I've taken a different angle. I work in a non-aggressive sector. It's very niche - my sector is museum technology - but I'd imagine it holds true for other non-profits.
Sounds weird that I can generalise like this but I've got 10+ years under the belt and I can say hand on heart that I've had maybe 3 "slightly difficult" clients in all this time. I've dipped out into the commercial world about once and almost instantly was bombarded with assholes, so retreated back into the place I know and love.
My figuring is this: the people who work for them aren't there to get rich - salaries are pretty crappy - they're there because they're fascinated in wonderful things and histories. So that endless bullshit drive to focus entirely on making vast sums of money is largely (not entirely!) removed. On the whole the sector is thoughtful, kind, considered. As a result (or because of!), it's a sector with excellent diversity, lots of working mums, lots of older people, lots of enthusiasm, lots of drive.
I'm never gunna get rich because museums aren't rich. But I do varied, fascinating work and the people I work with are almost always nice people. That to me is a huge thing and has positively affected my mental and working life.
OTOH, sometimes “passion” industries like say education are not only politicized to the extreme (given outcomes matter to so many people) but also are fundamentally on a shoestring budget, wanting as much as possible for as little as possible. This may be a function of governments being involved, but I struggle to think of more laid back industries. Entertainment has been a decent industry as well, but most of the “tech” is on the money driven side and less on the creative side.
Because pursuing creative, passion industries often do not pay the bills (due to oversupply or labour gatekeeping). Game developers being exhibit A. For non software engineering examples, look at traditional engineering and STEM. Most aerospace engineers start out with dreams of human space travel, they will either end up building missiles and drones, pivot, or work for one of Elon's passion companies that are infamous for their work life balance. People enter life science with the intention of becoming doctors yet most will be stuck with debt and a dead end job after graduation with medicine being forever out of reach. Teaching and non-tenured/non-STEM academia pays so badly (not to mention the incredible gatekeeping to even get the job) that you will probably find more English graduates on OnlyFans than your local college's literature department. Writing JavaScript apps is hardly the most meaningful job but it is a safe career path with good growth for current roboticists or electrical engineering graduates. Software engineering may be materialistic and CRUD apps boring, but they are an easy, uncontroversial way to pay the bills for the massive pool of STEM (and occasional non-STEM) talent we have right now.
> This is a curious rule and it took me a long time to learn because in fact at the beginning of my practice I felt the opposite. Professionalism required that you didn’t particularly like the people that you worked for or at least maintained an arms length relationship to them, which meant that I never had lunch with a client or saw them socially. Then some years ago I realized that the opposite was true. I discovered that all the work I had done that was meaningful and significant came out of an affectionate relationship with a client. And I am not talking about professionalism; I am talking about affection. I am talking about a client and you sharing some common ground. That in fact your view of life is someway congruent with the client, otherwise it is a bitter and hopeless struggle.
From graphic designer Milton Glaser’s essay, Ten Things I Have Learned
I've had the same experience. It seems that people that truly love what they do are the best clients to have. The worst are when you get someone random in the company that's been assigned to deal with the project, and they have no interest and just feel it's an added responsibility to everything else they are already disinterested in doing.
This is completely true for me too - I work in the Charity/non profit sector building websites. Nobody is getting rich, and for the most part people enjoy what they do and find it meaningful, it’s a good atmosphere
My small work experience made me start to think that the problems in most jobs is that it fails to provide a few core needs and thus everything collapses. People stay there because rent implies regular checks but they hate everything and it becomes a shark pool. People will fight not to click on a mouse. This is all because of depressive work context. Doesn't take much to make people joyful and thus just motivated enough and bring fluid daily lives back.
I worked for a consultancy. There was once we have to raise the price for the next year since the labor cost was booming in our country. We worked for the client for quite some years. He was an intelligent, elegant old man, who overcame a lot of difficulties and power struggles, then created the impressive business.
It's of course a hard conversation to go through, but we didn't expect what we're facing. I'm glad I'm not there but here's what happened according to the participants:
Before he was entering the meeting room, he was smiling and greeting team members in our office, just like any grandpa. During the meeting, our manager first did some small talk, then told him we have to raise the price. The next second he was outrageous, start cursing loudly and slamming things. Everybody was so scared, and the meeting was an immediate failure as he successfully low-balled us in the following rounds with nobody daring to object. The second he walked out of the meeting room, he was the same kind grandpa again, smiling and talking to the team members like nothing just happened.
