I haven’t been horse shopping with a client for ages. What do most of you do as far as getting paid for your time with a client while horse shopping?
There’s two methods, both of them flawed.
1.) Straight commission. Flawed for you because there’s no correlation between your time in and money out. If the client buys the first horse you look at AND it’s an expensive one, you do very well. If the client looks at 20 horses and ends up buying a cheap one, you have lots of uncompensated time in the endeavor that you’re going to hope to recoup with lesson and training fews.
2.) Get paid by the hour. Set an hourly rate, door to door, for your time and bill the client for it weekly or monthly. Flawed for the client because if they are indecisive or have unrealistic criteria, they will have paid for thousands in your time without a horse to show for it.
I made the second method work for me by looking at a lot of videos first, having competent clients do the first look and veto the obvious lame/not as represented/bad fits, and taking multiple clients (clients participating split my fees among themselves) to a sales barn and looking at EVERYTHING on offer; even having that barn have other people bring horses in for us to look at the same time. This is also a great technique for evaluation - if you’re looking at two horses side by side at the same time, it’s much easier to say “The gray is worth 10K more than the bay because…” or “I like the gray better than the bay, but I don’t like him 10K better.”
My view on this is that I needed to be making the same amount of money looking at horses as I would make teaching or riding. Also, because commissions are such a fraught issue with sport horses; I preferred method #2. Or, when that wasn’t possible, being absolutely upfront about the commissions and who was getting what.
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You can also attempt to combine McGurk’s two methods by charging a fee for evaluating horses (hourly or other), non-refundable, but which is credited toward commission (10% is pretty standard).
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Excellent suggestion, @Redlie44. Makes sure the professional is compensated for their time; but also protects the buyer.
I looked at a bunch of horses, rode a few, and took my trainer to see/try 2.
She charged me the price of a lesson for each horse. We saw them on the same day and I drove. I videoed her rides and she mine but we never reviewed them. I vetted the most suitable candidate and he arrived within the week.
Cost me $150 to trainer.
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Since this got bumped up, I will toss in my story. My trainer was charging 10% of purchase price to find me a suitable eventer. My range was $20-$25K . Very convoluted story…very convoluted…I purchased my current guy for $1. I jokingly asked my trainer would she like her dime in a check or cash! lol I ended up giving her $500 for her time.
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