Retainer from a Client

[BrendanLeahy]

I just had a new client approach me asking if I would consider a monthly or annual retainer, but I am very much in the dark on this.

Does anyone have experience with this, and if so, could you offer a lot of guidance on what I should ask for, what terms to draw up, what's a "fair" rate (vs what I charge them now) etc.?

Thank you!!!

 

[David Rasberry]

What does the client expect the retainer to pay for? Minimum defined amount of time during the retainer period, i.e. X hours of time reserved production services whether they use it or not? Would they expect priority access over other clients? Would you have to cancel or turn down other work for last minute calls?
What is the monthly average time this client books your services now? That would be a good starting point for discussions.

 

[Nick Morrison]

In my experience, a retainer when it works for both parties is generally a gaurantee of long-term work from them...in exchange for a lower rate from you.

When it works, you make more money and they save more money (if that makes sense).

Ie you both agree to a concession - you lower your rate, and they give you more of their work.

It requires trust on both sides to work (as you may become more dependent on them, and perhaps they more on you) but hopefully this gives you a framework or pov that's helpful.

Good luck

 

[Kerry Lofton]

Just set one of my first retainer situations up and had a lot of questions as well. I set my contract as time based doing social content for an athlete. For this particular client it was too hard to try to offer x amount of projects for x price because each video and what it entailed was wildly different. Some videos take 30 minutes to edit and some take 6 hours, so setting it up as offering a certain amount of time for shooting and editing worked best for me and the client. They initially estimated they’d need 12 videos a month but with this time based contract they could easily get 20+ if they’re short and easy edits.

Based on the amount of content the client said they wanted, I estimated about how much time on average a project would take and converted that to hours. For the sake of the example let’s say all the client wanted would take me 40 hours a month. Then from there I just took my usual day rate, knocked a couple hundred off for the benefit of using a retainer so the client saves a little and basically sold them days. So that 40 hours equal 5 days(8 hours per work day) and multiplied that by my day rate and that was what I charged them.

Hopefully that whol scenario isn’t too confusing but it’s worked well. I just track all my time using bonsai and the client is happy cause we could spend the time doing whatever. If he wants to use the whole 40 on one giant project with a lot of production, he can. Or if he wants to do a ton of small, easy content he can do that as well.

The biggest thing is to make sure it’s clear whether the client is comfortable paying you that fee if the hours are hot or not. It’s probably a little scary for a client having to think about paying you for 40 hours when you only worked 20. But that’s on the client and you to make sure the time is being used wisely and also trust that you aren’t just letting the timer run when doing whatever to hit your goal. I touch base with my client in the middle of the month to let them know where we stand on hours. If we need to put more work in, I push to schedule more shoots or get stuff done. If we’re getting close to that number, we plan accordingly as well.

Again, hope that helps! My PM’s are open if you want to discuss further or have any more questions!