Spotting Shitty Clients — Part 0 -Established Rules & Decencies

If you’ve been a working professional, it doesn’t matter the industry; then you know that clients are @#%%#**$*@%&@&@!! $$*! $***!(^$). This is especially true in my world of marketing, advertising, and branding, and I’m guessing the same goes for every job where the duty is to stop people from being stupid, publicly.

Over the years, I’ve fine-tuned my client radar, and in this series, I’m going to tell you about some of the most common stereotypes you encounter in today’s online gig economy. I also hire enough freelancers to know the other side of the equation. And I’ve seen, for lack of better words, “quirky behaviors” on this side of the fence as well. But before we get to that, let’s establish some rules. Decorum rather.

Now, this set of “quirks” works for me, and how I conduct business. You can apply these how you want if you see them working for you.

Established Rules

1. Do not WhatsApp me about work. An email/slack is the way to go. But do follow me on LinkedIn & Instagram if you want.

2. If there needs to be a meeting for 15 minutes — it can be an email trail. Reserve meeting time for longer ones that are at least 1–2 hours long. These are much more productive and conducive to collaboration. The ideal time frame for a group meeting should be 10 x the number of people on-call.

3. Do not send an email with replies like “Agreed/Got it/Yeah/Sure”. Add a couple of sentences. Wish people a good day and good health—T’is basic. Don’t want to type it out each time? Create a template. You can add more than footers with email templates.

4. What is urgent may not be possible urgently, for any number of reasons — acknowledge this beforehand.

5. Always communicate. Didn’t do any work this week? Send that over email. Do not, at any point, maintain radio silence. Maintaining radio silence is the quickest way to lose clients.

6. Get to know your clients. Who are they? What are their hobbies and interests? Talk to them about it. It helps be human first, co-workers second.

7. Timelines are everything. Stick to them. Take as much, and as little time as necessary. E.g., most clients do not know the effort that goes into the design, user experience, or budget management. It’s your job to tell them about all this in excruciating detail.

8. Do not follow up every day. This behavior can be, and largely is, annoying on either side of the fence.

9. If you’re working with an organization, add only the relevant people to the email. Knowing their organizational structure helps. Let’s be real — the CEO doesn’t care about your bill; that’s the account team’s job. The HR doesn’t care about you beyond onboarding (especially if you’re a freelancer in India), so go out of the way to build that relationship.

10. Adding more people to an email does not mean doing more work done. Typically, only 2–3 people need to see your work, and these are the final decision-makers. Tailor your work to them. You can, in 90% of cases, keep middle management out of the way.

So this said, let’s get to talking about “Spotting Shitty Clients”.

Type 1: The “Send Option Only” Client
Type 2: The “Tomorrow” Hopeful
Type 3: The “Humble” Middle-Management

If the stories aren’t linked when you are reading this, then firstly, I’d like to apologize. I simply need some time, and I plan on writing only two a month. But I’ll be sure to announce it on my LinkedIn & Instagram. So do follow if you’re interested in updates.

P.S — I will not be using any images/screenshots in this series. Those are all confidential.