10 Mistakes Youre Making With Clients That Cost You

Ive got a MASSIVE episode on client relations for you here today. Im going to
share the top 10 mistakes youre making with clients that cost you.
These mistakes are costing you in a number of ways: Theyre causing you to lose
time, to lose money, to miss great opportunities, to miss out on working with the
right type of people, to devalue your work, to get paid slower, to be seen as a
novice, and to lose the respect of your client.
Its been awhile since I talked specifically about the nitty-gritty details of client
work, so I have an overwhelming amount to share on the subject and I dont hold
back.
Show Notes

10 Mistakes Youre Making With Clients That Cost You

05:10 Sean: Client work is the fastest way to make money. Sure, products
make money once youve grown, but getting there is not super fast. It takes a
lot of resources. The same with teaching: you need to establish your authority
and expertise to grow an audience. You have to cultivate relationships with
people. Teaching eventually becomes a great way to generate residual
income but like products, it takes a long time. Client work is the easiest
entrance point and the fastest way to make money. If you want to sell
products or teach, start with client work to get the money first.

1. Not Filtering With Your Questionnaire

06:31 Sean: Your questionnaire isnt just for asking questions that pertain to
the project. Its also a filtration device.

06:45 Having this questionnaire form on your website means that only
serious people can contact you. If you just have a plain form with a email and
message field, the barrier to entry is lowered. This will let everyone in. Youre
going to get more low-quality requests.

07:02 Whereas if you put your whole questionnaire in a form on your website
and require all of those questions to be answered in order for someone to be
able to submit, it acts as a filtration device. Someone has to be serious
enough to answer these really thought-provoking questions about their
business and about the project.

07:22 Ben: Maybe youre personally acting as the filter right now, but think
about how much time and energy thats taking away from you. I picture a
water filtration system. It has several levels of filtration with varying degrees
of granularity. With your questionnaire, you can decide the order in which
you ask the questions to continue to narrow it down. By the time it gets to
you, you have almost exactly what youre looking for. You dont have to do
any additional filtration.

08:22 Sean: I love that analogy of filtration devices with different size rocks
or sand filtering the water. Having the questionnaire form on your website as
a requirement before people contact you is like the largest rocks in this
filtration machine. Its keeping things like twigs in the water from getting into
your glass. Its the stuff you would never want. You dont want someone
saying, Hey, do work for me for free, orCan you do this for $50? Thats
what this is filtering.

09:21 When youre starting out, a lot of people say, Take whatever work you
can get. People are scared to put a filtration on it because theyre afraid
they may not get any work. Maybe Im not going to be able to make money
if I filter this too heavily! But you dont want to work with the wrong type of
client. Thats just going to lead to more bad work.

09:46 You want to work with the right type of client and that means
establishing how you work up front. It means sharing case studies and
explaining your process. It means requiring these questions on your
questionnaire before the client can get to you to show them that they need to
be serious if they want to work with you. The right type of client is one that
values your expertise and is willing to come under your process.

Theres no magic point you reach where youre able to be selective with clients.
Youre able to be selective because youve chosen to practice selectivity.
2. Not Establishing Roles

10:29 Sean: The client is responsible for two things:

1. Content
2. Goals

11:00 You are the professional. Making design decisions is your job. The only
person making design decisions is you as the designer.

Professionals do not subject their clients todesign decisions.

11:15 This is easy to say, but its hard in practice. The reason its hard is
because you need to have a certain level of trust built with this client. The

client needs to know what they are responsible for and what you are
responsible for at the onset of the project. Any miscommunications are your
responsibility.

11:32 Ben: I like the way you say that: The professional doesnt subject
their client to design decisions. Instead of thinking about preventing your
client from having input, youre actually saving them from doing something
thats going to be harmful to their brand.

11:55 Sean: The reason I say it that way is because its an acknowledgment
of who has authority in this relationship. It starts with the professional. The
client comes to the professional for their expertise so they can solve these
problems. The design professional is the person who has the authority here
and if theyre relinquishing any of that, its on them. Its not a question
of What if the client starts making design decisions? No, thats you
relinquishing that control.

