It may be the greatest obstacle to managing a project budget that has ever existed – revisions.  Everyone knows there will be some. What is surprising, and frustrating, is that today many agencies are eliminating them from their project estimates altogether, presumably in order to win business. The result is out-of-scope, unmanageable additional billing to the client. The answer, however, is a whole new era in budget management that is a revision-driven organization’s dream come true.

Client Frustration
It is easy to spot someone who has experienced the revision creep effect first-hand.  The pricing looks great on the surface, and clients eager to grab the best creative for the lowest possible price don’t think to inquire about the inclusion of revisions until the additional billing for revisions starts rolling in. One client from a Fortune 500 company recently complained of another agency, “I feel like every time I pick up the phone on this project, I am spending money I don’t have allocated in the budget. I just don’t know how to manage this.”

The Agency Gamble
The secret is this: most agencies don’t know how to manage revisions either, and it is one of the main reasons agencies lose business, next to creative that misses the mark. Client frustration and inability to manage a budget is now at an all-time high as they pick the low-cost leader who left revisions out of the pricing model, hoping to make those up if, and when, they occur. Agencies are afraid of the effect on their bottom line if they don’t bill for the hours they work on a project, but even more afraid right now of not winning the project in the first place – so they gamble on the low price, hoping that any subsequent revision billings, if necessary, will be few and won’t irritate the client.

The New Era In Pricing
No one ever knows the scale or volume of revisions a project will entail. There are too many variables. A few forward thinking agencies, The WOW Factory among them, have developed a “Revision Insurance” plan for clients. The best part is – it doesn’t cost any additional money.

Years of project work have shown that most clients make no more than one or two rounds of revisions at any phase of a project. Each of those revisions take approximately one or two hours apiece for a designer, programmer, editor, or other creative or production team member to execute. An average hourly rate for these team members is $130/hour. Experience has also shown that clients that go beyond the second round of revisions are 80% more likely to reach five, six, seven or more rounds of revisions – and while they stand to gain the most in this arrangement, they are in the minority. Therefore, this “risk” that certain agencies, WOW among them, are taking, is really nominal, and designed for long-term business relationships founded on consultation and trust.