Contract Renewal Rises
This is the second of a 3-part series that UKContractors is running on getting contract renewal rises from both your client and your agent at renewal time.
See Part 1 – Contract Renewal Time Rises – How to Get a Good One first before reading this one.
Backed Up by Ability
If you are to get a good contract renewal rises, you have to be able to back it up with your ability and knowledge. You don’t want to be the most expensive person at your site, as well as the least technically good.
Don’t bargain without having holding a good hand. Any weakness here will have to be made up by ingratiating yourself to your boss. That works equally as well.
It tends to be, though, that God didn’t make good technical people to be good negotiators, and good negotiators to be good technically.
I’ve always thought that there was room for a role for contractors to have agents, whose sole role was to negotiate for them. Contractors make a mistake in thinking that their agents are their agents.
Never have a group of people been so inappropriately named. Their first loyalty is to the client, and most of them will tell you that.
Clients, Agents and Contractors
They are not as interested in keeping you happy as keeping the client happy.
UK Contractors should just accept this as a fact of life, instead of moaning and groaning about it, as they normally do. The agent’s first priority is to get as many people out as possible and to get as much from the contractor as possible.
They want to get other IT contractors into the client’s site. They want to be known to the client as someone who can get very good contractors at very reasonable rates.
They are not that interested in possibly annoying the client by pushing for a large rate for you originally and risking not getting the job, or future work from the client.
They are also not that interested in pushing the client for large contract renewal rises for the contractor. So, they would rather that the contractor took nothing, if there were any contract renewal rises and they took it all.
Not the Contractor’s Agent
Their interests are very different from yours, and you should never consider them to be YOUR agents. That is the mistake that many contractors make.
You have to do the negotiation by yourself.
Now read Part 3 – Contract Renewal Time Rises – Buying Out the Agency
See Successful Contractors – Ten Steps to Successful Contracting
See also Getting a Good Rate
