Sometimes our clients misunderstand what it is we do when it comes to Design and UX for their projects, it can be treated as an afterthought or just as "make it pretty" type of work. What happens when your client wants to bring the design in-house or have their own resource handle that part of the project? Do you have strategies or tactics for how to handle this when it happens to you?
For more on how to create successful client relationships make sure you on the list for the weekly email newsletter.
Carl: there are people out there wanting this to happen. Dozens and dozens.
Gene: Here goes the intro.
Gene: Hey.
Carl: You're listening to BizCraft.
Gene: Oh, man. I used to catch so much shit for the intro. That music, it was like...
Carl: It's like Scottish rock.
Gene: Crazy.
Carl: It was amazing. I loved it. Now you only catch hell on this intro from me-
Gene: And Rob.
Carl: Okay. Thanks. Because Rob is one of those people that listens and the thing about the intro to this song is I just want a nice bubble bath.
Gene: Yeah, well that's what this show is. It's a nice bubble bath.
Carl: Then we show up.
Gene: Yeah. Hey!
Carl: It's like, "Hey, while you're lighting that candle and I hand you this lovely glass of wine, let's talk about business shit. Let's do that. By the way, those crunches are working."
Gene: We're recording this right after the long weekend, but you're watching this after the long weekend, and after you've had your shitty week, so.
Gene: What'd you do this weekend, man?
Carl: What is wrong with you, man? Why are you so upset today? You are. I'm worried about you, Gene. Before we do the show, local intervention. Are you having post-event distress? Are you having post-event trauma? Are you having post-event depression?
Gene: A little bit. It happens. It's funny, isn't it?
Carl: You had your huge karate tournament.
Gene: Mm-hmm (affirmative).
Carl: I called it karate.
Gene: You did.
Carl: I'm not picking on you anymore for like an hour.
Gene: Yay.
Carl: Hold on. One more, one more. Let's do it again. Okay. Are you okay because it does, it just feels like you're down?
Gene: Yeah, it happens, man. You know how it is? You build and build and build and then you're like, hmm.
Carl: Then it's over, and you're like, "What am I supposed to do now?"
Gene: I just wait for the next one.
Carl: You suck it up, and you do a podcast dammit, Gene.
Gene: That's right.
Carl: We're doing this.
Gene: You know what I did this weekend. How was your weekend?
Carl: I do know what you did this weekend. You encouraged young people to punch each other. I did the same. Different format. I yelled over the fence at my neighbors and said, "Yeah, well come over here," and, "Oh shit, they're coming." Then I ran inside.
Carl: It was a great weekend, man. The weather here was oddly mild. It didn't get crazy hot. We had some friends over for Memorial Day. Actually talked a little bit about Memorial Day. I think it's important to just recognize everybody who's given so much for this country, and I've never really slowed down to think about it and I don't know if it's the pandemic or what it is, but I don't... My dad was Navy, but he was only sort of Navy. He was in for maybe four years, and he was a psychologist. He was studying rats, but I don't know. It's just one of those things. You've got military in your family, right?
Gene: A little bit. Yeah. My wife's dad was both in the Korean War and the Vietnam War and my cousin through that family was in Iraq. We lost him in Iraq, so it does have a special moment for us on Memorial Day. We always think about him.
Carl: There you go. Wow. Sorry about that. It sucks.
Gene: Yeah, but it is what it is.
Carl: But yeah, we had a good weekend. We had friends come over. Little kids. Anytime you have a six-year-old, four-year-old and there's a pool, it doesn't matter. Nothing else matters. So yeah, they had a blast and cooked out and did all the things and listened to pool music. How many times have you heard Jessie's Girl?
Gene: That's a good song.
Carl: Why can't you block a song like you can block a person?
Gene: That would be a great feature in Spotify.
Carl: That would. I don't necessarily want to block Jessie's Girl. I'm fine with Springfield.
Gene: Which song [inaudible 00:04:59]?
Carl: All the Kid Rock shit.
Gene: Yes. He's got the go.
Carl: All the Kid Rock shit.
Gene: Yes. He's got to go. Okay. I was going to ask you what song you'd blocked, but you blocked a whole dude, so.
Carl: I'm just going to block him. That would be amazing.
