This is touchy subject but it’s something that keeps coming to mind as one of the biggest lessons of my professional career. It’s created a 180 degree turnaround in the relationships I have with my clients and the people I work for and with.
For years almost everywhere I worked and the studio I was running there was this strange undertone of our clients somehow being our enemies. There’s this pervasively snarky “they don’t understand design and what we do and it’s our jobs to save them from themselves” attitude. Does this sound familiar?
On top of this there was this constant need to be accepted by our peers in the design and creative community. Strangely enough I constantly found myself colluding with my peers, those who I should be competing against and constantly competing against our clients, those who we should be working with! This is so completely backwards.
For years I subscribed to this approach and it consistently failed me. The people on my team took my lead and felt the same. Eye rolling on calls, and ultimately the lack of respect for our clients ultimately led to a constant rift in our relationship where we felt like we couldn’t tell them what we really thought so we cow towed to what we thought was their desires. Not their best interest mind you, just what we thought they wanted.
This ultimately led to some abysmal work. Not always bad, but generally watered down. And ultimately this ended up with relationships that were unproductive and negative.
So why does this happen?
It all happens at 2 stages of the relationship.
1. The first date: You need to be confident enough to tell it like it is, explain your process, show a genuine interest in the success of their business, tell the truth, seek a connection. Walk away if it doesn’t feel right.
2. Therapy: When you’ve been working with someone for a while and things aren’t going well know well enough when to cut the line and move on. Our job as branders, designers, communicators is to enhance the value of our clients’s businesses and products. To help them grow, and if we’re not doing that we have an ethical responsibility to help them find someone who will do this for them.
So what have I been doing that’s worked so well for me?
1. Listening better:
Rather than trying to come across as the expert I’m trying to ask the right questions. This is about understanding their business not selling mine. My goal is simple now: How can I help? If it’s 20 minutes of free chat time I’m game. My goal is to help people succeed. It’s all about them, not all about my work or my portfolio.
2. Explain and stand up for your process:
You need a system, a process. Brand work is too complex to wing, and if you’re passionate about the science of design your work will reflect a depth that it may not have before. Walk someone through your process, tell them how you work, give them a sense of what to expect when they hire you. Explain how you’ll approach solving their problems. Maybe even dive in a little bit to give them a taste. Don’t worry about giving away the show, if they think you’re capable and smart they’ll hire you. What you’re talking about if you’re good is too complex to steal. If they get bored when you explain process, or ask you to skip over it, then this is a giant red flag. You need a partner to get good work done. And they need to be sold on how you work.
3. Zen Out:
The last thing I changed was to be absolutely calm and understanding no matter how tense things get. Our clients are people, often challenged with the same stressful professional and personal challenges we are. When things get tense it’s usually because of a miscommunication. Don’t be reactive. Stand your ground and work towards a resolution of the problem at hand. Since I started doing this I’ve been blown away by the responses I get. Clients genuinely value someone who they know is stable and can handle the stress of day to day business. Be like water and they’ll lean on you more. Be someone they’re psyched to talk to, so when they have a call with you it’s a highlight to their day, a ray of sunshine and calm, not a stressful battle over minutiae.
I’ve been working at this myself and I’ve seen a huge turnaround in the relationships I have with my clients. I feel like I have partners now, we’re a team, not a client and a vendor (oh how I despise that word). They love my work and it makes sense to them, they feel part of a process and so do I, and I feel blessed to be able to step into their world and learn about their business and what makes them tick.