When Do You Say No to Clients?
We’ve covered firing a client, making a “not to do” list, and coping with client fall out, but what do you do if you just can’t say no? As a new freelancer, I am still loathe to say that I cannot complete a clients request. My answer right now is “Yes!” – regardless of what they need. Requests like “Can you do websites?” or “Can you create a 10 page, long copy sales letter about the efficacy of acai on middle aged men in Ohio?” gets the same response from me – “Yes!”
If it’s something I can do, I do it. If it’s something I can learn, I try and find a way to learn it on my time. I don’t think it’s fair to learn on the client’s dime. If it’s something that I can’t do myself, and can’t/won/t/shouldn’t learn how to do it, I will find a provider who can provide the quality I require.
I know this isn’t an ideal business model, but I am confident that there are many readers that find themselves in this situation.
Are you comfortable and secure enough to tell your client no, or have you taken the N-word out of your freelance vocabulary?
3,200 freelancers surveyed globally. In-depth interviews with 10 notable freelancers.
Insights and information you can't afford to ignore!
Find Out More
I have said “no” when I’m not what my client was looking for. Hate doing it, but if I can’t deliver then they REALLY aren’t going to hire me for what I can deliver on. It seems unethical to say I can do something that I can’t do. But I might be wrong.
I agree with you Heather. But it really hurts so much, especially if you’re new to freelancing. Whew!
You must learn to say no to clients or you won’t last long as a freelancer. You will either (rightfully) earn a reputation for incompetence/being hard to work with by saying yes to projects you can’t or don’t know how to handle, or you will be so stressed out by projects you don’t have time for or don’t know how to do that you will likely decide to stop freelancing altogether. It’s also necessary for your sanity to be able to tell that client from hell no the next s/he approaches you with work.
Saying no to clients is not a hard skill to develop, and I have learned that clients would much rather I say no when a project is out of my depth or when I don’t have time for it than say yes and do a crappy job.
I say no when they get too predictable with last minute changes not stated in contract, etc.
In that case, I don’t just say no though, I typically set my prices above what I’m figuring they’ll willing to pay.
If it’s something I don’t feel I can do a satisfactory job on, I’ll simply tell them just that.
Good points Chris – and these are, IMHO, good things to say no to.
i was referring to new projects
telling them you cant do a satisfactory job on a component is a good thing – i’m just suggesting that i will find someone who can do that part
From my XP, I am realizing that when I say yes to something that is “not so tangible” I end up going from $50/hour… to $30/hr…. to $15/hr… to $2.47 an hour….
So, If you’re ‘ok’ with that… then by all means say yes. That is the cold-hard-fact, and reality of being a “yes-person.”
Time is MONEY… and you should be worth every penny… quit selling yourself short!
Excellent points, Ian
I may not say “no” – but I am clear that there are additional costs for additional work. It’s more like upselling – do you want fries with that?
My philosophy has always been, “I’ll do it myself or help you find someone else who can.”
A lot of times, my clients don’t have the mindset or the capacity to deal with freelancers for the projects they want. Nor should they, that’s my job and one of the services I provide for them. After taking the time to build rapport and gain trust with my client, they know that I can work in their best interest and manage someone else to do the job they need.
I suppose I do say no, in a fashion. Instead of saying, “No, as an engineer I cannot take this project,” I say “Yes, as a project manager I can facilitate other resources to complete this project.” This way my client knows that I can help with whatever they might need that falls within my general area of expertise (technology), and I further develop my relationship with them, increase my billable hours and expand my own skillsets.
Excellent philosophy Ben – this is very much the direction that I am shooting for.
My goal is to become the person my clients call for whatever they need – so I become a facilitator/general contractor to help them meet their goals.
thanks for sharing
Good one, Ian. That’s a great point.
I find that pricing myself out of someone’s budget is the polite way to say no.
However, if someone is looking for something outside of my business scope (animation, programming, technical support…) I can say no.
