Stop Saying Yes to Bad Client Work

In this episode of Happy Client Show, Ben and I are going to talk about the stuff that you should stop saying yes to and how that will help you stop reinventing the wheel at your agency. Here we go.

Guys. Welcome back to the Happy Client show, where our goal is to give you happier clients. And really happier clients, they start with us. It's not always the client. And this is one of those cases where sometimes saying no, you might think might make an unhappy client, but sometimes saying yes to something is not in your wheelhouse. It's gonna make a very miserable client. We'll get into that in a minute. Andrew. How you doing today, Ben?

I am feeling all sorts of warm and fuzzy because when we put this item on the list of episodes to create, I got excited because I know this is a point of passion for you. Definitely a point of passion for me, because I've made this mistake more times than I want to remember. And as a. As a lacrosse goalie, we're trained to have short memories. Well, when it comes to serving clients and remembering the negative experiences that you have from saying yes to too many things, that's a good skill to bring from the lacrosse field into the business world, but it kind of bothers you in other areas. We'll get into that later. But this is definitely something that's close to my heart, and I'm fired up to hear what we dig into here.

Yeah. So I think this is the biggest mistake that agencies make, besides sucking in general, is saying yes to things that they shouldn't say yes to. And this spans a whole realm of categories. Number one is things that aren't in the wheelhouse. Number two is things that aren't the best fit from a prospect, from a project, from a scope perspective. And there's a whole bunch of other things, but I find those to be the two biggest. So, you know, Andrew, tell us, what was one thing in the history of Guavabox that you know you said yes to that you really regret? And what were the results to that?

There. There are several. I think one thing that just jumps right out is saying yes to video production. When we weren't really a video production agency. There was a period in our history where one of our early co founders was a great videographer, and that was a good offering. But after he left, we still had clients who were, like, looking for things there. And so there's this one case. I just went back to this client's website the other day to see if they still had the video up there is my voice on a It's a voiceover of this, like, welding shot. You were there with me, we did this together. You were behind the camera and I was doing the voiceover. We shot it on iPhones. Like, the video turned out pretty good for how we shot it, but. And the voiceover sounded like not quite as deep as Morgan Freeman, but I was pretty close. But that, like, that took me so much time because I'm not a videographer. You know, I can edit podcasts now because of this journey, but back in the day, I had no idea how to edit audio.

Yeah.

So that's like, what am I doing here right now? You know, we only had three retainer clients at the time. Goodness knows, we could have been out there being the streets for more prospects, could have been serving this client in a much more efficient way. But that was definitely a project that we should have said no thank you to or just pass them off to a partner, something like that. You could say here, you work with these guys, they're much more qualified at this than I am.

Yeah, I do remember that. I remember getting sparks flown all over me as we had to do the follow up shoot with that poor camera. That poor camera, poor lens, poor us. At least we got Chipotle out of it. But whatever. Yeah, absolutely. I think as an agency, it's not to say you're not capable of it right now. You know, maybe you expand your production team, your content team to include a videographer or a photographer, but if that's not something that you do, you're really. Someone's gonna eat your lunch and it's not gonna be good. You're either gonna spend too much time to get it perfect, not gonna be able to handle it efficiently, or he's just gonna do a very poor job in a similar circumstance. And this is an episode that's very near and dear to my heart is, you know, as an agency, sometimes these projects bring a lot of money. You know, video production is one of those things where it can be thousands, if not tens of thousands of dollars for us. We had, you know, we are a branding and development shop and we do communication strategy. We don't do app development. We can develop the heck out of a website and make it amazing and do relatively anything within that realm. But apps are a different animal for us. And someone came to us with a very attractive offer. This is many years ago, said, hey, we'll give you X. It was a lot of money for the agency at the time, said, if you do this. And pretty much we were hobbling the whole project through. And really it's one of those things where dimmer, I feel like you have a moral of the story, which you learned how to do voice editing and, you know, have that talent. But the moral of the story for us is we're still to this day troubleshooting and on the hook for that work that should have been done two years ago. And I, I kid you not, it is the biggest mistake I've ever made as an agency owner. And I should have said no. I should have said no, we don't do that. And I, I say to my wife during the time, I'm like, oh, I feel like this is never going to end. And she's like, oh, yeah, it will. No, it's still, still going on. So it can really, really cripple your project management and your process. So if it's not something in your wheelhouse, do not take it, say no. And that brings us to what happens if one of those comes Dimmer, what do we do if something that's out of our wheelhouse completely, that we don't support, comes to us? What do we do with it?