We then realized it was his tactic, but it's effective nonetheless. I rather not work with rude/manipulative people like that, but sometimes people just hide things too well, I guess I'll never know.
I think there is another possibility of knowing the value your product gives the customer compared to the competition. Stay firm on that unless the client is essential for your budget. Once a man like that learn that you are not easily manipulated, he either stops being unreasonable, or he doubles down and gladly spend more money on an similar or even inferior product. In the latter case you did not want his business long term anyway, unless you had to.
When I was in sales, I found that these older gentlemen try to strong arm you, but if you push back and don't back down, you generally earn their respect and they still go with you. They want someone to push back, while still giving them what they need. It seems to just be that generation.
So shocking and disappointing that this childish behavior would be rewarded like this. I would have immediately lost all respect for my superiors for not firing him as a client and forcefully removing him from the premises.
It would appear, based on the outcome, that your company didn't "have" to raise the price after all. If that were the case, the outcome would have been price hike or firing the client, no?
Yes, strictly speaking, we didn't "have" to because we have many other clients and projects, the company will surely stay afloat.
However, we have to because this deal is less and less attractive over time compared to other projects and the management would eventually fire the client (we won't get fired since there are other projects) - before that, the head of the project should at least attempt to talk with the client and try to raise the price (plus there are obvious lock-ins for a giant software project and they can afford the price).
Not strictly freelancing/clients but I think B2B is somewhat similar...
The most insightful thing that the founder of a company I used to work for decided to do was...take on less customers and grow slow and steady. This won't work for everyone or in every industry but it worked really well for that company. In B2B you can really screw yourself over if you have to deal with toxic customers. Not only can it clog you up and bind lots of resources but it can also create a horrible working environment in your own company. There was usually an initial discussion with the potential customers and if something felt off, we wouldn't take them on. The mantra I've seen at many other companies seems to be "more customers = better" but for me adding more customers without thinking too much about who you deal with is similar to trying to fix software by pouring in more hours on a death march.
So if you can afford it, always think long term not short term, don't be afraid to say no to customers and reject them outright and also don't be afraid to drop customers later. It's called customer relationship management for a reason. Try to think long and hard before starting a relationship. The second benefit of screening really hard is that you usually have very good relations with the customers that you do pick and keep. And they are usually quite happy and refer you to other potential customers. And those are usually high quality referrals because they tend to deal with people who won't turn out to be toxic, too.
In my industry/sector I led a sales team for a company that had a moderately successful exit, where a lot of similar companies ultimately failed. People often asked what the strategy was, and I said "I told a lot of customers NO". We stayed focused on a core market, and worked to avoid customers that seemed like they would be difficult and demand resources disproportionate to their spend with us.
"3 weeks is the realistic estimate, 2 weeks is our best case scenario. The original deadline is no longer realistic due to <changes in scope>|<missing materials>|<whatever>, but if you wish to launch on Friday we can do so by removing tasks from scope, would you prefer that solution"
This reminds me what stuck with me after reading Shape Up, at a time when it was presented as the replacement for our Agile framework at work. What these methods have in common is a ritualized way to manage disappointment and help management to accept the loss of something they really wanted.
More generally I would say that you need to religiously manage expectations and to keep in mind that this is much easier going into a project than halfway through. Giving an estimate of "1 month" is easy. Giving "1 week" 4 times is very painful, which is why I always work off buffers.
In a nice work environment giving an estimate of 1 month is easy, but not always. A lot of managers have the bad habit of trying to negotiate estimates and it takes quite a bit of confidence and even stubborness to avoid telling someone what they clearly want to hear.
That's the job but it can be one of the hardest parts of the job.
Then for the next project, you know the pushback you're going to receive so (perhaps unconsciously) you have this bias toward a lower estimate.
If you're not a regular employee the incentives are even worse. If one contractor tells you a week and the other tells you a month, which one will you hire? When you're billing for time and materials, and that's pretty normal, it hardly matters to the contractor if a deadline is missed because most clients know switching mid-project will only add to the delays.
Contractors don't know how long projects will take.
I've given up on deadlines for projects; now we just have contributors work on small deliverables (that they usually define) that build toward the goal.
Not having deadlines makes learning about a new unknown unknown a lot less painful.
Yeah negotiating estimates with employees is odd. You are trying to predict something. Negotiating is to skew the prediction to be less accurate on average. Employee is not even doing it for fixed price so all the negotiating down does is lose accuracy.
