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Mike Clarke
09-20-2015, 9:30 AM
I have been asked over the years to do some training of engravers on non-laser rotary machines. Last time I was begged but refused as it was a customer who is on their 3rd try of taking their engraving in house. I just decided I need to worry about replacing the business I was losing from them. At that time they had this machine about 9 months and were still getting every job from me, so I had no incentive other than short term money vs long term customers. Their account was about $25K year for the past couple of years and I found out about the machine on accident. I did their work for 1-2 months after finding out about the machine.

I now have a chance to do some training and for whatever reason am considering it. In this case it is not just training but some consulting. I am going to suggest some ways to streamline their production. What is a going rate that you know of? What is a number you would charge or a fee structure? One concern is the potential constant support afterward for some period of time and billing for small increments of time. Another is I have a friend the did this type of work and he said for every hour of 'class' there is a multiplier of 'X' for the time it takes to prepare the material to be presented. Of course I am also concerned that I am fairly busy and will I do a good job. I have done some teaching to people on hobby type of activities such as rifle marksmanship, but no money was involved, so I think I have some aptitude & would enjoy it.

What say you on price, fee structure and such? I know I will get some answers on questions I didn't ask and that is fine as well.

Thanks in advance.

Keith Winter
09-20-2015, 9:57 AM
First off you charge for class time and out of class time. Think of another business let's say lawyers for simplicity. They spend a large portion of their time researching the case and prepping. They definitely bill for that and you should too.

If it was me I might charge $x up front plus a higher fee for one off consulting. Example with random numbers $800 for the initial training 6 hours we will go through the laser and any questions you have. $150 hour thereafter billed in 15 minute increments. Another thing you've mentioned, does this guy operate in the same area as you? If he does I'd share you concern on training him to be a more efficient and better competitor.

One more thing on the operational consulting. I mentioned $150 as a fictious number, but if you are doing operational consulting as well $150 or even $200 hour would not be unreasonable. You will typically have a first watch and learn meeting where they do all of the processes and you observe. Then you write up your suggestions and then you present your recommendations along with the annual cost savings they should return. Consulting should pay upwards of $2500 because it's going to take a lot off time for you off-site. If he's not prepared for that then pass, because going to be a lot of work.

Dave Sheldrake
09-20-2015, 10:27 AM
I do quite a bit of consultancy work,
prices vary between $60 an hour for email support up to $400 an hour if I have to turn up at a facility + travelling expenses. Admittedly that's in a field where there are few of my peers available, laser side consultancy varies again between $50 an hour to $200 an hour depending on what and where I have to do it.

Glen Monaghan
09-20-2015, 10:48 AM
I've done consulting and training for large and small companies over the years, both as an employee of a consulting firm and as an independent consultant, and the answer you seek is somewhere between non-existent and nebulous. In my experience, bigger companies with higher dollar stakes generally don't balk at consulting and training fees that run to a couple of thousand dollars per day if you can solve their pain for them. In contrast, smaller companies with more highly constrained budgets may want similar expertise but their perceived payoffs severely limit what they are willing/able to pay, sometimes only a few hundred/day. So you have to figure out what is worth your time and even that isn't easy. If your time is limited due to other work, you may not be willing to expend the effort to set up, say, four hours of 1-on-1 training for $500 whereas that might sound good when you're sucking for paying work. Conversely, when everything is cooking along and you can pick your clients, you might draw the lower limit at $800/day per person with a four student minimum for training, or $2000/day plus travel and expenses for specialized consulting. And yet I've also done small one-off gigs that didn't pay much better than pizza and beer plus a couple of sawbucks for my trouble.

For training, a big part of the answer is how long it will take you to prepare the training, what training materials you have to provide and how much of them, how many people you'll be training, and how many times you'll be able to reuse the same training. I put a lot of time into creating two particular different training programs with lots of handouts and exercises, but was able to train 1-12 people each session and ran several dozens of sessions of each over a couple of years. I generally charged by the student for 1-4 people or when I set up the training that was open to anyone, or by the day for larger groups from the same company at their facility, and these programs were very profitable because the payback was high compared to the total preparation and presentation time. On the other hand, I worked for weeks with another guy to set up a training program that turned out to attract way fewer takers than anticipated and so was roughly a minimum wage payback.

Generally speaking, the greater the client's "pain", the more arcane and/or difficult the solution appears to them, the better you understand the solution and the more tailored your presentation is to their situation, and the higher their perceived payoff is, the more you can charge. So, you don't want to get wrapped around the axle for something that seems like a big deal but in reality is only a "paper cut" because the payback won't be there. Your customer's situation is a bit different since they want you to tell them how to cut yourself out of the picture permanently. Why spend the time and effort training someone to replace you unless they are making it extremely lucrative to do so?

