Why clients will pay you upfront before work starts
Here's what I've done.
I get it. The fear of scaring off potential clients is real.
But here’s the truth: clients who baulk at paying upfront might not be the dream clients you want anyway.
The ones who value your work won’t think twice about investing upfront. And honestly? It sets the tone for:
Smooth working relationship
Better quality of life
Better quality work
Client retention
Why Do I Ask For an Upfront Payment First?
I’ve been in the graphic design service industry for a long time, since 2005.
If I wanted to be demanding about money, I could take a lifetime to hunt down countless clients who’ve not paid up what I’ve delivered.
Every experience is a lesson, but this one triggered me to change my payment system once and for all:
I was tasked to design a book and have a few hundred copies of it printed.
The design was approved and I sent it for print.
Samples were given and approved.
But when the client received hundreds of them, they claimed the copies were not printed in the way they asked for.
They refused to pay for the all work, design and printing included.
I had to pay for the printing and never got paid for both design and printing.
Worst of all, I didn’t have enough to pay the printer and had to owe him past the Lunar New Year.
Based on superstition, I’d be unlucky all year!
Here’s the thing.
I accepted this project for a few reasons:
I needed the money
I loved the work
I got referred
But after all that pleasure doing the work, not only did I lose money.
I lost time to do the following:
The work
Chase payment
Negotiate quote with client
Negotiate a quote with the printer
I also got emotionally drained to:
Think of what to say to get payment from the client
Think of what to say to the printer to delay payment
Feel bad for months not being able to pay the printer on time
Going through this process was insane to the max!
Imagine if I had to do all of these with another 20 clients.
I’d rather get a job.
Life would have been better.
You may think not all clients are jerks.
That’s true, but not all clients don’t pay up because they are jerks.
Some faked death.
Some can go bankrupt.
Some companies can get strangely acquired, like Twitter.
Some just ignore your calls and let you do the wild goose chase.
At the end of the day, you are the one who has invested it all.
Anyway, I wasn’t ready to give up yet.
I was willing to transform how I do business to improve my life.
So I decided to figure out how to get paid first before delivering anything to clients.
I sat down to brainstorm a few things and these are what I came up with:
Who Are My Dream Clients?
This is not about finding your niche or sub-niche.
It’s not about demographics either.
It’s more about working with people who understand what’s standard practice when working with service providers.
It’s similar to the SaaS pricing models, people typically pay up first before using the apps.
Here’s what I listed as my dream clients:
They know what they want.
They’ve outsourced or hired before.
They are serious and wish to commit.
They know the value of the service I’m providing.
They are willing to pay to work together in the first place.
They need ongoing service that doesn’t require hand-holding.
There are several ways to find out about these.
The best way is to have a discovery call so you can ask them open-ended questions.
The more scalable way is to have a form embedded in your website for them to answer these questions at their own time.
You then filter your prospects and contact the ideal ones to move on to the next steps of working with them.
What Deliverables Do They Need?
In the past, I was more of an order taker.
One day, the client will ask for a website design.
The requests were always random, 2 pages today, 10 pages tomorrow, then down to 4 pages another day.
I couldn’t ask for payment upfront because I didn’t know what deliverables I would be providing, what expertise was required and how long that would take.
So, creating pre-defined fixed deliverables is the best thing to do.
In this way, I’m able to set a fixed pricing to the expected deliverables and hence, bill clients upfront.
Why Will Clients Want to Pay Upfront?
I realised I used to work with a scarcity mindset, low confidence and self-skepticism.
I didn’t trust myself enough to trust that clients would trust me to pay me before I started work.
Some people are not willing to pay anyone upfront before work starts.
That’s perfectly normal.
They are afraid of getting ghosted, and random power outages.
Similar reasons why some clients don’t pay up.
It has to do with how much they trust what you say and do.
So you just have to give clients the right reasons and help them to see why they should pay first.
Here’s what I’ve done and what you can do:
Position yourself as an expert: Show prospects your case studies, past results and a portfolio geared to the fixed deliverables you promise you can deliver. Hence, don’t offer too many services, the less the easier, the better.
Tell clients payment upfront secures their spot: Have them understand, that paying upfront ensures their project gets prioritized. If they see you’re in demand, they won’t want to miss their chance to work with you.
Cheaper now than later: I let clients know paying after work is done will be 3x more than paying upfront. Make it a no-brainer for them to pay upfront.
Free trial: I used to also provide a 7-day free trial to allow prospects to know what it’s like to work with us first. Most times, this converts a lot of them to long-term clients because trust has been established.
Money-back guarantees: If clients are not getting what I’m promising, they can cancel the service and I refund them 100%. So far, I’ve not met anyone who signed up to take advantage of the refund. This is more of an assurance that leads them to buy. They are already ready to buy since they need the service to complete their tasks. This can be a final trigger.
I can’t reiterate this enough. Many clients are willing to pay upfront.
On your part as a service provide, you just have to help them:
Trust you and your process.
See you as a professional worth investing in.
Understand the benefits for them (priority, speed, simplicity).
In short, trust yourself to do this and position yourself and your service. You are doing this for both you and your clients to win, not to cheat or trick anyone into paying and not doing anything.
Most clients won’t think twice about paying upfront, they want to get things going and move forward.
They’ll see it as the logical next step!
I’ve productized my business since 2015 to get paid before starting work, and never looked back. If you want my tried and proven system, I’ve created a step-by-step, no-nonsense course here for you to do the same → Productized Kit
Securing their spot is such a good idea to create value for them before you even start