand dollars ten thousand dollars um you know on some of the smaller ends of two and a half thousand dollars but it very much depends uh on the value of the outcome that you're providing and the value of the service that you're uh being retained for so there are a bunch of different types of retainers and in consulting there's more of a particular type of retainer whereas if we talk about retainers more from let's say a legal point of view you might have a family lawyer who is retained which means that there is a ongoing payment so that they're available they make themselves available a certain amount of time every month so that you can contact them and have that conversation the same thing does happen in professional services with accountants and financial advisors they're often retained so that there's this ongoing conversation that's happening but in business consulting and management consulting there does tend to be retainers that are focused towards specific outcomes rather than just roles in the business so those other ones were very much about retaining for a role in the business whether that be the financial advice role whether it be the um the legal advice role the one i'm talking about mainly is is much more to do with outcome based uh work so it could be to do with specific projects that are rolling out but more likely than not it's not actually about the project itself it certainly can be but my my uh my thoughts are to start looking at whether you want to be stuck into project based retainers and we'll be talking about the details of that across this episode so why why do we actually want to look at retainers at all well it gives us this regular income which makes it very nice to forecast how much income you're going to be bringing into your business how much income you're going to be paying yourself and so it's this nice comfortable approach where if you know that you've got three clients who are ten thousand dollar retainer you're going to be getting thirty thousand dollars coming in every month that can be quite nice uh but there are two sides to that coin and that's one of the things i'll be talking about as well the actual way you do a retainer well it could be as simple as you send a monthly invoice and that invoice gets paid it could be a direct debit which is actually taken directly from their account or from a card uh any of those ways those transactional activities are completely fine it really just comes down to what is the approach that affects your business but also your clients what's going to be easiest for them to to transact with right so do think about that it is actually worth thinking about for instance if you want to get a retainer with a large organization most of the time there needs to be a you have to come on as a contractor of some sort um there is also the the side where you need to have a purchase order for the the lifespan of the retainer um and again that's another one of the things that we'll be talking about you know should there be a lifetime on your retainer or is the idea that you just keeps happening month after month after month well before we get into that why would someone pay you for a retainer well when they actually see the value of what you bring to the table and that could be about anything there's all sorts of areas where you actually can bring value to the table like i said before it could be about a specific role that's helpful for their business it could be about a specific outcome that you're delivering to the business but no matter what if someone's going to pay you on going without actually knowing specifically what you're going to be doing because that's what the retainer really is about it's for future efforts it's for future work they they really need to trust that you are bringing value and so how do you go about establishing that trust well the the concept of the trusted advisor is one that most people in the consulting space are aware of um which ideally i like to consider is you've reached a point in time where they start asking for your advice outside of your area of expertise right you're now a trusted advisor to this individual who's making the decisions right it's kind of like sitting uh merlin on the left side of uh of king arthur right merlin is the advisor uh they bring special talents and skills and knowledge uh experience to the table which are highly valuable to to the king who is king arthur in that metaphor right and so how do you become that person understanding that in marketing we have no like and trust the process itself is very much the same they need to know who you are in order to actually see if they will like you and vice versa you need to know who they are and get to go through a courting process to say do i like this individual do i like this company enough to actually work with them and do you trust that they're not going to wake waste your time and on the flip side that they trust that you are going to be bringing that regular value to the table but it's very important to understand that it is a two-way street because if you're moving into a retainer position without having that trusted advisor or beyond the trusted advisor position you may actually be setting yourself up for a form of employment right so you end up just becoming an employee without the title which is definitely not the position you want to be in as an effective consultant you want to be able to actually challenge the leadership you want to be able to challenge the ideas that are happening inside the business and you don't want to become a yes person otherwise the value of your consulting is completely undermined right you want the ability to to bring thoughtful discussion and insights to the table you want to be able to be a mirror for these people at different points in time and in that that's massively valued valuable for so many people and so making sure that you're moving through that process no like and trust and that you know who they are enough to know whether you like them to continue to work with them over a longer period of time because that's ideally where the where the retainer comes in and do you trust they're not going to mess you around right so uh a retainer could be for three months it could be for six months it could be 12 and ongoing it could be for years i like the the retainer that goes for about 18 months