12:29 You relinquish control when you say What do you think about this?
What would you do in this design? Thats not the clients job.Youre
subjecting them to a design decision. Thats your responsibility. This is
something you have to establish in the beginning. Like I said, there needs to
be a trust. You have to build that. You have to facilitate that. You have to
establish the roles. Client, you are responsible for content and goals. Im
going to take those two things that you provide to me at the beginning of the
project and I am going to design a solution. Thats my job.

16:41 Comment from Sarah in the chat room:

Sean, if you feel the client is trying to give you stylistic direction even though you
stated clearly that its your job, how do you react? Say no or explain again?

16:53 First of all, we have to acknowledge that if the client is trying to give
you stylistic direction in the middle of the project, guess whose fault that is?
Guess whose responsibility that is? Its the professionals responsibility. You
always have to take responsibility. Even if the client is being crazy or silly, or
sending things that you told them not to send, its your responsibility. In the
beginning, you need to make it abundantly clear that you are the designer
and you are designing for their goals. You are designing their content for their
goals. Tell them up front how you work.

18:19 So first of all, you have to know its your responsibilityits something
that you need to prevent. An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.
Youve got to nip it in the bud. If they are asking, you point back to the
conversation you already had. Point to the discussion over email where you
explained your agreement in plain english and they acknowledged it. Dont

thump the agreement. That is the last resort. Avoid that at all costs. If it
comes to the very, very worst and you have to pursue legal routes, then you
can start talking about contract, but dont talk about the contract in the
middle of the project. Thats not going to make for a good relationship. It
strains the relationship. Its not going to make for a friction-free project. You
need to point to a conversation you already had personally with the client.
3. Not Setting Expectations

19:21 Tell the client what to expect. Whats going to happen when?
(Related: e024 Finding Clients While Maintaining Professionalism) You have
two processes:
1. General Process
2. Project Specific process

19:58 Give the client a way to visualize the flow of the project and what they
can expect. Have this on your website before they even contact you. Youre
planting the seed of what they can come to expect when working with you.

20:32 The project-specific process is basically an adaptation of your general

process that is tailored to this particular client. Its basically a guideline of
your general process but everything is tailored to their needs, their content or
goals, and this timeframe. You explain when you start, when you send
invoices, when you need to be paid, any milestones, checkpoints, etc. Give
them a full overview of what to expect.
1. When does the client get involved?
2. Do they get involved at all?
3. When will you send deliverables?
4. When will they hear an update from you?
5. What will the update contain?

4. Not Pricing on Value

21:23 Youre selling your time and not the results of your effort. Youre selling
your hours and not the benefit to the client. Youre selling your days and not
the return the client gets on their investment.

21:50 Youre positioning yourself as an expense instead of an investment to

the client. Time vs. Value. When you charge for time, it doesnt acknowledge
the value the client receives. Youre making yourself a commodity. When you

make yourself a commodity, you open yourself to comparison and price

bidding.

22:22 Clients will then encourage you to give them a lower rate because they
know someone cheaper. This is because they see you as an expense.

Expenses are what businesses try to keep at a minimum. If you put yourself in that
pool, you are going to be yet another thing they will try to pay the least amount
for.

22:45 If you can get yourself into the investment pool, then they see you as a
place to put money in to get money out. Theyre giving you money because
youre going to make them money. The reason they know this is very simply
because of a shift in conversation. Youre positioning the conversation around
value. Youre all about accomplishing goals for this client, and youre all about
return.
o

How can we impact your conversions?

How can we impact your bottom line?

23:18 The way you position the conversation is critical. When you start right
up front by saying, Whats your budget? you immediately throw all of that
out the window! You just positioned yourself as an expense. Youre
saying, How much money do you have? How much do you want to give me?
How much you have allocated to this expense? rather than saying, Hey,
what are your goals? What are you trying to accomplish? What makes you
the most money right now and how can we make that better? What does a
successful project look like? You see how were positioning the conversation
around value?

23:51 Ben: When you point the client to value, you also reinforce for them
how valuable their thing is. Its a little bit of an ego stroke. Its saying Why
would you treat something that could potentially give your brand more value
as a commodity? Treating this like an investment is saying they believe so
much in their brand that theyre willing to invest in something of quality.

5. Not Using Two Prices: Full Price & Free

25:25 Sean: These are two prices that acknowledge full value: full price or
free.

