How to Know When a Client is Right for You

By Robin Callan

When I grant informational interviews to designers fresh out of school or to people contemplating switching to a career in interior design, I always end our chats by advising them to walk away from clients who trip their mental caution wire during an initial consultation. “It’s not worth it!” I tell them. “If you ignore your instincts and take the job anyway, you run the risk of ending up in a bad situation and nine times out of ten, you’ll look back on that first meeting and think, ‘Damn. I should’ve paid attention!’”

Yet, how many times did I take my own advice? Just one measly time, and the only reason I bailed on that guy was because he struck me as someone who could very well be making a skin suit in his basement.

In the eight years I’ve been in this business, there have been four other clients whose jobs I regret taking, where my gut predicted a poor outcome. One was fairly innocuous—my recommendations fell under the category of Not What They Wanted to Hear, and I never heard from them again. No big whoop. The remaining three? I’ll refer to them as “Hell,” “Fire,” and “Brimstone.” “Hell” ranted and raved for days on end, implying I had done something unethical when I took the time to visit a few furniture stores after she requested a second round of sofa options. “Fire” got her nickname when she fired off a nearly incomprehensible, vitriolic email about how untalented I was to have suggested a green paint color for her living room, simply because green rooms already existed in my Web portfolio. “Brimstone” yo-yo’d between ending our meetings by telling me, “I love you,” (which, umm, was weird enough) and then the next day she’d send abusive emails and text messages. After several weeks of Brimstone’s bad behavior, my Pavlovian response to seeing her name in my email que put me in a constant state of anxiety. I amped up my meditation practice, followed coping advice I found online…I tried every relaxation trick I could think of, to no avail.

I was a stressed mess.

The bottom line is, for every negative experience that clogs your calendar, you eliminate the option of experiencing something positive--period, end of discussion. It doesn’t matter if you’re talking about work or life in general. Business school profs call that an “opportunity cost.” If you charge clients by the hour and elect to clean your house rather than hire a cleaning service, your opportunity cost is the number of billable hours you could have charged back to a client at a higher hourly rate. If you spend time with a client who gives you ulcers, your cost is the opportunity to work with a client who appreciates you, and worse yet, your missed opportunity could be one that represents greater income potential. You will never know what you’re missing out on if you decide to stay on the crazy train. I finally fired Brimstone and created the following guidelines for my company to follow:

When to End a Relationship with a Client

·  First and foremost, if you feel your personal safety is at risk, do whatever it takes to remove yourself from the situation and fire the client.

·  You should fire any client who becomes verbally abusive or disrespectful.

·  If you feel that working with a particular client represents an opportunity cost that is higher than you want to pay, you should fire the client.

·  It goes without saying that a client who’s lackadaisical about paying their bills needs to go, too.

Why You Should End These Relationships

·  You’ll make yourself available to better clients, better projects, and greater creative fulfillment.

·  You may have greater income potential elsewhere.

·  The happier you are, the better job you’re capable of doing.

·  There are obvious and well-known health benefits to reducing your stress levels.

· You risk endangering relationships with trusted subcontractors and vendors by subjecting them to unreasonable clients.

· Every unsatisfied customer has the potential to damage your reputation, either by word of mouth or by posting negative reviews online.

How to End a Relationship with  Clients

·  If you want to fire a client after an initial consultation, it’s easy to make excuses based on your workload. I told Skin Suit Guy that a contractor walked off a job and I needed to devote all of my time to getting the project back on track, making me unable to meet his deadline.

·  Notify the client in writing. Sending an email allows you to be brief, concise and diplomatic. Do it over the phone and you risk saying something you regret, or being bullied into keeping the job. “After careful consideration, …” is a good way to start. Do not be tempted to go into vivid detail about where the train derailed, except in the case of nonpayment. The important thing is to make it clear to the client that the door is closed on your working relationship.

·  Make sure to let them know what work—if any—you will complete. If you will not finish the project yourself and know another designer with a rep for handling difficult clients well, refer this patron saint to the client.

·  If your client responds with drama, do not engage.

·  For extreme cases like “Brimstone,” consider blocking them from your pages on social networking sites—even if you aren’t Facebook friends to begin with. It’s all about limiting their access to you.

It’s easy to brush off negative feelings you may have about new clients. You think, “Oh, I’m just being silly,” or “I know I can come up with a design plan that’ll knock their socks off,” or “I need the money…how bad can it be?” The better question to ask is, “How good can it be?” If the answer is “not good enough,” then you’re doing yourself a huge favor by moving on to the next client. Being an interior designer can be a total blast—there’s no point taking a client who will take all of the fun out of it. Let Hell, Fire, and Brimstone deluge someone else’s email inbox.

Have any of these things happened to you – and have you ever had to fire a client? What did you learn in the process?

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Robin Callan is the founding design guru of Room Fu, an Austin, Texas interior design firm and long-time defender of affordable design. Her blog, Fu for Thought, features steals and deals, design-related musings, and interviews with celebrity designers. For more information, email her at robin@roomfu.com or call (512) 797-5821.