I would prefer the word got out that I was expensive, rather than that I just didn’t want to work.
I never thought about it this way, you are right. It is much better to be expensive rather than don`t want to work, good idea !
I agree – and It’s not necessarily that you’re expensive… it’s that you are getting paid what you are worth.
We all need to remind ourselves that we are worth every penny the client is going to pay (and to those that don’t feel that way about yourself – maybe it’s time to work on you skill-sets, abilities, knowledge, etc. ).
It has taken me a LONG time to grasp this and BELIEVE it! You have to put a price on your time, calculate your time accurately, and bid accordingly. Now the ball will be in their court — if they say yes – then it will be worth your time.
When we say yes to projects (that we would otherwise say NO to because “we want to learn something,” or “it sounds interesting,” or “it should be fun” or “I’m sure I can handle it”) there is a high probability that you will find yourself all strung out neck deep in high water — and Voila! a good paying client/project comes up (that more fits your skill-set/focus/whatever) and you either have to:
A) Risk losing the project because you are on a “freebie – but I wanted to learn it and I Just couldn’t say no” project…. so you dont have the time/have to push them out too far
OR
B) You have to consider putting the freebie (ie. VERY low paying job) on the back burner to take up the project that will pay the bills (been there done that – have the scars to prove it).
It becomes a ‘lose-lose’ as the client (rightfully so) gets frustrated and you get frustrated — and your reputation can take a hit.
Do you fool your clients by saying “yes” when you can’t make it? And you charge them for that? Then you’re a dirty liar and a freelancer from hell!
If your clients read this post, I guess you’ve just lost them.
I used to be willing to take on anything headed my way and I don’t think it’s an uncommon phase for a freelancer to go through — especially if you’re working full-time and have some worries about making rent.
But I’m a big believer in knowing when to say ‘no’, as well as having a few alternatives up my sleeve. While I used to do pagination and other graphic design tasks for my clients, I now work with a freelance graphic designer who I subcontract that sort of work to.
There’s a price tag that goes along with anything that’s outside my normal services though, which translates to paying me for setting things up with the graphic designer as well as the graphic designer’s fees. I’ve priced myself out of some clients’ budgets that way, but I’m okay with that.
For me, I had to push my limits until failure. You eventually hit a point where you have too many fingers in too many pies doing little non-billable stuff, learning, research and testing – and suddenly the deadline on a high profile project passes and you either deliver nothing or something half-done at best.
Nothing in the world is more educational than a huge, non-delivered, reeking pile of infected failure turds of a project to CLEARLY demonstrate that you need to reassess where your resources are being used and if you are spread too thin. They can’t teach that feeling in Harvard BizScool. If they could transfer that horrible feeling that you just crashed the plane into the mountain along with your financial stability, the ignorance that leads to bubbles and crashes would probably vanish. There will always be a portion of the market that are gamblers, but they know they are playing a game where most people just look around and do what other people are doing – which is often wrong. How many times in the past 10 years did you hear from your family and friends who had just gotten into the real estate game that ‘real estate never goes down’?
The brutal invisible hand of the market will eventually teach you the things you should know but don’t know you don’t know them *Rumsfeld*
The markets are a wild voting machine in the short term and a precise triple-beam scale in the long term *Buffett*
wow. “reeking pile of infected failure turds” – i can see your point
love the visual!
I said no to a client for the first time in a long time yesterday. I got a text message at 4:50pm asking my if I could design a website by 6:50 at the latest, and I wouldn’t be home until 5:45 (which the client knew)… in instances like this I will say no, but otherwise i don’t turn a project down without weighing the options. i am a designer/developer so I can cover most of my clients requests, but every now and then i get a request for some 3D work, copy writing, or print design and i have 2-3 resources for each of these and know their hourly rates so i will generally outsource… but i check availability with all of them before just saying yes of course – and if i got a request that i wasn’t 100% sure i could deliver on i would be honest and tell them that it isn’t in my skill-set, but i would still be willing to take it on if they were OK with the fact that i had to learn it.