Some really shit jobs would expect weekend work to make the difference but with this job market: f that!
Yes exactly. Or they just don't trust the employee, either ethically (they'll slack off) or technically (they are doing it wrong, that's why it takes long). Or worse they are of the "they need to be challenged, keep 'em out of the comfort zone" mentality.
Thinking about this, what if you prepare for the meeting and write down the estimate! What are they going to do, argue with a piece of paper? Scribble some notes to make it look like you were thinking, and write the estimate, then present it as your "original unbiased estimate" which, of course, will never change. This won't always be an option, but it's a good trick to have I think.
Sort of, but that's not been the real value of Shape Up, at least not for us.
We've found it's changed the conversation about what to build into one framed by investment and return, which has helped to take a lot of the emotion out of the discussion and decision-making process (and is also a much sounder basis for decision-making than, for example, how long things might take, or simply caving to the loudest voices[0]). So, yes, you could say it helps us manage disappointment but, whilst true, that's somewhat reductionist. What it's really enabled is an effective working relationship between our technology team and the other value-generating areas of the wider business.
In turn, the primary value that's delivered is to ensure our development teams are working on projects that (are much more likely to) add real, strategic value as we build our platform and products, as opposed to just chasing individual client requirements - requirements that would deliver short-term cash, but which would tie us in knots and lead to dead ends that would destroy our ability to scale our business.
(Of course, we don't do Shape Up in exactly the way described in the book: rather than cargo-culting, we've tailored the process to fit our business, which is a very different business to Basecamp. Happy to offer more detail if anyone is interested.)
[0] It certainly gives us a way to manage and involve those voices though.
> (Of course, we don't do Shape Up in exactly the way described in the book: rather than cargo-culting, we've tailored the process to fit our business, which is a very different business to Basecamp. Happy to offer more detail if anyone is interested.)
Sure, would love to hear more about your use of Shape Up. What have you found that has worked in your context that goes beyond the initial framework, for example? :)
- As I mentioned, our business is very different to Basecamp's. We're a technology driven MR and insights consultancy that is increasingly platform and product focussed. As such we have four or five different customer/stakeholder groups, each with their own requirements. Our betting table is therefore larger, and includes representatives from each of these groups, as well as our product managers, and some technical representatives. This makes the meeting tougher to wrangle but does give everyone a voice. Like Basecamp, the CEO and I have final say over what the teams actually work on, but we've only overridden a betting table decision once.
- Our pitches include an ROI estimation. It's not particularly detailed, and we originally used something like t-shirt sizing. We now just give an estimated range. This helps us to have a more dispassionate discussion about which work to prioritise.
- We are about to implement a change to the way we shape pitches, to break this up into two phases which run across two cycles. The first phase will focus on clarity about the problem we're trying to solve, the value of solving it, and our investment appetite. We'll then make decisions about which pitches we want to take to the second phase, which is a kind of extended validation, and will be where more research is carried out, and proposed solutions are roughed out. This should help us more effectively manage workload around pitch preparation, and ensure pitches are ready for teams to start work on at the beginning of cycles where they are prioritised.
- We have regular check-ins with business stakeholders throughout each project, and they are involved in decision-making around any changes of direction or scope, or trade-offs that need to be made.
- We have strong guidance in place for the teams around where they should be throughout the cycle: e.g., when they need to stop adding functionality, and focus on delivery; derisking each project, which should happen early, when UX testing should occur, etc.
- We do sometimes reprioritise our strategic roadmap to ensure that we are adding necessary functionality to our platform in order to bid for and service high value client projects; such projects still get oversight from the betting table and could, at least in theory, be deprioritised if there were serious objections.
It's not all been plain sailing though. For example, we still struggle to appropriately shape small batch projects, and getting people outside of tech onboard with creating pitches is an uphill battle, though one we are slowly winning.
That's really fascinating, thanks so much! I like the sound of your two cycle pitch approach -- kind of putting 'measure twice, cut once' into practice. And I admire your ability to wrangle a larger betting table & bring others into the pitching process!
"You've heard the term "Speak softly and carry a big stick". Well forget the stick. If there's any tension or negativity between you and a client, just speak softly. It will instinctively make them feel over-dramatic and they will gear down."
I would say, there is a implicit stick with that: that you go away. Because someone who stays calm, when anger is rushing around, is someone you usually do not want to go away, but want to side with.
