A $1 discount is ~0.025% of a $4000/week bill rate.
A $1 discount is ~0.001% of an $8000 project.
In what increment do you want to negotiate your rate? In full percentage points, or in hundredths of a percent?
And what figures do you want to be negotiating in: amounts that are low enough that your client can immediately get their heads around, like $100 vs. $150, or the real amounts their company will pay in the end, like $8000 vs. $7900, where an individual person at the company is less likely to feel like they should have a strong opinion?
Remember this: your clients are not paying you with their own money. It is monopoly money to them. It comes out of a budget, not their own pockets.
(To say nothing of the fact that when you bill hourly, you give your clients tacit permission to ask for your time in hourly increments).
Aahaa. Thanks, I hadn't really thought about it from negotiation perspective. So far, it's been a negotiation of scope: a client have set budget and we negotiate scope down to do it in budget. I'm probably not good enough negotiator/seller yet to get to the price negotiation phase: so far it's been that either client goes immediately away or we end up negotiating on scope.
This is the most convincing argument you've made yet (and you've made several good ones). I've definitely had clients say to me, "It's not my money," when talking about billing.
But what's the reasoning behind giving weekly prices, why does it result in better rates? I'm sincerely curious about this.