February 16, 2010

Is Your Client Costing You Money?

Posted by Marla Tabaka at 4:00 PM

We’ve all done it…hung on to the client who makes unreasonable demands on our time and resources. We may hang on out of the fear of letting go of the revenue, or we may believe that the impossible client is going to change, so why not wait it out?

This is the client who often pays late or argues about the amount of the invoice. This client calls or emails more frequently than the rest and demands that you have an answer for him on the spot. She expects last minute changes and somehow has a direct line of communication to your stomach because it%u2019s always tied in knots when her number shows up on caller ID. This is the client who pays the least but expects as much, or more, than your top-paying clients. And just when you think you%u2019ve had enough and it%u2019s time to do something about it, this client%u2019s radar goes off and he says something really nice and tells you how much he appreciates you!

Listen up freelancers and startup entrepreneurs. All clients are not the same. Yes, I’ve said it. Having a bad client in the bunch is actually unfair to the rest of your well deserving clients, and knowing how to address problem clients is critical to your success.

Maria Tabaka covers how to go about diplomatically setting the rules so you can do you best work. And it’s definitely a skill you have to learn to apply judiciously, if you want to do good business here in Washington DC.

Technology certainly makes a lot of things easier; including being an idiot. Dr. Jim Taylor talks about how a technology has made it easier to indulge our impulsively bad behaviors. I agree with him in that mistakes and errors in judgment can be magnified with services like Twitter or Facebook.

But I am not so sure that it makes us any dumber or this is a “new age of idiocy”. I hate to say it, I think we’re all pretty dumb to begin with (or at least capable of doing pretty boneheaded stuff on occasion). It’s just that it simply use to be easier to hide it from each other and now no longer the case.

Before email, angrily written letters would sit on a desk until the writer got around to dropping it off at the post office. Maybe upon a bit reflection, they decided to best not send it… smart move? Perhaps… but they still wrote it.

Year 2010, we got instant messaging, videologs, BBM, and prodigious status updates. Plenty of easy-to-use-and-let-the-world-know how you REALLY feel about things.

Hey, if you consider yourself a bit of a hothead, well then simply avoid using Twitter or Facebook, right?

Well, what about those holiday party pictures someone took of you in unflattering contexts? Yes the ones that they did you the favor of uploading them into Facebook and tagged by your “friends” because they thought you were a hoot that night. Yes those pictures.

…and there it is, no one is safe from idiotic moments.

That fact is, we all already act like idiots sometimes, and it’s just a matter of time before some tags you. And in this town, where image is everything, I can’t wait until we all get tagged doing something stupid. Then maybe then we can all get over it, and move on to more important things.

Here’s a good list of things to check through this year regarding your career, your web presence, your social network(s), and even your desk. And if you missed it, check your web site’s copyright year!

I think it is time for some spring cleaning around here. Stay tuned. We’re going to be updating a few things around here.