Why Should You Charge People To Call You? a Helpful Guide

Client communication is an essential part of every service-based business and yet it is often one of the least visible.

Few of us track the time we spend answering client emails and taking phone calls and fewer still consider it to be billable.

Realizing that any kind of client communication can quickly add up time-wise is crucial as failing to recognize it as valid work could mean you might be underselling the value of your own time.

In this article, we are going to look at why as a consultant or anyone who sells their knowledge and expertise, you should always charge people to call you.

Let’s start first with the brief takeaway and then we can start to delve deeper.

Why should you charge people to call you

As a professional, it’s important to understand that making sure you charge for your communication time effectively is crucial to success. Business owners such as coaches, consultants, and other knowledge sellers should make sure they charge their customers for their services during communication such as phone calls.

So now we’ve hit the brief, let’s first start by looking at the cost of client communication to help you understand a little more easily why it’s so important to charge people to call you.

How costly is client communication?

There is an absolute wealth of surveys and other research which discovers that we spend around 33% of our billable time reading and answering emails, and 15% on meetings as organizations.

This is before we add in any time we spend giving advice, selling our knowledge, and generally taking calls from our customers.

This huge demand for our time in terms of communications such as emails, calls, and face to face meetings is probably much larger than you might think.

It is also worth considering that it’s not only the physical time we spend on communication tasks.

It’s interesting to know that according to the University of California, it can take as long as 23 minutes to recover from unscheduled communications which interrupt our flow and concentration.

Many knowledge professionals learn this the hard way when they unknowingly enter into lengthy calls with clients without feeling able to charge for that time.

So it’s important to understand that if you’re providing value during this contact time to your customers and clients, it should be part of your billable service.

“Many knowledge professionals learn this the hard way when they unknowingly enter into lengthy calls with clients without feeling able to charge for that time.”

So are all client communications, including telephone calls billable? Let’s find out.

Are all client communications billable?

Although we often look at much client communication as included in our marketing budgets, it’s crucial that you don’t think of this as a favor you do for your client.

Those whose business is selling their expertise should also be aware that customers who are constantly messaging, emailing, or calling them, should have some monetary boundaries in place.

It can be very easy to simply take the fourth call that day from a very keen client and realize that your whole day has been interrupted with very little real revenue being made!

All knowledge is valuable

It’s important to understand as a busy professional consultant or coach is that your knowledge is the way you provide value to your customers and so should be part of your revenue stream, rather than a freebie.

On a daily basis during telephone calls and other communication such as email or physical meetings, you might find yourself:

• Responding to customers questions
• Giving advice and direction
• Demonstrating
• Clarifying and developing processes with your clients.

So although you may feel these tasks are wrapped up in a service your customers may have already been charged for, this important use of your time forms part of your project work and represents how you add value to your offering.

Managing a growing client base

Consultants and anyone who sells their advice have to give themselves room to grow and as soon as they can, start to develop their business.

If you are simply getting tied up with your existing customers on small issues or queries that tie up your time, you could find yourself struggling to build your customer base and expand.

Anyone who sells expertise of knowledge would benefit from learning from other more traditional service providers such as accountants and attorneys.

That means billing for telephone calls, something that some consultants might hesitate to do as they mistakenly believe doing this might antagonize their clients or worse still, contribute to them reaching out to competitors.

So now we’ve discovered that charging for your calls is crucial to expansion, let’s find out why you should make sure you are not giving away your day for free.

All hard-earned knowledge is billable

It’s important to realize that you may be the font of all knowledge as far as your clients are concerned, but your knowledge is the business expertise that you have learned through hard work and dedication!

So even if you may feel you may only be imparting a fraction of what you have learned in a brief telephone call to your client, knowledge doesn’t come free!

What information should I charge for?

Obviously any kind of calls in order to look for a business isn’t an option to charge for.

So you can get a better handle on the types of calls you could make extra revenue from, it’s an idea to think along the lines of ‘ is this communication benefitting me or my client?’.

This can help you more easily establish the types of calls you could not only charge for, but actively generate income from.

Ok, so now you know that you should be charging your clients, fans, followers or anyone else you communicate with to sell your knowledge, let’s find out how.

What is the best way of charging customers for calls?

Invoice your customers

So simply invoicing your customers could work, it’s a very time rich process which means you would need to spend crucial business time on admin, instead of generating your income.

Our modern world moves very quickly, so having to wait for customers to pay and possibly chasing them to remind them is not the best use of any one’s time, especially if you are working alone.

Use a dedicated chat service

The best pay-per-minute chat services offer the ability for you to bill for your time in an effective way which actively helps you generate income.

Consulting with any of your clients via either video or chat is a simple process and perfect for everyone who sells their knowledge.

Coaches, consultants, influencers, experts, psychics, tech support agents, and anyone who sells their expertise can offer one-on-one paid chat or consultancy services and get paid for talking to clients.

And finally…

Charging for your knowledge, especially via telephone calls can make sure that as a busy entrepreneur you are making the most of every opportunity to create revenue.

PayPerCall.com is the easiest and quickest way to launch a flat-rate or pay per minute call service with a simple widget for your website.

A great way to boost your availability and make sure you’re getting paid for your time, every minute of time. Order today and you will be setup in 24 hours or less.