How would you word this

[Carl "Excel-Expert" Nixon]

Due to the nature of what I do (spreadsheets) I get contacted by a lot of people who either want free advice or believe I should be working at fiverr.com rates to fix formulas. In 7 years, not one serious enquiry has started this way, so they are a complete waste of time to me.

The other thing I have noticed is that 95%+ of these freebie hunters use Hotmail type address and because I'm B2B, my serious enquiries never have Hotmail addresses.

So I want to put something on my contact page along the lines of "Please note - we do not answer enquiries from Hotmail type addresses". Is this too cheeky? Will it put off genuine customers in anyway?

 

[KM-Tiger]

So I want to put something on my contact page along the lines of "Please note - we do not answer enquiries from Hotmail type addresses". Is this too cheeky? Will it put off genuine customers in anyway?

Know exactly what you mean, we get a fair few of such enquiries, and you just know they are not serious or fishing for something for nothing.

I'd be wary of doing that as many freelance professional type people do use gmail addresses, which could be described as 'Hotmail type". Perhaps add a required field to the contact form to give a company name?

 

[Shopclicks]

I have no idea if this exists or could be coded but what you need is a pop-up which says 'We do not answer enquiries from Hotmail addresses', as soon as @hot is recognised within the email address field.

 

[myfairworld]

I think it might put some people off even if they don't personally have Hotmail addresses. It just sounds a bit snooty!

Is there some way of stating on your contact form or just above it the minimum cost of advice or the minimum hourly rate? I've a few minutes ago come back from an emergency Sunday visit to the vet with a very distressed older cat. When you look on the emergency page on their website it states upfront that 'out of hours' consultations will cost at least £135.00 plus the cost of any medication or tests required. When you phone the emergency number the recording tells you exactly the same thing - not aggressively just calmly before putting you through to the on-duty vet.

I did not particularly want to part with what came to £246 today but at least it did not come as a surprise either!

 

[threenine]

I completely empathise with your situation. We get countless enquiries from people with a great idea for a website, mob application, business idea etc. But have no idea or money to get it up and running. So there "offers" are basically "You do all the work, and we'll give you a percentage"

We've developed our lead validation process, for this, and we also have a minimum level of engagement fee. We have a "How We Work" document which we forward to our prospects which clearly state our terms and conditions, with a key phrase in there stating
"We do not engage which every prospective, unless we feel that the relationship is mutually beneficial. "

We still get a high volume of "Tyre Kickers & Time wasters" but that is just the very nature of business

 

[silvermusic]

I get a lot of time wasting cheap as chips tyre-kickers who what something for nothing or a "special" deal just because [insert any reason]. Just have a standard email reply explaining your prices to send to the tyre-kickers. No need to go into any depth or specifics, if they're still interested and prepared to pay, fine. I wouldn't however block any particular email source assuming they're all a waste of time.

 

[fisicx]

I have no idea if this exists or could be coded but what you need is a pop-up which says 'We do not answer enquiries from Hotmail addresses', as soon as @hot is recognised within the email address field.

^^^This. It's a relatively easy thing to do but not with CF7.

 

[beasty]

I would write this

We know you may be calling us during your free time, but our time is not free
Phone consult from
etc

This is clearly aimed at those that have an idea and a day job, i.e. the most likely to waste time

Not sure if it is possible but you might also have
If your budget is less than xxx we suggest www. (Use some kind of affiliate deal to refer people away)

 

[Carl "Excel-Expert" Nixon]

Thanks everyone - I'm so glad I'm not the only one that suffers from this. I will look in to the pop idea as that sounds like the ideal solution - My site is WordPress driven so there should be some sort of plugin out there.

Putting the hourly rate up is a big "no no" for us as it kills the enquiries dead. If someone (with limited Excel knowledge) wants work doing they will have a rough idea in their head of how long it would take to complete with their skills. So they go on my site, see the hourly rate and multiply it by the number of hours they came up with and put themselves off calling. If they had called, they would have found out it would have taken me a tenth of that time and would have been a lot cheaper than the cost they imagined.

Twice a year the problem really gets out of hand because of students. In the US there is an exercise students have to do where they have to create a spreadsheet for a business they are setting up. I can get 200-250 emails in those weeks from students pretending to be real businesses wanting work to be done. It gets very suspicious when you have 200 companies doing exactly the same thing and needing the same thing in the same week.

 

[tony84]

Do you get enough of those enquiries for it to be a problem?
The reason I ask is that some people may be put off by the message.

