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Drawing the line on picking clients

Fred Oliveira on August 11, 2006

Stefan Sagmeister, a designer I admire for both work and ideals, on picking clients:

“I recently took a year off from my clients. I used the time to make up my mind about all the fields I did not want to get into (but had previously imagined I would). (…) It made me think a lot about clients. I decided I would rather have an educated client than one I have to educate. Tibor’s line was that he would only take on clients smarter than him (but remember, a client does not have to be design literate to be smart).”

Where do you draw the line between taking a job and not taking a job based on your perception of the client? One of the things about the new possibilities on the web (the fact that so much is so easy), is that it generates a lot of people with “ideas for an amazing project” (half of those being myspace clones). Sadly companies can’t work with everyone on everything, so, where is your line? What if the sort of client that makes you jump fences, and what clients make you say no?


Comments on this post

Mind Booster Noori

More than creativity, the line (IMHO) must be on innovation, specially if you’re thinking Web 2.0. You might be creative, smart, tecnichly good and everything… If you’re not going to give something NEW (and innovative, and different), you’re just doing Yet Another MySpace (or anything else) Clone.

adaptive path » blog » blog archive » Signposts for the Week Ending August 11, 2006

[...] How do you pick clients? [...]

Gary Bourgeault (thealphamarketer.com)

I think his decision is great. We don’t have to agree with it, but he does. The bottom line to me is that we need to be able to work with and enjoy our clients, or we will begin to hate our businesses.

To create an idea of the customer you want, and then only work with those within those parameters, is a great way to motivate yourself when you get tired of babysitting people.

Eric Reiss

We’ve got three things on our list of goals when evaluating potential clients:

Make money.
Learn something.
Have fun.

If we can achieve two out of three, we go for it.

Dmitry Buterin

Great post. I am in a similar business (custom web apps) and when we recently redesigned our website, we put up a page “Are you our dream client?”.
http://www.bonasource.com/ideal-client.html
Our sales team was a bit scared to have it - they did not want us to look “snotty” but I felt that it is very important that we communicate upfront - what are the situations when we are a good fit - and when we are not.
No single web developer is good for any kind of project. They differ in size, technology, complexity, industry, approach etc.

Michael McCorry

@Eric: That’s a great way of looking at things. I think I might adopt that method for myself. Usually, I just look for the warning signs of a bad client that I’ve learned over the years (want the world but don’t want to pay for it, want the project built now but will pay once they start making money, want to go into a business partnership instead of just paying me for the work… can you see a theme here?).

Natalie Ferguson

We have to be inspired and excited by what our customers do. This helps us 1) deliver the best results (When the business is inpirational, ideas flow) and 2) allows us to go to bed at night knowing that we have not had to compromise our beliefs to earn money (a perk of employing yourself)
The newest, as our services have developed a good reputation, is customers who know what they are doing in the web space. As you say, it is much better to work with those who are already educated…

Choosing clients that are smarter than you « Paying Attention

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