Especially in your first couple of years working as a contractor, your instinctive reaction when someone reaches out looking for your services will be to jump at it. After all, any first time client could lead to many successful contracts going forward, as well as being a chance to create some positive word of mouth and expand your network.
More seasoned contractors temper that instinct with an equally important question:
Is it going to be worth your time working with this person?
What Makes a Problem Client?
There are many different kinds of problem client. Problem traits include:
- Scope creep making contracts unprofitable
- Delays in pay affecting your ability to budget
- Poor communication leading to unclear briefs
- Too many decision makers, especially if internal politics get involved
- Delays in feedback and reviews of work
- Changing their mind whenever they talk to someone
- Requiring so much contact time that it eats up the budget for the job
- Failure to provide needed information or brand assets in a timely manner
Not every contractor has to deal with all of these categories, but sometimes you may encounter a client who has multiple of the traits above. Professional confidentiality prevents us from telling you tales, but let’s just say we’ve all been there.
And did you notice that almost all of the traits above affect either your ability to complete work in a timely fashion or your ability to get paid for it on time?
Many contractors use PEO or umbrella solutions to reduce the risk of late payment (or going unpaid entirely), but lost time can affect your schedule going forward, pushing work back from other, better clients or taking up time you would have used for business admin or to relax. You can roll some of this back with a contractor accountant on your side, but ultimately the best solution is usually to avoid this client and select another.
How Can You Avoid Problem Clients as a Contractor?
Screening out problem clients is a skill you need to develop as a contractor that you may not have had to think about if you’ve come across from being a full-time employee elsewhere.
There’s no perfect way to screen out all problem clients, but there are some things worth watching for.
Look for Reviews
Most clients have at least some online presence that they don’t run. Have a look at their Trustpilot, Feefo, or Google Reviews – a lot of positive reviews isn’t necessarily a good sign about their treatment of contractors, but a lot of negative reviews can be an indicator about their treatment of everyone.
It’s also worth taking a look at Glassdoor and other employer review sites. These always give you a clearer picture of how people working for them get treated. Here, either lots of negative reviews or heavily mixed reviews can be a bad sign.
If reviews are mixed, look to see whether the good reviews come in blocks all around the same time – this can be a sign of the company pushing for good reviews to whitewash their reputation, and the positive reviews created are often, if not outright fake, ‘sweetened’.
Work Your Network
To begin with you may not had as much reach, but contracting is not the lonely job it’s sometimes presented as! You’ll often find you know someone who’s worked there, or who chose not to work there based on what they heard.
Word of mouth is one of the best ways to keep yourself safe, so make sure you grow your network and that you learn whose advice you can depend on.
Negotiation Style
It’s a sad fact that many of the worst clients for delaying payment are also the ones who push the hardest to negotiate a discount on your services in the first place.
It’s not unusual for a client to see your proposed rate as the start of a negotiation, and there will be times when you will want to agree a discount. But if they’re particularly aggressive in seeking it, that can be an indicator of their behaviour when they have it.
Most of all, if they want a first job at a lower rate and promise higher rates on later jobs, be careful. Sometimes this promise holds up, but a lot of experienced freelancers translate it to “We’re only offering you one job.”
