Mistakes You Might Be Making When Choosing Clients

In this post, we’ll look at the top eight mistakes that designers, developers and agencies make when choosing clients and what sorts of effects it can have on their business.

Just because someone comes to you in need of design or development assistance doesn’t mean you should say “yes.” There are a number of reasons why you might feel you have to though.

If you or your agency is relatively new, you might be worried about where and when your next lead will come from if you turn this one down. You might also be eager to bulk up your portfolio, and think this particular project or client would be an impressive addition to it. Or you may just feel guilty about saying “no” to someone in need.

It’s not easy turning away new business. But it’s also not easy working on a project or for a client that’s a bad fit. And it’ll feel even worse if scope creep, profit loss and reputational damage result from the relationship.

In this post, we’re going to look at eight costly mistakes you could be making when choosing to work with clients.

8 Common Mistakes Digital Pros Make When Picking Clients

As service providers, I think we’re conditioned to say “yes” as much as possible. After all, we don’t want clients to think we’re unable or unwilling to do what they want. In certain cases, though, being too agreeable can hurt us, especially when it comes to digital experience design. When it comes to turning a prospect into a client, this is very true.

Here are some of the more common mistakes digital pros can make when deciding who to work with:

1. Ignoring Red Flags

Typically, there is a consultation call before you draw up any paperwork and formally commit to a project. There are a lot of red flags that can appear during this call. There are even some red flags that can appear before and after when you communicate with the prospect and/or their team.

Here are some common warning signs to watch for:

• The prospect is rude to you.
• They’re dismissive of your expertise or your experience.
• They spend a lot of time trash-talking a former designer or developer.
• They brag about how well they understand complex concepts like UX and SEO.
• They try to haggle you the way someone might at a flea market.
• They’re very late or are a complete no-show for your consultation call.
• They take days or weeks to respond to every message you send.

What you’re ultimately looking for during these early stages of communication is what it will be like to work with the prospect. If there’s a lack of respect, if they seem dissatisfied with everything you propose or if there’s a general disconnect in your personalities, that’s often a sign that you’ll have rocky seas ahead.

It’s up to you to decide what you’re willing to tolerate. Some designers and developers are able to set firm ground rules from the get-go and not budge when the client violates them. So taking on troublesome clients might not seem like a big deal.

While not all of these examples of problem clients turn out to be bad clients, some of them will. Not only do bad clients drain your energy, kill your profit margins and interfere with the time you planned on devoting to other projects, they can do serious harm to your professional reputation. So, it can be a major gamble to ignore these red flags.

2. Accepting Clients in the Wrong Niche

One of the reasons why designers and developers niche down is because they can be more efficient and effective when they specialize.

There’s nothing wrong with branching out and accepting projects in other niches besides your primary one. Or even expanding into one that’s closely related to your own.

However, issues can arise when you enter the wrong kinds of niches.

For example, let’s say you’ve been designing gaming apps. The head of a new fintech company liked your work and wanted to see if you could develop something exciting and youthful for their own app. They’re also offering you much more money than any of your other gigs have paid. So you accept.

One issue is the knowledge gap. Developing gaming apps is far different from developing fintech apps.

The underlying structures might be similar, but the style and features are going to wildly differ. In addition to developing this new app, you’re also going to have to spend time familiarizing yourself with fintech design and best practices—time which you’re not getting paid for.

Another issue is regulatory compliance.

With gaming, you probably need to be aware of child protection regulations, accessibility and so on. With fintech, though, you have regulatory bodies that carefully dictate ways to protect your users. GDPR, PCI DSS and SOC 2, for instance, would all have an impact on the fintech product you’d build. This is something you’d have to spend time familiarizing yourself with before even drawing up the proposal or SOW for the job.

If you’re interested in challenging yourself or migrating to a new niche, then this type of job might be worth saying “yes” to. However, it will cost you in the beginning as you have to devote extra time to mastering the requirements and strategies required to develop these kinds of digital products.

