1) Don’t Listen.
Often times a project will start out and the client has their own vision for what they want to see (or their boss does). Don’t put on your prima donna hat and ignore their request. Look deeper into the request and ask why they want to take this approach and explore it in one of your directions. When presenting this, reiterate how you incorporated their original input. Resist the urge to try and make this direction look the worse, or they will surely choose it.
Address your client’s input in your designs.
2) Ignore Deadlines.
Let’s face it, we are in a deadline driven profession and we pride ourselves on making deadlines. In fact, one of our clients pointed out to me once that she was amazed at how well our agency met deadlines. The only time we have ever bought extra time is when preparing creative. (Good ideas don’t often come at the exact time you expect.) That said, ignoring a deadline can be detrimental to your relationship with your client. Even if they aren’t on top of the deadline, they trust that you will be. You are there to make them look good.
Be a person of your word.
3) Charge More Money than Estimated.
Money is always a touchy subject with clients and it is hard to discuss budgets with creative but it must be done. At the beginning of a job, always outline the expectations and scope of the project. If the scope changes at any point during the project, ( ie: a 10 page web site becomes an 100 page web site) have a frank discussion on how this effects the budget. Don’t wait until the end and then drop the bomb. More than likely, they know they are changing scope, but they don’t know how it will effect their budget unless you tell them up front.
Don’t wait to talk about the hard stuff.
4) Complain.
There may be one person on the client’s team that isn’t easy to work with. My advice is to work on your relationship with that person before you ever go over their head. Once, and I’m speaking from experience, we had our client open the conversation about a difficult employee and asked our opinion. Rather than be tactful, we were painfully honest. That wasn’t the bad part though. We didn’t shut up. We reiterated the issues far longer than the client wanted to discuss them. It made us look really bad and guess what? We lost the client. I can’t blame them and we learned a valuable lesson.
Even if asked your opinion—be tactful.
We are in this business to make our clients look good to their customers and their superiors. Also, without them, we wouldn’t have a business. We are lucky, if a relationship is really bad we can walk away—but most clients are reasonable and we value their business.
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