because by 18 months ideally you want to have completed your outcome part of moving into a retainer position is to make sure i well this is my personal opinion that if you're going to be taking a retainer with a business you want to make sure that you don't become so much of a linchpin that the business can't actually function without you some people i know go out of their way to become that linchpin which means that they're never going to be removed from the company but you do want to be removed from the company so you can go on and have ongoing new clients for not only the process of making sure your own processes marketing sales the way you're positioned in the market are current and contextual you want to make sure you're doing that so that your business but doesn't become style old and boring and on the flip side of that if you find that you you're locked into let's say four uh retainers for a number of years it because you haven't been actively getting new new work in the market because you haven't been actively generating your contact list and your your leads list when you enter the market again you've got to start again you've got to start from scratch because you haven't built the momentum so anytime i'm looking at a business model that has retainers in it when it's an individual rather than a business so we're talking about a practice we're talking about a consulting practice which means a a business that runs around you you are the expertise in the business versus a business which is the profitable enterprise that runs without you anytime you're central to that business you've really got to start looking at your time and let's say traditionally you know maybe there's a day or week of effort that goes into a retainer of any substance well in that if you have more than three retainers it means that you don't have uh you've only got two days left in the business to actually run the business side of things and so i personally like the model of having three retainers plus strategic work that is ongoing and we'll talk about how that fits into the retainer model in a minute uh strategic work that enables you to basically audition paid auditions for new clients as they're they're moving into your circle of influence and then you want to have that fifth day if you want to work on a five-day schedule and if you want four days a week you want to be able to reduce that again on that fifth day that's when you're actually going to be doing your marketing and your bookkeeping and all the other side of things now you might have a bookkeeper doing that of course but you want to be you want to be looking at your finances you want to be looking at your reports you want to be looking at the things that manage your business rather than just working in the business you want to be actually managing and running your own business right so there's choices in retainers um why don't you want to be in a very long retainer why would you push away from the idea of being stuck into a two three five year retainer well not only what i just said about the you know you're losing market momentum but there's this real big second piece which is you become part of the furniture which basically means people get used to you being around which means that they start talking differently to you they take your advice differently they um any challenges become much more of like a disgruntled employees challenge they they become expectant on you and they expect you're always going to be around which means that your perceived value will diminish over time and so that's one of the reasons i like to actually have retainers only last for 18 months is so that you can actually make sure that your value that that's highly valuable usually at the start of an engagement continues to stay valuable the entire way through the process so you've got to watch yourself on those to make sure that you're not getting stale and and um and dependent on their business because all sorts of things can happen now you know they if you had let's say three or four retainers where and one of them gets cut that's that's let's take four that's 25 percent of your business just goes overnight and that can have a dramatic impact on your personal income right and it could have a dramatic impact on the expenses of the business and your ability to pay those expenses so by having not a revolving door but making sure that you're aware of how you're managing the length of your retainers you're actually managing the evolution of your business so you're making sure it's com it's continuing to stay market ready it's continuing to stay current it's consider consistently evolving as you engage new people on the strategic side now that's an interesting thing in itself the actual process of how do you get a retainer so yes there's no like and trust um uh a lot of people will uh you know say how do i actually get to the conversation of having a retainer in my experience what's usually happened is that there has been a a thing that people have wanted my engagement for and it's usually whether it's a project or a strategic piece or whatever it might be we do that work and then they go all right what's our next step what else can we do and i go all right well i'm not sure what else we can do so let's look at that and then we work out they are they have seen me as highly valuable and they want to retain my services my experience my knowledge my my expertise and my uh you know ability to get stuff done right um but in doing that i don't want to be employed by them if i'm employed by them i'm losing my status i'm also starting to become dependent on them i don't want to become an employee and so ideally in your world too you know you may not want to becoming an employee either that's the reason why you stepped out of being an employee in the first place is because you wanted to have control and the freedom to make choices uh within your business right so often it comes from an initial engagement and so if you want to design a business that has retainers as a core function you want to go how do i get the retainer and i think the easiest way to actually get a retainer is to come in to do the strategic work in a business to come in and do the strategic work around a specific outcome and then through that strategy tactical planning process you can actually start to cherry pick certain