Hierarchy of Client Types: From Best to Worst

We know that all clients aren’t the same. But have you ever tried to rank clients in a hierarchy?

What characteristics would you use? Here’s how I look at clients…

Characteristics of the Best of the Best Clients

These are the ones I’d break rocks for. They are 5-star, 10/10 clients. Why?

The best clients are professionals. They are prepared for their projects. They give you detailed written briefs that make sense. They hand over the research you need to do the job.
The projects tend to be big ones, important to the company or at least the department you’re working for. It’s serious business, and they’re counting on you.
They have adequate budgets for their projects. They agree to your estimates and payment terms. If you ask for a deposit, you get it.
If you need a purchase order for their accounting system, they make sure you have one when the project starts.
From a project management perspective, they understand timelines and how long it takes to do a project. They are realistic about deadlines.
They also know that for longer, multi-stage projects, you need timely approvals along the way so that you can move on to the next step.
In general, they are responsive. If you have questions, they’ll get you the answers. It’s a smooth back-and-forth process when you work together.
Here’s my favorite characteristic: they have lots of projects for you. As you finish one, they let you know there’s more coming.

I have had and continue to have clients like that. For them, I’ll happily work evenings and weekends if I need to.

My advice: actively look for clients like this and treat them like gold. Keep them for years. Build your business with them.

Bonus Tip: Develop strong personal relationships with these clients. If they change jobs, they will often take you with them. If you’re lucky, you now have two great clients. I was able to do this many times. I wrote about making business friends to grow your company here.

Good Clients, Just a Bit Below the Best

There are many clients you’ll work with who are very good, but not quite at the level of the best.

The key differences? The projects aren’t as big, and there aren’t that many of them. So, you may work for them a few times a year.

As long as they’re professional, and easy to get along with, you’re happy when they call you.

Having a few clients like this can be an excellent foundation for your business.

Average Clients can Still be Valuable

As you go down the scale, you’ll get clients who are still reasonable to work with, but budget becomes more of a concern. You may present an estimate that you think is correct for the project but get pushback. You’ll have to negotiate deliverables versus cost.

These may not be your regular clients. Perhaps they don’t market continuously, so they call you when they think they must “do something”. Maybe sales are down, or they want to introduce a new product.

The challenge is that you don’t work together often enough to become an expert in their area, so you have a bigger learning curve.

If you’re lucky, you can train these clients, so they better understand budgets, timelines, and processes. They’ll turn into good clients. They may agree that they should market more consistently, which could be good for you.

You have to judge how open they are to learning the benefits of more marketing and whether they’ll find the budgets to support it.

Tolerable Clients—You’ll do These Projects, But Not Too Many

To me, tolerable clients are often ones you get through referrals. A friend-of-a-friend kind of job. They think they’re doing you a favor by referring business to you, but it’s not really the business you want.

These clients may mean well but have little marketing experience or understanding of the budgets required.

They’ll take some patience and hand-holding.

My advice: try to keep it simple. Help them reach their goals, but don’t complicate it along the way.

They likely don’t have a defined budget, so find out at the very beginning what they have in mind for budget and timelines. Make your project fit their budget and be sure everyone agrees.

Often, these are one-off projects, which in this case, is fine.

Very rarely will you find someone like this that you can train to become a good client. It may happen sometimes, but not often.

The Ones to Avoid—The Absolute Worst Clients

I tweeted about these types of clients. As I expected, it got a lot of likes and comments.

Here are the clients you DON’T WANT:

One-off project (don’t usually market)
No written brief (I’ll just tell you)
No defined budget ($0)
No experience in marketing (know it when I see it)
No research (too much work)
Needs it done quickly (of course)
Don’t want to pay deposits (we’ll pay when it’s done and we’re happy)
Change their minds frequently (that’s not what I thought)
Need lots of revisions (but don’t want to pay for them)
Half-way through, “the boss” has a different idea (like a 180-degree change)

You’re Meeting with a Potentially Terrible Client. Now What?

If you’re in a meeting with a client who has many of these “absolute worst” characteristics, here’s what you can do:

Once you understand the project, give them a ballpark verbal estimate. Tell them you need a deposit before you start. If they’re shocked, and you know they’ll never agree, walk.
If they agree to the verbal estimate, provide a written estimate and get a sign-off.
Insist on actually getting the deposit before you start. If the “check is in the mail”, wait. Let them know you’ll start when it’s cleared your bank account.
If you’re partway through the project from hell, try to finish as quickly as possible. Keep it simple, get the job done, and get it behind you.
Collect full payment before handing over any materials. Show them the finished job and ask for the rest of the payment before giving it to them.
If the project keeps dragging on, getting worse and worse, be prepared to walk away from it and write it off. It’s a hard lesson to learn, but it’s not going to get miraculously better. We once wrote off a project where we had invested over $6,000 in hours. It wasn’t fun, but we felt so much better when it was over.
Learn from it. Know the signs so that you won’t do it again.

In Your Business, You Should Have Rules for All Clients

Whether you’re a freelancer or a small agency, you’re running a business. You should have a “my business, my rules” policy.

To do that, you have to understand what your rules are. Perhaps put them in writing to remind yourself.

Most importantly, don’t let a client change your rules too much. Be prepared to bend a bit, but not very far.

Here are the rules that helped me:

All projects start with written briefs from the client which provide the information for detailed written estimates. Estimates are signed off (email or text responses are acceptable) before you start. I wrote about detailed estimates here.
Get agreements for timelines and deadlines in advance.
Understand the client’s approval process. How many layers of approvals are there before final approval? This will affect the number of revisions and your timelines. Big organizations can have many layers. Find out before you start. Clients should agree to estimates that include more rounds of revisions.
Get deposits. It’s very common these days. Be matter-of-fact about it. Don’t accept any excuses. If you hear, “We can’t pay until the project is done.”, your response should be, “We can’t start before the deposit hits the bank.” Be prepared to walk away.

You’re Looking for Better Clients, Be a Better Supplier

What do clients value most in a supplier? Reliability. It’s as simple as that. It means you meet your deadlines and deliver as promised. I wrote about what marketing clients value most in a freelancer here.

Along with reliability is organization. Be organized in how you handle files, and how you create estimates and invoices. You need systems for all of these.

Communicate how your client prefers to communicate. Ideally, any detailed briefs or feedback should be in writing. However, sometimes clients want to call you to give you a quick bit of information. I see some freelancers trying to impose strict rules—“I don’t do telephone”. Okay, but at your peril.

Over-deliver when possible. That may mean doing a little more on a project than specified (“While we were photographing X, we also grabbed Y for you. Thought it might be helpful.”), or simply sending clients useful industry information.

For example, if your client is considering their first TikTok campaign, send them research or stats on effectiveness. It might be something they can include in internal presentations.

Learn more about running your business like a professional in my book, How to Start a Successful Creative Agency. It’s the essential business guide for graphic designers, copywriters, filmmakers, photographers, and programmers.

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This chapter covers essential areas such as Clients vs. Projects, Corporate Clients vs. Small Business Clients, How to Create an Opportunity Document, Benefits of Finding a Niche… and much more.

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