Gene: Yeah. Probably Eminem as well.
Carl: There's some Eminem stuff that's all right. I don't know what it is so don't push me on it. What about you? How was your weekend?
Gene: It was good, man. I had the tournament, and then we did the whole Memorial Day thing where we grilled out and stuff, and it was awesome, man. I'm still full.
Carl: Cool.
Gene: Still recovering a little bit because our tournament was three days, so it's a lot of work.
Carl: Intense. You said 500 people?
Gene: Well, 500 competitors.
Carl: Jesus.
Gene: Each competitor brings about two people so if you do the math on that, it's like 1,500 people, so it's huge.
Carl: I might get the hot dogs. You might get the hot dogs. [inaudible 00:05:54].
Gene: Yeah, a lot of the hot dogs. Yeah.
Carl: Hey, we're closing up folks. We hit our thousand dollar goal. Hey, everybody wins the tournament. Congratulations. I like it. I like it.
Gene: Yeah, man.
Carl: What are we talking about today, Gene?
Gene: When clients want to manage the design process. I think this came out of the Slack backchannel there.
Carl: It did. It came out of the Slack channels, but you know Gene, this is going to be a short episode. Don't.
Gene: Don't.
Carl: All right folks. We appreciate you.
Carl: This was a great conversation that showed up in the owner's channels in Slack, and it's one of those that... It's been around forever. Like pre-web, pre-internet. Like old-school advertising, basically. Probably David Ogilvy. Look it up, folks. Probably John Caples. He was just a writer. But if you look at it, there's always been some desire and in the old advertising days, they probably didn't care because they were just making money off media.
Gene: Yeah, they didn't give a shit.
Carl: Right, but the thing that gets me on this, it really backs up to choosing your clients or what agreements you signed because if you find out after you start the project that the client has a designer they want to use, that's on you.
Gene: Yeah.
Carl: Or if you find out after, and you don't have any recourse, so this is going to happen sometimes because, "Oh, we have this designer we'd really like to use. We like their style," or "We're trying to save some money." They won't say that, or "They really understand who we are. That's what we need." But when you come into that initial agreement... We always had, we call it the voices in the shadows. Anybody who was not at the table for the kickoff that showed up later, we had the right to redo the entire agreement. We could redo the entire estimate because the game had changed.
Gene: I caught that from you, you and Gabe a long time ago. I think it's back when you had the pause clause, when you were introducing that in one of you guys talks. I think you introduced that at the same time.
Carl: It could be. I remember we were fixing everything after our hundredth project, and we saw what went wrong all the time and I think both of those clauses originated from us just digging deep into every project that went off the rails.
Gene: Right. Well, that's a great one that if your contract doesn't have that in there now, you really need to... The very next one you need to get that shit in there.
Carl: Yeah, and check with your lawyer because it always changes but for us, those two clauses fixed a lot of things.
Gene: I find that that one actually is not so much the designer like, "Hey, we've got this designer." It's more the, "Oh, there's this person that's actually in charge and I know we've done all this work, but they don't like these things." You're like, "Where's this person been for the last year and a half?"
Carl: Well, that's it. Well, they were over there waiting on this to get to a point where they can come in and say no. This is a term I first heard... Again, I am really just going to tell you I'm old as dirt, but I heard this term probably in the late '80s, early '90s.
Gene: You know what, you really are.
Carl: I am and still, somehow, look so much better than you. But the swoop and poop. Now, you've heard that term before, right?
Gene: Mm-hmm (affirmative).
Carl: But every generation comes up, and it's a thing but on the designer thing real quick, I do want to talk about this because I think this is one of those things where there are a lot of ways you can go about it.
Carl: First of all, let's play the context disclaimer. Everything we share here depends on the context of who you are and where you are because if you took a project because you needed to get started, maybe you were a little looser on the agreement, maybe it's a cash situation, whatever, or you had a team on the bench, and you really wanted to get them involved. Totally cool. It's not about shaming anybody for the way that you got the project, but once you get in, and if you have a situation where the client's like, "Look, we're going to manage the design." You should send them the requirements. You should say, "These are the things the design needs to accomplish." And you shouldn't call it web design. This came out of the Slack, right? Call it product design.
Gene: Yeah. I like that too.
