Signs of a complex project
Ideas are thrown by a customer service coach.
His name is Sergey Serova. For contacts to me.
Why does the studio work? In my opinion, this is profit , reputation and pleasure .
It's great when everything is at once: they pay well, a bright project, beautiful people.
However, everything and always can not be obtained. There are projects for status, there are monetary, but uninteresting and not giving reason to be proud, there is just for the soul.
But it may happen that the project does not give the studio anything . A reasonable question arises: why such a project ? How to justify the strength and nerves spent on it?
Is that a long customer relationship.
')
In many cases, it is better to politely and with mutual respect refuse to work, to “technically merge” the project, than to get into a situation when the project does nothing. In this case, the customer in any case should not think that you abandoned him.
Such a refusal will save you profit, reputation and pleasure.
You can even consider such a project perfect.
The question is how to determine future difficulties at the very beginning.
If there are one or two symptoms, everything can be corrected properly constructed negotiations.
If at the discussion stage there are more than two alarming factors, then during the project everything will manifest itself, be ready for this.
1. Draw me a kungur!
The goal of the project is formulated in such a way that your area of ​​responsibility does not apply (sales growth by XX%, winning the competition, “better than Vasya Krivoy”).
The goal is unclear and often changes.
2. Inventor
The customer does not understand the web and is trying to reinvent it. Vertical headers, bread crumbs in the middle of the screen, animated mouse cursors, authorization through a flash game, layout with triangles.
3. Collective intelligence.
The customer is represented by several people without a clear leader with different opinions. As an option - any decision is made by the whole team. Until everyone gathers, there is no progress. If there are more than 4 participants, at each meeting someone will not be.
4. There is no time, start already!
Your letter is read more than a week or the meeting is postponed more than 2 times, despite the fact that the deadlines are burning. It is dangerous, because often in this case they announce or even make a generous payment.
5. Expensive!
Regardless of the price that you call, they try to knock it down 2 times. Offer to work for a share of the profits.
As a rule, the client likes you if he is aggressively bargaining with you, and he has the money. It's just trying to pay a little and get a lot. This is normal if it turns out and if the goods are sold. In services, starting with an attempt to forcefully push a partner, this means creating an appropriate atmosphere in the future.
You have dozens of competitors who can work at client prices or with his manners. If it is normal to conduct price negotiations, it will save money and sound relations, regardless of whether the project is or not.
6. Bore.
Careful attention to detail (especially scary in conjunction with paragraphs 2 and 3).
The alignment of the layout to the pixels may not be so bad, but usually such attention means distrust of you and rejection of the division of responsibilities. You will adjust the colors on the monitor under the attached business card and use the case not according to Rosenthal, but according to corporate standards.
7. Hasty jelly.
Inattention to the project manager and already completed stages, inconsistency in the plans. Information is constantly being issued in small portions, the client continues to actively think and change conditions, simultaneously asking why they have already lost so much time.
It is normal that the client comes to consult. It is normal that he is incompetent on the web - otherwise he would not have come.
It is bad when it is combined with a sly (or stupid) attempt to give information in parts in order to fix the price in case of uncertain work.
It is bad when goals, requirements and benchmarks change after the documents are signed, where they are written down.
8. No, let's be different
Failure to negotiate or cooperate.
Each industry has its own established rules, rarely obvious and necessary to the client. The house begins with a project, business automation with a pre-project survey, advertising with market research.
Surely you have a scheme of work that you think is correct. Respect yourself, do not let this scheme break on the knee simply because the client wants differently. This is no reason to be stupid and boring and not to compromise, just feel what is real and what is not. Unreal - do not. Do not go for experiments at the expense of the client. In fact, you will do it at your own expense, losing time, pleasure, reputation.
9. Of course, the general will decide, but you will never see him.
The decision maker is not available even at key moments. You work with an intermediary. The consequences are obvious. There are a number of effective methods to circumvent this, but it is important to understand that organizational barriers exist and will be further. The logo will be at the brand manager, who in another city, vacation and died.
10. You are creative, think up! I pay you money, do it!
High or low expectations.
Extremely difficult moment. You have a reputation, perhaps the client has his own understanding of what you are doing and how, what you are responsible for.
There are two polar situations.
Exaggerated expectations at the first stage perfectly give an agreement. The client believes, does not bargain, does not argue, he is sure that there will be a masterpiece. It turns out well, but the client does not consider this a masterpiece. And the game begins with fonts and "give me a couple more options"
Low expectations are worse. You are perceived solely as Photoshop operators, hourly programmers or btl-agency with payment for orders. If you are ready to work like this or pay in gold, you are welcome, but you almost never manage to share responsibility.
