No More Mr. Fix-It

The pattern is almost impossible to see from inside it, because every individual piece of it is going well.

A business calls with a problem. Andrew scopes it, prices it, builds it, and the thing works. Everyone is happy. He invoices, they pay, and then the relationship goes quiet, because from the client's point of view the problem is solved and there is nothing left to talk about. Months later, a well meaning team member changes a process without telling anyone and it breaks. The phone rings again.

The trouble is that nobody thinks of the person who fixed the thing as the person who could grow the thing. Being reliable in a crisis is a strong position and a narrow one. It puts you in the same mental drawer as the handyman, which is a fine place to be if you want to be called when the door knob falls off. That’s not the first person you call when you’re deciding how to open new doors in the business though.

This label was a costly one to carry. Around two hundred projects. Roughly eleven hundred businesses in the database. But just a handful he was actually still talking to and were actively seeking him out.

The objection to a retainer is always the same, and Andrew had it too. My clients do not need me every month. Putting them on a monthly fee would be charging for nothing. He was right. They didn’t need him to fix things monthly, because he built elegantly and cleanly in the first place.

He was overlooking the opportunity he could create for them though. They didn’t associate him with creating opportunities. Especially when there was no named next step or offer.

What settled it was inspecting what had actually happened after one of his recent builds went live. In the months following, that client had come back for ad hoc help. Three full days worth, a few hours at a time. Unplanned, urgent and expensive. They were already well past what three months of a partnership program would have cost them. Prevention is always cheaper than cure.

Andrew knew that the ongoing program offer did not invent any unnecessary work. It actually named and pre-empted work that was already being done, moved it off crisis pricing, and gave the client a predictable number instead of a series of unwelcome surprises. That client is now on a monthly partnership program, with the option to dial it back if they want, but with no intent of doing so. It grows their business. It saves them time, money and headaches. They’re not being sold anything needlessly, and they’re profiting from his help.

The second-order effect is the one worth paying attention to. Staying in the system means being present when the next thing comes up, and the next thing is usually bigger than the thing you were called about. The client is now on a growth path, and Andrew is the guide. He has a series of easily selectable offers which his clients have been asking for - but now he doesn’t need to quote, reprice and resell them every time.

Today, Andrew has a menu of productised pieces of work rather than one big build to sell, holds recurring revenue he did not have a year ago, and gets found by growing business owners looking to add expertise and capability to their team. More importantly though, his clients feel more supported and have less need for ad-hoc, crisis pricing work.