3. Working with Clients Who Have Unrealistic Expectations

It’s only natural for a prospect to be extra excited about finding someone to develop their product. But being enthusiastic about the project and having unrealistic expectations are two separate matters.

Take, for instance, an enterprise healthcare client who needs you to rebuild their customer-facing portal. Customers have been complaining about it for years and they’re finally ready to do something about it. They’re in a rush, too, as they feel like they’ve waited too long and now it’s costing them too much business.

In addition to redesigning the portal within four weeks, they also ask if you can do it for about 75% of the budget that you proposed in your initial call.

Now, if you were to counter with a reasonable argument about why this job requires far more time and a much larger budget and they agree to it, you could take on the job. However, if they continue to push back, insisting it can be done faster and cheaper, then this is the time to say “no” and walk away.

If they have unrealistic expectations before the contract is even signed, they’re going to be unrealistic and impossible to reason with throughout the project. Everything will be a debate or a negotiation. And while you might win those debates more often than not, the time and energy it sucks out of you will have a negative impact on you as well as your workload.

4. Working with Clients with Vague Goals

It often feels like you need to be like Goldilocks when choosing clients. You don’t want them to be super picky or unrealistic, yet you also don’t want them to have no clue what they want.

There are some clients who genuinely trust their designer to create an amazing product with what little they give them (if anything) and are completely satisfied with the end result. In my experience, though, these clients are rare.

More likely than not, these “I don’t know what I want” clients expect you to be a mindreader. Unfortunately, even if you could read their minds, you wouldn’t get much clarity on what they need or want. What you will get clarity on, however, is what they don’t like once you’ve started to work on the project.

It’s not your job to be a mindreader. It’s your job to take your client’s vision and make it a reality.

If the prospect doesn’t have a vision, then there are two things you can do.

The first is to force it out of them. You can use questionnaires with closed and open-ended questions to get the answers you need. You can also give them a task and ask them to find five websites (or apps) they like and five that they don’t. Then ask them to explain in detail why.

The second thing you can do is to say “no.” Because in addition to being a mindreader, you’re also likely going to become a babysitter. And you don’t have time for that.

5. Accepting a Job with the Wrong CMS

When defining your services and capabilities, it’s important to explain which technologies you know how to or are willing to use. You don’t need to get into the specifics of it. It could be as simple as listing Progress Sitefinity CMS on your resume and Sitefinity Web Design as one of the services on your portfolio website.

But until you do that, you might receive requests that seem great on their face until you realize the prospect wants you to use a content management system that you’ve never used before. Or, worse, one that you’d never in a million years recommend anyone use to build a reputable website or app.

This is similar to the niche problem noted above. When you go outside of your comfort zone, there are risks.

For starters, the wrong CMS could make it incredibly difficult for you to develop the product your client wants. It might still be possible, but you’d have to do a lot of time-consuming jerry-rigging to make it happen.

There’s also the end result to think about. You’ve chosen to work with a certain CMS because it’s the best solution for the types of products you build. In addition to allowing you to build impressive digital experiences, the software itself is super user-friendly. This is critical for client empowerment as you don’t want to leave them feeling stuck with content they have zero control over.

While a prospect might like a certain CMS because they saw a commercial for it or a friend recommended it, they don’t have the years of experience that you do to know that it’s all wrong for their project.

If you get one of these requests and can convince them to use a more suitable CMS, then by all means accept the job. However, if they insist on using the wrong tech, walk away as it’ll cause more trouble than it’s worth.

6. Agreeing to Work with Clients Who Don’t Want a Contract

This kind of issue could appear in one of two ways.

The first is the prospect who says they don’t need a contract because they trust you. The implication is that, if they sign the contract you’ve given them, there’s something possibly untrustworthy about your services. They think you’ll get defensive and agree that, sure, it’s fine that you work contractless as you have nothing to hide.

In reality, this makes the prospect seem like a very untrustworthy individual or enterprise to work with.

Any time you enter into an expensive agreement with a service provider, there should always be a signed contract. It’s there to explain the scope, define the rules of engagement and to provide protective measures for both parties.