So I am not sure how easy it is to follow that advice. You either are cool, because you have the confidence, or you are not. Just speaking softly, while being scared inside will probably not have the same effect.
And my biggest difficulties with clients was lack of technical understanding on their side, combined with too much ego to show that.
(Me showing the requested new feature): "You got that and are happy with it?"
"Sure, sure"
But no, they didn't and they messed up and it was supposed to be my fault. And in a way it maybe was, so I learned that communicating with tech illiterate is a very hard, but important skill.
> Master De-escalation: I once had a colleague who was very soft spoken, very low key. Listening to him speak on any topic could put you half to sleep - And I don't mean boring, just very calm.
This is a technique taught to public administrators.
Ever watch a townhall or council meeting? Elected politician is grilling some agency head. They'll respond in cool, soothing, calming tones. Pretty much like a hypnotherapist.
Then they'll talk and talk. So long that by the time they wrap up, you've forgotten your question. Mostly running the clock.
Once you're made aware of this technique, it can be maddening to watch.
With great power comes great responsibility. De-escalation: good. Obfuscation: bad.
They're also used to being inundated with inane questions by said elected leaders. They run out the clock so they can't be asked more irrelevant questions that are clearly fishing for a sound clip of holding agencies accountable (for things that are explicitly outside of their jurisdiction).
Staying calm in a sweaty room requires a definitive level of detachment from what lead to the situation.Feeling of detachment can itself be a measure of , when it’s a good time to speak or act
I agree and I think the detachment comes when you try and make sure you aren't bringing in fear and insecurity into the room, whether you get that by self-help books or therapy is up to you.
The way to deal with any difficult situation is to remain objective. The reason why some people are better than others is that some people are more able to take the emotion out of it. If a client shouts at you, it can get your back up, make you see the red mist and cause all kinds of problems. If, on the other hand, you can detach, then it becomes simply a matter of, "I'm sorry but I am unable to work for someone who shouts at people to get things done."
Sometimes you have to suppress the justice we feel, "How dare you speak to me like that..." and just keep it as their problem. Same thing with bills that aren't paid, you don't carry on working because you feel like you need their affirmation, you say, "I'm sorry but I have stopped work until my last bill is paid. If you don't pay this soon, I am likely to accept other work"
I got depression and slipped for ~3 years because of a difficult client. Since then, I always carry the big stick and use it all the time, in professional and non-professional situations. Let's say I got allergic of BS, and better you hurt than me getting anaphylactic shock.
To get angry when there is a mess-up is not to be difficult. Difficult clients are more like abusive partners. They create the situations that allow them to exert abuse e.g. ask you to drop other clients, then ask for an impossible deadline, then assign side tasks all the time while pretending they don't know this will impact the deadline, then withholding payment, while saying that $1M is just around the corner.
The same can also go when choosing vendors. When I built my house, I interviewed three general contractors. One had signs similar to what the article mentioned, but I chose to work with them because they owned land in a desirable part of town.
Oh, they were so difficult to work with!
Another lesson: Never, ever call someone difficult to their face. (That's what my general contractor did to me.) That was often the tell that they didn't realize how difficult they were to work with.
We've sacked a few clients and it was a very liberating feeling. I highly recommend if it financials allow.
We've also not taken on clients because there were warning signs which, while not as liberating because you weren't tied into them in the first place, is also very satisfying.
If there's a client who looks like they might be difficult, but the project is really interesting, we may apply a variety of taxes, such as the "arsehole tax", "whingeing tax", and "ego massaging tax" that help us maintain calm if that person starts ranting.
>After they had ranted for about 10 minutes while we just sat back and listened, my colleague started to speak - Very softly and slowly as he always did - "I understand your situation completely, there's so much pressure on you guys to perform and you expect the same kind of commitment from your contractors as you yourselves put in. This was a mistake on our part, and one that we have done a lot to ensure won't happen again" ... He kept going for 7 - 8 minutes after which we were all cuddled up in a ball under a warm blanket. Or that's how it felt anyway. Normally there's a vibe in a room that everyone takes part in, but it was very clear that while the room was boiling, he was in his own bubble of comfort - and he managed to pull everyone in to that bubble.
One of the keys for me is to treat the interaction like a task, with a plan that you stick to, and to avoid being in the moment or thinking a lot about the big picture.
