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How to Successfully Sell a High-Value Monthly Retainer to Clients

  • November 19, 2019

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How to Successfully Sell a High-Value Monthly Retainer to Clients

A great way for freelancers to create a recurring income stream is through the use of a retainer contract, especially a high-value one. A retainer is an agreement with a client whereby they pay the freelancer a set fee each month for ongoing work. 

The primary benefit for you, the freelancer, is a sense of stability, with a predetermined amount of money coming in, each and every month. 

However, it can be difficult to sell high-value monthly retainers, at least at the beginning of a freelancer-client relationship. New clients are understandably apprehensive about agreeing to a monthly financial commitment if they’re unsure of the value you will bring. 

Benefits of a client retainer

Developing a retainer agreement has a number of benefits for freelancers. 

It leads to steady work and pay, which quickly improves your cash flow. You work with the same client over a period of months and even years. This provides you with ever-deepening insight and knowledge into their business, target markets, and industries. As such, your workflow quickens and you can deliver improved results. 

Plus, working with a select few clients on a recurring basis suits some types of freelancer personalities, especially those who are shy or prone to phone anxiety. 

Yet with all the benefits of a retainer agreement, they have nevertheless sometimes been viewed with suspicion and confusion, both by freelancers and their clients. This is in no small part thanks to the traditional retainer model. 

The traditional retainer model

Traditional retainer agreements have usually been based around selling hours of your time. These hourly retainers can work well for certain types of services but for others, it can be detrimental to your income and productivity. 

For instance, the more skilled you become in what you do, and the longer you work for the same client, the faster you’ll inevitably work. This means you’ll be doing more work in the same amount of time but with no extra financial reward. 

You basically get paid less the better you become at your job. This may be high-value freelancing from your client’s perspective, but it’s certainly not when it comes to your career. 

Selling hours inherently plays into the hands of the dreaded scope creep. 

And this is where an alternative pricing strategy comes into view. One that will benefit not just you, but will also benefit your clients. 

Selling value

A more logical and lucrative alternative is to sell your services based around value rather than time. The client never needs to know how long a particular service or task takes, because they are paying for the monthly value you bring to the job rather than a set number of hours. 

In this way, you can work faster, without the worry of being underpaid. Plus, you’ll bring a lot more value to the client’s project. You’ll also have a more incentivizing way to successfully sell a high-value monthly retainer to your next clients. 

Productizing your freelance retainer services

We’ve mentioned productizing your services before on the Invoice Ninja blog, and for good reason. Services can sometimes seem rather opaque to potential clients, which can cause confusion, concern, and delays. 

When prospects and existing clients instead get to see the features and benefits of a service laid out in a package format, they find it a lot easier to understand exactly where their money will be going. 

Productizing your services is a lot like formatting and writing a good invoice. With invoicing, you break your main services down into smaller chunks and provide a mini description for each, together with the associated price. This helps the client see exactly what has been completed (or will be completed) and how it fits in with the total fee. 

Likewise, packaged services can also be arranged in their component parts. These can be advertised on your website or in a downloadable document you send to interested prospects.  

For example, in one package option, a freelance social media manager might offer 20 social media updates per week on four different social media platforms – no less and no more – at a single price. Another package available might include 40 social media updates per week. Yet another might also include content strategy planning and a detailed eBook. 

The package price can be scaled up, with the addition of more services and products. It is irrelevant to the client how long each task or project takes you. The clients are not paying you for your time but rather for the results you bring to their unique business, based on your skills and experience. 

Selling your high-value retainer services

Packaging services makes decisions easier for prospects and also a lot simpler for you when it comes to defining a new client project. But these can also sometimes be a step too far at first, if a prospect is unfamiliar with your brand. 

A good way to bring a potential client onboard with a retainer agreement is to offer a paid trial. This is where the client samples your work – perhaps a couple of blog posts or a paid one-hour consultation – prior to then commencing with a retainer contract. 

With good long-term marketing strategies, such as email marketing and blogging, it’s easier to build trust with prospects over time. This makes it more likely they’ll be agreeable to a retainer setup earlier on, especially when you’ve already been teaching them about the basic principles behind what it is you do. 

The more trust and likeability you can build with a prospect before a retainer is even mentioned, the higher the chances of successfully selling them on the concept. You’re also more likely to attract the best types of clients. 

Better value, better results

High-value monthly retainers need to be lucrative for you and valuable to your clients. When you feel you are being paid what you’re truly worth, you will do your best work, and this will reflect positively in the results you bring for your clients. 

As such, you need to charge good rates while also presenting your retainer as great value for money. Productizing your retainer services makes it so much easier for prospects to understand exactly what they’re getting. You will also find it easier to sell the value of your service packages, rather than simply selling hours. 