I recently told a realtor I could create a complete architectural plan for a house. I’ve never even taken a drafting class, but I learned how to do it and i did it. It took a few late nights, and I didn’t ask them to pay for all of the time I spent on it as that wouldn’t have been right, but the next time I am asked to do a plan like that I can comfortably say yes and charge for my full time because i said yes and I learned a new skill because of it. I always say yes, and I have always delivered.
Good on ya, Kyle
there’s a world of difference between what we can’t do – and what we can’t do yet.
you took the time to improve our skills, and it paid off
Jason, I often find myself saying yes to many (every?) thing. Often it’s not because I am scared to say no but rather I am genuinely interested in the project. Do I already have 5 other major projects on my plate? Doesn’t matter… this is fun! I’ve been working this out within myself recently, finding ways to say “no” or “later.”
Ian, that’s a great way of thinking about it. I am going to remind myself of that in the future.
I’m in that same stage as well. That may change in the future – but I doubt it. it’s how I was successful in the corporate world, and I can see benefits in freelancing.
The other reason I try to avoid saying no – I don’t want to give work to a competitor. If I can build a relationship with other experts, I benefit, the client benefits, and so does my contact – win, win, win
that’s what I shoot for
I’ve said “no” to requests for highly detailed daily status updates. (Percent complete on and # of hours worked on each task at the end of each day.) I don’t charge hourly, and even though I may track time on a project, I would find that level of detailed reporting to be stressful. Basically I told the customer that it wasn’t a service I provided.
Agreed Avonelle – I’m referring more to new projects.
Gotta wonder if that client was even going to read the report they wanted you to create….:-)
I agree. It takes about as much time to write detailed status reports as it does to just do the job. A complete waste of time, and of course most clients don’t think they have to pay for that time. Ridiculous.
I made the mistake of going on a retainer basis with an IT firm. I gave them a lower hourly rate in exchange for 15-hours of web development work a week, and what I got was the request for highly detailed reports, paying for their business insurance on me, and not even getting 15 hours a week. Big mistake. I made more money on a project basis, and I will say ‘no’ to charging hourly.
It really boils down to where you’re at. Sometimes you have to take work you otherwise wouldn’t just to pay the bills. On the other hand, if you don’t have the time, skills, or interest to do a job and you have a good network, I do like the idea of serving as a “general contractor” for the job. That is, of course, assuming this is a client you want to maintain a relationship with.
I say “no” if a client is disrespectful of my time, craft, skills… or if what I’m asked does not fall within my scope of excellence.
For example, a client asked me if I could get out an html newsletter by Friday morning if he got the text to me by Thursday. I said I thought so, assuming he meant by what we commonly think of the close of business, but he did not email me the text until 11:45pm Thursday night. On Friday morning, I had to do scheduled phone interviews for an article I was writing with a late Friday deadline. When this client phoned me at 9 am to ask why I hadn’t sent out the email and could I do it right then and there, I said, “No!” This was not the first time he expected me to stop what I was doing to meet his emergency and I ultimately let this client go.
I also decline work that I could conceivably do, but is not what I do best or like to do most. Concentrating on what I love and do best builds my business better than doing something I “could” do but is not my forte.
Sometimes you have no choice, especially when working on big government funded contracts that have use-it-or-loose-it type budgets that must be spent in a fiscal year, plus fines for your clients if systems aren’t implemented by a specific date, plus slow inflexible bureaucratic processes where it takes them seven months (of that same fiscal year) to award the tender, plus security restrictions that prevent full disclosure on the horrendous state of their current system until after the tender is awarded. In cases like this, signing a contract would be akin to shooting yourself in the head. Saying no at this point also effectively means that your client, will most likely loose major funding, but sometimes you have no choice and it would be grossly irresponsible to do otherwise.
I’m finding myself saying no more and more often this past year.
