April 5, 2023
Don: Hello and welcome to the Design and Prosper podcast. This is Episode 73, and today we are asking the question. Retainer clients for designers? Yay or nay, where do you stand? Let’s chat about it.
Kris: Hey everybody.
Don: Hello and welcome.
Kris: Welcome in. Get comfy. We’re going to do this one pretty quick actually. Yeah. Yeah.
Don: It’s a quickie because it’s something that has come up for us and we feel really passionate to address it. We want to sort of nip it in the bud.
Kris: Yeah.
Don: It’s come from a lot of designers approaching us with clients coming to them. Potential clients, new leads, coming to them and saying, we want maximum deliverables for minimum outlay. We want it on repeat, and yeah, we want you to do it now. We don’t want to pay you very much. want to get onto a retainer. We want, that familiarity. We want to be one of your best friends.
Kris: Yeah, and I think also it’s been propelled by the whole retainer landscape has changed a little bit. So sometimes it’s called monthly recurring revenue, so MRRs or retainers. And it has been propelled by a lot of this, you know, done in a day type of thing as well and like book in a day with me and I’ll get all this stuff done, which is really interesting and really great and worthwhile pursuing and the question of this podcast is retainers yay or nay? Well, the answer is yay
Don: and nay. Yeah. Sorry to do that to you everybody.
Kris: We’ll explain.
Don: It’s cruel. Yeah,
Kris: We shall explain. So, as Donna alluded to, it is not something that we recommend doing with new clients.
Don: Mm-hmm.
Kris: Who you don’t know. You don’t know how they work, you don’t know their personality type. You don’t know if they’re tricky clients or complex clients with complex needs, or whether they’re really easy breezy and you love working with them.
Don: Absolutely. That is all unknown and until we know all of that, that really important intel, we can’t determine how efficiently we can work with somebody on repeat. Or at a dedicated three hour block every week or every month. We just don’t know. We don’t know, you know, who they are yet and how wobbly they are going to make the process.
You know your process, right? You can stand in your own lane and you know exactly what you need, how fast you can work, what you can do. But there are so many variables. When you are working with another person, and even though your systems might be nice and watertight, and we, we teach a really beautiful project management system within the academy where you are making sure you’re getting all of the assets that you need at the right time.
You, there’s a really clear timeline, all of the aspects are taken care of, but until you work with someone you don’t know how they’re going to work with. you.
Don: Are they going to respect your process? Are they going to respect the boundaries? Are they going to deliver things to you on time? Are they going to approve things with ease?
Are they going to be wobbly about their approval process? Are they going to drag things out? So who is this person that wants to get into a long-term relationship with me without courting me? Who are they? Yeah.
Kris: Yeah. So another rule of thumb that we have for assessing whether a client should be on a retainer is the kind of work we’re doing. Now, this might not be your opinion, but this is definitely Donna’s, and my opinion, so you might not agree with this, but we don’t like doing new creative on a retainer. So if it’s new creative, no retainer, it’s a project. It’s a project based design with a timeline and stages, through it.
Even if it might stretch over a couple of months, you know, and you might have a payment plan as well, but it’s not a retainer.
Don: Absolutely. Because you need to go through your really deep dive process for a new creative where you’re trying to break new ground. Yeah. You’re trying to make sure that you deliver that really elevated response every single time you have a new creative project.
So that can’t be done on a retainer. So the flip side of that, the things that we do like to do on retainer are the things that are more like maintenance design, more like filling in template-based designs. An example of that would be, you have done a beautiful brand for a restaurant and each week, or each month or each season, they change their menu so that you could pop them on a retainer.
So they might do a new social media campaign to promote the new menu. You might have to design the new menu and put in the, the new menu based on the type of food that’s available now and the update to their menu plan and things like that. That would be a retainer client because the creative’s done. It’s pretty much a typesetting thing. Rinse and repeat.
Kris: You know the brand, you know it inside out, you know, the client, their brand voice, all the elements that create their branding, you are already across. So doing those extra items on a retainer is, is really, it’s fun for you.