The second way in which this type of issue appears is when the prospect tells you that they haven’t had time to review the contract. But you go ahead and get started, and they’ll review and sign it as soon as they can.

Some clients will use this tactic so that they never have to sign the contract. And as many times as they promise to do so, they just keep kicking the can down the road. Before you know it, you’ve finished half the job and there’s no legally binding agreement that says they’ll pay you for the work you’ve completed or that they’ll stay within the scope of the job.

7. Accepting a Referral Without Vetting Them

We love when happy clients happily send more business our way. Word-of-mouth marketing can be one of the best and most cost-effective ways to get new leads. Emphasis on the word leads.

You might assume that someone referred to you by a great client is guaranteed to be a great client themselves. So you take shortcuts and rush them into the contract and onboarding phase.

Unfortunately, referrals aren’t always as good as the sources they came from. If you don’t take the time to properly vet them the way you would any other prospect, it could backfire on you.

For example, let’s say a long-term client sends a referral your way. Although they own separate businesses, they’re partners and closely collaborate on jobs on a regular basis.

You fast-track the referral through the process. However, they don’t show for your scheduled kickoff call, they don’t pay the deposit, and they disappear for the first month, failing to respond to any of your messages in that time.

As a result, you put the project on hold. When they return, they’re very angry that you didn’t just keep working. After all, they’d heard such great things from their partner about you. While you are able to start things back up again, the working relationship is fraught with distrust and tension. Not only that, you’ve started to pick up similar vibes from the referring client.

Not only have you invested a lot of time in a project that’s been derailed by the client’s flakiness, it has also potentially put your other client relationship in jeopardy.

So this isn’t necessarily the kind of prospect to say “no” to. However, it is one that you should treat the same way you would any other lead. If you don’t take time to vet them, you could jeopardize more than just this one client by automatically saying “yes.”

8. Taking a New Project When You’re Maxed Out

You might be worried that saying “no” to a prospect now will come back to haunt you when you’ve wrapped up all your work and there are no new clients waiting for you. While feast-or-famine cycles are a real possibility in web design and development, so too is burnout.

Let’s say you run out of work. You can use all of that free time to apply to new jobs, interview and consult with prospects and get started on new gigs.

However, if you take on more work than you can reasonably handle, it could have negative consequences.

For example, it could disrupt the projects you’re doing for other clients. Rather than devote all your attention and energy to the jobs you have the time for, you end up running late in delivering your work, all so you can fit it everything in.

Another possibility is that you rush so you’re not having to work late nights and all weekend. Because you’re rushing, you miss critical steps or important details. Clients become frustrated and the tension makes every interaction difficult to get through.

Burnout is something else that can happen. It can manifest in different ways. For example:

• Exhaustion
• Alienation
• Headaches
• Depression
• Reduced performance

When you’re not feeling great mentally or physically, you shut down when you encounter challenges. The best-case scenario is that you are irritable and sluggish and your clients take notice. The worst-case scenario is that you get sick or are unable to get out of bed, so you fail to complete your projects and lose all that revenue and the trust of your clients.

It can be hard to say “no” though when there’s no steady flow of clients coming in, at least not at the moment.

So what you can do instead is create a waitlist. While some prospects will go find someone else, that’s to be expected. But those who understand the value of hiring a designer or developer who wants to bring their A-game to every job will be willing to wait for you.

Wrapping Up

It’s OK to say “no” to a prospective client when you know you’re the wrong person for the job. Or when you know that they’re the wrong kind of client for your business.

During those early stages of meeting and getting to know a prospect, consider the common mistakes above before saying “yes” and committing to a contract. While you might be eager to bring in new revenue or to take on a high-profile client, it might not be a great fit for either of you.

Trust me. If the prospect didn’t think you were the right person for the job, they’d have no issue saying “no” to your proposal and contract. It’s a wise business move. So if you’re feeling guilty or hesitant about doing the same, keep that in mind.