You can refer to these four warning signs (taken from "Inside PR", a a weekly Canadian podcast about public relations, episode #108):
- The chemistry and your relationship to the client have gone flat.
- Unreasonable client demands. You just continuously deliver.
- No return of investment, you simply don’t make money with the client anymore.
- Abusive behaviour of the client, the mean client-syndrome.
4 comment(s):
If we fire clients every time there is a change, there will be no client and no project, sadly but truly!
We recently had this same discussion in my office, regarding a client who seemed to have already decided that our design was going to be a failure and refused to reasonably discuss this (we're an acoustics consulting firm, and in this case the client was fixated on some ideas he'd heard that really are contrary to the laws of physics...).
In our case, we determined that Lack of Reason + Passion + Hostile Opposition = Resign. We knew that no matter how successful we felt the final project would be, the client had already damned it in their mind.
As creative designers, we all face some level of doubt/opposition from some clients who cannot quite "get" our vision until its all over. However, when they insist upon continually undermining us (either in public statement or by enforcing design changes that we know are ludicrous) then the relationship may be irreparable and not worth continuing.
Much like any business operation...there is always a limit and key things to remember are relationship and trust. Without these two, projects certainly will be nightmares.
Dead on. Applicable in all industries. Very helpful.
Aloha,
Keahi
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