An Unfair Trade

Hey everybody, Drew McLellan here from Agency Management Institute, this week coming to you from a beautiful events center right outside Richmond, Virginia. You know, this week in the Facebook group for podcast listeners, so the 'Build A Better Agency Podcast' Facebook group, which you're all welcome to join, we were having an interesting discussion. One of the agency owners posted this question: "Hey, I have the opportunity to work with a prospect that I think would be really great. I think we can do some amazing work for them. But rather than paying us in cash, they're wondering if we would be willing to do a trade." And then he went on to explain what the business was and the fact that the trade items, the things that they were offering for trade, weren't really something that he could use a lot of or for a long period of time. So I jumped into the conversation, other people had different ideas about how he could use the items offered in the trade or could he sell it to another client or something like that. And I jumped in and I said, "Whoa, whoa, whoa, timeout! Do not ever trade your services." Here's the deal, that I have seen so many people get into a trade situation and what happens is both parties end up feeling like they ended up giving more into the trade than the other party. So the agency and whoever else the trade was with, it didn't feel equitable to either party. And no matter what they tried to do, no matter how clear they were in their language, what it did was it eroded the relationship, it created resentment between the two parties because they both felt like they were sort of being taken advantage of. And at the end of the day, in many cases, those relationships sort of dissipated because the relationship was not based on a, "You're doing something of value for me, and I'm paying you to do that. And maybe I have something of value that you want too, and so you're going to pay me for that." And so I think it's really important that we be very careful about not denigrating the value of what we do by going into a trade arrangement. Does it work? Every once in a while. But if 90 times out of 100, it doesn't work, the odds are not in your favor. So if you have something awesome that you do for other people, for clients, get paid to do that work. If that client happens to have something that is equally awesome that you want to take advantage of personally or for your business, then just pay them for whatever that is. Let money exchange hands, a fair value, and then everybody feels like they got what they wanted for the price they were willing to pay. So don't get into trades; it's not worth it. I know it sounds good on the surface, but it causes a lot of problems underneath. All right? I'll see you next week.