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Free Invoicing Software for Small Business.
Focus on doing what you love.​ We’ll help with the invoicing​:)

Create a Free Account!

Create Taxes per Invoice Total or per Invoice Line-Item

Forever Free

Powerful tax settings.

  • Create up to 3 separate tax rates per invoice total.
  • Create up to 3 separate tax rates per individual invoice line-item!

You may have line-items (services or products) that are tax exempt, others that require taxation. You can create multiple tax situations per client or invoice! 

Invoice Ninja also supports creating inclusive & exclusive taxes per client as needed

  • Exclusive taxation: $100 + 10% = $110
  • Inclusive taxation: $100 + 10% = $100 ($90.91 + tax $9.09)

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Free Invoicing Software for Small Business.
Focus on doing what you love.​ We’ll help with the invoicing​:)

Create a Free Account!

​Enable/Disable Recurring When Cloning

Forever Free

Save time by cloning invoices within a client, or clone an existing invoice to a new client! You may wish to clone a invoice from one client to another and set up the new invoice as recurring with auto-billing, or vice versa! 

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Free Invoicing Software for Small Business.
Focus on doing what you love.​ We’ll help with the invoicing​:)

 

Create a Free Account!

Setup Automatic Credit Card Gateway Fees

Forever Free

You may wish to pass along your credit processing fee to your clients if they pay by credit card, or simply to encourage your clients to pay by ACH bank transfer! Set up automatic fees at your discretion or enable the fee to auto-match your gateway fee!

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Free Invoicing Software for Small Business.
Focus on doing what you love.​ We’ll help with the invoicing​:)

Create a Free Account!

Bulk Emailing Invoices & Quotations

Forever Free

If you wish to semi-automate emailing out invoices & quotes to your clients, utilize the bulk send feature! Simply select all the invoices & quotes and click “Send” and your account will automatically que them up to go out! 

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Free Invoicing Software for Small Business.
Focus on doing what you love.​ We’ll help with the invoicing​:)

Create a Free Account!

​Multiple Currencies & Languages

Forever Free

Invoice Ninja supports dozens of languages & currencies!

You can set different languages & currencies per client! Is your account in English, but it would be nice if your French speaking clients saw their client portal in French or Spanish speaking clients seeing payment instructions in Spanish? We have you covered!

Languages and currencies can be set per individual client!

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Free Invoicing Software for Small Business.
Focus on doing what you love.​ We’ll help with the invoicing​:)

Create a Free Account!

Importing Expenses & Vendors

Forever Free

Keep all records up to date & run accurate reports by importing Expenses. Expense importing can be done manually anytime, or you can automate it with our new banking Yodleee integration!

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Free Invoicing Software for Small Business.
Focus on doing what you love.​ We’ll help with the invoicing​:)

Create a Free Account!

Item & Product Library System

Forever Free

Why waste time typing? Create product & services in your Product Library! When creating invoices simple click from the line-item selector to quickly populate invoices and email them out!

Your product library also works (optionally) together with the Inventory feature! You can define the # of inventory stock available and when creating invoices the product library will reduce inventory levels and notify when you’re running low!

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Free Invoicing Software for Small Business.
Focus on doing what you love.​ We’ll help with the invoicing​:)

Create a Free Account!

Alerts When Client Views & Pays Invoices

Forever Free

Want to know when your client clicks to view their invoice?

Set up notifications when clients view quotes, invoices, make payments, and also if a clients payment fails. 

If you have additional account users, you can also be notified when your User are creating and sending out quotes & invoices! 

Many notification options to keep you informed of all actions taking place within your account!

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Free Invoicing Software for Small Business.
Focus on doing what you love.​ We’ll help with the invoicing​:)

Create a Free Account!

Projects, Tasks & Track Time

Forever Free

Task time-tracking allows you to accurately record every second spent on each individual task and quickly transfer timed data to the relevant invoice.

  • Create Project, Tasks, and Track Billable-Work
  • Convert Timed-Tasks to Invoices with 1-Click
  • Easily Categorize to Search Tasks & Projects

When you’re done with a task or series of tasks within a project, simply click and send your work-time to an invoice with 1-click!

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Free Invoicing Software for Small Business.
Focus on doing what you love.​ We’ll help with the invoicing​:)

Create a Free Account!

Accept Deposits & Partial Payments

Forever Free

Do you require a deposit or down-payment from clients to commence your work?

Set partial payments/deposits with unique due dates for partial payments/deposits! After your client pays the partial payment the invoice will automatically update itself with the balance due and set the new final invoice due date.