25:38 When you charge full price, the client feels like theyre getting a fullpriced value. When you discount that rate, it devalues your worth. It devalues
the worth of your work. However when you do a project pro-bono and you
dont charge the client but you say the value is X dollars, then they value the
project at the full rateeven though theyre not paying the full amount. They

know what the value is. So those two prices, full price and free, are the only
ones that acknowledge full value. Everything else is a devaluation.

27:16 The next time you start to do a project and you tell the client its going
to be $2,000 and the client says, Oh, I only have $1,000, what are you
going to do? What a lot of people do is they say, Well, I guess I can come
down in price just this once, or Ok, I suppose Ill take the project, I just
might have to make it a lower priority. What youve just done is devalued
the worth of your work.

27:42 You dont ever want to arbitrarily discount rate or your price, you only
want to remove features. Thats the only way to go down in the amount that
youre quoting someone.

27:54 Ben: Be very careful about that too. If those features are part of what
makes your service valuable, then you might not want to remove those at
all.

28:06 Sean: Right. You have to know that. If it will cripple the functions of the
final product, then you dont want to remove those features. You just
say, This is what it is. Come back when you have $2,000!

28:24 Ben: If youre using The Overlap Technique and youre just starting
out trying to get clients, pro bono work is a great way to start. You get to do
great work for somebody who values your work at full value and you also
have the added benefit of them being willing to want to refer your services to
other people.

29:01 Sean: Thats the huge part because say you do a cheaper rate for
someone: they dont think of you as this professional who charges a premium
amount and does quality work, they think they got a deal! They think they
got a cheaper rate and theyre associating you with that cheapness. Youre
better off saying, You know, I realize you cant afford this $2,000 project, but
Im going to do this for you pro-bono. They now know and acknowledge the
full value of the project and when they refer you to someone else, they will
say, This guy does awesome work. Its $2,000, but for your business it
sounds like youre in a place where that would work for you. You might want
to give him a call.

29:41 Ben: You might even work it in as a marketing plan where you are
willing to accommodate X number of pro-bono clients per year.

30:01 Sean: Yeah! Maybe instead of actually putting ads out or doing other
forms of marketing, you could allocate some funds to cover your own
expenses to be able to do these types of pro-bono projects. Because they can

bring in some more high-paying clients. The best clients are the ones that
come from referrals.

30:18 Its all about trust. We want people that are on board with our process
that understand and acknowledge that you are the professional. Theyre
coming to you for your expertise. Thats something that is built on trust.
People trust those who other people they trust say are good. Its one more
step in building that relationship.

30:40 Ben: Can we answer a question from Cory in the chat room?

How do you charge for things with no ROI? Weddings, etc.

31:02 Ben: We talked about this before where the value is something that
isnt always related to money. Sometimes theres ego-centric value,
sometimes theres emotional value, sometimes theres sentimental value or
other forms of intangible value.

31:22 Sometimes theres a value that is so far beyond measuring with

dollars and cents that somebody might be willing to pay any amount to get
whatever it is that you offer. They may just be allocating the means to pay a
great amount for it because it means so much to them. You have what they
want and what they need, but if youre positioning yourself as a commodity
or as an expense youre going to charge way less than what they would be
willing to compensate you.

32:01 Sean: Thats a great point. You may be charging $300 for shooting
some wedding photos and youre baffled at the fact thatbelieve it or not
there are photographers out there that charge $30,000 for a wedding and
you have to fly them out to your location all-expenses-paid! Whats going on
here? Someone values those photosthe sentimental value of this eventat
$30,000. This other person has the guts to position themselves as someone
who can deliver on that value. Thats pretty scary, right? Can you imagine
positioning yourself that way, confidently charging that much and requiring
people to fly you out? Whos going to pay for that? Well guess whatnot the
people that are paying you $300 for a wedding.

32:53 You need to get over the fact that youre going to lose those people.
Because the tighter you hold onto them, the more that is going to be your
audience. Thats going to be your client base because youre too afraid to
lose them.

33:06 Ben: Heres a comment from Justin in the chat room:

If youre doing value-based pricing, its based on the value client is going to reap.
That means different amounts, for different clients, in different situations. You

should use what it would cost you plus base profit as a starting point and not go
lower than that.

