| An SOW is a statement of work. An MSA is a master agreement. Together, they're your contract. If your BATNA is "lose house, live in box", the bill rate discussion is academic. Steadily raise your rate with new clients. Many consultants will advise you to build a steady pipeline and then raise your rates until you're turning away enough work to be 50+(Nx10)% utilized. You can quote prices in fixed project dollar amounts (or by the milestone), and then cap your hours in an SOW. If you're working with procurements departments, it doesn't matter, since they're doing the math automatically. But don't offer up a $/hour amount. I have less development consulting experience than many of the other commenters here do, but what I'd probaby do with regards to bugfix support is: * Have a formal acceptance process, at the end of which the customer is responsible for signing off on the deliverable. Most large projects I've worked on are QA'd by the customer as well as the vendor. * Have an escalation ladder for bugs, from cosmetic to data-loss, and have SLA time frames for free fixes on anything other than "cosmetic". * Offer an up-front retainer contract for rapid (=better than SLA) bugfixes, changes, or feature requests, pointing out that if the customer does not opt for the retainer, feature additions and subsequent revisions will be full-on new projects subject to whatever your current rate and scheduling terms are. Something I've learned in the past 4 years: scheduling risk is something many customers will pay to mitigate. |