Your services are being commoditized every day.
Margins are being squeezed.
Scope creep is killing you.
If you've done any significant project work (either with clients or coworkers), you've probably experienced one of these.
- They request you start the project without a purchase order.
- They don't have the information you need to proceed but they ask you to start anyway.
- They request your attendance at a new weekly or daily meeting that was not anticipated in the original scope.
- They request an in person meeting with your whole team when they should be out producing.
- They need you to prepare a special report by the end of the day (and it already 5pm) - this is the fourth new report this month.
- They put your project on hold.
So what typically happens?
You might have the following conversation inside your head...
- "No, it isn't in the scope, I'm not going to do it."
- "I don't want to be the one holding up the project so I'll figure out a way to do it."
- "I just have to accept that. Don't want to have the project pulled."
And then what happens?
Your project is now...
- Behind schedule and
- Over budget
What if you took a different approach?
What if you took a page out of "Negotiations 101" and proposed a swap?
What is a swap?
It is proposing a counter-offer to their offer.
What it does is put you on the same level in the negotiations.
Too often we think of the BIG CLIENT
little us 
.This leads to accepting whatever they offer/request rather than proposing something that levels the playing field.
So what do you need to make this happen?
Prepare a Swap List.
What are the things that you could use to improve the success of your project?
What are some things that you could use to improve your client relationship?
What are some things that you do request to improve the success of another active project or a future project?
Now that you have these swaps ready to go, bring them up in your negotiations when a client says,
"I need you to..."
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