Comments on: One day, two very different inquiries

By: DesignOweb

DesignOweb — Tue, 27 Dec 2005 07:32:47 +0000

this might be unbelievable….i just go to Google.com and try to find dealing of that client with others.(by putting his email or his company name). Most of the time i get some information of the client when i have doubt. If client is not genuine, he might have wasted somebody’s time before you. Google capture content of most of the popular message boards/forum.

By: DesignOweb

DesignOweb — Tue, 27 Dec 2005 07:18:41 +0000

This is also applicable to your associations/partnershipd. Let me explain it a bit. I had a partnerhsip with one of guy to work on their projects. It was great going when we started, and i had small projects. I was running around anything comes into my hand. This partneship consumed my energy and time and i couldn’t see beyond small projects. After doing lot of investment in the business, i spend more time on attending inquiries for big associations.

By: EXACTLY!

EXACTLY! — Thu, 22 Dec 2005 00:49:34 +0000

I have been a web developer for 10 years. Every single time I’ve hung up with a prospect that I had a feeling would be a problem client, they were. Now that I know what to look for or listen for, I have been able to avoid the problem client who is just wasting my valuable time. Andrew is right on the money!

By: Draken

Draken — Tue, 20 Dec 2005 16:18:05 +0000

I got a few Red-flags…

1) The client ask how much it will cost… Before I got any details wath will be needed)

2) The client is not interested in my portfolio… only on how much it will cost

3) Client is on a very small bidget… yet ask for a lot.

A client on a small budget is not a bad client in my book, when this client know he cant get the moon.

By: dhecker

dhecker — Sun, 18 Dec 2005 20:02:24 +0000

there is no good reason for wasting someone’s time. Period. If someone can’t see my time as valuable now, they won’t see it as valuable in the future either, client or not

This is really true. If a client wastes your time before a project, just wait ’till it starts. As in the original post, if someone is querying about refund policies before a purchase, you can pretty much see where things are going.

By: Jason Batten

Jason Batten — Sun, 18 Dec 2005 19:15:01 +0000

Jason—there is no good reason for wasting someone’s time. Period.

I meant that some people to be funny or something will waste your time or they may appear to have a different intetion than they really have.

By: beley

beley — Sun, 18 Dec 2005 18:02:39 +0000

Jason - there is no good reason for wasting someone’s time. Period. If someone can’t see my time as valuable now, they won’t see it as valuable in the future either, client or not.

Andrew is right on the money. You have to know who your ideal clients are. Sometimes, turning down business from non-ideal clients is the best thing for your business.

By: Jason Batten

Jason Batten — Sun, 18 Dec 2005 14:35:17 +0000

Treat everyone equal, you don’t know what other people intend to do - my expierence in sales taught me that (it depends how you handle a situation also). Some people will waste your time on purpose, others need gentle nudging and/or convincing. I agree with Andrew that you indeed need to know when to “give up” or “cut loose”. As ikeo siad it develops over time.

By: ikeo

ikeo — Sun, 18 Dec 2005 12:32:41 +0000

I’d say you can, but it develops over time.
Its why cops are so good at detecting liars, they deal with them all day, everyday.

The starting point is to watch the body language cues (are their arms crossed and leaning away from you? Or are they engaged … leaning over to take a look at the portfolio you’re showing them on your shiny new Dell Latitude 600m).

Pay attention to their line of questioning. Interested prospects want to see the work you’ve done, they want to know how your work is going to make their project better, they’re engaged in the conversation. The other kind of prospect will usually zero in on one thing and one thing only … “how much will it cost?” or “write me a proposal” (so they can take it to someone else to build).

Other (good) prospects might do this too, but they are usually open to finding out more about what you can do to get the project in under cost or why they should extend their budget (a custom CMS will give you total control of your site, $3000 might sound like a lot now, but imagine having to pay $400 in maintennance costs each month …).

Its just something you pick up over time, and you can never be totally perfect. Human beings act in strange ways, some times people will give off all the classic signs of being a bad prospect but turn out to be great. (In those kind of instances, they’ve been burned before and have their gurads up)

Just my $0.02

By: Sojan80

Sojan80 — Sun, 18 Dec 2005 12:19:59 +0000

My question would be “Can anyone develop this, well, radar for lack of a better word, that Andrew is talking about?

If it is based off of cues from the prospect contact then I would think so, but I also think some more precise or specific pointers on what to watch or look for would be good.