Not all project managers are the same. And depending on your business model, products/services, culture, and niche, the criteria for choosing the right project manager varies greatly. 

So how do you know you’re hiring the right type of project manager for your company? 

We see this most clearly when it goes wrong. You hire someone with proven PM experience only to realize they don’t understand anything about how you do project management in your organization.  

The learning curve can be devastating when you immediately assign them a huge project but soon find out their style of project management doesn’t mesh with your company’s style of project management.

Project management takes on various roles in different rental and staging companies. There are three different approaches — each distinctly meeting a unique set of needs for the organization. 

All three roles are the “right kind” of project manager if they’re used in the right situations. The better you understand them, the better you’ll be able to identify what type of PM will best meet the needs of your company. 

3 Types of Project Managers

1. Sales/Production Management  

Sales and production management is a customer support role. 

These project managers are there to help customers feel comfortable doing business with you. A sales or production manager gives the customer a constant point of contact to assuage their fears. 

Being a client can be very scary when you don’t understand what your rental and staging company is really supposed to do for you. The production manager holds their hands to walk them through the process.  

2. Project PM

These managers are advocates for the job itself. They’re focused on the process. 

They create drawings and schedules. They coordinate other suppliers within the project to make sure everything goes smoothly. They work to keep the customer from interfering with the project flow while also ensuring the seller does everything they said they would do. 

The role of Project PM can be an adversarial role as these PMs work both to protect the client from the supplier and the job from the client. Project PMs have to hold their own company accountable for what they promised to do. In other situations, they have to push back on the client to keep the client from interfering in what would otherwise be a great outcome. 

In this delicate role, the PM works on behalf of the job itself, making sure both their company and the client do what’s necessary to make the job as successful as possible. 

3. Internal PM

The most common type of project manager in rental and staging is the internal project manager. 

Internal project managers do behind-the-scenes tasks like order scrubbing, massage the equipment list, deal with sub-rentals, hire labor, and coordinate travel and trucking. 

An internal project manager sometimes takes on several administrative roles to get the job done. They don’t need to be seen by the customer in order to be effective. A salesperson can remain the primary contact for customers while the internal PM handles the details. 

The (Elusive) Super Project Manager

In some organizations, we find a Super PM — that’s someone who does all three of these roles combined. 

A Super PM is usually a veteran salesperson who’s used to hand-holding the client, creating drawings, managing details, running departments, coordinating suppliers, and dealing with venues. 

They do it all. 

They’re an all-in-one project manager, account manager, and anything else needed to make sure the job goes well. To top it off, when the show starts, they put on a pair of headphones and call the show. 

These Super Project Managers are few and far between. They’re the professional heroes which are hard to find. If we try to build a job description around the all-encompassing Super PM role, we’ll have a hard time filling it.  

However, we have three other PM job descriptions we can fill. It’s much more effective to dismantle the Super PM role and create a distinction between account management and project management. Once you do that, it becomes easier to define the project manager role needed for your organization. 

When to Bill Clients for PM Services

When it comes to charging clients specifically for project management, consider, “What does the client consider optional but necessary?” 

Most of the project management tasks I described are necessary to the customer, but they think these jobs are included in the quote. That can make billing the customer for extra services difficult. 

To better bill for PM services, start by defining what jobs need a project manager and what jobs don’t. If all the jobs you take require project management, your idea of a project manager is likely more of an operations role — the Internal PM who works to make sure your organization does the daily tasks for each client. These aren’t billable tasks. You can’t charge a customer extra for sending the right equipment or making sure the truck leaves the warehouse on time. If that’s your role in project management, it’s not billable. 

PM services become billable when they supply extra support, complete additional tasks, or coordinate with outside suppliers. For example, when PMs coordinate outside people, complete tasks the customer would otherwise need to do, or create drawings or CAD layouts that are necessary in order to make the show happen, the role of project manager becomes billable. 

As a profession, project management is billable. But when you make it a part of the sales process, it’s not. No one pays a salesperson to be on show-site. If the salesperson can do it, the client doesn’t want to pay extra for it. To them, it’s part of the included package. 

To figure out how to pay for project management and how to hire better project managers, step back for a moment and look at how you view project management in your organization. 

What kind of project management are you expecting out of your organization? 

Does your job description for PM make sense for you and your client? 

If you already have the right roles in project management, can you bill for tasks differently?  

Don’t make the mistake of looking for a Super PM (Honestly, the ROI isn’t all that great). Instead, decide on the best type of project manager for your organization — then, hire a person who fits the bill.