It’s easy, it’s kind of easy money if you like. Yeah. Yeah. And it’s great value for the client as well, because, you put them on a retainer and you say, well, you can get this, this, and this for this monthly, amount, and I’m going to always have time for you and I’m going to schedule it in. There’s lots of ins and outs to making a retainer work well. Many, many boundaries that need to be in place.
With that restaurant example. That is a perfect example of what can happen on a retainer. So, you might have already created the brand, you might have created the initial menu design and all those sorts of things in that initial phase and then um, you get onto a retainer with them because you love the client and you work really well together and it’s efficient and, and it’s all, all good. And then you’re doing those little, little bits and pieces. But then they say, okay, we want to redo our website. That’s not on the retainer.
Don: Good example.
Kris: Yes. That’s a project now.
Don: That’s a new project. That’s okay.
Kris: Yeah. And the retainer and the project can be running along side by side.
Don: Parallel. That’s it. They can run together. It’s totally fine. Yeah, that’s a great example. So there we go. Yay to retainers when they are things that are in the system.
You’ve done them before, you’ve got the brand all set, you might even have a brand guide. All of that’s there that can be retainer work because the bulk of the creative has already been done. The visionary work has already been done. The transformation factor is a lot less. Hopefully the complexity factor is minimized.
Kris: You’re not doing the deep dive brand strategy that you would do at the beginning of a client relationship.
Don: Yeah, and that means there’s no complexity and the transformation is, is a lot less, like we were saying. So you know, that’s when retainers really come into their own, because it’s work that needs to happen on repeat. We need to help our clients with their brand, make sure that our clients’ brands have a consistent voice, a consistent message and as a designer, you can absolutely step into that space and take care of their needs on a monthly basis and make sure that their beautiful brand is accurate at every touchpoint.
And clients love that. They love that this is the work that goes out to our designer every week, every fortnight, or every two weeks. Or whatever it may be.
Kris: Okay. So when you’re thinking about retainers, it’s a yes. If it is an existing client who you love and respect and it’s mutual respect, and it’s just an all round love fest, you know?
Don: Yeah. Love those ones.
Kris: Because you’re going to be with this client all
Don: For a long time, right? Yeah. Long term. Yeah.
Kris: And also yes if it’s templated based design that you’ve already done. That’s part of their brand manual or their, their brand guidelines already. And just a little side tip with that, it’s perfect work to outsource to another designer. Grow your team.
Don: Grow your team. Scale. Yeah. Junior designer.
Kris: That’s perfect work for retainer and retainers are brilliant for helping with cash flow and, and being able to forecast and know that you’ve got this guaranteed income come in.
Don: Yeah, we love it. It’s brilliant and that’s why Kris and I have had long-term clients for decades because we’ve had them on retainer, and then, like we were saying before, when a big project comes up for them, that is a new project. We’ll do that parallel to the retainer, then the retainer will keep going, and we’ve literally had clients for 20 years, same client, but with lots of new variations and new, new chapters, new stories being told over that time.
And retainers running parallel as well. So that’s the thing. Just remember, if a retainer is run really, really well, it equals long-term, long-term relationship, and that’s why boundaries and processes need to be so, so clear.
Whatever practices you set up and processes you set up with a retainer now, that’s going to be the expectation moving forward. So make sure you are being respected, it is really clear, your client knows what they need to do and how they need to behave in this relationship. When they need to get things to you. All those things.
Yes. So that’s why we don’t like brand new people coming in and jumping straight into a retainer. We need to get to know these people first. We need to get to know their way they work. We need to get to know their brand. We need to have investigated every facet of their brand. We need to make sure that their brand has reached its potential before we start going into formula-based design or templated design or rinse and repeat work.
We need to make sure that that brand is the best that it can be. Yeah, so that’s why we don’t rush into a retainer.
