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I have worked for one company that charge for an initial "consultation" and many that did not. Both types had good reasoning. I think that you have to determine which way will work best for you by having a very clear understanding of your market and where you fit in it.
The company that charged a "consultation" fee was very visible both in terms of location and work produced. At the time I was there, you could expect 15-20 calls inquiring about landscape work per spring day. Obviously, these can not all be responded to with meetings, quick plans, and written contracts without considerable cost.
We all know that there is an element out there that loves to talk pie in the sky and be waited on hand and foot while they go no where just to feel important.
Having a fee certainly separates the real tire kickers away very quickly while retriving some of the expense of writing up dead end proposals. If there was a straight forward job that did not require real design time, we would do a quick sketch to confirm what we were pricing, kept that ourselves, and wrote a proposal. When the job needed design work, we would write up a design contract. The clients signed and paid deposits for either of these, or they did not. They were a medium range landscape company with an occaissonal high end thrown in here and there. They got all the work that they could handle, managed things well, and made good money on the jobs that they got. I think it was extremely effective at that particular company.
More recently, I worked for a much more high end company that would not charge for consultation. The clients were consistantly much wealthier. The jobs were much more involved. The difference was that they were well known in the"right" circles and did not advertise much beyond yellow page listings. A fee for "consultation" is taken much more as disrespectful of someone who is about to drop a half mil into landscaping. Yes, we charged for design without crediting it toward construction. That is a whole other ball game (@#$%, I new I could not avoid the ball game thing!). The company was much more invisible to tire kickers. We would respond to them, but would shorten the subject matter, the time spent, and send a proposal for a portion of the job to save time, and never hear from them again as the pricing was less than competitive with many other scapers.
The third situation is that of a company that has to be competitive. In that case you need to write proposals to get work. In order to do that you have to hit as many prospects as you can to land as many jobs as you can. Recovering $50 on a consultation fee makes no sense if you cut yourself from needed potential clients. One good contract is going to cover several dead end sales calls.
Any of these can work, but they can work against you if you don't understand which is right for your situation. A good indicator of whether an initial consultation fee is workable is if you're at near full production and have too many tire kickers that are wasting your time. Both have to be present.
Free design services are a whole other subject. When I say design, I don't mean a quick plan to show ten or twelve plants. I mean a well drafted and well thought out design. How can you charge $45 per hour for a fairly unskilled laborer to dig holes and then sit down for six hours to design a landscape for $100. That makes no sense. Two hours to draft out a simple plan for $100 is alright. Design takes time spent with the client, with the site, and drafting takes time. I can't see too many well designed landscapes taking much less than twenty hours to get to a nice plan.
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