136 - Standing up to clients

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In this episode:

Discussion - Standing up to clients (but not the big scary ones) In this episode David and I talk about the (sometimes unpleasant) interactions which we have with clients. Most of the time (I hope) we have good relations with our clients. They want to work with you and you want to work with them... but this does not mean that you're always going to see eye to eye with them. From time to time you're going to have to face up to a client who is not wanting to work with your processes and it not willing to be flexible. Obviously, this works in reverse too, and sometimes it's us that needs to take a step back and consider the way that we're behaving. Whatever the case may be, this is the subject of our discussion today and it's an interesting chat. I should start by saying that it's important that we understand that we work in an industry which is almost completely incomprehensible to most people. The things that we take for granted are just nonsense to our clients. I'm talking about divs, UI, Javascript, WordPress and a whole lot more. We've been working with it for years and so it's second nature to us, but to the majority of our clients - not so much! I think of it like this... if I go to the mechanic for a repair to my car, I have no idea what they're going on about. I'm trusting that the stuff that they say needs doing, does in fact need doing. I do not understand any of the words that the mechanic throws around. And it's the same for our clients and I think that this is an important baseline to start from - understand that your client does not have the expertise that you do and modify your expectations and language accordingly. In order to tackle this subject we break our clients up into some broad groups: The Stalker

Your new best friend who picks up the phone before even reading the first line of an email. The simplest instructions need to be turned into a social occasion. They really see this as a personal service. They have too high an expectations of after care.

The Unresponsive

Just goes silent and reappears weeks later ignoring all that happened before.

The Alpha

Seem to push too hard to show they are above you in the relationship. Joke put downs that are hard to challenge. Reminders of it being their money.

The Know it all (including the one with the nephew who does IT)

Embarrassing show off, making it hard to have adult conversations. Do you pull them up on their ignorance or support them even if they might not deserve it?

The Underminer (or distractor)

Look at the wrong stuff and picks out issues that side track the conversation.

The Shirker

Someone who passes the buck to someone else… "Yeah, not had a reply from them", "Yeah this is being done by Janice in accounts".

The Non Payer

Forgetful/conveniently busy.

The Visionary

They are going to build a social media platform to change history…. Today.

Next week they may be threatening to stop working with you because you cannot keep up.

Clearly some of this is a little tongue in cheek, but it's a good conversation to have - helping you to realise that you're not the only one who has had to deal with this in the past. It's easy feel that you ought to be able to get along with all-the-people all-the-time. But reality shows otherwise. It might be that some of these people are better suited to you than others and if you detect one of these "types", you might need to think through carefully how to deal with them. Another really interesting chat about how you can run your WordPress website business.