Speaker:
Welcome to The Pricing Lady Podcast,
where smart business owners price
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with purpose and profit with clarity.
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I'm Janene your hostess, and today
we are going to be talking about
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scope creep and how weak boundaries
undermine your Pricing power.
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Scope creep most of the time
is blamed on the client.
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And of course clients do push.
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I'm not saying that they don't.
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However, this is not
where scope creep starts.
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It's created well before you
even have a client, and it's
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reinforced during the work.
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So let's take a look.
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The first place where you start to set
the framework or the breeding ground
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for scope creep is in your offer design.
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Oftentimes what I see is that
people are trying to be super
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flexible, so they leave their offers
very open, a little bit vague.
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They assume, oh, I'll just
figure this out later.
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They may be mixing types of work
like freelance work with strategy
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work, and oftentimes, actually a
lot of the time their offers aren't.
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Forcing clients to make trade-offs
about how much flexibility they want
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versus the budget that they have.
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And these are all things that are
contributing to this potential for
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there to be scope creep later on.
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And it's important to recognize
that now this happens because
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they're trying to cast a wide
net and be everything to anyone.
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But that not only creates like this
breeding ground for scope, keep
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scope creep, it also makes it harder
for you to explain your offer.
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You sound and feel a little bit more
wishy-washy, and it also makes it
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harder for clients to make decisions
about whether or not to work for you.
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Not defining what is being bought is
this first place where you actually
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open the door for scope creep later on.
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The second point in time
where this becomes a factor
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is in defining the contract.
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Now they're buying something from
you, and the contract is where you're
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translating the offer itself into
this is how we're gonna work together.
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And you can either get more
clear and give more clarity, or
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you can remain quite vague here.
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It's a choice.
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Oftentimes, it's not that people
don't know what to put into contract,
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but there's this sense of, oh, maybe
something will go wrong if I put
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too much of this in the contract.
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So they soften the language, they
leaves very specific things out,
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and they deliberately choose to be
vague because they wanna be easy
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peasy and not introduce friction.
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The problem with that is that it
opens the door for more questions,
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because if it's not clearly
defined, then it becomes negotiable.
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So you wanna think of
things in your contract.
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What's gonna be written
versus what's assumed?
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What if things were to
change along the way?
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How do we respond to that?
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What happens to things like access
to you, your availability, if.
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Things are canceled or postponed,
or the project goes wrong or
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steers off course, how are we going
to deal with those situations?
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And it's not about locking everybody in,
but it's actually about being responsible
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enough to have a plan for some of these
things and to set clear boundaries
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around how you want to work with clients.
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Because here's the kicker,
and this is part number three.
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Once the work begins, it all becomes
visible and it all gets tested.
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Clients say.
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Can you just do this one more thing?
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They cancel meetings just before.
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They ask, is this included or not?
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Or they assume that it's included.
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They don't even ask.
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All of these little cracks in
between the offer and the contract.
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They start to become very visible.
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And so for example, I had a
client, she said to me, yeah, it's
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gotten really bad with my client.
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They keep canceling meetings 10 minutes
before the meeting and they just say,
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oh, we have to cancel and postpone.
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We have to go take care of something else.
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And then she's left, one, she has to
suddenly switch to doing something else.
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And of course there's a switching
cost for her, but then she's like,
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should I charge them for that or not?
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And I said, well, maybe the question
isn't whether or not to charge them.
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Maybe that's not the first question.
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The first question is,
what's the boundary here?
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What was in the offer?
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What was in the contract?
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What was defined?
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Has this happened before?
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What did you do when
it happened last time?
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Did you say something or not?
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All of these things play
into what happens next.
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In that moment when these situations come
up, your response either reinforces the
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boundary you already set, or it erodes it.
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So ask yourself, am I
addressing the situation?
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Am I delaying talking about it?
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Outta fear or creating fiction,
am I ignoring it or am I just
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accommodating this behavior?
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Now, oftentimes people will say
to me, " the first time I let it
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slide 'cause it just happened once."
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And then now we're at like
the 14th time it's happened.
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And they said, " the second time
it happened, I wasn't sure if
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I should address it because.
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I didn't the first time", right?
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So the longer you delay or ignore
these things, they're not going to
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resolve themselves and get better.
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In fact, you reinforce that
behavior and they think that
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that's acceptable and okay.
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Now I'm not saying you have go in
and you know, pick on everything.
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But if those boundaries are
clear in either the offer or the
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contract, it makes them much easier
to go back to it when it happens.
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That's why it's important
that they get in there.
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Now, scope creep is not
a single moment in time.
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It's not something that just
shows up out of nowhere.
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It's usually a consequence of an
offer that's not quite designed,
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the contract that isn't well-defined
and/ or your response in the moment.
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So we have to go back to the beginning
where we say, oh yeah, we kind of
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point our finger at the client and say,
it's all their fault the scope creep.
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The reality is it's also you
and what you are doing at these
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three moments during the process.
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And yes, of course it has
a huge impact on Pricing.
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A lot of times what I hear from my
clients is, "well, you know, I charge
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this, but because of all the scope creep,
I'm effectively earning half that."
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Or sometimes even less than
half of what their rate is.
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And their assumption is that,
oh, Janene, I have to raise my
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prices to accommodate for that.
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I bring them back and we talk
about maybe, maybe, the fix here
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isn't adjusting your prices.
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It's cleaning up the structure around
the way in which you're working.
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As I said before, scope
creep is not unusual.
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It's not avoidable.
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There will always be some to some degree.
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That's why it's so important you
put these structures in place and
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that you respond in the right way
at the time when it first comes up.
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Because unmanaged, it will quietly reduce
your Pricing power as you go forward.
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Here's what I'd like you to consider.
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Ask yourself, where am
I leaving things open?
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Where am I letting things
slide that shouldn't?
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And where is my Pricing absorbing much
more work than it was designed to?
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The answers to those questions are
going to help you understand better
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what's going on in your business.
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Because once again, how you choose to
design your offers, define your contract
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and respond in the moment when things
come up, those decisions, either fuel,
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scope creep or help you contain it.
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Thank you so much for joining me today.
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If you wanna support the show, the
number one thing you can do is share
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this episode on social media and tag me.
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This really helps get the word out.
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I wish you a wonderful day,
and as always, enjoy Pricing.
