“Hey Greg, nice laptop! How much did that set you back?”
“Slab of beer! Gotta love mates rates!”
Okay guys, who likes doing something for nothing?
Then you’ll love mates rates!
Mates rates is when you do something at or even below cost, often for your friends or family members. So another words it costs you as much as you made it for plus you get no profit.
If you Urban Dictionary the term “Mates Rates”, the similar words that show up include things like beer, pub, free, discount, sperm bank… If you’re doing it for that, I’d suggest that you’re a little too close friends.
So are mates rates worth it?
If it’s going to have anything to do with a sperm bank… I’d say no.
But if you’re doing it for a beer, maybe. No.
On a serious note though, while you might feel mates rates are necessary for some people they’ll only take away from your business regardless of who it’s for.
It’s your business, the people that care about you or that you care enough about them to be contemplating doing mates rates for, should understand that. And if they want your help with something, they should be wanting to help you in return – by helping your business by paying for the product or service that they want.
I know this might sound harsh, making friends and family pay the same as customers. But regardless of how much you discount them, the same amount of work goes into it.
Probably more work actually, considering you try harder to give someone you care about a quality service. Or help them understand how the product works, et cetera. So you might end up spending more time and more effort on the project. But if you’re doing it for mates rates, you would be getting less and less for it.
Mates rates not only takes away from the profits on the job that you are doing with them. It also impacts on the rest of your business as a result of it. It takes your team off other important work that they need to be doing. Work that could be making you money!
And instead getting them to do unpaid or very little paid work for your friend or family member.
And don’t forget your team still wants to be paid. It’s wasn’t their idea to do mates rates. And it’s not their friend or family member that they’re doing it for. So they shouldn’t have to receive a pay cut!
So now you’re losing money, leads, time, team and sales! But hey at least you helped your mum, right?
