Grace PM Academy · Module 3 · Week 3 Live Discussion Summary

What Came Out of the Feedback

Full agreement on two questions, and a real split on timing

The Week 3 survey had three questions. The cohort agreed completely on two of them. The third described a phase of work finishing right after the accounting period closed, and asked what a PM should do to speed up the fee to cash process.

0% of the group said to just wait for the normal billing cycle

But 100% agreed a PM should look for a way to bill sooner

The group only disagreed on what that faster path looks like

Full agreement that waiting is not good enough, without full agreement on the alternative, is still real progress. It means the group already sees the fee to cash process as something a PM can influence, not something that just runs on its own schedule.

The Standard the Program Builds Toward

Money moves through a pipe. Know where you stand in it.

Module 3 built on one picture: backlog becomes work in progress, work in progress becomes an invoice, and an invoice becomes cash. A PM’s leverage sits at one point in that pipe.

Backlog: contracted work, not started yet

WIP: cost sitting in the system, not billable yet

AR: invoiced, and waiting on the client to pay

Cash: paid, the only stage that is fully real

The highest leverage moment is turning WIP into AR: estimating the finished work, putting it on an invoice, and getting it out the door. That window is controlled almost entirely by the PM and the accounting team, working together.

Questions about following up on invoices that are running long? The AR and collections guide posted this week walks through it.

But most of today’s discussion was not about the pipe. It was about a harder question the group raised in the feedback: how much of the work in that pipe is free.

Reason 1They are trying to save money

Real, and not a reason to work for free. Wanting a lower price never meant the work should cost nothing.

Reason 2They do not see the value

This one is on the firm. Make the value visible before the client has to ask.

Reason 3They found out too late

Also on the firm. Raise it at the kickoff meeting, or the moment the request comes in, not after the work is already done.

Reason 4They do not trust the numbers

Also on the firm. Share the billing rates that have governed the project from day one.

Three of the four reasons clients push back on additional services sit inside the firm’s own control. Clear scope, early conversations, and consistent numbers remove them before a client ever has the chance to push back.

Two Scenarios From Today

“We do a lot of free work”

One line from this week’s feedback opened the entire discussion, and the group did not hold back.

Scenario 1A rendering, then another, then another

A client asks for small tweaks to a rendering used for marketing, one at a time, over months. No single ask feels big enough to push back on. By the end, the group agreed, it adds up to real, uncompensated work. The fix raised in the room: set the boundary early, and put a fixed price on every rendering beyond what the scope includes.

Scenario 2Free concept work, won by someone else

A firm designs a concept to help win a project, and sometimes the client takes the concept and hires someone else at a lower fee. The room did not land on a clean fix. What did land: pursuit work spent trying to win a job is a different category of free work than work given away out of fear of losing a relationship, and the two should not be treated the same.

Four steps came out of the discussion for evaluating a request before answering it: what is being asked and what it costs, why the client is asking, the options available, and a recommendation. Bringing all four to a decision, instead of just the first one, is what turns the conversation from a confrontation into a choice.

What Comes Next

Project startup begins, and the BST sessions are confirmed

1
New content releases tomorrowModule 4 opens project startup, contracting, and pursuit. About half of it is video; the rest is written resources from the Grace Legal Department and on the storyteller role.
2
Submit your Week 4 feedback surveyDue Tuesday, 5 PM ET, same as every week.
3
Join next week’s live discussionSame time, Thursday, 2 PM ET.
4
Mark the schedule changeTwo BST technical sessions, led by Nick, now sit between weeks 4 and 5, and weeks 8 and 9. All twelve weeks of PM content stay exactly where they were; the BST sessions are additions, not replacements.