Instigator Blog

Time is cheap right?

Sure there’s only 24 hours per day, but what’s the harm in doing a bit more work for someone without charging more?

Let me ask some more questions:

• Do you track the hours you work on different projects?
• Do you charge more when you go over a certain number of hours on a project?
• Do you know what you really make per hour?

This won’t apply to everyone. There are some jobs - take being a lawyer - where they charge by the hour, or even in 15-minute increments. They’re not sacrificing their time at all. But in other service businesses or in the product business where you might be building newer versions of your product, customizing it, training, implementing it or providing support, the value of time is something worth looking at.

People are often very willing to sacrifice time. Most people don’t value their time enough.

I sacrifice time quite a bit. It’s a dangerous risk, because it’s not infinite. If I under-estimate how long a project will take, then I usually eat it. That means I do more work than expected without charging more. My hourly rate drops, and drops and drops. So, estimating how long things take is critical to ensuring that you value time properly.

The more time you sacrfice, the less time you have to do other things: sales, marketing, other projects, etc. Let’s say you get so busy sacrificing time that you need to hire other people to help you — now you’ve got a double whammy: you’re swamped and your costs are going up. That’s very troublesome territory.

Often, time is sacrificed because we’ve already sacrificed something else - like a timeline or price .

You ask the client, “When do you need this done by?”

What’s the most common answer to that?

Client responds, “Yesterday.”

You agree, and suddenly you’re sacrificing time.

Time is perhaps one of the easiest things to sacrifice - you can always work 24 hours a day if need be - but the risks are still there. And sacrificing time has to be something you do less and less of as your business grows, or it won’t grow successfully.

So, is TIME worth sacrificing? Have you done it? What were the results?

(Monday we’ll ask, “Will You Sacrifice Your Service/Product to Close a Deal?” - the 3rd part in an ongoing series: What Will You Sacrifice to Close the Deal)

Photo by Beholder.