No to projects where the client can’t be specific enough or I can’t forecast a project cost. No to projects where I get this funny feeling in my stomach – either due to the client’s initial attitude or due to the project sounding interesting but I don’t have an immediate plan of action. No to emergency requests unless a person’s zen cart site is down or else I’ve done work for them before. No even after accepting money if I realize that after accessing their site I realize that there’s no way I can deliver without requesting more money and I’ve promised them a fixed cost.
I’ve lost too much money, had too many anxious and weird clients back out, not pay, drive me crazy, etc. to risk it again.
This comes from the girl (excuse me, older woman) who used to say: sure, I can do that or find someone who can. Even that can be dicey on many of my projects.
That said, I do a lot of troubleshooting work on open source scripts so I generally don’t do fixed fee projects. I charge by the hour normally but I now realize that many clients have wishful thinking and can’t foresee the kind of costs that can run into – even when I try to explain it to them. I also have virtually no local clients – they come to me from all over the world and it’s extremely rare that I meet someone in person – thus actually deal with a riskier client base.
I got started in this business by bidding on jobs on bid websites and made really crappy money for years but built up a portfolio and a long history of success and so now have enough work normally so that I don’t have to take all projects on.
That makes it easier to say absolutely NO! (thank heavens!)
Learning to say no is a very important skill all feelancers should learn. As others have said, it’s often the best thing you can do for your client. But more than that, you need to be able to say no to give yourself the space to do your highest and best work. If you’re spending the majority of your time working om projects that either don’t pay well or fit your skills, you’re missing out on the chance to work on better paying projects that are also a better fit for your skills and goals. Learning to say no will help you do your best, and that helps everyone win in the long run.
I say no when a client starts abusing my good nature. I’m more than happy to go above and beyond for a project for clients that follow deadlines, pay on time, respect working hours etc. But for those clients who never meet deadlines, drag their feet at invoice time and call at all hours I am more than happy to tell them no.
Clients who treat me in a professional manner deserve a high level of service, but difficult clients need to either be willing to be schooled in how to do business with me or to take their business elsewhere.
Normally I always have a great freelancer team around so I can provide almost any services to my clients. When I need to say no is when I see that the client will not trust the work I will deliver or when hes not willing to do the part of the job that he needs to do, sending me contents on time, etc.
I made a post on my design web blog (french only unfortunately) and there is a PDF questionnaire to help you ask questions to a new client to see if hes willing to help you deliver your best work for him. If there is one answer that makes me think hes not willing to help me accomplish is project, I have to say NO.
This is something that general contractors are usually guilty of, in the field of home repair/renovation .. they say they can do it all because they have a ton of tools in the back of a pickup truck, but in the end, theyre practicing on your house and getting paid for it.. dont be like that. Do what you can do and stop pretending like youre an expert in everything. Saying you can do it, then buying a Whatever for Dummies book to complete the task is unethical. You can try to justify it all you want, but thats what youre describing.. at least be honest with the client when you know it will be a significant learning process to get the job done. They deserve to know when their money is going toward amateur / entry-level work. Sorry, but thats how professionals operate.
I have been working in web agency for the past 8 years and now it’s been 2 years full time that I’m working as a freelancer. I’m one of the lucky people that can do a lot of different design tasks, logo, video, web, with always a high standard of design quality, behind all those medias good design standard stay the same. What agency do is they offer all services to their clients, why it would not be ok that a freelancer do the same thing?
Most of the time I do it all, but all of us have tasks we’re not good at, so yes I’m outsourcing some parts of the job, if you want to have a quality project at the end. This way I can provide all the services to my clients. It’s the same thing as having employees for me, but you don’t have the downside of it… You don’t have to pay for a big office, problem of training and hiring, etc. Though you always have to keep a good balance on this, because you don’t want to end up doing only project management for your clients.
I’m always completely honest with my client, they know I’m outsourcing parts of the coding and back-end development, but they know I’m always the artistic director behind the final job. They don’t want to deal with one logo designer, one web designer, one developer, one copywriter… they can’t handle that and they don’t know how to do it properly. Instead you should think what are your clients needs and how to deliver a solution that work for them.