 

[Clinton]

Why filter based on email addresses? Couldn't you post on your site a per hour charge with a minimum charge of £x? That would scare away the wrong types.

I run a consultancy and yes I get such enquiries myself. I tend to give the enquirer some free advice and send him on his way. It's amazing how many later decide that the whole process of selling a business is a lot more complicated than they thought. Or they publish an ad online to sell their business and hit problems. When they finally realise they could use professional help to ensure a safe sale and to get a good price, they return to me and they're well warmed up to pay well.

<added>Sorry, I see we cross posted and it's not an option for you to add a per hour charge.

 

[Clinton]

It gets very suspicious when you have 200 companies doing exactly the same thing and needing the same thing in the same week.

What a fantastic opportunity for you to create once and sell multiple times!

 

[SamLH]

What a fantastic opportunity for you to create once and sell multiple times!

You could then sell at fiverr rates,,, the same product to 200 people... More like thousanderr .

Anyway, cant you just create a rule to mark all messages from a Hotmail account as spam.

 

[beasty]

Thanks everyone - I'm so glad I'm not the only one that suffers from this. I will look in to the pop idea as that sounds like the ideal solution - My site is WordPress driven so there should be some sort of plugin out there.

Putting the hourly rate up is a big "no no" for us as it kills the enquiries dead. If someone (with limited Excel knowledge) wants work doing they will have a rough idea in their head of how long it would take to complete with their skills. So they go on my site, see the hourly rate and multiply it by the number of hours they came up with and put themselves off calling. If they had called, they would have found out it would have taken me a tenth of that time and would have been a lot cheaper than the cost they imagined.

Twice a year the problem really gets out of hand because of students. In the US there is an exercise students have to do where they have to create a spreadsheet for a business they are setting up. I can get 200-250 emails in those weeks from students pretending to be real businesses wanting work to be done. It gets very suspicious when you have 200 companies doing exactly the same thing and needing the same thing in the same week.

In order to maintain US university standards, give everyone the same info, charge them and send a copy to the university so they can identify the cheats

 

[Psl]

Have an advice line at £1.50 per min. Spell out the charges as per the rules and record a message explaining how your work.

 

[john1989]

We have quite a lot of contracts with businesses that use Hotmail, Gmail etc. where the contract is worth over £500k.


You can get quite sizeable businesses that only need one email address and have no need for a website. Needing a website and a ‘proper’ email address is a myth.


I also agree with an earlier comment that it looks snooty.


I think a standard email that can just be copied and pasted is the way to go, along with mass deletion for the 200 or so emails from the yanks!

 

[Carl "Excel-Expert" Nixon]

You could then sell at fiverr rates,,, the same product to 200 people... More like thousanderr .

Anyway, cant you just create a rule to mark all messages from a Hotmail account as spam.

Yes I could but I have non work related emails come in to the same mailbox that could genuinely come from Hotmail/GMail accounts etc, so I would end up checking them. I could set up a new address for them but it will take a while for everyone who contacts me to update

 

[Carl "Excel-Expert" Nixon]

In order to maintain US university standards, give everyone the same info, charge them and send a copy to the university so they can identify the cheats

One guy was very open about it being a homework project and offered me a scale of payments based on the grade he got. He was so cocky he sent me his homework paper complete with his professors details on it. I had a really great chat with the professor and it was a really big problem at their university (a very big, world famous university). Their students were basically so loaded they were constantly hiring in people from abroad to do their homework for them.

The professor took all their names and made them do another set of homework.

Personally I'm against helping them because it makes life harder for those that are there through hard graft and hardship rather than mummy and daddy's money.

 

[Carl "Excel-Expert" Nixon]

Have an advice line at £1.50 per min. Spell out the charges as per the rules and record a message explaining how your work.

Nice idea in principal, but even Microsoft had to shut down their helpline when they started something similar. A complex problem could take an hour or two to discuss on the phone and that means you end up breaching all sorts of rules about call lengths

 

[Carl "Excel-Expert" Nixon]

We have quite a lot of contracts with businesses that use Hotmail, Gmail etc. where the contract is worth over £500k.


You can get quite sizeable businesses that only need one email address and have no need for a website. Needing a website and a ‘proper’ email address is a myth.


I also agree with an earlier comment that it looks snooty.


I think a standard email that can just be copied and pasted is the way to go, along with mass deletion for the 200 or so emails from the yanks!

I totally agree that not all businesses need websites etc, but I have to go on my own data.

