A huge subject: Client Management

Do you take the time to read through every single thread on Treehouse?

I have.

Here's a quote (from a Ms. Megan Seegmiller):

I still find working with clients to be the hardest part as a freelancer..

...from a thread several months old

https://teamtreehouse.com/community/request-and-vote-on-all-topics-in-our-new-public-roadmaps

...that I finally decided to do a follow-up thread on.

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First off, I wanted to say:

You are not alone Megan!

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Although Treehouse has a variety of Business courses,

(including one good Soft Skills Deep Dive course I link to at the bottom of this thread),

they are mostly based around a semi-long term business relation...

Namely -- an employer-employee relationship getting hired for a full time position within a company.

We live in a different economy, though, than in decades past.

Now is the time of the "sharing economy":

http://www.usnews.com/news/blogs/data-mine/2015/08/21/uber-airbnb-etsy-who-are-the-sharing-economy-workers

http://journalistsresource.org/studies/economics/business/airbnb-lyft-uber-bike-share-sharing-economy-research-roundup

It is also sometimes called the "free agent economy" or the "gig economy":

http://www.fastcompany.com/1840948/learning-work-free-agent-economy-your-advantage

http://www.workforcesoftware.com/blog/workforce-management-blog/rise-free-agent-economy/

http://money.cnn.com/2015/09/03/pf/gig-economy-free-agents/

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Regular full time employees within a web design company have a certain "slack":

1.) They are usually not the "buck-stop-here" person responsible for managing the client relationship

(it's usually someone higher up in small boutique "shops"

or in sales/marketing for larger companies).

2.) If things start to go "badly" with a project there are usually

additional people ("resources") that can be brought in to help

(or in some cases to take over the project).

3.) If the final deliverable doesn't fully please the client, most times the client may still stick with the same design company for the next project.

They'll just specify they don't want to work with a particular designer on the next project

(or for doing ongoing maintenance/upgrades of the same project in the future).

This is different for a freelancer.

When a project goes "badly" they have probably lost the ongoing client relationship

(and the income from that client) permanently.

4.) Once a particular client project is over, the individual designer within a design company "moves on"

--either joining another ongoing project, or being assigned a new client with a new project.

Most important: The web designer's income (and employment) doesn't cease at the end of any particular project

(and/or they sit around without being paid waiting for the next project to come along).

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Client expectations:

1.) Where do they come from?

2.) How do you set/reset or change client expectations?

3.) How can you deal with dynamic (ever-changing) expectations over the course of the project??

4.) Or (to put it another way) --how can you "lock in" a set of expectations for a project with a client

and still give yourself enough "wiggle room" if things go slightly "off track"

or you discover new technical techniques which make possible upgrading the design in the middle of a project?

Yes, managing client expectations can be somewhat "tricky"..

I would love to learn a few more "battle-testing" (tired and true) techniques for handling clients (and their expectations).

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Here's one of the main points I want to make, though:

Handling an "ad-hoc" business relationship (in the sharing/free agent/gig economy)

is a very different way of doing things (with vastly different expectations) than

the "old skool" way of setting up semi-long term relationships.

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There's a old Hollywood agent saying:

"You are only as good as your last project"

For a movie actor in Hollywood, your "value" (and reputation) is set

by the films you've been involved with...

Whether the film was successful or unsuccessful

(and how much money it made at the box office)

determines what (if anything) you get offered (or allowed to audition for).

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Although Hollywood seems like a "big business"

(since it involves sometimes huge sums of money),

the number of Hollywood insiders who can "green light" a project is relatively small.

Equally small is the number of Hollywood actors who can "make a picture" --that

once they sign on to a project the power of their reputation can move the project forward

and/or get it made from scratch (based solely on

the potential "marquee value" their name brings to the project).

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In the sharing economy the base population of "actors" can be huge

(as is the population of decision makers)

--and is not dependent on just a few relationships being created over an extended period of time.

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Each web designer freelancer (in the free agent economy) not only acts as his own agent in acquiring work,

but then manages the product, performs the work,

and even (to some extend) is responsible for what comes after (like getting paid).

In the Hollywood system a division of labor means a whole slew

of people perform these functions --in the sharing economy it could be just a single person!!!

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The freelancing web designer is not like an Uber driver.

There's no "app" that helps set up the work relationship.

There's no backend-in-the-cloud that insures payment will automatically happen.

There is not even a guarantee social media reputation/rating tracking built-in.

All of these functions must be "managed" as part of the client relationship.

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If you search for "client management" in the treehouse forums

you'll come across many threads like:

1.) What to charge as a developer

2.) How to to take over management of website

3.) Walking away from a job opportunity (due to work/life balance concerns)

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However none of these really detail the way to optimize the day to day interaction with clients.

Of course I know each client is different.

However there should be some sort of "flow guidance" that can help with things like:

1.) What happens when a client becomes too demanding (in relation to what they are willing to pay for).

2.) How to turn a bad design decision on the part of clients into a "teachable moment"

3.) How to fairly handle disagreements regarding payments for

addons, minor tweaking, and incremental (but over time quite substantial) upgrades.

4.) How to diplomatically "back down" a client from demanding so much face time that it's interfering with your ability to get work done.

5.) How to bring a contract firm's representative into the "conversation"

when the client is saying they are not getting what they need

but are being very vague and nebulous as to what exact needs of their aren't being met..

I could go on...but just thinking about all the difficulties (situations/scenarios) I've run into over the years,

it would take a very thick book/tome (or a pdf of over a 100mb uncompressed)

to encapsulate in a small portion of the experience

I've gaining in working with (and sometimes deciding not to work with) clients.

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There is definitely enough material for an additional "Client Management" course

in the Business section (that's a follow-up to the Soft Skills "Deep Dive" course):

https://teamtreehouse.com/community/soft-skills-deep-dive