If you want to do a good living out of your freelancing business, that’s a good solution. But it’s not everybody that want and/or are good at this. Only professionnals can do this
That said, I know my limits… design tasks only. If a client ask me for coding or development only, I’m giving my freelance partners contact so they can deal directly with them.
That works for me.
The problem with not saying no is that it doesnt scale. Sooner or later youll have more clients than you can handle, and you must weed out the weaker ones by telling them no. The weaker ones are those who think they can clone Facebook for a couple hundred bucks; who dont respect fixed scope contracts and who always append it should be easy to add at every last sentence.
Back when I was still a full-fledged student freelancer, I said yes to almost every job offer and applied to lots of jobs (sometimes at the same time) when I know I can do it. But now that I have a family, heavy responsibilities, and I became more knowledgeable about my specialties, I began saying no to jobs that I didn’t want to do and no to clients who didn’t sound like people I could really work with.
I guess you can say I started saying no after becoming more aware and wise with my decisions as a freelancer.
Yes when can I manage something (or think I can), no when I think something is well beyond my capabilities (or isn’t worth the hassle).
I think its incredibly important to know when to say know. Everyone knows their limits, and as you say its wrong to learn on the clients time.
After all is said and done if you take on a project when you are not 100% confident that you can do it well, then you should not take it on at all.
Like Heather, I say ‘no’ when I know I’m not the right person for the job. Luckily, I have a good network of freelance writers so can easily find someone with the expertise the client is looking for.
I am dealing with this today, thanks for the article.
My clients have typically had very little idea when their request goes from “creative” to hurting their business. So if it’s something that could get dicey, or outright won’t help their business, I tell them so. I always try to go the extra mile to inform clients about issues that can drastically affect their outcome.
Because, let’s be honest, they WILL blame you no matter the issue. Bad marketing, no capital, pack of wild badgers? All the web designer’s fault, I’m sure.
So I do frequently say No, or more commonly “No, but…” =D
saying yes has been the bane of my existence
I think by saying no you will gain the customer respect and potential for future projects.
sometimes the N word is a must, but if you prefer to find alternative ways, its a great option as well, and you wont loose the opportunity but now you have to do your work and manage another freelancer in the same time to get the required results, which means saying good bye to your life
I would say NO.
That’s really tough. When you’re freelancing, you want to make sure that you have enough projects to work on and you may never know when they get canceled for certain reasons. I think, honesty is still the best policy. Either you say yes now and regret your decision later.. or you come clean and be honest on what you can and cannot do. Your clients know that it is impossible for anyone to know everything and they’ll respect you more if you come to them clean – from the very start. They may even hire you for your daring. Besides, you don’t want to damage your credibility as a freelancer and have people demand you give them a refund for a mess of a job.
I recently said no to a client because I was not giving myself enough time off. As a freelancer I feel the need to always say yes, but if you do that, you can end up working more than if you had a full-time gig.
So it goes…
-dp
No when their ideas and examples are terrible, even after I’ve given better ideas. Basically saying something “I wont put on my portfolio”
Jason, I’m also doing the same thing. I always refer or find someone who can do the job and what the client is looking for. By doing so, you are not closing your door to the client, but helping your client to get the job done. And if you successfully found someone that suits to the job. Client would definitely remember you and might give you a better deal in a future, may be a recruiter or building your own team to leverage your skills.
Thank you all so much for your posts. I have been in the ‘take every job’ category, using my son as my high-level coder and doing the design and small web edits myself. I just turned down a job that was ‘in-progress’ but the client kept dillying with the scope of the project, but wanted my estimate to be ‘within her budget’. Rush job, to boot.
When the client returned my estimate to remove that additional work would require additional pay, I decided to rescind my estimate.
Came right here to read what your experience is and found my decision to be solid.
Thanks so much! Much success to you all.