How do you teach your client not to know your specialty?

Question

You and I want to be an expert in computer programming or website design, but sometimes a client would rather try your hand in your field, rather than focus on selling real estate, marketing, or a former member of the Israeli army. Then we have a choice: either find out how to tell the stabbing client that their logo will NOT rotate better in 3 with the right lens flare, or, perhaps, will suffer from the slightest humiliation, which consists in making the link texts as detailed as possible in a direct contrast to any style guide ever written.

You were able to convince your customers to focus on the fact that they are trained to do this, they will allow you to fulfill your technical skills to the best of your ability?

Answer 1

Often, the reason a client wants to participate is to consciously or unconsciously take care that you don’t understand the details of your business or how they do it.

The best approach is to work with a client to study their business. This includes zero assumptions and learning how they do it, their business. Based on this, open all the data that they use, which means that the data is at some point in their process.

Keep coming back to them, and ultimately they will understand that you not only understand their things, what they want, and in what direction they want to go, but that you can even know the consequences or blows better than them.

After that, they usually remain outside your hair. This can be difficult, although when working with types of micro levels or engineers. By their nature, they want to know how everything works perfectly. It’s not easy when it’s best to find out how it works.

Often you can get stuck in a conversation about solving a problem than it takes to fix it. Perhaps you can tell us more about the identity of the client.

Answer 2

I always try to point my clients in the right direction regarding design. Sometimes this is simply not possible; they want something terrible design, but they are convinced that it is important for their system. If they are not convinced after a modest pitch, I just do what they want. In the end, they pay me (usually) thousands of dollars to build their specification.

Answer 3

The trick is to get them to make the right decisions, but think about their idea. :-)

You cannot easily communicate with them in this thesis, but you can turn them around and direct them towards righteousness for each individual decision. In the end, after you go through this a few times, they will begin to trust you.

If possible, it helps to wait a day . Tomorrow they may be less clear what exactly they requested. (Do they really have a heart on the glowing logo, or is it just a whim?) Then, in your answer, you: tell us what you recommend and why. Repeat the agreed goals and show how the solution meets the goals. And it sounds like it was their idea . ("What you did yesterday about xxx is really excellent, and I think it offers a yyy solution.")

At this point you have a choice. Ideally, you can pretend you never heard their silly offer. Or, if you feel that you need to, respond tactfully and explain the costs. ("I’m a little worried about the idea of ​​an animated logo, because it may not convey the brand image as you requested. Of course, if you want to go this route, we certainly can - and in this case I would suggest that we contact our graphic design consultant. Let me know if you would like to further explore this and get a quote from the consultant for his services. ")

Answer 4

I found that it’s always easier for customers to convince “optical evidence” than theoretical arguments — so you could, for example, show them the logos or the general style used on websites that won a price for their usability, or maybe perhaps even show them how some great competitor does it, and then point out the advantages based on what they see.

I also once managed to get rid of a really terrible user interface offer by making layout screens of how this function would look and work - and I did everything possible to make the layouts as unappealing as possible; -) When I introduced them, the client quickly realized that there are better ways to achieve their goal.

Answer 5

Knowledge is power. When you know that the client is doing something wrong, let the facts be ready for why and offer them quickly and in plain English . You must remind them why they hired you in the first place.

Taking this into account, sometimes customers insist on shooting in the foot. Prepare backups, use version control, but most of all: do not antagonize them. Your reputation costs a lot more than their 3D logo spinning site.

Answer 6

Very careful.

Here you have several conflicting problems: you want to keep the relationship (and income), you want to do a good job, and you don't want your name on the turkey.

Start by asking a lot of questions about the business aspect: what you want, who you want to achieve, what impression you want to give. Sometimes this will allow you to move on to a discussion of more useful topics.

If this does not work, sometimes it helps to mock up the client’s idea and your idea and compare them; if yours is clearly superior, they can see it.

If not, sometimes you have to remember that contracting / consulting is a form of prostitution; you do what the client wants, whether it’s your favorite thing or not.

Another thing to remember is the lesson I learned from another consultant several years ago: some clients are not worth the trouble. he recommended that after you have enough business for life, you practice firing your least favorite 10 percent of your customers. Over time, you create a customer base with which you can work, and give the turkeys to someone else.

Answer 7

The problem with customers is that they are a customer. They hired you to complete the project according to their specifications. What they seem to have missed in your example is that they hired you because of your experience. You must remind them of this fact in a gentle way. Perhaps a story such as "On one client we used such a logo, and they experienced a drop in traffic. When we switched to a flat icon, the traffic returned." It is not necessary to be true, as such, but you need to sell it.

Answer 8

All you can do is explain to your client that they hired you for your design experience, but in the end the client is always right.

If you find that you do not like working with such clients, simply indicate at the beginning of a new project that you need complete creative control. If they still need rotating logos, you will have to come to terms with this project, but at least you can refuse any offers from the same client in the future.