AI-generated image of someone looking at someone else thru a lens by DALL-E

You may have heard the expression, “you don’t control your brand, your customers do.” This comes from the belief that the perception of a company and its products, despite the efforts they put, will likely come from how they resonate with their customers. This perception may impact a company overall or just to a few customers. There are rare cases where this can be extreme; Bud Light is one that comes to mind. I am aware of this as it has happened to me over the years. I’d like to share one story of how this happened with one client, despite them being a referral from another client.

Referrals are good, right?

One day a very good client told me she was going to connect me to someone who needed help with their Web site. I had redesigned this client’s Web site and added significant dynamic functionality, to which she was very pleased. She however wasn’t specific as to the needs of whom she was referring me to though. I thanked her for the referral and I took it from there. Or so I thought.

The referral was independent contractor who had done some work for my client. I quickly assessed they were very confident in their abilities and spoke very highly of themselves. As we got into the specifics of their needs for their Web site, I didn’t get a strong sense she knew what she wanted despite how confident she was that she did know. In the end it was settled she wanted an unspecified content refresh. I suggested we start on a time and materials basis (aka hourly) and upon agreement I sent a contract. It was signed and we went to work.

As we started I did a top-level assessment and delivered it to her verbally, something I often did for similar projects. The Web site looked good but there were some issues I found, namely a lot of text in images. This was met with a unexpected refusal; even though she complained about having a lack of search engine prominence (tip: text in images is not a good thing for many reasons, especially for being found in search results) she liked text in graphics as it was esthetically pleasing to her.

After much back and forth (looking back, too much back and forth) it was decided to refresh the photos on the Web site, a combination of new and enhancements to existing ones. Though not a graphic designer I did the work myself, for the basics of what I know in PhotoShop seemed sufficient based on the request. When I was done and presented the work, it was picked apart to a level I did not see coming, with the implication I didn’t get at all what she was looking for. So I went back and made further adjustments, to which she was content, and the changes went live. I sent an invoice, she paid, transaction complete.

Along the way I talked with this new client about the full breath of services I offered, to which I got a lukewarm response, but not a definite “no” as she saw a redesign of the entire site sometime in the future. Shortly after my work for her was done, she referred to someone else, another independent contractor, who wanted some unspecified work done to their Web site. It was starting to feel like déjà vu all over again, both from their approach and my own. Despite this, I still reached out, and my hunch turned out to be correct. I did some small work for this new referral, but eventually turned down additional work.

While I was the midst of doing the final work for that second referral, I saw the first one relaunched their Web site, clearly working with someone else. Despite the fact I articulated my services, something did not resonate with her that I could do a full redesign, just small updates. That was my gut feel and I never did bother asking her why. As you might guess, I didn’t do any other work for her after that.

Deconstructing How Other See Us

This was a truly learning experience. I needed to stick to and continuously refine my approach on vetting clients, especially from referrals, and taking on new work. I burned a lot of my time with both of these referrals, something I didn’t see when I was in the midst of negotiating and working with them. They weren’t, fortunately, my only clients, as there were plenty of others I was working with the way I wanted to work with a mutual benefit for all.

---

This is from The Hot Iron, a journal on business and technology by Mike Maddaloni.

---

Did you enjoy this? Subscribe to The Hot Iron by RSS/XML feed or Read by Email

(0) Comments • Permalink