Handling Difficult Sign Clients, Part 2: “One More Thing”

PARTICULAR TO GRAPHIC providers like design firms and sign companies is a type of difficult client who might be easy to work with, but ultimately eats up your profit on a project with never-ending design changes. We all know what I’m talking about.

With each new proof you send, you think, “Okay, surely this one is the final one.” And yet, somehow you get that response back with, “One more thing!” Sometimes it feels like they are showing the design to someone new with each iteration, hunting for new edits, just for fun.

And you likely know about the dreaded “design by committee” where a group is sending feedback to the designer that becomes a cascade of edits and changes with each successive proof.

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There is no fool-proof way to ensure, predict or control those kinds of clients, but here are 10 tips for learning to defend your profit.

1. When you sell a project, indicate how much design time is allotted and exceeding that will incur additional fees.
2. An alternate method is to let clients know up front how many proofs are included. For basic orders indicate, “Includes up to three proofs. Each additional proof is $25 each.”
3. Don’t allow customers to interact directly with design. Be sure your salespeople are the liaison between them to help manage expectations and to monitor what changes are happening.
4. Train your design and sales teams to interact and communicate regarding difficult design customers.
5.  If a client seems very unsure of what they are going to want, don’t “take a guess” at design. Instead, send them the link to a Google search based on their needs. Let them peruse ideas that result from “bohemian ranch style sign” or “colorful and happy children’s clothing store sign.” Let the internet do the work for you!
6.  There are some great AI tools out there that can help you create rough drafts from basic prompts to save your design team a step.
7. Be sure you have one point of contact on design. Do not agree to send proofs to multiple decision makers. Let that point of contact do the wrestling with the different responses.
8.  Train your salespeople to identify when a client is unsure rather than just pushing the project into design. Sometimes salespeople will push projects through to get something back to show a client. Teach them alternate ways of dealing with a client who is unsure of the final look.
9.  Don’t be afraid to sell design as a product. You might be shocked by what other companies charge for design. Sign companies generally undervalue it in my opinion. (See my previous column on not giving design away — ST, April 2021, page 42.)
10.  It is always easier to sell design before you start a project than to contact the client after a bunch of designs and ask them to take out their wallet. Setting the client up with all the information they need is the easiest approach!

Design can be a difficult process to manage. It’s based on ideas and subjective tastes and unpredictable responses. As a result, it is tempting to just “let it be” and not try to manage it too much. You can manage some parts of it, even if you can’t manage every bit of it!

I believe that design services, like everything we do, should be a profit center. Defend your profit and don’t let it leak out a little bit — or a lot — on any of your projects.

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