Re: FN-FORUM: Angry Pickle

date posted 11th November 2007 13:50

get rid of hime and give him my details ;) I can achieve his goals and
timelines, email me off list I have a team of more than capable developers
and designers that will deliver on time and budget I am 100% confident his
personality will change ;)



----- Original Message -----
From: "Ben Johnson (Neogic) F" [EMAIL REMOVED]
To: [EMAIL REMOVED]
Sent: Sunday, November 11, 2007 8:53 AM
Subject: RE: FN-FORUM: Angry Pickle



Jon wrote:
> One of my clients is beginning to make me supremely angry. He
> perpetually haggles on costs, always complains of having no budget,
> doesn't understand or value design, and has a knack of revealing
> deadlines hours before work is due. He's also rude, a shockingly poor
> payer and is by no means one of my more financially reliant clients.


Hi Jon - as you have not yet ditched the client in question, presumably they
provide a useful supply of regular work?

If you don't need the work, then by all means follow one of the suggestions
for giving them the polite heave-ho. I am a firm believer that
business-to-business relationships should be based on mutual respect; none
of this "The customer is always right" rubbish from the retail/restaurant
trade- it just doesn't work in the B2B services trade.

There is another, better, way though!

We were in exactly the same situation last month. A client that provides
regular work at a reasonable rate, but who is inevitably a royal PITA and
poor payer, called a meeting to discuss moving a project forward. The
project was on-hold, awaiting payment of a 5 months overdue (!) milestone
invoice. The client's e-mail hinted that they wanted to see XYZ more work
before they would consider paying.

On the way to the meeting, I considered my options.

1. Give in to his demands ("The customer is always right") and continue
work on the project without the milestone payment: not going to happen!
2. Ditch the client there-and-then: a possibility, but unprofessional IMO
and didn't make financial sense.
3. Put my foot down on the specific problematic areas, present resolutions
and proceed only if the client was in agreement.

The meeting started as expected - a torrent of abuse in all directions: the
design he'd signed off several years ago was hideous, the work we'd done
would have taken his cousin 20 minutes in FrontPage and 4 hours was daylight
robbery for re-designing and re-building the dynamic Flash banner as DHTML.

There was no way in Hell he was going to pay a penny until XYZ (all out of
spec) changes were made and approved by him. The Usual.

I let him finish, then told him calmly, but firmly, that there would be no
further work on the project until the milestone invoice was paid, including
13% statutory Late Payment Interest, and that work beyond spec would cost
extra. If this wasn't acceptable to him, I recommended he get his cousin, or
another supplier, to do the work instead!

My client looked taken aback by my ultimatum, tested to see if I was
bluffing (I wasn't!) .. then agreed to the terms. Up-front payments and
strict delivery to spec. from here-on, plus a cheque there-and-then for the
full invoice amount, including LPI.

In some ways, it's quite liberating to have a difficult client. It's the
friendly clients you get on well with that you feel obliged to let get away
with spec changes and late payments. If you are genuinely prepared to turn
the client away, then you are in a position to call the shots, potentially
resolving the problem.

Simply walking away without giving the client a decent chance to "repent"
is, to me, unprofessional and slightly cowardly!

Cheers, Ben

PS: After our showdown, the troublesome client also hinted he'd like me to
work for him in the future! Sometimes you have to be firm to establish
client-supplier respect. ;)


--
Ben Johnson, Neogic Web Solutions
// design . development . managed hosting

w | http://www.neogic.com
t | +44 (0)1242 808 262
e | [EMAIL REMOVED]




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