Thinking you know what the client means
Posted: Sat Dec 21, 2024 4:13 am
Without embarrassment
Every project knows the phenomenon of 'advancing insight' and advancing insight costs money. For a long time this felt a bit embarrassing, as if we hadn't thought it through well enough in advance. Since I have accepted that it is simply part of a project and I tell the client at the start that it is wise to set up a budget item for it, there is nothing embarrassing about it anymore. Calculated additional work hurts much less than surprise additional work.
Chop into pieces
In my opinion, projects of any size should always be built in phases. The basis first, go live and then expand. What is most needed, you always build next and completely finished. Nice and clear and completely scrum and agile . Leaving budget with a client because you advise to reserve it for subsequent phases, feels vulnerable as an agency. But it gives confidence, the eternal additional work remains limited. If you do it right, a longer-term collaboration will arise and in many cases even more turnover (which does not raise any eyebrows with the client).
2. Vague invoicing
Money is a pain. The previous point was already about that. In the same vein: vague invoices cause a pain for our clients. Unspecified amounts, unclear project management items and greece telegram data unexpected additional work are mentioned as factors that cause pain. Our clients have to explain within their organizations where all those amounts go, the least we can do is help them a little with a decent invoice.
Leonie Blom of Nuffic tells about an enthusiastic young agency she once worked with, they never charged anything extra: “That was nice of course, but afterwards I sometimes wondered whether they weren’t shortchanging themselves: as a client, you want to be paid properly for work delivered.” All clients seemed to be like that. It was nice to hear that explicitly for once. The good will is there, let’s not spoil it with vague stuff.
Also read: Agency vs. client: the 10 biggest annoyances & how it can be done differently
Clients have an idea of the end point. More or less. Although it still needs to be filled in 'some'. What seems like a logical solution for you as an agency, turns out not to be obvious at all for the client.
An example from daily practice. “You must be able to search the website.” was stated in the request for quotation. In the quotation – which we were awarded – we included 'search' as a functionality. We already suspected that 'ctrl f' was probably not what the client meant, so we budgeted a number of hours for a mid-range search engine. Once we started working with the client, we checked our modal assumption. It turned out that more was needed. There were wishes for a top-class model that also crossed through PDFs and semi-automatically switched with search results. By implementing another functionality more simply in consultation, we were able to realize the expensive search engine within budget.
Every project knows the phenomenon of 'advancing insight' and advancing insight costs money. For a long time this felt a bit embarrassing, as if we hadn't thought it through well enough in advance. Since I have accepted that it is simply part of a project and I tell the client at the start that it is wise to set up a budget item for it, there is nothing embarrassing about it anymore. Calculated additional work hurts much less than surprise additional work.
Chop into pieces
In my opinion, projects of any size should always be built in phases. The basis first, go live and then expand. What is most needed, you always build next and completely finished. Nice and clear and completely scrum and agile . Leaving budget with a client because you advise to reserve it for subsequent phases, feels vulnerable as an agency. But it gives confidence, the eternal additional work remains limited. If you do it right, a longer-term collaboration will arise and in many cases even more turnover (which does not raise any eyebrows with the client).
2. Vague invoicing
Money is a pain. The previous point was already about that. In the same vein: vague invoices cause a pain for our clients. Unspecified amounts, unclear project management items and greece telegram data unexpected additional work are mentioned as factors that cause pain. Our clients have to explain within their organizations where all those amounts go, the least we can do is help them a little with a decent invoice.
Leonie Blom of Nuffic tells about an enthusiastic young agency she once worked with, they never charged anything extra: “That was nice of course, but afterwards I sometimes wondered whether they weren’t shortchanging themselves: as a client, you want to be paid properly for work delivered.” All clients seemed to be like that. It was nice to hear that explicitly for once. The good will is there, let’s not spoil it with vague stuff.
Also read: Agency vs. client: the 10 biggest annoyances & how it can be done differently
Clients have an idea of the end point. More or less. Although it still needs to be filled in 'some'. What seems like a logical solution for you as an agency, turns out not to be obvious at all for the client.
An example from daily practice. “You must be able to search the website.” was stated in the request for quotation. In the quotation – which we were awarded – we included 'search' as a functionality. We already suspected that 'ctrl f' was probably not what the client meant, so we budgeted a number of hours for a mid-range search engine. Once we started working with the client, we checked our modal assumption. It turned out that more was needed. There were wishes for a top-class model that also crossed through PDFs and semi-automatically switched with search results. By implementing another functionality more simply in consultation, we were able to realize the expensive search engine within budget.