Mike Clarke
09-20-2015, 10:51 AM
Keith,
I am going to propose a lunch meeting with the head of production this week. My plan is to deal with the decision maker and not anyone else as things get lost in translation at the very least. 50% up front is the acid test from what my friend tells me.
They are a customer/non-customer in that I do work for them that they can't do in house. I just did a few jobs for them on their material and have been through their place, which is 15 minutes away from me. I also do work for there other divisions/sister company on a sporadic basis. It is nothing I can count on, but nothing to sneeze at either. I don't think they do any outside work (yet). Then again that is a lot of my customer base.
Competition is a reality. The same guy that sells me a laser or rotary machine is going to go to my customers and try to sell them or at least answer the phone if my customer calls them.
In general I am not interested in making less money than I am already making. For me there is no sense in it unless the money it there.

Keith Winter
09-20-2015, 11:17 AM
I'd pass for the reasons you just mentioned. No harm in being friends with him, but no sense in training the competition.

Tony Lenkic
09-20-2015, 11:44 AM
Mike.

I my view it makes no sense for them to do this.
Your charges of 25K per year will not save them anything by taking one person off production to do engraving that will cost them more in wage and all other employment costs.
You did not mention who is supplying blanks to be engraved.

Mike Clarke
09-20-2015, 12:08 PM
Mike.

I my view it makes no sense for them to do this.
Your charges of 25K per year will not save them anything by taking one person off production to do engraving that will cost them more in wage and all other employment costs.
You did not mention who is supplying blanks to be engraved.

Sorry I thought It was clear in the first post:
2 different customers
the 25K/yr one was a father/son business. The son didn't want to get a machine, the dad did, according to what I was told. Correct it doesn't make sense to you, me and half of the customer. The decision maker saw it differently.

The company I am currently considering doing the training and consulting for is a different company. I just did some jobs for them on their material. Part of it is the engraver retired, the machine was broke and the new guy needs training. It was a temporary situation for me to do there work. It was an extra $2,500 that week for me to engrave their gravoply. ("I just did a few jobs for them on their material")

There are a couple of considerations I left out as well as my feelings about the situation. But they don't really factor into the topic on a broader nature.

Mike Clarke
09-20-2015, 12:17 PM
For clarification it is a customer that I never really did a certain portion of work for. The portion of work in consideration I only did as a stopgap measure. Me training the new guy would really only cut me out of going to work for them as their engraver, which is probably not an option due to price. They are doing their own work currently.

Mike Clarke
09-20-2015, 12:22 PM
I do quite a bit of consultancy work,
prices vary between $60 an hour for email support up to $400 an hour if I have to turn up at a facility + travelling expenses. Admittedly that's in a field where there are few of my peers available, laser side consultancy varies again between $50 an hour to $200 an hour depending on what and where I have to do it.
Dave
Thanks for the reply. I did a search for 'rotary engraver training' and so far have not seen a price quoted. Even though I am only 15 minutes away I was taking travel time into consideration. In reading various post on here you do seem quite knowledgeable.

Mike Chance in Iowa
09-20-2015, 12:23 PM
One more quick thought for you in case you decide to do this. If this is a manufacturing or production environment, find out who you are training prior to agreeing. I was tasked to train some employees that worked on a production line for them to become more efficient. Not only did this involve training them to use a new software program, but it also involved several other "simple" factors involving printing and copy/pasting info from email and a web-based program. Management deemed this would only take 1 hour per employee. Prior to agreeing to this task, I requested to see their environment and maybe ask 1 or 2 of these employees questions. Management was shocked when I told them none of these employees owned computers at home nor did they work on them while on the production line. In order to teach these employees how to use the new software program, email, print, etc. I was going to need to teach them how to use a mouse, how to use Windows, etc. That was going to take more than 1 hour per employee!

Mike Clarke
09-20-2015, 12:37 PM
I've done consulting and training for large and small companies over the years, both as an employee of a consulting firm and as an independent consultant, and the answer you seek is somewhere between non-existent and nebulous. -- cut out for brevity -- Why spend the time and effort training someone to replace you unless they are making it extremely lucrative to do so?

Glen,
Thanks also for the reply. Sound like you were on the level my friend was on as a trainer. He has told me the factor is any where from 4:1 to 100:1 for behind the scenes work and prep to class/presentation time.
Two of my hobbies and shooting and motorsports. In shooting it is about 7:1 for dryfire vs live fire. In motorsports I have a deep appreciation of how expensive 'Seat Time' is based on all the effort it takes.

As to your last sentence "Why spend the time and effort training someone to replace you unless they are making it extremely lucrative to do so?"
That really is the thing. I look at it from that stand point even if I am not being replaced directly. If I am not running my business I am not building what is potentially more long term customers that buy from my core competencies. On the other hand I when I do get out of my comfort zone it can add something to my core competencies.

I am kind of on the fence with this decision. Thanks for all the effort you took in responding.

Mike Clarke
09-20-2015, 12:49 PM
Mike,
First off thank you for the reply. Secondly I like that car.

Having been to there place, done a little of the work and met some of the people I know it will be involved. I am going to have to get into some things with engineering and IT. I am also familiar with the term 'push back'.

One thing I always try to realize is just because we find some things easy we should not devalue it. Example is my wife make caramel popcorn. I know a guy Al that does also. They don't get how other people find it hard to do. What his Al's wife and I find a challenge, they don't even consider hard. To them it is just part of it, to us it is a hurdle.

Part of me is maybe I shouldn't let the mouth overload other load bearing components