Then you can just do the simple (but not easy) work of softly explaining a difficult situation. Like an actor in a movie.
If you start to think about "if this goes to court I'll be ruined!" or "I can't believe I wasted 3 months of my life for these jerks" it becomes really difficult.
Yeah one difficult client can wreak havoc on a freelance business. I would just give an outrageous quote if I wanted to get rid of them. Also why it’s important to have contracts.
Why would you give an outrageous quote instead of just saying "no"? Do you want the "difficult client" to walk around to other prospects, warning them about how you tried to scam them with an outrageous price? Or are you hoping that they might accept your outrageous price, potentially leading to more outrage down the line when they realize that they overpaid?
Quoting high avoids awkward discussions and filters undesirable clients. It beats saying: "I don't want to work with you because you're an arsehole" or "I find your project excessively boring". As a freelance copywriter, I do it all the time. I get lots of offers from people and companies I don't want to work for, so I quote them an amount I suspect they won't want to pay.
> Do you want the "difficult client" to walk around to other prospects, warning them about how you tried to scam them with an outrageous price?
It's not a scam. Freelance contracts specify an agreement between me and a client. I can charge whatever I like and they can say no—everything is transparent. I'm not obligated to charge the industry average. In fact, I also vary my price depending on the client: a big tech company gets a bigger bill than a small local business, for example.
> are you hoping that they might accept your outrageous price
No. I just don't want to work with them. Also, it's not unusual for attractive clients to back out because they don't want to pay my normal rates—they're on the high end for the industries I work with. But that's not a scam either; I charge what the market will bear and I have no shortage of work (just the opposite).
> Quoting high avoids awkward discussions and filters undesirable clients. It beats saying: "I don't want to work with you because you're an arsehole" or "I find your project excessively boring".
There are ways of turning down projects without being insulting, and without offering outrageously high quotes. For example, you can say "I'm spread out too thin with all my other projects right now, sorry".
> It's not a scam. Freelance contracts specify an agreement between me and a client. I can charge whatever I like and they can say no—everything is transparent. I'm not obligated to charge the industry average.
This is your opinion, not the opinion of the "difficult client" that you're presenting the quote to. If you offered me a quote that is outrageously expensive, I will assume you are trying to scam me, and I will tell other people that you tried to scam me. Now, my question to you is, is it a desirable outcome for you to have a "difficult client" going around telling everybody that you're trying to scam people? Yes, you have your opinion that you didn't try to scam them, but they'll be going around telling people you tried to scam them nonetheless. To me it seems like this outcome should be avoided when possible.
> Also, it's not unusual for attractive clients to back out because they don't want to pay my normal rates—they're on the high end for the industries I work with. But that's not a scam either; I charge what the market will bear and I have no shortage of work (just the opposite).
Offering a rate that you believe the market will pay is distinctly different from offering an outrageously high rate that you believe the market will not pay.
> If you offered me a quote that is outrageously expensive, I will assume you are trying to scam me, and I will tell other people that you tried to scam me.
I’m sure some of these people do react this way. They are, after all, assholes. That’s why I didn’t want to work with them in the first place. I can’t deny that it’s a possibility, but it doesn’t seem to have have resulted in any reputation issues.
I think it's valuable to send the message to the prospect that "I don't want to work with you". It sure beats out right lie like "I'm spread out too thin" when you are not, you just don't want to work with an asshole client.
"I'm spread too thin" isn't an actual lie as much as it's a reframing. Working with difficult people can take a lot of mental energy, which ought to be considered part of the work effort. It's the polite way of saying "I don't have the bandwidth to do the work and manage my way around your issues, so best of luck finding someone who does have that bandwidth" the same way that "Thank you for your input" is a polite way (in the business world) of saying "That was the dumbest thing I have heard all day".
Two entities entering a contractual agreement over an agreed price doesn't in anyway meet the definition of a scam so I'm not sure where you're getting that from. You sound somewhat naive on how negotiations like this often go, clients will pull all kinds of tricks to try and low-ball or scam free or below rate work out of freelancers, it's par for the course. You learn early on ways to spot them and ways to avoid them, difficult clients are often also price sensitive ones (no not always) so it's a pretty common way of getting out quickly and avoiding having an awkward discussion.
> Two entities entering a contractual agreement over an agreed price doesn't in anyway meet the definition of a scam so I'm not sure where you're getting that from.