responsibilities which you make them aware that you are happy to be retained to look after now does that mean you have to do work i know everybody like ever there's a lot of people that are that are shy of being pulled into doing the actual manual labor or brought in to actually do data entry copywriting all these different things like into an organization if you don't want to do that don't do that don't cherry pick those pieces but i really like the idea of of cherry picking the responsibilities and in that it's more a case of i would like to be responsible for this outcome i would like to be responsible for these results and in doing that without actually saying this is how i'm going to do it you're actually saying i would like to be retained to look after these things they'll say how you're going to do it you can even i've done it myself say well that's my problem it's my responsibility to actually get these things done and i'm happy to put some kpis in place so that we can say how is that going and that that is a large part of being a successful consultant is being able to define your own kpis that engage with the clients at a place where they find valuable and then also to ensure that nobody is telling you how you're performing one way or another you're well ahead of the ball and you know whether you're performing well and how you've got a shift and how things need to change to hit the outcome the idea of you coming in as a consultant and as a retained consultant really means that you need to be coming in at a higher level of performance than the people who are that are regular employees and so that's how you get retained you get retained because you are a highly valuable player uh in their business and then making sure that you're not going to create that linchpin piece like i was talking about if you become the business becomes reliant on you you've made a mistake i think it's it's one of the the traps that i fell into earlier in my business is that i i set up things that only i could do and that's not good design you want to be able to set it up to exit the same way as as people set up actual businesses profitable enterprises that run without them to exit so that there are systems processors uh people that can actually manage these things for them uh i think that's important in a retained uh position as well is to make sure that you're building in systems that the business can take on that you're building in activities that the business can take on and that you do hand those over to the business across the lifetime of that retainer all right the longer the retainer does not necessarily mean the better it can often mean that you've just become lazy and reliant okay so there'll be a specific responsibility that ideally you want to be retained for if you retain for projects project management is funny because project management is i would say a second level function and then that's you know no skin off the nose of people who are doing project management but the the actual running of projects is what i'm talking about the operational running of projects so there's project planning that's certainly one side of things but if you're actually in there doing the operational part but actually and not handing that over to someone then you are becoming a lynchpin part of their business and ideally if you're doing that it's a flawed business model because if you ever leave the outcome is no longer achieved you know if you're leaving the business to you know you just drop the baby with the bath water and leave they're back to where they were before you were engaged all right so you don't want to do that you want to want to leave the place better than than how you found it and i think that that's an important responsibility of being really a hype a high quality consultant is making sure that you're coming into a business with that in mind so you're designing around you not being there you're designing around you not being reliant on the business achieving what it needs to achieve and and then people are incredibly happy with paying retainers and really high retainers because it changes things it transforms the business now why wouldn't you just transform the business from external well you can there are certainly retainers where you become just an advisor and you come in and you help them transform their thinking yeah help them transform their methods whatever it might be but sometimes there are retainers where you do want to actually get into the business because there is some transformation that needs to happen internally um and maybe you need to be right there with the the people the attitudes the actions the things that are happening inside the business to to make that change happen because in essence that's what we're doing you know if we're an advisor in any situation we're helping people go from one place to another sometimes that's transformation transformational sometimes the the the transformation can happen instantly just with an idea so depending on your business model depending on your expertise depending on your market it's going to be a little bit different for you but i do i definitely like the idea of if you're going to set up a business where retainers are going to be that core function what is your entry point and certainly for me the strategic side coming in and doing a strategy workshop for a certain pur uh certain amount of money uh to achieve a plan and then actually saying well if and this is if a big if if this is a person that i want to work with if this is a company i want to continue to work with then uh put yourselves into the positions where it makes sense for you to have responsibility where you know you're going to do a great job of helping them transform in that area right so just be aware that there are some problems with retainers like it it's it's nice to have 30 000 plus in in retainers that is coming through um every month and um it's highly possible and people are doing it all the time right um and i'm talking about just individuals i'm not even talking about a consulting company i'm talking about like just an individual consultant so it is nice to have those things but be mindful in your approach that you are not becoming part of the furniture that they are not becoming reliant on you and that you are actually stuck in a situation um that if you were