21 A little humor in Closing A Difficult client

Backing up to this point:
You: ∗Contemplates beating the client to death with a handy philosophy textbook…∗

Mr. Smith: … why are you looking at that book?
========
New Ending:
========

You: Opens signed contract to pricing line items.

Mr. Smith … Why are you looking at the contract?

You: Just checking to see how many hours I included for development education and training. See here I have included 0 hours at $150.00 and hour.
This is billable in 1/4 hour increments. Would you like me write you down for 2 hours? I have an open time slot tomorrow at 3:30 pm. (note proximity to rush hour traffic)

Mr Smith … Not Really.

You.. The answers to all of your questions can be summed up here in the signed contract. You are paying for a site that is designed using the latest Internet technologies and theories.

Mr. Smith … I see.

You: (Quickly Changing subject to money) Friday I will be invoicing you for the first 50%. Would you like that mailed, emailed or faxed.

Mr Smith … (Avoiding the discussion of money)You Can mail it to me please. Now if you will excuse me I am running late for another appointment!!!!!!!!!!

—-Sorry I couldn’t refuse the opportunity to inject some humor into it.

Regards,
William

posted at 02:31 am on November 15, 2006 by William Barnes

22

Of course “click here” destroys well-written copy, and it has horrible implications for accessibility.

On the other hand, it’s an unambiguous call to action… so I don’t bother fighting it as long as it’s used sparingly.

As for the rest… I feel like the point of the article – that difficult clients keep us on our toes – gets lost in the “defense.”

Meanwhile, for those of us whose account lists are comprised largely of difficult clients this article does little to battle despair. It’s better than silence, but only by an increment in my opinion.

Meanwhile, a much more significant point of contention is ignored: the fact that small business owners are particularly susceptible to the temptations of micromanagement, penny-pinching, and price-shopping. A well-intentioned webnik must bear the first, and let prospects learn from their mistakes with the latter two – at someone else’s expense.

posted at 03:05 am on November 15, 2006 by Ben Henick

23 Key is to create trust

Great article.

I often find that by explaining the first couple of these ‘difficult questions’ in a way that makes sense from the client perspective will quickly bring you to a point where the client trusts you, thus reducing the number of ‘difficult’ questions.

Right now ‘Google’ often is the magic word to motivate standards and semantics. Google is the blind person that every small business owner does want to take into account.

Furthermore, a client who takes your word for everything you say and asks no questions at all isn´t that enjoyable neither. My preferred client is a critical one who likes to know why and at the same time values a motivation that makes sense.

posted at 11:28 am on November 15, 2006 by Thomas Maas

25 Untitled

Great article – it goes with the age-old philosophy that you only truly understand something if you can explain it from the bottom-up.

posted at 03:04 pm on November 15, 2006 by Kris Noble

26 Terrific Post

I’ve been a client as well as a user (…to the level of creating and using web templates on my own in html. Currently I’m buried in a tome on MySQL. This ‘about me’ is by way of introducing my pov.) At this point, any developer I talk to assumes I am at their level (this is not always good), whereas serious conversation with a coder is still difficult in that I understand many concepts but still relatively few processes.

Until a few years ago, I spent decades working with only non tech business people. Most of them would relate to your description of difficult client, yet none of them were sole proprietor types. For the most part they are highly educated, extremely sophisticated, usually self-employed or professional, and successful in worldly terms. They only know the term social networking if it has been uttered by their teenaged children, yet they almost all use computers and the web.

The thought I’d like to add here is that the folks I just described may not be your difficult client directly, but they are likely to be the clients of your client. Your client, I am assuming, has a successful B&M business but no web experience. They are more or less clueless about what you do and why. They are, nevertheless, anything but clueless about their users. It might be a pretty tough stretch in some cases to delve into their knowledge of how their customers behave and translate it to the web directly, but I believe that specific (perhaps limited) versions of such an exercise could be enlightening in some cases.

