Speculate to accumulate?

[leftie]

I work quite a bit with the public sector, who are prone to ask for a meeting at the drop of a hat. I now build the need for pointless meetings into my tender price.

Recently I have had a couple of them want me to travel to see them about a smallish piece of work they may want me to do. Job is often worth about £2,500-3000, but it will cost me a day to travel to them and another £130 in train fare to London.

I have been telling them I don't think we need to meet face-to-face and can do what we need to do on the 'phone or by email . To date I don't think I have lost any work but has anyone else got a 'chase-to-get' ratio they use? I am busy anyway and don't need the work at the moment, but might need the goodwill should times get hard.

The other thing they do is call me for meetings after the work has finished ( to present it senior managemnet when that wasn't in the workplan) and get sniffy if I want to charge them.

[Size Nine Elm]

Your time is not free. If you imply to your customer that it is, they'll take advantage.

You either have to charge explicitly for such overheads, or build a reasonable overhead into your rate for the rest of the work, and manage how much 'free' time you then are prepared to give away...