Carl: Right, because we used to do this thing called level setting at every kickoff and I think you could even do it before a kickoff. If you're having what we used to call a chemistry call. You're just getting on a call before the agreement is finalized where you can just see, how do we get along? Do we laugh at the same jokes? Because when you're on a project like this, it's going to go for a long time and some things are going to go wrong, and it's important that you know who it is you're going into this with. Are you going to be able to get through it or does this person get annoyed really fast, or they start blaming people really fast? Are they going to derail it or are you going to derail it because they remind you of something that happened once? Whatever.
Carl: To me, what we used to do is we would go around the table, and I would start. I would say, "Hey everybody, nice to meet you. My name is Carl. My main job will be air cover and making sure that everything the team needs the team gets. I've managed 272 web projects." Then it would go to the next person. By the time it got to the client, everybody on the Ngen team had said how many web projects they had managed.
Gene: Yeah, and they were like [inaudible 00:11:23].
Carl: There was nobody under 30. I've been involved in 37 web projects. By the time it got to the client, they'd be like, "My name is Steve. I am the head of the department, and I have, well, if you include my daughter's high school project, I have managed three web projects." You're just sitting there going, "And my softball team." Whipped up a good one there. This is again, not to shame clients or prospects, but they haven't done it and until you share with them how many times you've done it.
Gene: But it's setting the tone that you're the professional.
Carl: Exactly.
Gene: That's what a lot of people miss the opportunity to do.
Carl: We show up apologizing so much. I say, "You know your customer. What should you do?" But the thing is, you're a guide for them through treacherous lands to get to this great place. I guess that's a big part of it for me is level set. Let them know who you are and then when they say they have a designer, say, "Oh, you have a product designer?" Even if you're doing a web project, still call it product. I think that's important. Did you go through that at Period Three? Did you have... Switches would come in?
Gene: Yes. It still happens. We just had it on a project, and I just renegotiated. We're like, "Okay, well, I get it. You want to do this. This changes the scope, so we won't be doing this part." I did what you just said. I said, "Here's the requirements," and I pulled some of the requirements out and made that designer a sheet of things that we needed to make sure the project was accomplishing... I said, "This is what we're going to hold everything against. When they present a design, and you like it, then we're going to have a chance to go through it and make sure it does these things."
Gene: I think even in the Slack channel, one of the main things they were talking about was a lot of times what will happen is they'll bring in their designer or whatever and there won't be any responsive models or anything. It'll just be like a Illustrator document, and you're like, whoa. So there's no active state. There's no responsive... The designer doesn't understand a browser window that moves, and so they do these dumb things. They put things on the edges of the screen that can't happen.
Carl: Well, uninformed. They do want to inform things.
Gene: Yeah. The thing is, you know what you need to build something. You know what's good. You need to list that out and say, "Cool. It needs to accomplish these things." That gives you that, I don't necessarily want to use the term CYA, but that's really what it is. To say, "It doesn't accomplish these things. We now have to work on this a little bit, and I know you wanted to save money, but here's where it's actually impacted that."
Carl: Yeah. I remember in probably 2005, we were working with a well-known web design company. I remember they wanted us to help build out what they had done, and they liked us because of our design integrity, but they wanted to create the design and have us build it out because they didn't have the capacity to build stuff out.
Carl: I remember the very first time they sent us PSDs, and I was like, what? They weren't even content templates or anything like that. They were just, "Make it look kind of like this." That's the thing. Sometimes we make it an us and them thing with the client and that's why I said not dumb, uninformed because they're not the enemy. We have to work with them if we're going to create something great.
Carl: But to me, that designer may not even want this, and I think you get to a point where you have to ask that client if you've already signed this agreement or the prospect if not, what are you trying to accomplish in this? If it's saving money, you may end up hurting the overall impact of the product or project on your company, so you may save a dime here and lose a dollar there.
Gene: That's right.
Carl: If it is brand integrity, then let us integrate them in with our team, have them have an initial pass, or be able weekly to see where we're going to make sure we're not violating brand guidelines.