Perhaps seeing that difficult client as the agent of a pool of new users who we might or might not bring into the flow could be useful.

Vera

posted at 04:10 pm on November 15, 2006 by Vera Bass

27 Untitled

Crazy, this actually just happened to me yesterday at a SEO/SEM seminar … My boss asked me point blank what are the benefits of using CSS layouts over tables and, after countless hours reading ALA and other industry leader articles and blogs, preaching the virtues to clients and coworkers, painstakingly reworking sites to CSS when i could do it in tables in a fraction of the time,

I stammered like an idiot for a second. And in that second, I saw in his eyes the total loss of his brief interest in the subject.

I had on my comfy shoes, and looked like a fool

posted at 06:45 pm on November 15, 2006 by Brendan Cullen

28 Hopeless is the the last hope

Its a little refreshing to be reminded that I’m not the only one with this problem. Although that doesn’t change the fact that I still can’t come up with the right answers when it comes down to the moment. I hate it when they ask “why” the second time. I almost take it as they just don’t trust me.
Currently my only excuse for why I enforce web standers is because of search engines. Its a hard case to plead. I usually end up just giving up on the client, doing it the way they want and move on to the next client in hopes that they understand.

posted at 10:15 pm on November 15, 2006 by Bryan Austin

29 PULLS HAIR OUT!

When I was just starting out with doing web design I did have a very difficult and trying experience. My client was looking for a designer to create a site that would explain his amazing life. And trust me, this guy had an amazing life to tell. But was also looking for a designer that would charge a fair price and get the site built within a reasonable amount of time. It sounded like a good job to take on so I volunteered to build it for him and keep him posted along the way. I immediately went to work on the site. Every day after getting done with my regular job, I’d come home and work on the design of the pages. Everything was going great and he seemed happy. After I built the first page, I helped him get his domain name so that I could create a banner and put his website name on it. I made it perfectly clear that he was to save all passwords and numbers so that when it came time to load his site into the ftp it would be a breeze. I completed all the layout of the pages, put the text in and finished it up.I then attempted to send it to him so he could look at it, and then have me go over to his house and put it onto the web. But that proved unsuceesful because he uses AOL and Aol doesn’t allow any files to be sent. I then sent it to my hotmail and tried to save it onto his computer that way. Again AOL didn’t allow it. The only way I could think of getting the website up and running was to load it onto the ftp from my computer, but he was afraid of giving out his credit card numbers due to being afraid that it might get lost and someone might use them. He also lost the password which also made it impossible. So I was running out of options and he was getting impatient to get the site up. I told him I’d work on a solution and get back to him and definitely get the site up. All of a sudden he calls me and tells me that he had a guy he met build a site and put it up. So I checked it out and it was horrible. The guy used free software that was supplied by Yahoo, that required no coding at all. He said the guy did a great job and he liked it but wanted a few changes. Well after getting no hits and seeing alot of errors that wasn’t ever fixed, including bad layout, he was no longer pleased with it. So he decided to go back to using my services again. So, I told him to call the hosting company and get the passwords but that proved to not work either. I made him give me his credit card info. I then had no choice but to buy a new domain and get hosting. When he saw the site he loved it but wanted it shortened, and the text made bigger. He did pay me for it and all but that experience taught me alot about how to deal with clients in the future. www.bizenez.com

posted at 03:41 am on November 16, 2006 by andy t

30 Great Article, thanks!

I enjoyed it, and do believe the concepts are applicable to other areas in our lives and our relationships in general. Thanks!

posted at 07:49 am on November 16, 2006 by rod homor

Discussion Closed

New comments are not being accepted, but you are welcome to explore what people said before we closed the door.

Got something to say?

Discuss this article. We reserve the right to delete flames, trolls, and wood nymphs.

Create a new account or sign in below if you’d like to leave a comment.

Forgot your password?

Subscribe to this article's comments: RSS (what’s this?)