33:35 Ben: You do have to make a calculation for what your time is worth.

33:40 Sean: Yes, so real quick to help you out therevalue-based pricing is
built on three things:

Time

Cost

Value to the client.

33:50 When you have something like a wedding, youre dealing with
intangible or sentimental value, not a dollar amount. A lot of cases are not
possible when your base costs are more than they want to pay at all. Thats
not even accounting for any valuetangible or intangible. What that means
is you cant do the project.

6. Not Requiring Payment Before Sending Deliverables

35:32 This is something we were discussing in the chat recently. Someone

was struggling with this. Most people know that you need to get paid up
front. If you dont know that, let me just hammer that point real quick: You
get paid up front. 50% minimum. You dont do any work until you get
paid 50%.

36:22 Require 50% up front. If youre not getting paid, youre not working.
You dont work before you get paid. Now, a lot of people already get that, so
Im not going to hammer on that too much. But heres the part that a lot of
people dont do: they dont get paid before the deliverables are sent. You
must get paid before the deliverables are sent. Let me break down the order
of events for you:
o

Preliminary discussion

Agreement sent

Agreement signed

Agreement states project does not begin until initial invoice is

paid.

Agreement states that initial invoice is due in 5 business days or

project is canceled.

Initial invoice sent

Client pays

Project starts and process begins

Work is finished

Present to the client

Send final invoice

Reiterate terms of agreement when you send invoice and state

that the final payment is required prior to sending deliverables.

Send deliverables

38:47 Thats the order of events. You dont send the deliverables and
say, Will you pay me? You dont send the deliverables and the invoice at
the same time. We hear this all the time: How do I get clients to pay? The
client hasnt paid me! That is not something you should be worrying about.
That is something you shouldve prevented.

39:11 Ben: Or you could just charge 100% upfront. Also, if youre booked
for the next few months, you can take a deposit up front to secure their time
in your schedule.

40:15 Sean: You can totally do that. Thats your choice. You can set the
requirements. Maybe you have a minimum to where if its under X thousand
dollars or X hundred dollars, they have to pay all up front. Because at that
point, youre spending your time invoicing. Thats no fun. Thats not what
theyre paying you for. Youre wasting time. Lets simplify this and spend less
time on the paperwork and more time on the actual work. Part of enabling
that could be charging 100% up front.

41:01 But my client is Net 90! Theyre Net 9,000! Im not gonna get paid!
They say Im not gonna get paid unless I do Net 90!

41:12 What the heck?! Net 90? 90 days? Do you know how many days are in
a month? Theres 30 days in a month. Do you know how many 30s go into
90? Thats 3 months. Thats a quarter of a year. That is insane. That is
asinine. That is ridiculous. You are the professional. You are the one who sets
the terms. You can say, Pay me in 5 days or get out of my office, sir. Take a
free letterpress coaster on your way out. Good day!

41:42 Thats something you set. You have to be the professional. You have to
stick to your guns. If youre good at what you do, you can demand that.

7. Not Acquiring Content Before the Project Starts

42:06 Lets get something straight:

o

You dont design websites, you design content.

You dont design mobile apps, you design content.

You dont design brochures, you design content.

You design content.

You need content to design.

42:33 So many designers start projects without content. Do you ever get
those clients that send you more content in the middle of the
project? Where did this come from?

43:00 You have to have content at the start of the project. Before it begins,
you need the content.

43:07 But Sean, my client doesnt have content yet. They said theyre
working on it!

43:18 If they dont have content, they have no business hiring a designer. Its
your job to tell them that. Its your job to refuse to take them on until they
have business hiring you.

44:30 Sure, help them get the content. Point them to a copywriter or
whatever you need to do. Dont be unhelpful and just say, No, Im not going
to work with you! Youre not even ready! You dont have to be rude about it,
but you shouldnt be working with them unless they have the content.

8. Saying, What do you think?

47:00 Do you ever send something to the client and say, What do you
think?

Saying What do you think? is the mark of a novice.

48:04 As the professional, it is your job to present. Explain what problems you
solved. Go through every design decision.
o

Why did you do it this way?

Why is it this color?

Why is this element on the right?

Why is it this tall?

Why does it adapt this way when you are on a different device?

