Your creative agency would encounter clients from all walks of life and of assortment of flavors. Some clients may be sweet, some spicy, some sour and some really bitter which you just want to get rid of. The love-hate relationship with your clients would remain eternal but sometimes the hatred can just cross the limit. However they are the lifeline of your business, so you cannot completely stay away from them but you can certainly identify their category.
Generally, bad clients come in traceable shapes and sizes; hence by spotting them early, you can keep them at bay. Now you must be pondering that how can you sort the clients and define them as good or bad before kicking off business with them? One thing, you can surely do is believe in your gut feeling, if the client is trying and annoying, you will come to know about his nature from the first meeting itself. Other thing which you should definitely do is conduct a research and get feedback from their earlier dealers.
However, there are few clients who you can get to know only after few stages of the project get passed. The only solution to tackle with these clients is to chuck them off.
1. Hesitant clients:
The hesitant or reluctant clients are those who really don’t want to be or are not interested to be a client; they are forced to look for a supplier as they were asked to do so. This category of clients seems to be disinterested, communicate inappropriately and just ask to create a site because they were forced to. Clients who get convinced with any design and don’t provide any suggestion or guidance can be tagged as reluctant clients and you can mull over whether you should deal with such clients or not. You can also identify such clients when they get infatuated with their previously in-house created website. Such kind of clients usually avoid communicating, are disengaged and get satisfied with whatever you offer, there is no fun in working with such clients.
2. Hidden clients:
Sometimes you might think that a person is your client but actually he might be the mediator or middle-person. The real client is hidden behind the scenes while the person who interacts with you may act as a puppet. These disguised clients don’t have any knowledge about the requirements; they just follow their boss’s instruction. Thus ensure you meet the real players, discuss plan and take revisions before execution. Sometimes it happens that you discuss and start implementing the project as per the client requirement and suddenly the real client comes into picture and start dominating all the decisions which you had made with the dummy client. Always make sure, either the middleman discusses project plan and take feedback of the real client or you manage to meet the actual client in early stages.
3. Buddy clients:
There are some clients who are too friendly and mingle with you as your best buddy and may ask you out for coffee, clubbing or offer you a lift, movie ticket etc. You might get instantly impressed with such clients, but beware this is the sign of emotional manipulation. They brainwash you to get more work done, smoothly. Remember you are dealing to build strong business relationships not friendly relationships. Going out for drink or coffee is fine but over pampering is signal that the client is trying to manipulate, hence be aware of such over-friendly clients.
4. Torturous clients:
The worst kind of clients, torturous clients just gets on nerves and maddens the suppliers. Torture can be of different types like demanding for frequent alterations in project, every time coming up with new requirement, never responding when the supplier try to communicate, imposing unattainable deadlines or not making proper payments. This type of client is easily identifiable. It is wise to get rid of such clients as they can be nerve-wracking.
5. Empty-pocket clients:
Getting paid is one of the biggest challenges for the designers. Sometimes the design and deal would be on track but suddenly the client may change term of payment so as to when and how to pay. Be aware of clients who agree to make excuses like they would make payment after they get paid, at present they don’t have enough funds or will make the payment soon. Such client may dupe you, thus don’t deliver the project until payment is made. Getting money is one of the most difficult tasks of web-designers. Client who makes the first payment on time, usually the balance payments from them come smoothly. Whoever fails or delay to pay the first fee, should instantly get an idea that this type of clients may hoodwink you later.
Though it is not always possible to identify the clients in the first meeting itself but it’s never too late. The moment you stumble upon such niggling clients, take a step back and think twice whether to continue working with that client or to get rid of them as soon as possible.
