Earlier this year I got a call from a client and friend who wanted to do a headshot. During our conversation, he asserted that I was in the ‘big leagues’ because my services were in American Dollars (USD). Truth is I priced in USD as a way to filter clients.
I found that clients who asked “Why do you charge in USD?” were less likely to book a session in comparison to those who asked, “How much is that in Jamaican Dollars (JMD)?” This filtration system worked very well for a while.
Over the last 6-7 months, most of my work has been with corporate clients, some of which are financial institutions and they prefered their invoices in JMD; even though I had the conversion rate and JMD equivalent included on the invoice. I may have even debated with a few clients about how to read my invoices – I was being pig-headed and my invoices were taking longer to get paid which affected my cash flow.
In May of this year while reading The 1-Page Marketing Plan by Allan Dib something he said resonated with me … “You need to offer your customers their preferred payment method, not yours.” Since then I’ve stopped arguing with clients about checking my invoices for the foreign exchange (fx) rate and simply provided them with a JMD invoice. There have been no issues with payment since and as of September 2019 all my prices will be in JMD.
“So what do you do when an overseas client books you for a job, like a wedding?” I hear you asking. Well, I’ll tell them the JMD value and share with them the weighted average rate from the Bank of Jamaica’s website if they so desire. The beauty about this is I’ll always get paid X amount of JMD regardless of the fx rate for the given day.
Will I ever change back to USD? If that’s the preferred way the majority of my clients want to pay.
Tell me, what currency do you charge your clients in and why?
Loving this post Gabs! I personally decided to move away from the USD many years ago because of the same challenge, but then had to try and figure out the “Filter”…which eventually got taken care of by my focus on my target group versus focusing on who I didn’t want. There’s a big difference…here I was able to filter out the “bad clients” while staying true to the “good ones”. It also allowed me to see that not all persons who I thought were “bad” were actually bad.
“Good clients” want a system they can adhere to and work with while getting quality service. I work with a series of deposits and final payments that I do not compromise with…ensuring that cash flow never stops new business from occurring…and ensuring that I always have something to hold on to in order to get paid.