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The “Good Guys”

Australia, 27th February 2010

In Australia we have a chain of stores that call themselves the “Good Guys”. Not sure if they exist overseas, but they pride themselves on their excellent service, excellent pricing smiling attitude and no questions asked quality warranty. I have bought some things there over the years and always come out a happy customer.

As I am working on preparing another fee proposal, I am pondering about the client. I have not worked with this client before and with little to go on, I need to apply common sense in assessing the business risk of working with this client. We all know the horror clients that we come across from time to time. However most of the time we don’t know until we are well and truly on our way in a project. Of course we try to protect ourselves as good as possible through our contracts terms and conditions, but there has to be some trust and respect along the way in any business relationship to work, right?

What we look for is a client that understands the process of design, respects our scope of work, your expertise and most of all your time (!) and when due, pays promptly. Horror clients will do basically none of the above, abuse their power and where possible push you to the limit. They will always find an excuse to delay payment … When that happens (and trust me that happens more often then you would like!) you need to assess whether to walk away, confront or just go with it…not always a clear cut decision! To avoid losses, it becomes crucial to start any project with a down payment for our own protection.

So will this be a “Good Guy”, I don’t know, time will tell.

27. February 2010 by Martin Klaasen
Categories: lighting design practice | Leave a comment

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