Speaker 1: It was that bad of a client, huh?

Speaker 2: I've had them. Working with clients can be frustrating at times. You know, sometimes it feels like they ask for more than they pay for, or they just don't give you what you need to do your job. It's almost like they don't understand the process. So in this video, we are listing our top tips that's going to make working with clients, even difficult ones, easier.

Speaker 1: I don't think that's possible, but we'll see.

Speaker 2: Tip number one, the five sentence rule. I'm going to say it. Email is a black hole where time just disappears. And I realized early on that I was spending hours writing emails back and forth with my clients every single day, just because I was trying to get it perfect. At best, my clients would write me emails back, but more often than not, I wasn't ever sure if they even read them. So instead of continuing this cycle of writing novels, I instituted the five sentence rule. What is that? The five sentence rule is, if an email needs more than five sentences, I schedule a phone call instead. Being able to communicate directly with the clients helped me to convey tone, emotion, and I got so much more clarity from having a conversation with an actual person than trying to convince them of something over email. You know, once I signed this five sentence rule into law, I gained about 12 hours back in my week. 12 hours. And getting this done is really easy. So let's say you have feedback from your client that just doesn't make sense. All you need to do is crack open an email and just type, hey, I'd love to get some clarity on the feedback. Do you have 15 minutes to chat at 430? And then send it. And I know all of you creative introverts just cringed, but hear me out. If you're one of those design ninjas that kind of stays in the shadows and never actually speaks to your clients, step into the light. You'll get things done so much faster. Tip number two, drop breadcrumbs. How many times have you been asked by a client for just one more revision? Some conflicts are unavoidable and sometimes having proof helps. If you're familiar with the fable of Hansel and Gretel, these kids dropped breadcrumbs in order to find their way back home through the forest. And since we're handling a lot of the business over quick phone calls, we need to start dropping breadcrumbs for ourselves. These breadcrumbs need to document the decisions that we make with the client. We call this the decision tree. And that way, when the inevitable conflict arises, we can kind of retrace our steps and review how we arrived at that point with the client.

Speaker 1: Right. So basically, it's just evidence of every step that we've taken to come to our conclusion. And if all of a sudden the client comes back and say, hey, I'd like to change directions, at least you can point back to the evidence and say, well, we took these steps, this is how long it took us to get here. And for us to do this now, it might take us off course.

Speaker 2: Exactly. Now, there's tons of ways that we can do this. But my favorite is the technique that I learned from this guy. It's really simple. It's easy. And it takes about five minutes to do. So first, during the call with the client, take notes, take copious notes. And then once the call is done, send a copy of those notes to the client and then ask them to confirm that you got everything right. Here's some examples. When you finish the wireframes on a website project, call out what parts of this project are locked and what parts that they can expect next. Also, when you're presenting the second round of logo designs, literally type round two of three on the slides that has the presentation on them. And then when you email that slideshow to them after the presentation, put round two of three in the subject line. The next part of this rule is to send a status check once a week. This can be a really, really simple three sentence email. All you want to say is what you did last week, what you're going to do this week, and then where you are in the project timeline. It's just a status check.

Speaker 1: This helps everybody stay aligned. Like everybody knows from the client to your team to you, where you're at with everything and doesn't feel like you've gone dark.

Speaker 2: Exactly. The clients are going to appreciate the follow up. You document all of the decisions and then hopefully you'll be able to avoid any costly miscommunication. Tip number three, build an email arsenal.

Speaker 1: I thought you said no emails.

Speaker 2: Just wait. I am a UI designer by trade and my favorite part of UI design is kind of developing an arsenal of reusable parts and pieces. We already established that email is a black hole where time goes to die, right? I got to thinking, why not start templating emails? Basically, I made a list of the most common emails that I wrote to clients. These are things like onboarding emails or posting work for approval, following up on a call and scheduling the calls to begin with. It dawned on me that I was literally typing the same thing over and over and over again. To save time, I took that list and I built out a template for each email. You just want to leave spaces for client specific information or links. Now I have all of the templates that I need saved right there in my email window as I'm writing them. All I need to do is drop down the menu, select the template and then fill in the gaps. Look back over the past month and identify the top 10 most frequent emails that you send to clients. All you need to do is turn those into templates that you can easily access. Build that email arsenal. It's going to save you tons of time. Honestly guys, these tips have been game changers for us and I hope at least you'll give them a try. I hope you guys got value out of this and I know that you ninjas have some pro client management tips and I want you to share those in the comment section below. I'd love to read those. If you found a gem in here, comment the timestamp below so that other people can skip right to that part. If you like this kind of stuff and you want to support us, check out our practical project management class over at academy.thefuture.com. I think you'll really like it. Our entire arsenal of email templates, onboarding guides and client management processes are all downloadable after you enroll. You will learn how to save time, money and make your projects run as smooth as a baby's

Speaker 1: bottom on ice. Don't forget to check out the other project management videos linked here and down below as well. We'll see you guys in the future.

Speaker 2: Smooth as butter on a hot day. I feel alone. You know what? Clients don't like working with you, Ben. Ah.