How do I Say Goodbye?

Cover art for "It's So Hard To Say Goodbye to Yesterday", a 1991 single by Boyz II Men

“How do I say goodbye?” aren’t just the lyrics to one of my favourite songs. It’s also a question I had to ask myself recently before walking away from a potential client. In conversation earlier this week, I thought about the times in the past when I either didn’t walk away or dragged my feet before doing so. Today’s post focuses on the ups and downs of figuring out which clients I'm compatible/not compatible with.

Before getting into the meat of things, I think that it’s fine when you find out that someone isn’t a good fit or that you guys don’t mesh well. Issues tend to arise when you’re unsure or even sometimes know that someone isn’t a good fit but elongate the process of going separate ways or even worse: attempting to make things work when you know there’s no compatibility.

I’m going to share three personal anecdotes of times when I knew but tried to sail a sinking ship.

Anecdote #1

Early in my freelance journey, I came across a client that was working on something interesting and needed a website. I thought “ok who better than me to work on this?”. After 2 30 minute calls, I sent a proposal and a service agreement outlining everything that I would be doing for them. This was agreed to.

However, shortly before working on things, I received a list of things outside of the agreed scope with a message requesting that I do all these things on this list and if I couldn’t we should lower the price of the service. As I could actually do everything on the list, I ignored the original scope and carried on with the project.

Result: The scope kept increasing and eventually we went separate ways in the middle of the project.

Anecdote #2

Working with an agency, we agreed to do a trial period so I could better understand their process and how I could slot in. Things started well but the workload drastically increased and for the sake of wanting to prove myself, I agreed to do things that fell outside of the original scope. It didn’t make it better that there were also differing opinions on how we were going to measure success of the trial period

Result: After a month of unpaid work, I ended up leaving.

Anecdote #3

Recently, I had a potential client who had been doing some cool things and I could see them being successful. After 3 30 minute calls and research after identifying their pain points, I sent them a proposal outlining how I could help them. They decided that they couldn’t justify paying the proposed fee for something that they could do themselves and suggested that working with them for a much lower fee would give me great exposure (laughing out loud as I write this, genuinely).

Result: Although I wasted time on the calls and research, the client and I ended up going separate ways after the proposal was sent.

Maybe it’s Me?

To a certain degree, the problems discussed in the above anecdotes are self-inflicted. I’m great at gathering requirements and seeing how I can help a potential client but I tend to leave discussions about their budget until the last minute, leading to a lot of disappointment.

Also, in times where they’ve had a lower budget, I have been reluctant to walk away. However, it’s difficult for others to value your work if you don’t adequately do it yourself.

Facing the Issues

One of the things I’m learning is how to disqualify people early so that I can turn my focus to those who I am more compatible with.

To do this, I have started understanding my principles and boundaries, both personal and business. When needed, I will stand on them. For instance, if the cost of a service starts from €750, it has to start from there no matter what the perceived benefits of lowering it would be.

Another thing that I have started doing is asking myself what kind of clients do I mesh well with, outside of how “cool” or “interesting” their business is. Asking myself this has forced me to take a deeper look and realise that I enjoy working with people who value my service.

But wanting someone who values my work poses the question - what value do I offer? With the redesign of my portfolio website, this question is something that I’ve been thinking about and constantly testing and perfecting. How do I take this service from a nice to have to a must have? Asking these questions helps with looking at my process and also helps me to determine what I can/can’t do.

I’m also working on valuing my time more and replacing calls with form submissions where possible.

Conclusion

To reiterate, in most areas in life, whether a friendship or romantic relationship, it’s pretty easy to recognise and determine what is and isn’t for you. The difficulty lies in doing this in the least amount of time possible. Ultimately, it’s better for you to do this early so that you can focus on offering the best version of you to what is for you.