I'm not a lawyer, but there are documented court cases in Finland where "two entities entered a contractual agreement over an agreed price", and then later the court determined that the price was outrageous and therefore it was actually fraud. For example, a door-to-door salesman selling house renovations to elderly people for 10x prices. Now, perhaps this is not fraud in the jurisdiction where you live, but it is definitely fraud in Finland.
Perhaps using "outrageous" was hyperbole, let's say "above market" and not 10x the going rate. There's a pretty clear contextual difference between these two situations, nobody is cold calling or going door-to-door finding elderly clients and pressuring them into signing a contract, this is a B2B transaction initiated by the client.
We can nitpick on the definition of "scam" and the legality of it, but those words will not nullify the reputational outcomes that you will get if you try to scam people. Even if you are technically on the right side of the law, even if you only charge 3x market price instead of 10x, some of your "difficult clients" will be vocal about your business practices.
> selling house renovations to elderly people for 10x prices
is illegal if the targets were elderly (or disabled), but not if you are just regular Joe and definitively not to business. In fact that's how politicians usually "help" their friends here, so laws are quite muddy probably on purpose
I am not a lawyer, so I can't argue on the topic of legality, but I can promise you: if you try to sell me something at 10x market price, I _will_ go around telling people you're a scammer. Then you can explain to people how you're actually not breaking any law while scamming people.
There's a difference between setting a price in good faith that you think the market is going to accept, and setting a "f u" price that you think no reasonable person should accept.
There is no such thing as "one reasonable price". You may value your time arbitrarily high and don't need explanation for that, and there may be someone that value money arbitrarily low and has literally random reason to hire you.
This checks as long you give your rate/price upfront. This would be a scam if you DO the work and THEN charge non-market rate/price.
Let me give you example. I live in Slovenia. There are quite a few programmers here. You have some brand new guys that charge 15 or 20 EUR per hour, and then you have some SV veterans that came back (or work remote), and charge SV prices, and everything in between.
If you go for a quote for a simple android app (iPhone is not that popular here) you are quite likely to get more than 10x difference in quotes from various studios.
> I would just give an outrageous quote if I wanted to get rid of them. Also why it’s important to have contracts.
Yeah, I don't get this either. Isn't putting together a proposal with a fake high price for someone you don't want to work really awkward and a waste of time for everyone? It's like a power-trip meme in freelancer forums.
"I don't think I'm a good fit for this project" is fine. Even when there's nothing wrong with the client, variations of this answer are fine when you're too busy, the deadline is too tight, they're using unfamiliar tech, it sounds risky, they want you to work in a way you don't want to work etc.
> Yeah, I don't get this either. Isn't putting together a proposal with a fake high price for someone you don't want to work really awkward and a waste of time for everyone? It's like a power-trip meme in freelancer forums.
It doesn't mean the price is fake. If your client is difficult, you know you'll have more phone calls, spend more time on interacting with them than with the code, would need to give them more support, haggle on the requirements and changer requests. All that cost time. And since I don't like to do those things, my rate for "having a call with the client" is higher than my rate for "developing the feature". Of course, clients doesn't need to know my internal pricing, so he would either get my "x2-3 normal hourly rate" or "xX normal project price" depending on the type of project.
I'm talking about cases where you don't want to work for them at all.
It's very sensible and normal to quote more if you expect higher admin time and other complications that carry risk e.g. many stakeholders to get agreement from.
> I'm talking about cases where you don't want to work for them at all.
Given enough money, I would be thrilled to work for the worst client I can imagine. There are very few cases where I would flat out refuse to work with a client, regardless of money. And in those cases, I would be scared to death to just say: “sorry, I feel it would be better not to work for you, although you want it”.
> If there's any tension or negativity between you and a client, just speak softly. It will instinctively make them feel over-dramatic and they will gear down.
I've heard in some cases doing this in the face of red hot fury can make things worse and you shouldn't be afraid to suspend the meeting and reconvene after a short break. Of course that needs a manager with enough of a backbone not to throw their team under the bus by sitting back and letting the client tear shreds off them.
Never enter into a relationship you're not willing to walk out on. Full stop.
I've worked for a number of agencies over the last 10 to 15 years. The myth is you need to hit grand slams. Big clients. Big budgets. And tolerate anything.
If that works, it's an outlier. What you need is a solid string of singles and doubles. Sure occasional triples and home runs are great. But as the stakes go up, often so do the unreasonable expectations and demands. One bad client can easily cost you more - time, energy, focus, team satisfaction, etc. - than that revenue. So what looks like big gains are in reality a loss.
