How to lose a client and other animals
Published by on October 20th, 2005
I would like to think I have experience of most aspects of freelance life many times over now, but in all the past 15 or so years I had only lost one client - until yesterday.
It is always the freelancer’s biggest headache when there is too much on - it is so difficult to turn away opportunity. The recent loss came about by gambling on one project ending on time for this one to begin and be given the necessary focus. The one project is still running, so the other never really happened.
The client needs things far quicker than I can commit to and so it is no longer my problem. Setting aside other issues I felt were there from the beginning such as a lack of communication and as a result some difficulty understanding the precise details of the requirement, I feel very frustrated that we have lost work as a result of the ongoing mismanagement (not ours) of other work and not simply a matter of ‘we messed up’ (something I would be more comfortable in handling).
I suppose two clients walking due to dissatisfaction in over 15 years is not a bad record. The interesting aspect is that both clients have similar personality traits. Both give the impression of a non-compromising attitude to getting work done, but both have underlying, obscured needs and the lack of understanding that to establish a long-term commitment, the initial stages of the client-supplier relationship are tricky but most importantly a two-way road.
It is virtually impossible for a solitary freelancer to drop into an alien environment and hit the ground running. Not a problem when that freelancer is introduced into an existing team as there are like-minded individuals to smooth the learning curve, but out on one’s own no freelancer can immediately fill the shoes of the previous, long-standing and trusted individual who the client had been using for several years.
There are differences in personalities, philosophies and methodologies which all have to be adjusted at either end for the relationship to work beyond the initial steps. The farther down the line the relationship heads before breaking, the higher the potential collateral damage. In this instance some of my initial negative gut feelings about taking the client on have proved correct and perhaps it is a good thing there there are not many thousands of pounds of owed money to argue over at this stage.
On a positive side, I now have one less clump of niggling tasks to achieve before the holiday in a couple of weeks, so there is a little less pressure right now and even less while away.
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