Carl: We worked with Siemens, man. They had seven volumes of brand guidelines, many of which made it impossible for them to be on the web. It was like, "Okay, this is great, and you have like a bajillion patents on technology, but you will not be on the web with these brand guidelines." But if you had somebody who was kind of the liaison for brand, that's totally awesome. Let's do that. That's great. But if this is a ego thing, that's cool too, but I do think you need to list out those requirements depending on your process, don't change your process for them, and don't let them become the enemy. Don't let them become the reason why because the whole team will feel it, and they'll collapse on themselves, and you won't be able to get out of it.
Carl: Now, one person in the Slack mentioned that they worked with a lot of advertising agencies and this was kind of the play. To me, that is almost always an ego-based play.
Gene: Every ounce of experience I have working with agency, it's always the creative director's ego. Every time.
Carl: Yeah. They don't want to give it up because also if an advertising agency has hired you to build the project, it's because it's too important for them to do it in-house and if it's too important for them to do it in-house, that means it's got a chance of being high profile. If it's got a chance of being high profile, that creative team wants to say they did it.
Gene: They want to claim it.
Carl: So see if you can do it as a team. We were digital agency of record for advertising agencies probably about three years before I said, no, we can't do it, and the reason was they would commit to things that just weren't possible. That's the other challenge with if the client is going to bring a designer, they may not be educated on what is and isn't possible or what is and isn't effective. If you're building an e-comm solution, and they want to bring in somebody who's going to have any say over user interface, information architecture, goal flow, any of these types of things, could be hurting your ability to sell.
Gene: I like that. I like the one, I forget who it was, was mentioning the design integration-
Carl: This is great.
Gene: ... piece to the contractor, to the project or whatever.
Carl: Yeah. I think that's a brilliant idea. It's like, "Oh, you've got your own designer. Well, you know what? We have a design integration." I think they said service. "Design integration service. So you give us the design." I'm making this part up now because he didn't go into it in too much depth, but, "You give us the design, and we basically let you know the process for bringing it to life as well as any challenges, any things like that."
Carl: But I think, again, this gets to being the expert or at least being the professional where somebody brings you something, and you say, "Oh, you need our design integration service." It's just a matter-of-fact thing. If somebody's installing an AC unit, "Oh, you know what? You need a new outtake flow."
Gene: That's right.
Carl: I didn't know you were a doctor.
Gene: [inaudible 00:19:27].
Gene: I like how you open it up though, because if... I'm probably reiterating that, but it's important to circle back to it because if you've made it all the way through to the point where you're now about to build things and this gets sprung on you, I would say, well, how come that happened? Why wasn't that exposed earlier on? Probably because you weren't talking enough. Probably because you weren't on the right level with talking to those people.
Carl: You hit on something really important at what... Congratulations, by the way.
Gene: I got something right.
Carl: You got something right, Gene. By golly, by gum. We'll get through this yet.
Gene: Took me 20 years. Still working.
Carl: Okay. But no, when did it happen in the process? Did they mention it before you signed an agreement? Okay brilliant, design integration service, blah, blah, blah. We'll pack it in and even say, "We're going to have to bump up the proposal a little bit because we won't be able to use this afterwards to really share our chops and what we do." If it's after they signed it. Okay. Was it before design was presented? Okay, because if it was before any design was presented, then it's probably a financial concern. I'm trying to play private detective here, but then you have to say, "Okay, do we have a budget issue? What's going on?"
Carl: Have trust conversations with clients. We used to do it all the time. "Hey, it feels like something's a little off. Could we just have a call and talk through how you're feeling so that we can make sure that we're on the right page?" If it's before design is shown, maybe something has happened, and they just think you're not in control, or they disagree with something, and they didn't tell you and so now they're trying to take the wheel. They're trying to take control. If it's after design's presented, probably don't like it. They're probably like, "No, we don't want that." Have that conversation but if it's after you're down the path, that feels like something really went off the rails. I would imagine it only really happens pre-agreement, post-agreement, and post-design presentation. Those seem like the only three places where you might get in there.
Gene: Agree.
Carl: Here's an idea is when they bring in that designer, maybe just give them a list of the content types and the different required templates for the build and not in any way to intimidate this designer, but to just shake out their skill level and maybe there's some sort of technical stuff you can share, again, not to intimidate or to disassociate them. If that word means make them feel uncomfortable, which is what I was going for. I think that's a great way to find out because again, they may not even want to do it.
