If you don’t get back to clients fast, they’ll write their own story about your business. That story is rarely flattering.
Hi y’all,
You’ve probably noticed it for the past year or so — clients are coming in hot. Big ideas, big inspiration boards, big expectations… and not always a budget to match. AI is part of it. They’re scrolling, generating, pinning, and arriving at the discovery call already convinced of what’s possible.
The instinct is to acquiesce: have the big “reset expectations” conversation, redo the pricing exercise, send the long email. But what I’ve seen play out is that the real fix is way less dramatic.
It’s communication. Speed, mostly.
Time kills deals — and trust. Same goes for client comms. The longer it takes you to respond, the more your client fills in the blanks themselves, and that story is rarely flattering. A quick yes — or a quick “that won’t land in your budget, but here’s what will” — beats a thoughtful three-day delay every time.
Custom-feeling ≠ custom-built. I have a friend at a big design fabrication company that services clients all over the country. The stage concept they built for a financial client in New York shows up (with tweaks) in Miami, then again in Atlanta. To each of those clients, it’s new and exclusive. The whole concept doesn’t have to be reinvented. The same is true for your couples planning weddings and your corporate planners. Replay what works.
Default to questions, then default to fast. When a client comes in with a huge idea, ask a lot of questions before you start scoping. Find out what they actually mean and what’s actually important to them. And if it’s not going to work, say so. Wouldn’t you rather find that out on the hour-long discovery call than six months into planning a contract you now have to fulfill?
Your ability to deliver on what your clients expect is the best bet for everyone — and that ability starts the first time they ask you a question.
See you next Monday,
Mallory Mullen
Goodshuffle
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