It seems to be a trend with designers (and whole firms) these days to talk bad about clients. They may not single out an individual client to trash, but they’ll tweet, blog, and rant about how horrible clients can be; how so many of them don’t see their inherent genius. Honestly, it’s actually kind of amazing when you realize that these are adults demanding professional-level fees while acting like spoiled children.
My goal is not actually to complain about the lack of professionalism. If you want to know about how to be a design professional, I definitely recommend Andy Rutledge’s book, Design Professionalism. I actually just want to talk about why you won’t hear us complain about clients, and maybe give you and idea how to avoid complaining about your own clients.
Bottom line: We love our clients because they are our clients.
Clients aren’t customers. Stores and restaurants have customers. Customers are transactional. They come in, buy something and leave. Customers only vet you enough to see that stores have what they want, and they’re charging a price the customers are willing to pay. Stores only vet customers enough to know that they can pay and that, maybe, they’re wearing a shirt and shoes. Nobody’s forming a relationship; they’re just trading goods or services for money. The system works great for retail stores everywhere. As professionals, though, we get to have clients. Developing a client means developing a relationship. Our relationship doesn’t dissolve after one deal, so we take client relationships a lot more seriously than we would take customer transactions.
Because they aren’t just customers, we choose our clients. Unlike a retail store, we have no obligation to trade with anyone with a thick wallet. As a relatively small shop, we have a finite amount of time and resources; and every client we take on is to the exclusion of another potential client. Just like a client will compare us to some great local competitors before choosing us, we evaluate our potential clients against current clients and other potentials. We always meet with potential clients, talk about our shared expectations, make sure we’re going to be a good fit, and, if all goes well, settle on terms that will make us both happy. If we end up with a micro-manager that doesn’t trust our design experience, we can’t write a blog complaining about them; it was our fault that we didn’t set expectations correctly or just chose a client that wasn’t a good fit for our company.
Finally, we have a different way of thinking about these non-transactional, non-customer relationships that we have chosen; they are partnerships. We’re not doing business for one quick transaction. We have a relationship. We chose them as much as they chose us. Essentially, we are partnering with them. It’s beneficial to both of us that we succeed together, and we will go out of our way to make sure that happens.
This idea of a partnership can’t just be a feel-good thing to say in meetings, though. It has to affect the way you think and operate. Because we have a relationship, our concern goes beyond the current design revision when disagreements happen. At the same time, in a relationship based on choice, we have the option to “break-up” at certain points if we can’t work together well. Finally, as partners, it is to our benefit to do everything within our control to make sure they succeed. If we don’t think of their success or failure as our success or failure, then we’re really just making them customers; and we’d rather have partners.
