For those of you just striking out to start your business, you might see this as an impossible task. What do you mean by defining the clients I want? I care more about getting business through the door!

I hear you. That was me when I first started too. In fact, I started doing pro bono work to get my foot in the door of the industries I wanted to work in. Even those experiences helped me learn about the kind of clients I would eventually want to work with. Defining your client isn’t a one-hour or even one-day exercise where you sit down with a notebook and jot down your wish list. It sometimes takes months or years to accumulate the experience and insights to define the type of client that jives with you.

What are some factors to pay attention to evaluate whether a client is right for you?

VISION

Do your clients share your vision for the strategy, product, or campaign? Whatever it may be, you need to know that you have buy-in from your client’s entire team. There needs to be a champion at the top that will keep your project going. Please don't take the job if this key element isn’t in place. If you aren’t aligned on the big picture, you’ll face problems at every other touch point and when it gets down to the nitty-gritty of the execution.

BUDGET

You may want to build a merry-go-round or fly everyone to Dubai for a party for the product launch. If the client’s budget is to rent an existing merry-go-round and host a local launch party, then sadly, your custom merry-go-round isn’t going to happen. Vision and budget go hand-in-hand, and I would say that even before you formulate the vision, you want to get a sense of your client’s budget. If you get everyone excited and then drop an astronomical number on them, it’ll be depressing to realize that they can’t afford to execute the brilliant idea you shared. Or worse, they’ll ask if you could do the same thing you proposed for half the budget, which is a big no-no. Never agree to this because both parties will walk away feeling like their expectations weren’t met.

EXPECTATIONS

What will the client get in return for what they’re spending? You want to set clear expectations and always err on the conservative side. I applaud your confidence if you want to set targets that are multiples of the results you usually get, but again, you would be setting yourself up to fail, and why would you want to do that? One way is to map out multiple scenarios for the potential results. You can set a baseline and stretch tier for your goals.

If the baseline scenario happens, then it’s a result that you and the client agreed on. It gives everyone something more to celebrate if you hit the stretch goal. The key is setting the goals collaboratively and openly discussing the issues that may impact the results.

We made the mistake of taking on a client who brought anecdotal evidence about how a single post on social media helped their competitor generate thousands in revenue, so they thought if they invested money into a marketing campaign on the same platform, their marketing dollars should generate many times that. It turned into a nightmare where we eventually had to let go of the client because the expectation of a transactional campaign leading to a sudden surge in business isn’t how it works.

The key is if you feel that the client has unrealistic expectations, or in some cases, it may be that you don’t feel like you can meet them, then it’s best not to engage.

PACE

Do you work at the same pace? Some client teams expect you to complete tasks within 24 hours, others may feel that if you get it done within the week, that’s acceptable. Before you engage a client, gauge their team’s workflow by mapping out your team’s work process to see how they react to it.

Do they ask questions such as “would you be able to get this done faster?” or “if we were to have rush jobs, what’s the fastest turnaround time?” Alternatively, if they tell you their approval process involves five other team members or they need to send it to head office in another time zone, you will want to adjust your workflow.

Ultimately, you want to determine that the workflow you set works for both parties and that there will be no surprises. If they ask whether you could complete a rush order, ask how often they would have rush orders. If it’s once in a blue moon, that’s fine. If it’s every week, then you will need to decide whether your team can or want to handle this kind of stress.

EXECUTION

Having templates is always a great help in this category. This is because you can show your clients how the execution process could be. Before we sign on a new client, we show them our work back schedule, content brief, and workflow templates so they get a sense of what to expect and what formats they could use to share information with us.

I’m a big believer in showing people how we intend to do things rather than simply telling them through words. Maybe it’s because I’m more visual, but having both the words and visual explanations couldn’t hurt. Right?

Congratulations if you’ve found clients that align with your business on all these key factors. Do whatever you can to keep them. My mentor once told me that your best prospect for tomorrow’s business is today’s clients.

When I find clients we really jive with, I work extremely hard to service them. After more than a decade in business, I would much rather work with teams where we have an established understanding and relationship. It lets us create magic together because we’ve already found the rhythm in every aspect of how we work together.

I hope you use these points as a simple guide to start building your client list!