Either the client says WHAT he wants and you are responsible for HOW.
Either the client dictates HOW, then you will either have to subtly advise and still be responsible, or give up and chop the cabbage.
Worst of all, in this case there may be no cabbage.
11. “I am doing a project for myself”
The requirement of special treatment, ignoring standards and established positions. When a client does everything for himself, the project manager loses grounds for arguments. You can no longer say: it is not beautiful, it does not work, it is expensive to maintain. After all, the client wants a project for himself.
12. “Let's experiment and decide”
Get ready for endless work for the final payment. The issue of limiting experiments is the key to outsourcing development. It seems the answer lies in the respect of the performer’s professionalism and the sharing of responsibility.
13. In a month!
Terms less than real more than 2 times.
A project is rarely needed right away so urgently. This may mean that they do not respect you, they think that you are deliberately drawing deadlines, and they just twist your organs. Under this may be a requirement to start without TZ, design, payment.
Ask yourself, skipping key phases will really shorten the development time? If you are ready to speed up twice, why not do all projects twice as fast, because it will increase your revenue?
1. Re-educate the client.
You can behave extremely hard and break the client under your scheme. Out of ten you break two, but quarrel with the rest.
Re-educate gently only through personal contact, for a long time, and only if the client himself is gentle enough.
2. Increase the cost of work.
This is unlikely to go unnoticed and will not add peace to the relationship. In addition, most likely even double the price will not bring money.
3. Refuse to work on the result (website, design, banner) and go to the time-based payment.
This path is conflicting from the first second. It will be unclear what you have been doing for so long, there will be complaints about the result. You can work temporarily only in front of a client or with complete trust.
4. Get away from cooperation, keeping relationships, reputation, money
I did not call this article "10 Signs of a Bad Client." This is not a review of the site "Hellish customers".
It seems to me that it is extremely important to understand the scheme in which you work effectively, and not to take on the unpromising.
It is not excluded that the freelancer Mitya from the neighboring house will satisfy the client, who is in trouble for you, by 200% and will buy his maybach after a year of work. Why bother them?
His name is Sergey Serova. For contacts to me.
Why does the studio work? In my opinion, this is profit , reputation and pleasure .
It's great when everything is at once: they pay well, a bright project, beautiful people.
However, everything and always can not be obtained. There are projects for status, there are monetary, but uninteresting and not giving reason to be proud, there is just for the soul.
But it may happen that the project does not give the studio anything . A reasonable question arises: why such a project ? How to justify the strength and nerves spent on it?
Is that a long customer relationship.
')
In many cases, it is better to politely and with mutual respect refuse to work, to “technically merge” the project, than to get into a situation when the project does nothing. In this case, the customer in any case should not think that you abandoned him.
Such a refusal will save you profit, reputation and pleasure.
You can even consider such a project perfect.
The question is how to determine future difficulties at the very beginning.
List of symptoms
If there are one or two symptoms, everything can be corrected properly constructed negotiations.
If at the discussion stage there are more than two alarming factors, then during the project everything will manifest itself, be ready for this.
1. Draw me a kungur!
The goal of the project is formulated in such a way that your area of ​​responsibility does not apply (sales growth by XX%, winning the competition, “better than Vasya Krivoy”).
The goal is unclear and often changes.
2. Inventor
The customer does not understand the web and is trying to reinvent it. Vertical headers, bread crumbs in the middle of the screen, animated mouse cursors, authorization through a flash game, layout with triangles.
3. Collective intelligence.
The customer is represented by several people without a clear leader with different opinions. As an option - any decision is made by the whole team. Until everyone gathers, there is no progress. If there are more than 4 participants, at each meeting someone will not be.
4. There is no time, start already!
Your letter is read more than a week or the meeting is postponed more than 2 times, despite the fact that the deadlines are burning. It is dangerous, because often in this case they announce or even make a generous payment.
5. Expensive!
Regardless of the price that you call, they try to knock it down 2 times. Offer to work for a share of the profits.
As a rule, the client likes you if he is aggressively bargaining with you, and he has the money. It's just trying to pay a little and get a lot. This is normal if it turns out and if the goods are sold. In services, starting with an attempt to forcefully push a partner, this means creating an appropriate atmosphere in the future.
You have dozens of competitors who can work at client prices or with his manners. If it is normal to conduct price negotiations, it will save money and sound relations, regardless of whether the project is or not.