Gene: Yes, you're right. I would also add at this point, it's a good point to check your own ego.
Carl: Oh my God. All the time.
Gene: I mean, we're talking about somebody else's ego, but over the years I've had to check my own ego because let's say you're talking to that designer, and you're just like, "Well, I'm not here to teach that person how to do web design. They should just let us do it."
Gene: But it's like you just said though, you might have to. You might have to. You might have to give them the list of all the stuff that they have to consider and at that point, they might go, "Well, hell I don't know what all this stuff is," or you'll know they don't know all that stuff is, and you know what you have to do because remember the end goal is to get the damn thing done.
Carl: Yeah.
Gene: We missed the mission of get this shit done and get paid for it. Not measure who's got more experience or whatever.
Carl: I didn't know where you were going there. You started talking about measuring things. It's like, all right. Yeah. I love what you just said there because... I'm on the measuring thing. I can't get past it. I can't get past it.
Carl: When you start thinking about that designer, and you have to check your ego. We tried forever to get this Cincinnati punch clock to stay on the wall at our first office at Ngen because we wanted it to be an ego clock where you had to clock out your ego when you came in. You could clock it back out when you left. I think this is so important. If you get to a point where you know that you are becoming part of the problem, check yourself. Just say, "What am I doing? Why am I doing this?"
Carl: But I'll also say that the goal is to make sure that you are a sustainable company, and you're getting paid for the work you're doing. The goal is also to create a really successful client. Happy maybe if you can, but if not, at least to be able to say that project moved them forward because that's where the new projects come from.
Gene: I was going to say because if you don't do that, and you have like three or four of those ones that's bad experiences in a row, you won't get any more good ones. It'll stop.
Carl: You'll start asking them, "Do you have a designer?"
Gene: Yeah, you'll be just, "Who cares?"
Carl: "And maybe some developers? Actually, do you want us to just say we did it? You can build it in-house. Send us [I don't know] five grand and then we'll just act like we did it." It's our new business model, Gene.
Gene: You're going to want to be more careful.
Carl: I'm going to open up a shop called Period Four.
Gene: Period Four, where you just claim you did things.
Carl: Yeah. Pretty much. Or we can call it Period Three. I just didn't want to crowd you. I think we've solved this, Gene.
Gene: We did. We solved it.
Carl: Feeling pretty good.
Gene: Yep. Done deal. Well, good luck everybody with those scenarios.
Carl: I hope that really works for you.
Gene: They've been around a long time, and it was a good idea hitting up Slack for that because I'm sure as you see there's a lot of people with experience in that.
Carl: And if you're a Bureau member, I'm just saying you're in there.
Gene: Yeah. Join the Bureau. Get in the Slack.
Carl: Or check the newsletter.
Gene: Or the newsletter. It's where this stuff goes.
Carl: Gene, what's your final take today? What you got going on there?
Gene: Check your ego.
Carl: I like it.
Gene: Just check it. It's hard to do, man. You either have to learn to be completely honest with yourself and want to actually achieve the things you claim or hopefully if you have a business partner, you have a relationship where you can check each other honestly, and not go to bed angry.
Carl: I'm going to let that stand because I have checked my ego and I realize you have value too, Gene. You do.
Gene: I do. What about you, what's your hot take?
Carl: Don't take clients that you don't want. I get the whole, we got to make money, we got to make payroll, but I want clients that have to win. I don't want clients that have to get the project done.
Gene: That's right.
Carl: Because if that project has to get done and that's urgent now, and then something else comes up, then it doesn't have to get done, and they're going to put it on hold and all these things, or they're going to show up and wonder. If they have to win, if this project is just integral to their success, that's what I want, so choose your clients wisely. Make sure they line up with who you are and what you want, and your skills aren't overlapping and all those things.
Gene: It's funny how the things you say no to build your business in the direction you want to go into more so than the ones you say yes to.
Carl: That's life, man.
Gene: Isn't that crazy?
Carl: Yeah. I love it.
Gene: It is.
Carl: All right. Solving problems.
Gene: What's up?
Carl: Cashing checks, making sound effects. I'm joining in. I know how to do it now.
Gene: All right, man. Until next week. In the meantime, sign up for that newsletter. Get the rest of this intel. Let's go.
Carl: All right.
