What is the most effective non-direct way to know the limit of a client's budget?

When I started my first company we used all the traditional methods of pitching and pricing  work: competitive analysis, researching industry rates, I asked my friends and I scrounged for every piece of documentation I could find. 

Then, a few years into things I had a revelation and made two significant changes to how I operated. First I quit charging by the hour and switched to charging project fees. Essentially making things one rate, vastly simplifying things for myself and also for my clients. You want X, X costs Y. If X turns into Y, then we recalculate and move on. 

I then stopped making up the budget number in the dark and made a bigger fundamental shift in my business in that I stopped treating clients like adversaries and began treating them like partners. When a potential new client comes to me now, we talk and more importantly I listen. I listen to what it is they do, what their concerns and needs are, what it is that they need help with and I ask a lot of questions.

From here I take a tact that is often very different for my contemporaries...I ask what they can afford and if I don't think they'll be successful with what they've asked me for I say so. I talk with complete and total transparency bringing them into the fold and making them also a part of my business. 

I can't tell you how good it feels to from the very first engagement with a client to feel like you're working with them to be successful and not some shitty cog in a wheel of failure. I can also say from experience that potential clients do not hear no or I don't think you should do that very often and this begins the process of building a bond, one that for me has led to long term engagements and partnerships that last and are mutually beneficial. Now the key here is that it's not simply no, you've got to back that up with reason, experience and data if at all possible.

I'm personally past the point where i'm disengaged, willing to simply cash a cheque, shake a hand and walk away. Doesn't work for me. I want to know about my client's business, to learn the details of what it is that they do...for the simple reason that their experience plus mine ( and my teams ) are what will make us successful. No more working in a vacuum, no more us vs them and much less in the way of confusion. 

So after all that...my answer to what is the most effective way to find out limits to budgets...Ask and be honest about why.

 

 Kerry Morrison