How to Disagree With Your Client and Do Right By Them
Anyone who’s trying to run a successful agency or works with clients deals with the perennial problem of pleasing both the client and themselves. Ideally, they get to do both simultaneously, but it’s not always easy or quick to get there, especially if they’re starting out.
The function of an agency is to create something of value for a client. The client pays the agency to give them what they want, hoping they'll make money off it. Nothing new there.
Equally conventional is the notion that you'll make money if you give the client or customer precisely what they want. Based on this sustained concept, many agencies will build the thing the client asks for, even if they know it's not really in the client's best interest.
It seems like it should be the moral obligation of an agency to communicate this knowledge since clients hire agencies for their expertise in whatever the client is paying for—software, websites, marketing, advertising, etc.
But many agencies won't tell the client they're wrong or suggest something different because they want to maintain a frictionless relationship, get paid, and move on to the next project.
That's not necessarily the wrong approach if you only care about money. You'll get paid and maintain a decent reputation. Plus, clients won't necessarily complain about any negative future outcomes of the thing you built for them because it's exactly what they asked for.
Yet, it's not necessarily the right approach, especially if you want to become the best at what you do. You might build a solid reputation, but you probably won't gain a reputation in the long run of being a leader and innovator in your industry.
Of course, there’s an inherent risk in disagreeing with a client, and a lot of agencies will deem that risk too dangerous, especially early on.
We love what we do at AE Studio, and we think we’re pretty good at it. That motivates us to create the greatest software, products, and machine learning solutions out there. We want to do that for clients, but selfishly, we also want to do that for ourselves because we’re passionate about our work.
The founders of AE were lucky because we weren't strapped for cash in the agency's earliest days, so we established a set of principles by which we still conduct business with clients. And we don't stray from them to make a quick dollar.
Among those principles is a promise that we’ll always tell a client when we disagree—but never before we’ve "steelmanned" the decision, arguing their perspective to ourselves as strongly as we can before arguing against it. If, after thoroughly steelmanning, we still disagree with the client, we’ll communicate that to them, explaining as best as possible, and with empathy, why and how we came to that conclusion.
“I disagree and commit all the time. I'll debate something for an hour or a day or a week. And I'll say: 'You know what? I really disagree with this, but you have more ground truth than I do. We're going to do it your way.'” -Jeff Bezos
And if, after hearing us out, the client still wants to do something different, we'll go ahead and move forward with that decision at 110%, even if we disagreed previously. (We can't claim we're always totally correct, either). But we'll communicate that. The point is that we want it to be a conversation.
Then we’ll move ahead and do our absolute best to make the thing they want. And we’ll get ourselves to believe in it too, to maximize its probability of success. Holding resentments accomplishes nothing and ultimately we want our clients and our work to be the best it can be.
If you like working this way too, we can create something amazing together. Let's talk about it.