Worried Clients Won’t Like Your Design Work?
When I tell people we build entire brands for clients in just two days, they look at me like I’m crazy. Most people can’t wrap their heads around such an insane feat. Shouldn’t brands take months to build? Shouldn’t there be lots of iterations and editing? And most commonly, they ask: “What happens when the client just doesn’t like what you made?”
It’s a fair question.
Years ago, even when clients DID like what I made, they never just took what I designed. We always had to do revisions, get more feedback, and make more variations until the client was completely satisfied. It was exhausting. And it was expensive (for us and the client).
But these days, my response to that question is always: ”That doesn’t happen anymore.”
Clients always love the designs I show them. And they almost never need revisions, especially extensive ones. And that’s not by accident.
“Yeah, but what if they don’t like it?”
“But they do.” I don’t have to worry about an alternative to that answer.
Is it because we’re just that good at what we do? Are we really the best designers, mind readers, and branding experts in the world? That would be flattering, but no.
It’s because we have a process that ensures clients love our work the first time around.
The Building Blocks of Great Brand Design, Guaranteed
At its core, our guaranteed-you’ll-love-it brand design process comes down to a few things:
It ensures we really understand the client, what they think they want, what they want, and what they need. Their ideas and ours might not align because clients don’t always know what’s best for them. It’s our job to figure it out.
We don’t just show them the work. We show them how we got to the final result. Telling a story is half the battle because when a client understands the thinking behind your decisions, they will see your conclusion (the design) as the best possible result.
We start every project with the right dynamic. In the past, clients hired us as designers to create something they would like. Now, they hire us as branders to show them what brand they need to achieve their desired outcome.
This all isn’t to say that we don’t care if they like the design or not. We want them to like it, but that’s not the end goal. The goal is to build a brand that fully represents them, communicates the right message to their clients, and will make those clients want to hire them. It might or might not be a brand that’s anything like what they originally envisioned, and that’s okay.
When a design is presented in this context, and you’re not just trying to get an individual to personally like the color green you picked, it’s actually much easier to get clients to say yes. In fact, they will enjoy saying yes much more. Because decision-making criteria make it easier and less stressful to make a decision compared to relying on personal taste alone.
Clients Love Brands That Work, Not Just Brands That Look Nice
Our process doesn’t leave room for the “I will know it when I see it” mentality that so many of my clients used to have. It doesn’t take anything else into consideration except for the outcomes they want to produce. And that’s what makes a brand so powerful in the first place.
This is the same reason why it’s very hard for branders to do their own brand work, build their own website, or design their own logo. But it’s way easier to do it for someone else. You’re too close to the process. All your personal emotions are getting in the way.
Similarly, your clients’ personal emotions can get in the way if you don’t help them get them out of the way. And we do this by being their trusted leader from the very start. We begin by understanding them enough to be able to make something amazing and right for them. And then, we show them how we got to where we landed so that they can see our thinking and agree that those were the best decisions.
When we handle each project this way, we guarantee that the client will not only say yes to our designs but will also LOVE THEM!
So if you really want to know what happens when they don’t like it? Well, that doesn’t happen!