I've never a single piece of work from a Hotmail or gmail account in the 7 years I have been doing this, yet 100% of the enquiries I get from Hotmail and Gmail accounts are either freebie hunters or time wasters.

There are two choices here. (1) I can carry on processing through all of these emails each day in the hope that I will find that once in ten years "real" enquiry or (2) I can just shut down hotmail and gmail enquiries.

At the moment the risk/gain is not there to make it worth dealing with

 

[Psl]

Nice idea in principal, but even Microsoft had to shut down their helpline when they started something similar. A complex problem could take an hour or two to discuss on the phone and that means you end up breaching all sorts of rules about call lengths

Surely after 10-20 mins you will know they are not 'tyre kickers' and revert to dealing with via email?

 

[Carl "Excel-Expert" Nixon]

I know from their initial email they are time wasters.

For example key phrases such as "This should only take you a couple of minutes", "We are only a small ______" or "We just need a template for_____" tend to give a lot away away. People using these phrases want everything doing for £5 or less. Dealing any further with these people would just clog me up.

Then there is what they are actually asking for in their emails. Homework questions are easy to spot because their wording, but then you get people who want to recreate Sage in Excel because they believe it will be cheaper than spending £99 on Sage. Sage spent hundreds of millions putting their software together and these people expect it to be recreated in Excel for the less than half of that.

 

[fisicx]

I don't want to block hotmail, if I did that I wouldn't get all those nice offers from the Oil Ministry in Nigeria or the lady in Estonia who want's to get to know me better.

 

[Carl "Excel-Expert" Nixon]

I don't want to block hotmail, if I did that I wouldn't get all those nice offers from the Oil Ministry in Nigeria or the lady in Estonia who want's to get to know me better.

I dont get any of those types of email, which is really annoying because I have always fancied winding some of them up. There are whole sites dedicated to it (http://www.419eater.com)

 

[Carl "Excel-Expert" Nixon]

I just found this on a professional bloggers site - what do people think of this as an approach?

"I’m pretty selective about who I work with, so only contact me if you want results from your business. If you’re on a very low budget, or are looking for ways to manage your budget, I’m probably not the best fit for you."

 

[MikeJ]

I think you'd lose a lot of custom with that. It makes you look very expensive.

 

[Carl "Excel-Expert" Nixon]

Its an odd one MikeJ. Digging around on the internet there are plenty of examples of people who swear by this tactic, but no one that says against it. But like you, I have doubts. I think most of that phrase is okay, apart from the "so only" part. That kind of sounds a bit aggressive to me.

I think it is time for some experimenting

 

[Root 66 Woodshop]

What's your hourly rate?

Can you not create a page where they have to give card details before sending an email - relatively speaking of course time is money - a minimum charge say of half your hourly rate - at least you'll make something out of the pile of negative emails.

Once they realise that they have to pay before they get any help they'll soon bugger off.

If it turns into a job - knock off the initial charge

 

[Paul Kelly ICHYB]

As already pointed at, have a minimum charge
- no phone number without a payment (bad idea)
- order your consultation for £xxx (paypal button)

 

[MikeJ]

What about a range of charges on the site? Something like "A quick fix to a formula that takes me a few minutes can cost as little as £10. Most jobs are invoiced between £200 and £400, though I have been involved in some intensive projects that have resulted in invoices over £1000. Naturally I will make you aware of these costs before proceeding"

 

[Carl "Excel-Expert" Nixon]

Putting an hourly rate up on the site really does not work for us - in fact it kills off all calls. Not because I'm expensive. A client will have a project in mind when they visit my site and they will mentally work out how long it would take them. They then mentally multiple my hourly rate by that many hours and scare themselves off calling. The trouble is at that stage they dont realise that it would only take one tenth of the time they estimate and would be 1/10th of the cost they imagined.

I only give out an hourly rate when I have established how quickly I can turn something around for a client.

Most of our jobs are in the £2k-£3k category and very rarely drop below the £500 range.

I have seen one competitor put up sample prices giving 3 different levels of project complexity with a guide price next to each. (Which is a variation of what MikeJ is saying). So maybe that is the answer.

 

[Gecko001]

Carl

As far as I can see there is no nice way of saying "no time wasters" or "no riff raff". No matter what wording you use, it will reflect badly on your business in general and could drive away the clients that you want to attract as well as the people you are trying to put off from contacting you.