TL;DR - Success isn't about the clients you get, it's about the ones you avoid (or worst case fire).
I feel like I've been in the difficult client Olympics for the last 5 years. We've missed so many deadlines. By years. Had multiple rewrites, etc.
For whatever reason these customers do not want to walk away from us. We think they actually like the product. It's ultimately just a scope problem with regard to "done". Large swathes of the project are completed and in production right now.
Perhaps the key here is incremental delivery. Our management keeps coming back to that conversation. It is fantasy to pretend like you can predict the exact completion date of a product like ours. We started having the business value conversation with our customers and I think this is the best path to success. Keep the stakeholders focused on how much better things are getting for the business (i.e. on weekly status calls) and they will be less likely to get wrapped around a fence post over an arbitrary total project completion deadline.
I think the magic spell kicked in when we let the clients tell us what priority order of incremental feature delivery they would prefer. I believe this gave them a sense of control, and we've been able to hit these smaller targets with ease.
We did have conversations about firing some of our customers (i.e. over scope creep and bad requirements delivery), but we also know how important perception is with many of our clients (banking).
The higher order effects of incremental delivery are what I am most interested in. It seems to calm everyone down a lot compared to the anxiety that builds as a big drop dead date looms. I can't imagine many software projects that couldn't be run in this manner. The quality of life of your team will certainly improve in my experience. It's almost like we could deal with any customer as long as everyone is willing to take it 1 small step at a time.
> difficult client Olympics for the last 5 years. We've missed so many deadlines
> many of our clients (banking).
I have been a couple of times on the other side of the fence, feeling like difficult vendor olympics, same industry. Difficult, like in wondering why the f#ck we are having so massive performance problems with our parallel computation engine, only to one day realize that the vendor has decided that it is a Very Good Idea (tm) to send computation requests to the engine not parallel, but in series, and not asynchronously, but synchronously. Yep, lots of rewriting there.
> For whatever reason these customers do not want to walk away from us. We think they actually like the product.
Sorry to be blunt, but it is unlikely they like the product. In the best case they hope that the product will be okay one day. Internal politics are much more likely reason why they do not walk away. In that case someone would need to admit they made a mistake. As long as there is hope, they can just blame someone else (most likely you, that is:)
> Internal politics are much more likely reason why they do not walk away.
I think I need to add a couple more possible reasons here. One is that your customers know at that point how painful project it was to just make a decision on the vendor. Likely just that part of the project took years. They are very reluctant to start that from the scratch. Second one is that they very likely already have a good grasp on the competing vendors. Almost surely they were evaluated during the process you were selected. And they were not chosen. Either they were much more expensive or your customer is even less confident that they could deliver something in time. So they are stuck with you. And pissed. And of course, the requirements were written in committees after committees where everyone had more important things on their mind, so they should very much be pissed at themselves, but I think that level of self awareness is quite rare in the decision making bodies.
Eh, nearly no one defines difficult clients as “demanding and pushing the boundaries of technical possibility”. Pretty much everyone equates “difficult” with “demanding, but very poorly organized, uncommunicative, and lacking vision” (also often strapped for cash to boot). You really don’t gain anything from them.
> but if you wish to launch on Friday we can do so by removing tasks from scope, would you prefer that solution"
Then the customer says "unacceptable", then he calls my boss, then I'm in for hard time. Then I burn out.
The thing is, all of that is fine and dandy as long as your management supports you. But if somehow your management is on the line too, then you will work during the week end.
Sounds weird that I can generalise like this but I've got 10+ years under the belt and I can say hand on heart that I've had maybe 3 "slightly difficult" clients in all this time. I've dipped out into the commercial world about once and almost instantly was bombarded with assholes, so retreated back into the place I know and love.
My figuring is this: the people who work for them aren't there to get rich - salaries are pretty crappy - they're there because they're fascinated in wonderful things and histories. So that endless bullshit drive to focus entirely on making vast sums of money is largely (not entirely!) removed. On the whole the sector is thoughtful, kind, considered. As a result (or because of!), it's a sector with excellent diversity, lots of working mums, lots of older people, lots of enthusiasm, lots of drive.
I'm never gunna get rich because museums aren't rich. But I do varied, fascinating work and the people I work with are almost always nice people. That to me is a huge thing and has positively affected my mental and working life.