A Client’s Urgency is Not Always Urgent
Have you ever experienced the urgency of a client? The need he has to deliver everything for yesterday and to finish things in a “couple of hours”?
If you work in the creative field you know it’s real and I know that you hate that. It’s indeed one of the most common complaints about dealing with a client that I hear from Designers and especially from freelancers.
A great way to understand if something is urgent or not is to figure out how both business and creative fields experience and discern it.
What urgency means to you
Urgency is the need to create quick fixes/solutions and for us, Designers, this is usually bad. Our work is related to both thinking and creativity. Neither of them are well performed if done quickly, without proper time to evolve the ideas and take the proper actions.
Urgency for us usually result in maneuvers made to fix or solve part of a bigger problem, since we aren’t able to come up with a bigger plan to actually bring a full solution to our client’s problem.
Don’t mistake urgency with deadline. Having deadlines are great, because they force us to find solutions and to analyze things with a timeframe in mind, otherwise we could lose our whole life trying to decide the best way to act. Urgency for a Designer acts like one of the most frustrating facts of a job, as we know that our output will be way lower than what we are capable of. You, your client and his clients will lose.
What urgency USUALLY means to your client
Urgency for your client is usually related to a problem they have or a challenge they have encountered, that they need to find a good solution for it as soon as possible.
Sometimes he’ll lose money because of it and sometimes he will just notice that he could win more money if he took a specific action to fix or change part of his business.
Most of the times, your client isn’t losing money. He just isn’t making more than he is now.
What is a real Urgency
When your client is losing money because of something, you can consider it as being a real case of urgency and that’s a perfect moment for your work.
Yes, I know it can seem strange since I’ve been talking that urgency is bad for you, but only the fake urgency. A real case of urgency makes:
- Your work and effort to be recognized by our client
- Your client to focus on result instead on a budget
- Your creative mind to explode with ideas and possible solutions
- A great relationship between client and designer
- A great case study capable of highlighting your capabilities as a Designer
Urgency is good because it’s the best moment to take actions and for your client to test new approaches to his business.
How to discover if the urgency is real
Taking the time to evaluate the situation of your client’s business in both big and small pictures is essential in a time of crisis. We are trained to see problems, understand them and to bring solutions.
Many times your client comes to you with a need in mind and after some talks and questions you discover that he has other issues that could be fixed, bringing better results than the he was planning to get.
A small tip that always helps with anything in a client-designer relationship is asking Why?. Simple as that, asking this question will make your client go further into his problems and his business, which will give you new insights and enable you to to see and evaluate his business decisions from a different perspective.
This will allow you to suggest and propose changes that he’ll then agree or disagree, and this discussion will enable both of you to find the best ways to fix your client’s problems.
How to convince your client that his urgency isn’t real
Asking the right questions will help you to understand his meaning of urgency, but explaining to a client that his/her urgency isn’t a real case of emergency is difficult.
Basically, the best way to explain to them that this job should be done without rush is to explain why a normal timeframe is directly related to the quality of your work and the output of the project. Some examples of the benefits can be seen below:
- You’ll be able to focus your efforts in different ways to solve a problem, which will lead to the best solution — more effective or cheaper — and your client will only win with this.
- Let them know that urgency projects cost more — If you don’t ask more for a job that is taking your soul and time away, you are doing it wrong.
- Decisions made with a good revision and analysis by either side will result in better results or eliminate future rework, which would eventually cost more for him.
How to position yourself in a case of real urgency
Don’t ever take two urgent projects. I don’t even recommend two projects being one of them urgent and another one with a normal timeframe. Urgent is urgent so if you divide your time between two projects, you aren’t being honest with your client.
Since you will be giving full focus in his issue and as the timeframe will probably require you to do a more work than you usually do on a daily basis, remember to price your work in accordance to your effort and the importance of your work to his business’s success.
Let your client know that his feedbacks and business information are important, making sure that every reply from him is fast and precise. He must be open about confidential information of his business, otherwise you’ll never find the real problem in his business.
You are able to close your client’s business gap, but you need to understand the material and the environment conditions available for you to build the best bridge.
As always, everything starts with a good and clear communication. Let him know how you value the work you do and how important it can be for his business. If you build trust and respect with your client, he’ll listen to you and consider you an expert in your field.
Originally published at mowestudio.com on December 9, 2015.
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