Kris: You’d be under pressure. Yeah. To get really good creative results if you go straight into retainer. Mm-hmm. Because even on retainer, like we mentioned before, we’ll have projects that come in that need the deep dive and you can’t maintain a 20 year long relationship with a client and just be hashing out the same stuff over and over again. Yeah. It’ll get stale. you knows, right? You need to really, you need an injection, a fresh creative, every now and again, and you can’t do that on a, retainer. So it’s not going to work because you’re going to set up an expectation that cannot be fulfilled for future months moving forward.
It needs to be separate, and you need to be very boundaried around the retainer otherwise you’ll be very sad. You need to have boundaries around how long the retainer’s going to go for and all those things.
Don: Contractual agreements. That’s right. We go over that in the academy as actually we, we take a, a look at retainers, um, in week 12 of the academy where we add clauses to the contract if it’s a retainer client, because this is a different way of . Working to project based creative. It is a pathway that requires collaboration on both client and designer. So it’s, actually a really big yay in the right way, and then it’s a really big nay when it’s premature.
So, Retainers can be premature and we’ve found so many times, that’s why we’re so passionately wanted to jump on here today and talk about this because there are so many designers who are being pushed into a retainer too soon, and then they’re being pushed out of their comfort zone. Their processes are being compromised. They are then under the pump, not profitable. All of those things because they’re trying to squash a very robust process, creative process into a short timeframe, and then the client’s expectations are not being met and your expectations as a designer are not being met. You’re not being fulfilled because you’re forever rushing or compromising or cutting corners.
So we wanted to say that when you have this conversation with a client, it’s a yes. Yes, we can do that. We can definitely do that, but let’s just pull back a little bit for a second. Let’s just, you know, whoa, there baby.
We can get into a long-term relationship very, very soon. However, before we do that, we need to establish who you are, what your needs are, how I can help you, what is the transformation that I’m offering, and then let’s work towards a retainer. Don’t take it off the table. It’s there. It’s on the table, but it’s down the track. It’s the next phase of the relationship.
Kris: Yeah, it’ll be project based at initially. Initially, yes. I like always putting myself into the position. Like I flip it, so it’s like, okay, so if I’m working with an illustrator or if I’m working with a copywriter or photographer and I insist, like I say, I want to be on a retainer, please, you know, I want 50 photos per month or whatever chances are it’s going to be a good deal for me.
But it’s not going to be a good deal for that photographer. So that’s why we need you to think about that. Because what’s going to happen is I could be demanding as hell. Or I could have really strange expectations of what I’m going to get for those 50 photographs or 50 captions or whatever it is and then I’m like backwards and forward, oh, you don’t understand me. No, it was this way. I want to do this instead, you know? And That’s the sort of thing that can happen. And then that photographer or copywriter or whatever they’re going to be putting more time and effort into that relationship. If they go straight into a retainer.
Don: Absolutely. Working double time to work this stuff out. The complexity is way too high. At the beginning of a relationship, you’re in unknown territory. You really do need to determine what that is. Now, what we’ve been talking about is very much retainer. Kris mentioned initially the daily workshops or a project in a day, that type of thing. That is different. And the framework for that is very different and there is a lot of boundaries that go into place around that.
Kris: They can work really well.
Don: They can work so beautifully and the expectations are for that to be in that day cause they’ve completely got you. There’s a lot of pre-work that goes on behind the scenes for those days.
So that, that’s a business model in and of itself. So we just wanted to clarify it and separate that one out. So we hope that shed some light on that today for you beautiful community. We want you to know that it’s perfectly okay to pull back if a client is asking for a retainer immediately.
It boils down to educating them on your process, educating them on the value of really strategic creative, that does require you to take a deep dive versus quicker design based on a beautiful formula that has been created first. Let’s get the brand and the brand guidelines done first, and then let’s enter into a retainer. So yeah, allow yourself the space to have that relationship first and then move on in.
Kris: That brings us to the end of this quickie episode. We really hope that’s helpful for you. It can be a little bit of a confusing landscape, the whole retainer world. So hopefully that’s shed some light on it for you.
Don: Until next time, take care.
Kris: Bye bye.
© Copyright 2024 Design & Prosper Pty Ltd