Well, first, first of all, you need to be prepared before that opportunity comes across the table. Because especially if you have some sort of commission based sales position at your agency, what's that salesperson going to be motivated to do? Bring in new business. But what do we define as new business that we will accept? We need to walk through that process as a core team at the agency so that the leadership is united around that vision here. We'll do website design in this price range. We'll do inbound content retainers, we'll do marketing automation configurations. We're not going to touch branding because that's something that a company like Top Hat should take on. Whatever it is, define what you do well and then figure out what you should not be doing then from there, when you have that conversation with a prospect, first of all, just ask them, why do you want to do this? Why do you want a new app? Or why do you need this new video? If it fits into the larger marketing strategy that you have, then, hey, go for it. You can help facilitate the creation of that asset. But that doesn't mean you have to be the one to create it. You can find a partner. We'll talk more about that later. But you can work with other folks to help that happen. But I find more often than not, just bring the client back to the why of it all and figure out what are you really trying to accomplish here Is this Just something cool that you saw at a trade show or something neat that you saw someone in a peer group share with you that they're doing. You don't want to feel like you're behind the game. So that's what I would do. Ben is kind of those two things. Address it and the team make sure everyone's on the same page and then just say Mr. Client why?

Exactly. And as a agency you have to be vanguarding your client's budget like it's your own. And that's not to say that if they use budget somewhere else that Bye Bye Mr. Agency. But really you're there. You don't want to be in that situation where I told you so and they said no you didn't. Why didn't you tell me? So it's a disaster. Really helping them. But yeah, don't bite that off if you can't chew it if it's not even if you're, you know, I would treat it like this. Any work that's outside the scope of what you do as an agency, you're allergic to. Yeah, don't do it, don't eat it, don't take that on because it'll make you violently ill. Yeah. And you know, as you teased a little bit here, I also really want to just stress that point of getting with the sales team, getting with the leadership, the agency. We do this type of work, we do it for these prices. And that brings up another thing that could go wrong is saying yes to something that's drastically under budget. And that's been the other thing that has been so, so haunting as an agency owner for me. And I know with Guavabox, you know when I was with you guys there that this is something that we were like no, we're not going to do this because taking on an under budget client that's low balled, they are going to be a headache, they are going to take more time then you have allotted budgetary wise. It's never a slam dunk. It's always worth every penny. And why do the same work for a lesser price when you can do that same amount of work for what you deserve. So that's another thing not to say yes to is something that is below your price range. And in both of these situations you want to have someone to hand the ball to. And I think it's really important to stress here. I don't believe in outsourcing and you know, white labeling like hey, we do this, you know and sending it to some shop somewhere else. I think that's very non transparent and I don't agree with it. So I think it's important to have an agency partner or a partner that you say, hey, we don't do this. I think it's a good idea. But our friends over here, they're very talented. We've worked with them before. I'm going to hand you to them and you're going to be in good hands. And then it's off of your management and it's on to someone who can do it properly. So I think, you know, handing the ball off is a valuable skill and pride and again, that lust of money can really prevent you from that. But I think it's important to be able to hand the ball off when necessary.

Yeah. So at the end of the day, if you want to stop reinventing the wheel for clients, stop saying yes to stuff that you shouldn't be doing. Practice a few times, just saying no. It's hard at first, but the more practice you get, the easier it becomes. Because you know that by saying no to an existing client or saying no to a prospect, you're really treating them better at the end of the day. And they're going to get a much higher level of service out of you and your team. A level of service that you'll be proud of, that you can stand behind. So that's a wrap for this one. Thanks for joining us here on Happy Client show and we will see y' all again next week.

Say no ra.