How to Manage Tricky Clients

Written by a design agency owner with years of experience wanting to save you a couple of headaches, if possible.

One of the many pieces of owning your own business is managing clients. My experience is in running my design agency, but these scenarios and tips that I’ll be sharing could easily be applied to other business types as well. After years of learning and growing with clients, I definitely have a few tricks up my sleeve for managing clients, making sure processes go smoothly, and ensuring minimal “headaches” if possible.

Step One: Create solid communication expectations.

Communication is one of the biggest things in business that can cause confusion both at your end and at the client’s end. I find it helpful to try compacting as many communication points as possible to make them as effective as possible. Fewer words, straight to the point, and fewer ways to get confused or mis-communicate.

Tips on how I’ve created a solid communication process with clients:

• Write out your WHOLE process on a piece of paper and include every tiny task that you do for the project. I recommend just brain dumping it all. It’s okay if it gets messy, you’ll forget items so you can easily write them in so when you put them in your system it’s organized. This includes every email sent, to-do list item, items you need from them, what needs to happen in order for the process to move forward, and deadlines for when certain communications need to be done.
• Automate as much as you can so you don’t forget to check in, ask for materials, or follow up. An example for this could be if you requested the client to send you photos for a web design and they haven’t sent them yet two days before the due date, a reminder email could be helpful. They probably genuinely forgot and just need a simple reminder email. These emails can be automated and sent for you if you use a client relationship management system (examples of these will be shared later on).
• Layout clear communication expectations before you sign the client to make sure they can meet those expectations and if any adjustments need to be made before any contracts are signed. This is part of the process where you’re seeing if you and the client are a good match to work together. Are you willing and able to conform to their communication needs?
• Know how your client prefers to communicate and what times they prefer as well. It’s important to ask if they would prefer to communicate via email, text, or phone call. From experience, email or phone call is the best route and keep the relationship professional. A text is the last resort reminder if really needed and I save those for times like that, it’s not cool to “bombard” clients with texts and can be unprofessional. Also, know what their timezone is and during what hours they would be able to respond back to you. You have the business hours that you will respond back to them during so it’s polite and professional to ask them if they have any preferred hours as well. It sets the tone of respecting their time and boundaries as well. If you want your hours respected, be sure to respect the clients as well.

Step Two: Create solid client processes (onboarding, during the process, and offboarding)

Before I get too deep into this one, here are a couple of definitions:

• Onboarding: introducing the client to the project, you and your team, setting expectations, and laying out the information you need to collect from them if any. During this time you’re getting them set up in a client portal and making sure that they don’t have any additional questions before the process begins.
• Offboarding: the project is completed and has been approved by the client, that doesn’t mean that you’re done. Sending final files, a thank-you card, any exit notes, and wrapping up the project formally is a great way to end a project on a high note, even with tricky clients.
• Client relationship management system: systems that you can use to help manage clients, client projects, calendars, bookings, payments (invoices, quotes, payments plans), and more.

Step Three: Create a process in a client relationship management (CRM) system to use your time as efficiently as possible.

Examples of client relationship management systems would be 17Hats or Honeybook. I recommend if you’re looking at investing in a CRM system to compare multiple systems before choosing and investing in one because they all are a little different and could be more efficient for certain business types and how you prefer to manage your business. Finding a CRM tool that you like the most can really take a lot off your plate and makes it so you don’t have to hire someone to help manage your business, they’re definitely worth the money.

How I use client relationship management systems to save time:

• I have all of my design workflows in my CRM system. That way all the to-do list items, emails, contracts, invoices, payment plans, and more are all in one place. They’re either automated or when I check off to-do list items it will prompt an email to be sent to keep the process moving. This way you can edit the email template you’ve already written for that type of project and send it off with minimal time taken from your day.
• Payment plans can be automated. This is an awesome system and gets rid of “chasing the client for their payments” because they are automatically withdrawn from either their bank account or on a credit card that you and the client set up at the beginning of their project.
• All of your pricing is right there in the system. When you update your pricing all you have to do is update it in your system then when you send a quote or invoice it will know exactly what pricing to send the client based on their project details. Based on each package it’ll have the coordinating welcome packet, and start the workflow for that project type.

When you implement those three steps you’re making “tricky” clients non-existent almost because they feel taken care of, communicated with, and they know what to expect and when to expect it from you as well. Often times a client becomes tricky when they feel frustrated or if you haven’t been communicating as well as you could have been. Have you ever thought of that before? When I realized this it changed my mindset and helped me really focus on creating an amazing experience for every client, even if it’s a tiny project it doesn’t matter because your client process should be as amazing for a $200 or a $5,000 client. Every client matters. :)

Although I could go on to include more, for the sake of this article getting a bit long, I will end with those three steps to managing tricky clients. Want to know more about my tips? Let me know so I can write you another article on this topic.

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