3 Essential Questions You Must Ask Your Clients Before They Divorce You
Human motivation is fickle. Keep that in mind.
Clients divorce us, and vice versa.
This is a matter of when. And this journey towards clientless singlehood accelerates when we get too caught up chasing new clients.
It can be too late before we realize our existing clients want a breakup.
Of course, we do our best to prevent that from happening. But prevention does not change the inevitable.
What we can do is to understand our clients every step of the way, and ask insight-driven questions to uncover their intent to divorce us…
… Before they actually do.
Question 1 — Are Your Goals Still the Same?
Our goals change all the time.
There are many permutations to goal changes and updates. First, the expectations of the goal can be lowered or raised. Second, yesterday’s goals can be expired to make way for today’s aspirations.
“Don’t worry about motivation. Motivation is fickle. It comes and goes. It is unreliable — and when you are counting on motivation to get your goals accomplished, you will likely fall short.”
I learned this the hard way.
I used to coach running. Back then (5 years ago, maybe?), I focused on helping runners achieve their marathon goals. My services were oriented towards performance, such as hitting a specific finishing time.
There were many joiners at the beginning. Everyone was pumped by the idea of minting a beautiful string of numbers behind their names from a branded marathon.
I gave my best. I wrote individual-based, lifestyle-specific training plans. I left the office earlier on days I had to appear on the stadium track to monitor their progress.
And then, bit by bit, personal disappointment crept in.
I found out why so during individual conversations.
As you might have guessed, clients want the result (only). They do not want the process. They executed jogs, avoided fast runs, and lofted the idea of exchanging their hamburgers for a balanced meal geared towards long-distance running efficiency.
Above all, they (just) wanted to get a medal while traveling overseas.
90% of my clients were not aligned with me by week 5 of the training regime. 100% of that 90% divorced me by week 7.
Fair-weather runners almost, always, have the same laments.
It is too tough for me, and all I wanted was an exercise regime to look forward to, lose weight, and look good in dry-fit attire for the event.
— Client A, B, C, and almost everyone else
While I did work with them until their marathon day, I rejected their subsequent business for their next marathon adventure.
My reason is simple.
I want to enjoy my side-hustle. I want to work with people who believe in run performance. So, over time, I learned to prioritize asking this question every week.
Are your goals still the same?
If not, I plan our divorce before they do.
Question 2 — How Is Your Progress?
I block time out weekly to catch up with my mentees.
I used to do social media coaching for LinkedIn. That was 3 years ago. Then, everyone wanted to learn how to be an influencer on LinkedIn to sell their products or get business.
Clients would reach out to me for LinkedIn coaching with the intent of writing better content, appealing call-to-action within 1,300 characters.
I would tell them to post 3 times a week. They would say yes.
And then, one week went by. 2 weeks flew past, leading to 3. Because I followed them on LinkedIn, I knew they did absolutely nothing.
I would text them to ask how is your progress?
They would tell me how they got swarmed by life and how they had to help out on the farm feedings pigs and cows because their parents got sick.
Their Instagram presented evidence of otherwise.
From then on, I focused my time and attention on those who continued trying. Customers with intent to improve always wanted more.
And I freed up more timeslots for future clients, knowing full well that non-committed clients will divorce me when our training contract is up.
Disappointment can be avoided when you are prepared for the inevitable.
Question 3 — What Help Do You Need Today?
Practitioners can explain the issues they encounter with many layers of depth.
Freelance copywriters, like myself, struggle with different variables of writing daily. We confront an entire list of issues such as the following.
- Grammar.
- Vocabulary.
- Expression of ideas.
- Keywords geared for search ranking.
- Sentence structure.
- Highly clickable instead of clickbaity headlines.
- Strong hook at the introduction, strong call-to-action punch at the end.
Each of these points takes its turn to torment our creative progress. Practitioners of the craft can illuminate their struggles working on different client projects.
Fakers and half-hearted individuals cannot.
Once, I had someone who paid me for copywriting mentorship. It was a one-and-done deal where the client wanted to explore making money without ever leaving the house.
I would give him weekly assignments to research and write. He would disappear and reappear by the end of the week via email, sending me his work for review.
It went on for a couple of months. Then, I got suspicious.
I asked Andy over a call what struggles he had while writing. He told me that he did not have any. I was perplexed. How could that be?
15 minutes later, he told me he paid another copywriter to draft the assignment answers. All he did was polish the draft before submission.
I went silent. And then, Andy told me that he prefers editorial work. My eyes rolled backward and were almost unable to get back to their original position.
I was prepared for a client’s divorce after the call. And indeed, that divorce came in 2 days.
I sighed a huge sigh of relief.
Summary
Why do we want to find out whether our clients intend to divorce us?
I know this does not make sense, but it does. As a side-hustler, I want to hustle with satisfaction. It brings me immense joy working with like-minded clients.
Next, I needed to identify tell-tale signs of goal misalignment to prepare for the inevitable. Clients come and go.
I want to marry like-minded ones for the long-term, divorce those already on their way to pursue their Next Big Thing, and make space to marry other like-minded clients I will meet in the future.
That way, we will get to hustle happy when we work with clients who genuinely subscribe to what we believe in and do.
As a content contributor, I write my observations from daily life and my business exposure. Because our life experience is the bedrock of our unique perspectives.