6. Bore.
Careful attention to detail (especially scary in conjunction with paragraphs 2 and 3).
The alignment of the layout to the pixels may not be so bad, but usually such attention means distrust of you and rejection of the division of responsibilities. You will adjust the colors on the monitor under the attached business card and use the case not according to Rosenthal, but according to corporate standards.
7. Hasty jelly.
Inattention to the project manager and already completed stages, inconsistency in the plans. Information is constantly being issued in small portions, the client continues to actively think and change conditions, simultaneously asking why they have already lost so much time.
It is normal that the client comes to consult. It is normal that he is incompetent on the web - otherwise he would not have come.
It is bad when it is combined with a sly (or stupid) attempt to give information in parts in order to fix the price in case of uncertain work.
It is bad when goals, requirements and benchmarks change after the documents are signed, where they are written down.
8. No, let's be different
Failure to negotiate or cooperate.
Each industry has its own established rules, rarely obvious and necessary to the client. The house begins with a project, business automation with a pre-project survey, advertising with market research.
Surely you have a scheme of work that you think is correct. Respect yourself, do not let this scheme break on the knee simply because the client wants differently. This is no reason to be stupid and boring and not to compromise, just feel what is real and what is not. Unreal - do not. Do not go for experiments at the expense of the client. In fact, you will do it at your own expense, losing time, pleasure, reputation.
9. Of course, the general will decide, but you will never see him.
The decision maker is not available even at key moments. You work with an intermediary. The consequences are obvious. There are a number of effective methods to circumvent this, but it is important to understand that organizational barriers exist and will be further. The logo will be at the brand manager, who in another city, vacation and died.
10. You are creative, think up! I pay you money, do it!
High or low expectations.
Extremely difficult moment. You have a reputation, perhaps the client has his own understanding of what you are doing and how, what you are responsible for.
There are two polar situations.
Exaggerated expectations at the first stage perfectly give an agreement. The client believes, does not bargain, does not argue, he is sure that there will be a masterpiece. It turns out well, but the client does not consider this a masterpiece. And the game begins with fonts and "give me a couple more options"
Low expectations are worse. You are perceived solely as Photoshop operators, hourly programmers or btl-agency with payment for orders. If you are ready to work like this or pay in gold, you are welcome, but you almost never manage to share responsibility.
Either the client says WHAT he wants and you are responsible for HOW.
Either the client dictates HOW, then you will either have to subtly advise and still be responsible, or give up and chop the cabbage.
Worst of all, in this case there may be no cabbage.
11. “I am doing a project for myself”
The requirement of special treatment, ignoring standards and established positions. When a client does everything for himself, the project manager loses grounds for arguments. You can no longer say: it is not beautiful, it does not work, it is expensive to maintain. After all, the client wants a project for himself.
12. “Let's experiment and decide”
Get ready for endless work for the final payment. The issue of limiting experiments is the key to outsourcing development. It seems the answer lies in the respect of the performer’s professionalism and the sharing of responsibility.
13. In a month!
Terms less than real more than 2 times.
A project is rarely needed right away so urgently. This may mean that they do not respect you, they think that you are deliberately drawing deadlines, and they just twist your organs. Under this may be a requirement to start without TZ, design, payment.
Ask yourself, skipping key phases will really shorten the development time? If you are ready to speed up twice, why not do all projects twice as fast, because it will increase your revenue?
What if there are many signs?
1. Re-educate the client.
You can behave extremely hard and break the client under your scheme. Out of ten you break two, but quarrel with the rest.
Re-educate gently only through personal contact, for a long time, and only if the client himself is gentle enough.
2. Increase the cost of work.
This is unlikely to go unnoticed and will not add peace to the relationship. In addition, most likely even double the price will not bring money.
3. Refuse to work on the result (website, design, banner) and go to the time-based payment.
This path is conflicting from the first second. It will be unclear what you have been doing for so long, there will be complaints about the result. You can work temporarily only in front of a client or with complete trust.
4. Get away from cooperation, keeping relationships, reputation, money
I did not call this article "10 Signs of a Bad Client." This is not a review of the site "Hellish customers".
It seems to me that it is extremely important to understand the scheme in which you work effectively, and not to take on the unpromising.
It is not excluded that the freelancer Mitya from the neighboring house will satisfy the client, who is in trouble for you, by 200% and will buy his maybach after a year of work. Why bother them?
Source: https://habr.com/ru/post/115649/
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