Hello Reader,
Have you ever seen a certain client's name in your inbox and your stomach drops before you've even opened the email? You already know it's a "small change" that isn't small, or a deadline that moved, or a question you answered two weeks ago.
You might have a client management problem.
I sometimes get the feeling that client management is more of a fable than a practice. It’s a bit of a fairy tale where some people are "good with clients" the way some people are good with plants, and the rest of us are just supposed to suffer. I don't buy it. Client management is a method. It's a repeatable, documented way of communicating with your clients before problems show up, and every piece of it can be learned.
On the whole, it has four major parts: intake, onboarding, delivery, and follow-up. Let's walk through them.
Are difficult clients really difficult?
First, a bit of a reframe. Most "difficult client" behavior is preventable.
The 9pm text, sudden scope change, and two-weeks of silence when you need an approval don’t have to happen. They do because you never set rules of engagement and boundaries. Clients tend to fill silence with their own habits, and their habits usually come from managing employees. If you don't tell them how working with you works, they'll default to how working for them works. I don’t know about you, but that’s not how I want my business to operate.
I also want to clear something up: managing your clients is not a power play. You're not trying to make anyone behave, and you don't need to channel some steely negotiator persona. A managed client relationship just means both of you know what happens next. That's good for them too. Clients are happier when they're not guessing what happens next.
Intake
Client management doesn't begin at the kickoff. It begins before you even talk to the client in your messaging, and then it really kicks in on the discovery call. That's where expectations are set, either on purpose or by accident.
Two things happen on a good discovery call. You learn whether this client fits your business, and the client learns how you work. You should be asking how they make decisions and who has to approve things. Ask what their timeline is built around. Ask what happened with the last person who did this type of project with them, and listen to that answer. Then tell them, plainly, what your process looks like: "Here's how I work. We start with X, you'll hear from me every Y, and the project wraps with Z."
You're interviewing them too. A client who bristles at the existence of a process during the sales conversation is letting you know how difficult they’ll be to work with. For me, that’s a red flag.
Onboarding
This is the highest-leverage hour in the entire client relationship, and I see way too many writers skip it entirely. We sign the contract, say "I'll get started!", and start working. Then we're surprised when the client texts us on a Sunday.
Onboarding is where you share the rules of the engagement. One short kickoff email (or a short welcome doc, if you're fancy) can cover:
- Where to reach you, and where not to
- Your working hours and your typical response time
- What you need from them, and by when
- What happens next, including a project schedule
- How to request changes once work is underway
You only need to write it once, and then you can easily customize it for each of your clients. A client who knows the expectations rarely breaks them, and a client who breaks rules they were clearly given is showing signs early on that they might not be a good fit. That gives you the opportunity to do something about it.
Delivery
Here's where proactive communication comes in, and it's the heart of the whole system: send updates before the client has to ask for them.
For longer projects, pick a rhythm that works for both of you, say every Friday, and send a short status note. What got done, what's next, what you're waiting on. Three lines is all you need. When clients hear from you on a schedule, they stop checking in, because checking in is just a client's way of asking "is my project okay?" Answer that question before it's asked and the anxious emails dry up.
Delivery is also where scope creep tends to happen, and this is where a documented process earns its keep. When the client asks for a "quick addition," it doesn’t have to become a confrontation. You can say something as simple as: "I’m happy to look at that for you. Let me send over what it adds in time and cost so you can decide if you want to move forward." The process exists to absorb the awkwardness so you don't have to. The client loves it because you're not saying no. You love it because you have a system in place that says, "here's how that works."
Follow-up
Most of us end projects by sending the final deliverable and the last invoice. If you think about it, that’s a strange way to treat someone who just paid us, trusts us, and knows other people with money.
Build a small offboarding step. Deliver the final work with a short recap of what was accomplished. Ask one or two debrief questions about how the process worked on their end, then ask for the testimonial while the win is fresh. A bonus step is to put a note in your calendar to check in with them in 90 days. They might have another project ready for you!
This step is also what keeps your referral pipeline filled. People refer the writer whose process they remember, and follow-up is the part they remember longest.
Put it to work
On to the practical part. Pick one of these this week, depending on where you are in your business:
- Map your process. Intake, onboarding, delivery, follow-up. Write them down or add them to a document, and then under each write what you currently do. If the answer under one of them is "nothing," congratulations, you've found the place you need to start.
- Write your kickoff email template. Use the five bullets above and write a kickoff email. I recommend keeping it friendly, professional, and short. If you have an active client right now and things feel off, you can even send a version of it mid-project: "I realized I never laid out how I like to keep projects on track, so here's a quick rundown."
- Pick your update day. At the start of each project, set a recurring reminder. Then send those three lines per client on the same day every week. This habit eliminates more client tension than anything else on this list.
- Script your scope response. Save it where you can copy and paste it when a client sends a request that should be charged for.
- Write your offboarding email. Make sure it includes a recap, debrief question, testimonial ask, and after you send it add that 90-day check-in on the calendar. If asking for testimonials makes you squirm, the recap pretty much writes it for them. You're reminding them of the results right before you ask.
Client management creates stronger client relationships
You don't have to be blessed with some client-whisperer gene, and you don't have to become someone other than who you are. All you need is a written process, a system, that answers your clients' questions before they ask them. Because it’s a system, you only need to build it once.
Then every new client gets your best system instead of your best guess.
Hope you have a lovely weekend.
Trudy (and Treasa)
P.S. Want to refine your discovery call process? Boss Responses offers a free discovery call guide. You can get your copy here.
