We were reminded the other day that in medical writing, as in most things, customers get what they pay for. A new client approached us to rewrite several sales-training modules that had been written by someone else but didn’t meet their expectations. They admitted to us that the first writer they hired was the one who had presented them with the lowest estimate. Yes, this writer was highly degreed and had years of experience writing high science. But what had attracted our client the most was the estimate.
Unfortunately, the client ended up with a deliverable they couldn’t use. So they came to us to fix it–and ultimately probably ended up paying more for the writing services overall than they would have had they not gone with the lowest estimate (since they paid us and the first writer).
In our opinion, there are 3 ways medical writers can work: good, cheap, and fast; and clients can choose any 2 they want. Good and cheap won’t be fast, good and fast won’t be cheap, and cheap and fast won’t be good–as our new client discovered.
Photo credit: Cyndy Kryder