48:30 Explain every design decision. Nothing is left up to chance. Nothing is

left to preferential whim. Youre explaining all of it. You arepresenting. Youre
not throwing it at the client and saying, What do you think? It does not
matter what they think. They hired you to solve the problem. They hired
you because they have goals. They hired you to design content. You did your
job. Tell them how you did your job. Tell them how the results of the work that
you did serve their goals.

This is your opportunity to explain to them that they just spent their money very
wisely.
9. Not Providing Solutions

50:26 Sean: A professional does not design for the client. A professional
designs for their clients customers. Your clients personal preferences are no
concern of yours. Similarly your own personal preferences. They have no
place in an objective design process.

51:26 If your favorite color is red, that doesnt mean the clients logo is going
to be red. This is obvious. We know this. Duh Sean, Im not gonna just use
red because its my favorite color! Well its the same with the client! Stop
bending on that just because its the client and you want to make them
happy. Its not about making them happyits about affecting the bottom line
of their business: more revenue and reaching the clients customers.

55:31 When you provide options to the client, you are subjecting them to a
design decision. Design is objective. We have goals here. Were trying to
accomplish something. Which concept more effectively accomplishes the
goals we have and reaches the target audience?

55:44 Who is more qualified to make a design decision? The designer or the
client? Yes, the client is the expert in their field. You defer to them as the
expert in their business, but when it comes to design, you are the designer
and you make the design decisions. This is something that you must
articulate to the client beforehand. Thats your job.

56:20 Its also your job to acquire all of the relevant information that the
client has to offer the project. Youre deferring to the client in the area they
specialize intheir expertise. You need to gather all of the insight they have
in their field that is relevant to this particular project. That all must be done
up front.

56:44 Remember, the client is responsible for two things: content and goals.
If the content or goals change, the project must start over. We are no longer

trying to accomplish the same thing anymore. Certain aspects affect other
aspects. You cant just replace things or then youre just grafting limbs and
putting patches on things. Thats not effective design. Thats why you have to
have the content upfront.
10. Believing Theres Such a Thing as Clients From Hell

57:29 Ben (Joking): Wait, but theres not?

Theres no such thing as clients from hell because only designers from hell take
on those type of clients.

57:42 Someone cannot be a client unless you take them on. If youre
saying, But if I dont take them on, someone else will take them on! See?
Theyre a client! Well, thats someone elses job. Thats theirresponsibility.
They made that person a client. Every bad client is the responsibility of a bad
designer. That bad designer made them client by taking them on. Thats why
theres no such thing as clients from hell. Only designers from hell take them
on. No one can be a client unless you allow them to work with you.

58:17 Ben: So if Ive taken on a client who is doing stuff that I dont like,
thats not the clients fault?

58:26 Sean: Right. Everything is the responsibility of the designer. You, as

the professional, are responsible for every single problem that occurs.

58:35 The definition of a professional is someone who actively seeks and

acquires responsibility. A novice will consistently try to put blame off on
someone else. A professional seeks responsibility. When something goes
wrong, theyre actively looking for places where they can take responsibility
for something having gone wrong.

How could I have prevented this?

How could I do better?

What could I have done to keep this from happening?

59:05 Ben: The responsibility thing is difficult sometimes because I think we

naturally just dont want for things to be our fault. We feel like it
compromises the perception the client has of our professionalism but I think
its totally the other way around: When we seek responsibility, the client
recognizes that as professionalism. When we say That wasnt my
responsibility, or I didnt make a mistake there, its actually undermining
the perception the client has of our professionalism.

59:50 Sean: I like that point. Its easy to forget that the client is actually
seeking someone who seems to know what theyre doingsomeone who is
looking for responsibility. Thats what they want. They may not be saying
thats what they want, but thats what they want. They want someone whos
confident and knows their stuff. They want someone who knows what theyre
doing. Everyones afraid to be harsh, but people look for that certain
harshness in a professional. Its not a harshness that comes from a place of
condescension, its a harshness that comes from a confidence that is
backed by expertise and experience.

1:00:44 The client wants to hire you as a professional. So dont be afraid to

be uncompromising about stuff. Dont be afraid to be professional because
you think it might be harsh. The right type of client is actually looking for
that. They want someone who exudes that kind of confidence.