¶ Dealing With Client Expectations and Limitations
Welcome back to Boss Responses . Have you ever been put in that situation where you accept a project from a client and it ends up being way more than you thought it was , or it's above your level and you thought you could upskill fast enough , but then you run into issues ?
Sarah Greesonbach joins me for her second day on the Boss Responses podcast and we answer a question about this very topic . Have a listen and let us know what you think . If you're a freelancer , business owner or anyone who deals with clients , you're in the right place . I'm your host , Treasa Edmond .
I've been dealing with clients and running my business for nearly two decades and in that time I've dealt with my share of doubt , imposter syndrome and not knowing what to say when a client asked a question I wasn't ready for . I created this podcast to empower you with the boss responses you need to grow your business .
Each week , my guest co-host and I will bring you five episodes packed with practical insights . Monday through Thursday , we answer your questions , and Fridays , we dive deep to explore how our co-hosts embrace their role as the boss of their business . Welcome to Boss Responses . We are back for day two with Sarah . Sarah , what's the question for today ?
Zach writes . I'm a graphic designer and I've recently landed a contract with a new client in the biotech industry . During our initial discussions I felt pretty confident and we talked about creating infographics explaining complex scientific processes , thinking it would be similar to some other graphic work I've done .
Now I realize the content is more technical than I anticipated . I'm struggling to understand the concepts well enough to visualize them and I'm worried I won't be able to deliver the quality I promised . Should I be upfront with the client about my limitations or try to quickly upskill to meet their needs ? Now that I'm looking at this again .
Sarah , I was hoping you would answer this question first .
That's cool . An answer came to me while I was reading , but I want to hear what you have to say .
My thoughts on this are twofold . One never lie to your clients . You can yeah , you can absolutely tell a client I'm learning this new skill and I will give it all I've got and I can deliver what you want , but you don't lie to them . You do not ever . The whole fake it till you make it thing is a sham . You do not fake your expertise , you just don't .
You can say I do this thing and not tell them how well you do it . You don't say I'm an expert in this thing unless you are . That's just that's used car salesmen . Don't do that people . However , you can also upskill to meet their needs .
I would have an honest conversation with my client at this point , because you already understand that it's more technical than you anticipated , and just say that . Tell them this content is much more technical than I anticipated . I'm struggling to understand some of the concepts and I want to make sure I visualize them the way you want them visualized .
Would it be possible for me to talk to an in-house expert and have them explain this to me in the way you would explain it to your clients , because they have the people and they will loan you the people . It's a matter of asking for knowledge . Don't just assume you can what's the word ? Fudge your way through . Don't make things up .
Go find expert help or find an expert and pay part of your fee for them to translate this for you . I'm huge on . If you promised good quality , then you have to deliver good quality , and sometimes you use all of your fee figuring out how to do that and then you never make that mistake again . But that's my big thing . Don't fake it until you make it .
Have an honest conversation with your client . Tell them you have no problem with the graphics , work on the design and all of that stuff , but you need someone to translate it for you . And most clients aren't even going to blink about that . They're going to say sure , we've got a person . So , what would you do , Sarah ?
Yeah well , two things kind of jumped out as not warning signs , but like blinking lights the words upfront and then quickly upskill . That kind of sends me into a mind space of worrying that Zach feels like he's not capable to do this or that it's somehow his fault that this came up .
And I just want to quickly zap that out of the way , because when we take on a project or even a client , it is not a marriage commitment right off the bat , even after you have signed a contract , as long as we are respecting everybody's finances and time and everything .
At any point in that you can withdraw consent and say , hey , I realized I made a mistake , I didn't understand blank . Or this is going to be a scope increase because of blank and blank , and the vibe I'm getting from this is like it's going to take a lot more work than he thought .
Am I on the hook for that and am I going to lose money on this now that I've promised something that actually it's quite difficult and I've done that several times , especially with white papers If I get assigned to a project at a standard rate and then I start to get into it , listen to interviews and realize whoa , this is very technical .
This is in biotech or fintech or something with AI and it's literally going to take me like a day to just figure out what is happening . And I'll go back to the client and explain the situation and say could we approve a technical fee for this to cover some of the extra stuff that I'm gonna have to do to make this perfect ?
And no one's ever said no to that , honestly , and no one's ever fired me for that either . And you can phrase it in a way that asks and says I would like to do blank . Is that something you can approve ?
And I don't know 80 , something you can approve , and 80% of the time I think they're going to say yes , especially in the biotech industry . They're going to want it done right and well and they already trust you , so that's just going to need this extra step . They would much rather have that than you not provide what you promised .
I mean , that's just across the board If you can take the weight of solving the problem on yourself , even if it requires an extra fee . That's why they hire us . They want us to be able to deal with the problems and just deliver them the final product and if we see there is a problem and we're proactive .
I think that's the big thing In situations like this and you mentioned white papers that's the only time I've ever ran into something like this was on a white paper and it ended up being this so complex topic and I'm like this is gobbledygook . I can't even translate this , and I can translate foreign languages , that's .
I went back to the client and I'm like this is well beyond the realm of comprehension for any normal person . I need to dumb it down or I need to translate this into language that everyone will understand . I need a person to help me do that and they'll just do it or they'll pay to have it done .
Yeah , an absolute worst case . They're going to write back I'm sorry , we can't approve that fee . This is the extent of the budget . And then you still have permission because you work for yourself , so you can still say I'm so sorry . I can complete this first one , but the rest are going to be out of scope .
And let me refer you to someone who I think could do a marvelous job with this . Yeah , things happen . You're not their employee or their parent or their child , like you're not in a lifelong relationship .
No , and usually if you're working with a company that has a very complex process or there's scientific knowledge involved , yeah , they're pretty upfront about asking people , or asking for people who have some knowledge in that field , or they're just looking for you to be an expert in your field and if expertise in that other field needs to happen , they will provide
that . And I'm interested in this one as well , because I've worked with graphic designers as a content writer and they don't translate the content . Usually , the content's translated for them and then they just do the graphics .
So it might be a case of they've missed a step in-house and they need to tell you a general idea of what graphic they need for each section of the infographic . But there are a lot of things at play there .
Like Sarah said , zach , it's not on you to solve all of the problems and you shouldn't have to upskill in the scientific processes at the last minute to get this done . They should either have a person who does that , or they should be able to help with that process , or you just need to walk away from the project .
But I will still say don't lie to your clients and have an honest conversation with them . So it's not necessarily just being upfront about your limitations as nothing to do with your limitations . It's communicating with them that there's an issue on the project and then working together to solve that problem .
I let out a gasp of dismay because you're absolutely right , a graphic designer has nothing to do with the words , quite literally .
¶ Creating Effective Infographics Through Collaboration
So in all the ones that I'm doing , I'm creating the document of 400 to 600 words in a chart laid out for the graphic designer , and then they decide on the data visualization or flow and all that stuff on the data visualization or flow and all that stuff .
So to actually take content , even a finished , polished resource , and then turn it into an infographic is a two or three person job .
Yeah , so somewhere a step's been missed . It's not anything to do with your limitations , zach , even if you had that conversation and said that you could do it and you were really confident about it at that point in time .
That's still with the understanding that they're giving you what you need to do your job , and I don't feel like they have in this situation . I think that's it for me , anything else to add to that , sarah .
Not that I can think of .
All right , that's day two with Sarah . Come back tomorrow and we're going to look at how you collaborate with someone else to bring in higher value contracts .