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Free Invoicing Software for Small Business.
Focus on doing what you love.​ We’ll help with the invoicing​:)

 

Create a Free Account!

Approved Quotes Auto-Convert to Payable Invoices

Forever Free

Automate your workflow! When you email out quotations to your clients, they can “Click to Approve” the quotation which then converts the quote into a payable invoice!

Invoices can then be paid online with 1-click, and your account documents all steps!

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Free Invoicing Software for Small Business.
Focus on doing what you love.​ We’ll help with the invoicing​:)

Create a Free Account!

Client-Side Portal & Invoices/Payments History

Forever Free

Every action your clients take is recorded and viewed into their client-side portal. 

Invoices, quotes, payments and more are tracked.

Uploaded documents, payment methods, client-profile – everything is accessible and recorded to ensure a smooth experience for you & your clients!

Your clients also have dynamic functionality to run their balance statements with custom date & data parameters!

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Free Invoicing Software for Small Business.
Focus on doing what you love.​ We’ll help with the invoicing​:)

Create a Free Account!

Recurring Invoicing & Auto-Billing Clients

Forever Free

If you have clients that need to be billed again & again on a fixed schedule (weekly, monthly, etc…), Invoice Ninja offers auto-billing via the world’s favorite payment gateways:

  • Stripe
  • WePay
  • Braintree
  • Authorize.net​​
  • Mollie
  • GoCardless
  • Square
  • Eway Rapid
  • PayFast
  • Checkout.com
  • Paytrace
  • Forte

Auto-billing (AKA “token billing”) is a feature that enables the payments system to capture your clients’ credit card details and store them for billing at a future date. Token billing enables auto-billing, which means future invoices can be issued automatically. Invoice Ninja integrates seamlessly so you can enjoy all the advantages of token billing via your Invoice Ninja account.

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Free Invoicing Software for Small Business.
Focus on doing what you love.​ We’ll help with the invoicing​:)

Create a Free Account!

Track Inventory Levels

Forever Free

The inventory management feature works together with your “product library”!

Set inventory stock within your product library with threshold notifications. When you create invoices and populate invoice line-items, the inventory stock levels will reduce automatically! When your stock runs low the system will email you a notification reminder to stock up!

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Free Invoicing Software for Small Business.
Focus on doing what you love.​ We’ll help with the invoicing​:)

Create a Free Account!

Invoice Template Designs

Forever Free

Beautiful well formatted invoices are critical to show clients that you mean business!

Invoice Ninja offers 11 invoice template designs. Free users have 4 free invoice templates, Pro & Enterprise user have all 11 invoice template designs.

Each invoice template can be customized with your company logo, colors scheme to match your brand, and detailed formatting customizations are also offered!

Give your clients a truly branded experience with your company by customizing your invoice templates to match your company branding! 

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Free Invoicing Software for Small Business.
Focus on doing what you love.​ We’ll help with the invoicing​:)

Create a Free Account!

Online Payment Gateways

Forever Free

Integrating your Invoice Ninja account with a payment gateway allows clients to pay their invoices with 1-click! 

The payment gateway processes the transaction in the background while your client never leave their Invoice Ninja client-side portal. Seamless! 

Integrate your invoices with: 

  • Stripe Payments
  • WePay Payments
  • PayPal Payments
  • Checkout.com Payments
  • Braintree Payments
  • PayFast Invoice Payments
  • Authorize.net Payments
  • Square Payments
  • Mollie Invoice Payments
  • Many more!

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Free Invoicing Software for Small Business.
Focus on doing what you love.​ We’ll help with the invoicing​:)

Create a Free Account!

Upload your Company Logo

Forever Free

Providing your clients a branded experience is critical for professionalism and building trust. Upload your company logo to your preferred invoice template design.

All accounts, Free & Pro/Enterprise, are able to upload logos an customize their invoice colors to match their logo & company brand theme.

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Free Invoicing Software for Small Business.
Focus on doing what you love.​ We’ll help with the invoicing​:)

Create a Free Account!

Create & Email Invoices & Quotes in Real-Time

Forever Free

Real-time PDF preview creation shows your invoice review as you build it in real-time. Utilize the product library to quickly populate invoices with 1-click, view the invoice .PDF preview to ensure everything looks awesome, and send it out!

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Free Invoicing Software for Small Business.
Focus on doing what you love.​ We’ll help with the invoicing​:)

Create a Free Account!

Dynamic Dashboard Data

Forever Free

View revenue, invoices sent, recent activity data. Track upcoming invoices, invoices past due, and more!

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Free Invoicing Software for Small Business.
Focus on doing what you love.​ We’ll help with the invoicing​:)

Create a Free Account!