If I had a dollar for everytime I heard something like this, I would be a wealthy man.
“Our main 3D Designer is no longer with our company, so I imagine there is an opportunity for us to send you a lot more work. Please consider that when pricing this out.”
I thought it would make some of you smile.
:- ) Sure did
sales 101, but just sounds slimy.
Bobby Parker www.bobby-parker.com
Did you tell them your prices are not based on “future” premise.
No, but I told him that I have several bids out, awaiting approval, so if he wants to proceed he needs to sign and send me a deposit as soon as possible. I didn’t acknowledge his sales 101 comment.
give them a coffee shop style loyalty card - commission 9 renders get the 10th free.
Everybody is using the same speech…I had one of those yesterday.
Loyalty card, good idea. I wouldn’t do free, however, a discount would work. You know, play their game and mark each one up a percent and discount 10% on the 10th one. Bobby Parker www.bobby-parker.com
yeah thats very common statement here too.
Hey, i now have a client who ordered 30 A4/300dpi interior renders. In the middle of the work they decided they want A3 sizes.
They were really pissed off with me when i said i will have to ask for additional money.
Apparently their suppliers dont make any problems when they ask for bigger sizes.
I tried to explain that for large size renders i woudl need to redo loads of textures, the renderign woudl take a lot longer and all that…NO…i was the bad capitalist swine thats refusing their small request trying to make money on everything.
In the end i just took it to PS and enlarged the whole damn thing and they were fine with it.
Mind you, the textures theyre sending me to use on their products are freaking small even for A4…
On some people i just give up 
Most don’t understand what it takes.
you are preaching to the choir my friend. 
I won’t name names (obviously!) but we had an agency recently plead for us to drop our rates for a project as the client wasn’t 100% sure about the route they’d signed off on (!?), however if the initial project went well, then there would be 5, 10, 20+ more images in the same campaign and we could charge these at our normal rate.
We reluctantly agreed but fortunately the initial image(s) went down really well and the client signed off on a further 10 images. We costed accordingly and the agency came back in a panic saying that we had to keep our costs the same as the first treatment, because how could they explain to the client that everything was now more expensive?
That was fun!
Just brilliant.
Like everyone else I get these requests as well, mostly for architect’s proposals to clients. Since they are doing it basically out of pocket they ask me to do a rendering on the cheap for them with the promise of a future full rendering for the project if they are awarded it. So they want me to absorb some of the cost on the initial rendering for the promise of possibly getting another rendering down the line for a couple thousand $. Meanwhile, if they get awarded the project they get hundreds of thousands or millions of $ in fees. Their risk/reward payoff is much, much greater. I usually kindly explain this to them and it gets sorted out, mostly based on prior projects together, not future ones.
Lol you guys crack me up…
Anytime there is this whole do for less now and get more later talk, it should be alarm n1 to refuse.
What I do is I let them do the talking:
Always in writing so you have shit to back you up on who said what.
If they want higher res you ask - simple resize or actual upres?
Simple resize is quick but shit, they come back for upres, that’s when you talk additional cost.
Often I get clients just tell me how much they have $ wise for work, and I tell them what I can do.
No surprises.
They try to make us think that we have skin in the game, when we don’t. Rule of thumb is when they complain about money they’ll be hard to please, so it’s a losing proposition.
I think it helps to understand that when dealing with any AEC work, the people requesting work often do work for FREE themselves in the hopes of getting work from the free work. it is an unfortunate industry standard. It is so standard that Developers expect it. So as 3d artists, we are on the receiving end of this “Do it for free mentality.”
When I worked for one architect, I sat in a meeting where he told the developer that “Our guys love doing this stuff for free. No problem. We’ll have something for you in a few days.” He then expected me to do it for free on my own time. I refused. He ended up doing it for free on his own time. No negative repercussions to me.
mh
yeah the vfx industry is also bad for shit like this. Often studios will make people work overtime without paying it, or pay it unfairly. For example try to negotiate your day rate but then make you work lots of OT, so therefore making your day rate less in effect.
Places like that I just run from.
Sure… you will take that into consideration when drafting your proposal if they agree to put you on retainer for future work. Otherwise it is an empty promise.
I gave him a price and said that I could start as soon as the middle of next week and would need two week to complete it, but would probably complete it sooner. He ended up replying saying that he needed it by Friday. Where do these people come from?
You mean tomorrow? hahahaaha