to leave the ball would be completely dropped and your um your outcome would no longer be achieved right because that's what we're in we're in the game off if we're going to be paid these large amounts of money then we need to be focused on outcomes and results and results one time are okay but if we're going to be retained as a consultant it's usually about identifying outcomes that are sustainable what is the sustainable outcome what is the the new sales process that's being implemented into the business what is the um i've seen futurists be retained because they they bring them into a company on a monthly basis and they go what's new and the person does a presentation and keeps them up to date on what's not only new in their industry but what's new in uh aligned industries industries with similar business models so maybe they can start bringing those those ideas in so wherever there is value there is an opportunity to have a consulting retainer and you may very well want to do that and i can tell you the retainers have done very very well by me over the years um but do take some of the lessons from what we've talked about today there are risks in retainers um if you don't go through the no like trust process you can end up being retained in a situation where you don't like the company you don't like the people you're actually working with and then you start to resent the retainer and that can be a hell of a spot to be in so so certainly try and avoid those situations by making sure that you've gone through the process of a process of no like and trust with these people with this organization with this individual all right make sure you're doing that the second part is is make sure you're planning make sure you're planning on the entry for the exit what does the exit look like what does done look like for your retainer how do you know what that is going to be how do you know when you get there how do you know when is the time to step away and how are you going to step away how are you going to hand over smoothly so the business continues to take that sustainable benefit of the outcome that you've actually brought to the organization and finally ensuring that you're not getting lazy and dependent on those businesses where if they suddenly disappeared it may hurt your business you don't want to ever be in that position you want to be you know a continually growing evolving business structure and i think having uh three time so three full day uh type of activity retainers um bringing strategic work in on the side so you might have four strategy sessions of those you might choose one as you're cycling these other clients and then making sure that you've got at least a day a week to be working on the business so you can do the activities of on the business rather than just being stuck in the business so consulting retainers what are your thoughts are you uh are you looking at consulting retainers as a positive thing are you looking at it as a thing well maybe i'll step away from it at the night now after this discussion uh are you wondering how to like do the nuance of of making this work for you in your business well it's one of the things that we talk about at the forge business program which is the business program that i run and the the program is very much for experts like you so consultants specialists people who have been doing what they've been doing for quite some time they're absolute experts in it and now it's about how do we how do we use those expertise and get the massive value that is there available since we're giving massive value to our clients and so we help get better clients at higher fees at the end of the day that is the game over at the forge business program so if you're interested in knowing more about that feel free to reach out with me and you can find me on all sorts of places linkedin and facebook and russellpearson.com spelt double s double l that's how you spell russell you'll be able to find all those details somewhere else or you can also if you're wanting to get more goodies from this podcast and from the work that we do on this podcast then definitely go over to consultingbusinesspodcast.com that's a website where we've put uh really useful resources for you in your consulting business uh and we've got other episodes like this one so if you did download this from a podcasting platform you know it's probably your favorite podcasting platform it could be apple it could be spotify i'd love to hear where you actually connected with me i'd love to hear where you heard about this podcast but i'd love you to also go there and do two things number one subscribe definitely subscribe to this podcast because we're doing these on a very regular basis every week we've got a podcast coming out and there's going to be new and evolving very cool information and topics that we discuss on the consulting business podcast and we'd love you to be a part of it so definitely go and subscribe uh number two we'd love you to leave some feedback uh you know give us a five star rating if you like it if you don't well then send some feedback and tell me what you'd like me to improve um we're always looking to evolve and actually do better in uh not only the podcast but in our business and our business programs uh but what i love is that we're continuing to evolve whether people give us feedback or not and i hope that uh that is the case in your business as well because school is never out for the fro school is never out for the professional fantastic quote from cavett robert roberts um over at national speakers association in the us and and i love that quote because it's so true whether you're uh working with retainers you're trying to continually make sure you're evolving the business whether you're working um on fee for service or advice or specific uh workshop basis whatever it might be continuing to evolve your business is i think the opportunity of keeping it alive fresh and continuing to get better clients at higher fees my name's russell pearson until next time stay passionate and i'll catch you on the next one bye for now thank you for joining us on your consulting business podcast make sure to click the subscribe button for future updates and also make sure to go to consultingbusinesspodcast.com for goodies made especially for you by yours truly i will see you on the site you