FRESH -> the Hive

24 May
2011

Zombie Haters Clients from Hell @fowd London 11

Hello everybody,
you might know that we just came back from London where we were having fun and demoing UpShot at Future of Web Design. Well, in this 2 days amazing event, we had the chance (as sponsors) to offer a “Uni Session”. That is to say a 10 to 20 minutes talk on whatever you want.
We didn’t want to go the standard sponsor way so we prepared a talk about “helping designers deal with clients”. The slides are available here: http://www.slideshare.net/jbfeldis/zombie-hater-clients-from-hell-fowd-london-11

The room was more than full and I hope you enjoyed this session, please don’t hesitate if you have questions or want to share your descent into madness: use the comments or email me jb (hell) upshotapp (yeah) com. :)
In order to help with the slides I need to add a bit more links and resources. The plan of the session is:

Save your ammo (choose your clients)
Easy as Braiiiiiins (teach them)
Basic dental surgery (tools to avoid bites)

Choosing your clients

This one is almost super simple: SAY NO!

Okay, it’s not that easy as clients are usually supposed to mean projects which translates into money. So no client = no money? No, in reality you have to understand that zombie haters clients do NOT represent money.
They represent wasted time, anger, WTFs and so on. You can see their typology in the slides. There are even more types than that. But lots of them means that you will do the job one way or another and they won’t pay you one way or another.
In the meantime you don’t spend time finding good clients, working on your portfolio (in the uni session room 0 out of 60+ designers had an updated porfolio online… you know what I mean) which will bring you more good clients or doing any specific cool operation to get your name printed more.

So again: SAY NO!

Teaching them

Clients (well, let’s say 99% of them) don’t have any clue on what a designer does which, when not addressed correctly, leads to great conversations:

Hey! You spend your entire days drawing tiny things on photoshop and you call it work? You hippie moron

Okay, I’m French, so I might not be really good at insulting people in English but I did my best. Speaking of which: you’re responsible and you have to do your best. The client doesn’t know what he needs, he even doesn’t know that he doesn’t know. You are meeting with him to explain that your role is not just about “things looking ~~good~~ Apple” but about making his clients buy more or get more here.
And this is done by using rules, experience, intuition and, of course, aesthetics.

You might want to explain since the very beginning what are your expectations. Yes, you, as a designer, have client expectations:

not able to work under a certain amount
not able to have more than X people to report to/get your work signed-off from
need to be answered in this timeframe
need that much time to do that task
use service/method Y to manage the project

Elliot Jay Stocks does that in a very polite yet meaningful way: http://elliotjaystocks.com/contact/#more_info Clients are used to that, they are in business, they love spreadsheets, project management reports, whatever has numbers and rules. Breathe and try to find a good measure (and everything is negotiable).

Using the right tools

Even if design is built on rules, once you’ve digested them, it’s hard to come back from creativity. Tools are a bit like that: boring at first, not easy to setup or get used to but once they’ve become natural they offer great things.
Clients aren’t usually fun, as I said before they’re mostly into numbers, precise reports and all those serious stuff. Now that you’ve carefully selected your clients, took time to explain them what you can really do to make their business go up. So, by now, they should be happy and think they picked up the right guy. The goal is to make them know they made the right choice, trust you and… let you bring your ideas.

Tools are exactly about that: making you stand out of the crowd. The first one we strongly advice are time tracking services. We use Harvest and are super happy with it: it’s clear, clean, simple with estimates, invoices and start/stop tracking button. All it takes is a few days of effort to remember pushing this button. After that it takes a few seconds and you have access to all the reports you could show your clients to justify your work.

Yes that logo cost you 902.47£ + 44.05£ to fix the bug on the production slider (at 11:47pm Thursday 18th) but I’ll make it 945£

And BOOM, there you go. Super serious, super precise, super professional and it took you a few minutes a month to get all those data available.

Design feedback tools.
Okay… Even though UpShot is the best one (super simple and natural so your clients won’t call you to ask how it works…) please use at least one. Four pages long email text feedback shouldn’t still exist nowadays. HEY! Wake up! We have airplanes, wi-fi and you can find croissants in the UK (at least they look like croissants ~~30 meters~~100 feet away in some creepy blizzard).
How many times your clients changed their minds after they gave you a “Go!”? How many times did they denied have chosen that colour/text/effect? How are you taking sign-offs? How are you processing new to-dos? Checking which were in the initial brief? Which were addressed already? Which were added after the last version’s sign-off?

Well go for UpShot and you’ll be able to get feedback directly on your pictures (so you understand what they were talking about), show them they said “red” that bloody Tuesday and not “green” as there telling you right now on the phone. And when they will want to change the logo (2 days before the project’s deadline) you’ll be able to tell them:

I’m sorry but you and your manager signed-off this logo Wednesday the 3rd at 3:34pm. Of course we can change that but considering the deadline… it will cost that amount, take that time and delay the launch. Thank you (evil face)

And again… You are the master. Do that helps you manage your time, but it also shows your clients that you value theirs.

Simple, isn’t it?

Get the right clients find you (and look for them)
Explain them how you can help their business go up
Use the right tools to stand out and prove you were the One

Thank you for your attention, would love to hear your thoughts, tips, tools and so on :)

Useful resources: