Top 7 Reasons to Turn Down New Business

It amazes me how many times I have to deal with bad prospective clients. I get these calls all the time where the client wants to meet but does not want to discuss budget or what they want designed first. They insist on meeting and then you get there and it was a total waste of your time. Other times, I get these same types of people promising me more future work if I cut them a break on pricing now for their current project, and then there are those that want to rewrite my contract, which is a big NO WAY IN HELL rule I stick by strongly! So, I have put together my top-7 list of reasons to turn down new business from bad prospective clients. I suggest you follow these simple rules or you will regret it when the client screws you around.

Top-7 List (not in any particular order, they are all equally important):

1. If the client is not willing to discuss their project by phone first and insist on meeting first, that is a red flag to not do business with them. What normally happens is you get to their office and they want to discuss a one page Web site with a budge of $100. I suggest you drill all your customers first by phone before you waste time driving across town when you could be at your office making money.

2. Always get a 50% deposit. If the client is not willing to put down a deposit, chances of them actually paying for the work they hired you to do is slim. A deposit puts the client in check and forces them to get the project done since now they have something invested in it. If you don’t get a deposit, the client is usually not that concerned since it is only your time they are waisting and not theirs.

3. The promise of future work if you provide a discount for the current project they are wanting done. Well, that is a load of garbage, in my 19+ years as a designer, I have never once had a client like this fulfill their promise of future work. In my early years as a designer, I was hungry and looking for work and fell for this several times and never once did I get a second job from that client who made these promises.

4. The client does not want to sign your contact or wants to change your contract. Well, that is the first sign of a client not willing to pay you for the work you do and that type of client is the one who will try to find a way out of paying you for your efforts. As for your contact, you should never change your contract for a client unless you feel it is in your best interest. With that said, you have to protect your business and yourself, not the client. They are hiring you! Look at it this way, when was the last time you went to your bank to get a loan and tried to change the loan contract? You can’t, they have their binding terms and you must agree to those terms or you don’t get the loan. That is that simple! So, if the client does not want to sign your contact or  tries to make you change it, fire them and give them the boot right out the door!

5. The client wants to play art director and tell you how to position things on the design. Okay, that is on of my biggest complaints with clients and happens all the time. They think that they have an eye for design, but they hired you to basically become their mouse so they can navigate you to create the garbage they have in their head on your screen. They will go to such efforts to move one pixel at a time which does absolutely nothing visually. How I handle these clients is I put revision charges into place before the work begins and if they keep making stupid changes, then they have to pay for it. If they don’t want to pay for it or beg for a discount, that is too freaking bad. It is all about business and my time and I do not work for fee and if they want to play that game, then they have to pay for it or I will just turn down the work. It is funny, sometimes I tell the client I made the change and did not and half the time they tell me it looks better. Makes you wonder if they just do this out of some obsessive compulsive behavior they have.

6. I don’t know what I want, but when I see it I will know. Okay, that is not a great way to start off on a project. What the heck do they think you are, a freaking mind reader? If the client tells me this, I right away tell them they must provide me details of what they are trying to achieve and I also have them do some research online to provide me samples of designs they like along with color and other information such as from their competitors. If they are not willing to do this, I decline the job and send them on their way. It is so important that the client works with you on what they are wanting to have designed, otherwise, it is like driving a car without a steering wheel, it is a combined effort by both the client and the designer!

7. The client wants to be able to update the design on their own. Well, that is a touchy issue. With Web design, you have tools that enable the client to make content changes and some basic design changes. Most of the time when you show them what to do, they are so over whelmed with the complexity of Web design, they just hire you to do the changes they need unless it is basic content changes they can do on their own. With that said, I have ran into instances where the customer whats a business card designed professionally, but cannot understand why they cannot open the file in Microsoft Word and edit it on their own. Of course I explain to them they must have the proper professional design software in order to do this, but many times they get mad. They insist they want to be able to edit the design on their own and cannot understand why it was not designed in Word. The way I explain this is if they wanted to do this in Word, they should have done it on their own and not hired a professional designer. I also send them a link to the Adobe Web site and tell them to purchase the software I use and then they can edit it on their own. I also send them some video tutorials on how to use the Adobe tools. Most of the time it shuts them up or they just go their way and never come back. To help solve this issue before it happens in the first place is tell the client up front that they cannot update things on their own unless they have the proper tools and training.

That covers my biggest issues in doing business with clients. Stick to these rules and it will save you some sanity.