The perils of being small

I've been co-running our very own baby research agency since 2007. I fell in love with the nitty gritty details of running a company, of working with your own salaried employees and freelancers, of negotiating with clients with the full knowledge of how the project is priced down to the last centavo.

As a small research agency, we don't have much of the leeway big agencies have when it comes to profit. I've been to one and the profit margins are really exorbitant (up to nearly four-fold). It is reasonable, really, knowing that they have higher salaries from the directors down to the RAs. Plus they rent in prime office buildings. This allows them to baby their clients to the core all in the name of client servicing - a concept I so loathe. This means buying them Starbucks, ordering food for them, serving them with drinks and chips. My colleagues call this babysitting, only they're not babies but annoying corporate executive brats.

Compared to them, we have lower operational expenses (but not necessarily lower salaries!). But all in all, we offer rock-bottom rates. For instance, in one project bidding that we won, a mole revealed to me that our cost is not even half as much as the cost of the next lowest bidder.

But does this give any client any right to abuse us? Abuse: asking more of what's stipulated in the contract. Do they even know what additional unaccounted for expenditures mean to small agencies like us? They're actually asking us to cut our own profit.

I woke up to a call of this kind of client. I almost lost it with her on the phone. It's just a small project, not even a full-service research. But she insists on some additional work outside of what was agreed upon. We argued for a few minutes, and told her I'll get back to her.

I consulted my partner if we can spend for this out of our own pocket. Okay. At the end of the day, its the thought that they can just go around the contract like 5-year old kids breaking down inside the store that is most annoying.

We decided to comply. They say the customer is always right. And I hate this. This much stress for P2,000. Seriously?!?