288: The Piranha Client

<p>If you have ever watched one of those nature documentaries about the piranha fish, they can strip an animal of its flesh in seconds.  The way they do that though is totally different to a shark.  Growing up in Australia, we are all experts on sharks and we know that they can distend their lower jaw to make the size of the bite larger.  They will take huge chunks of flesh off your body at a time.  The piranha however only takes small bites but there are a tremendous lot of them and this is where the trouble comes from.  These small bites remind me of some clients and how they attempt to strip you of your deal content, one little bite sized piece at a time.</p> <p> </p> <p>We are dealing with a large company and a new division.  This is a group we haven’t worked with before, so the people are new to us.  We struck a deal for a reasonable piece of business and imagined we would set some dates and get busy with the delivery.  Gradually, they came back with a little larger piece of business and wanted discounts for volume, which we agreed to.  And then they came back with another tranche and wanted more discounts.  And then another tranche and a request for more discounts. “Hmm, I am being played here”, was the thought going through my mind. I was in a bind now because being unable to see the total deal size from the beginning, I had nicely backed myself into the corner labelled “Big Discounts” and had no wiggle room. </p> <p> </p> <p>Did they plan that approach from the outset or did they get into a feeding frenzy on the discounts and think “let’s see how far we can push this along?”.  I am not sure which is which, but I do know we are working for a substantial reduction in revenues as a result.  In retrospect, I should have entertained the possibility that they would want further discounts and should have arranged my numbers, so that there was a hard stop which came into play much earlier.  In fact, they actually came back with a slightly different requirement and I was determined that if we had more of this scop