I think you have to concentrate on the value that you are adding to the clients who you want to target. What will attract them to you? Perhaps by concentrating on describing the service you provide to these target clients in a way that will appeal to them and them only, you might drive away the others. The better customers will probably want an overview rather than lots and lots of detail about your services. The customers who want you to do their college project or a quick spreadsheet to do their whatever will pick up on certain detail on your website and think you are just the person for them.

 

[MikeJ]

Most of our jobs are in the £2k-£3k category and very rarely drop below the £500 range.

I have seen one competitor put up sample prices giving 3 different levels of project complexity with a guide price next to each. (Which is a variation of what MikeJ is saying). So maybe that is the answer.

I think having that information would put off the riff-raff* without annoying potential customers. In fact, they may be encouraged by thinking it was at the lower end of the range.

Would it be possible to put up some sample spreadsheets and prices on your site, to show what you've done? Appreciate confidentiality may be an issue here. Or have a couple of project pages showing how the sheet works, and the invoice total. That may give people an idea of what they were looking at.

Either way, stating your projects start from £500 would put off the tyre kickers.

* We are in Fawlty Towers mode here, yes?

 

[paulears]

Different area, but a new client is likely to end up spending at least £1200 if we work for them. We get loads of speculative emails who clearly believe that they will spend a maximum of say £200. We offer help, advice and often suggest somebody who might be able to do something similar but with a lot less complexity at less money. We would never put the prices on the website and would never refuse people based on their service provider or ability with web-wrangling.

It's not like you can tell if a client knows how much you charge, based on what they know of your services - and you have no idea what a clients budget is by their email either.

 

[Carl "Excel-Expert" Nixon]

I think having that information would put off the riff-raff* without annoying potential customers. In fact, they may be encouraged by thinking it was at the lower end of the range.

Would it be possible to put up some sample spreadsheets and prices on your site, to show what you've done? Appreciate confidentiality may be an issue here. Or have a couple of project pages showing how the sheet works, and the invoice total. That may give people an idea of what they were looking at.

Either way, stating your projects start from £500 would put off the tyre kickers.

* We are in Fawlty Towers mode here, yes?

Putting up sample spreadsheets would be difficult because of how bespoke everything is, but the idea got me thinking. I'm now thinking of asking a few clients if they would mind me revealing the price range their projects fell in to. This way I can add that to case studies on my website. That way site visitors will get an idea of project scope v's price.

 

[Carl "Excel-Expert" Nixon]

Different area, but a new client is likely to end up spending at least £1200 if we work for them. We get loads of speculative emails who clearly believe that they will spend a maximum of say £200. We offer help, advice and often suggest somebody who might be able to do something similar but with a lot less complexity at less money. We would never put the prices on the website and would never refuse people based on their service provider or ability with web-wrangling.

It's not like you can tell if a client knows how much you charge, based on what they know of your services - and you have no idea what a clients budget is by their email either.

The other idea I'm thinking of (as well as MikeJ's above) is having a resources page for people on a budget. i.e. putting up a couple of pages of links to template sites that give stuff away for free or for fiverr.com type rates.

 

[MikeJ]

We have case studies on our website. They're completely anonymous (A brewery in the US / A Power Station in Europe, etc). They don't include costs, but we're less bespoke than you. However, when I worked for a project company, we'd regularly do case studies with total project costs on them.

 

[Root 66 Woodshop]

The other idea I'm thinking of (as well as MikeJ's above) is having a resources page for people on a budget. i.e. putting up a couple of pages of links to template sites that give stuff away for free or for fiverr.com type rates.

The template idea is quite good - but to link to fiverr.com probably not the best thing to do... personally, I've never used it - but lets say for instance something that you do for £500 because of what/how you do it - goes to some chap on fiverr for... a fiver who does it a different way (probably a worse way?... I dunno! - A couple of questions to ask yourself...

Do you really want to associate with such a service?
Would you be prepared for the come back for linking yourself with such a service?

Just a thought - and my personal opinion

 

[Gecko001]

I have had a look at your website and it looks professional and it seems to have all the things that you would expect, such as testimonials, list of clients and a clear description of your services. I suspect that the problem that you mention is mostly with regard to the prospective customers who first contact you by email. Can you just not answer emails from suspected time wasters immediately or ask the email sender to contact you by telephone or skype.

Most of my prospective clients contact me by telephone and usually it will become clear within seconds whether someone is a time waster or not and if they are they can be put off usually fairly easily, usually by focusing the conversation of costs.

 

[Christine Hough]

I think you'd lose a lot of custom with that. It makes you look very expensive.

It doesn't matter what you loose.
It matters what you gain.

If you still have enough high-end work really that is all that matters.