Real-Life Decision Making -- Solution
You decide to make the additions to the website.
The marketing executive of Energy Outerwear is so excited about the possibilities
of multimedia that you don't have the heart to tell him it will cost extra
money to add his ideas to the website. You don't stop him from brainstorming,
and after the hour-long meeting you come out with a week's worth of new work
that you'll have to complete for free.
You finish the extra work and show the website to your client. He's thrilled
with the final product.
Your team, however, doesn't share his enthusiasm. The graphic artist and
video technologist aren't too upset -- they just give you a dirty look and
grumble a bit. Your computer programmer, on the other hand, takes it one step
further, saying that he can work anywhere and get paid for it. He quits.
Now you're short thousands of dollars and one computer programmer. You
should have explained your situation to the customer and tried to reach a
compromise.
Multimedia developer Matthew Cramer says it can pay off to do extra things
for free for your client. But this is only true if the extra things take a
short amount of time.
"Sometimes I think it's OK to do that [extra work], if it's just a couple
small things," says Cramer. "Sometimes the smallest thing that you do is a
huge thing for the client, and, in that case, it's good to do it.
"But if there's a whole bunch of stuff, and it's going to take a lot, and
you just do it, then you're not limiting them," Cramer adds. "They're just
going to keep coming at you with stuff and if you keep doing it, eventually
you're like, 'Whoa, I've got to charge you for this stuff,' and they'll say,
'Well, you've been doing the rest of this stuff, why are you now charging
me?'"