Do Clients Choose Us, or Do We Choose Clients?

We’re often asked about how Industrial Brand does business development and find our clients. Good question, but not one that can be easily answered in a short explanation or blog post. One issue that always gets met with raised eyebrows is the fact that we’re sort of picky about the clients we DO work with and how often we actually decline work.

What? Decline work? In THIS economy? Are we crazy? I don’t think so.

We feel that it is important to consider what our clients, their products, practices, and reputations say about us as their design partners. As we’ve said before, we are defined by our clients.

Things aren’t always so black and white though. It’s easy to say no to a pornography website project, but what about online gambling? We’re confident we’d decline working for a tobacco client, regardless of the revenue potential, but what about a drug company?

And can we please be honest about something? Realistically, how often really do designers engage in any real due diligence investigating their potential clients and their backgrounds the way companies check OUR references? Not often enough I’ll venture to say.

Beyond the important ethics issues, how about a client that has no experience working with a brand strategy firm like ours? Or if the primary contact isn’t empowered with the authority to make decisions for the company? Or even if the company is in a totally different industry or sector where we’ve decided to specialize? These are all important issues worth considering when taking on new clients—for us anyway.

So, understanding that we can’t always take super cool, well-paying clients whose companies, products, or service are things we love and endorse, we created a five point grid by which to judge all potential clients and projects.

The rules are simple. As we consider any prospective client or opportunity, we ask ourselves five simple questions—we call them “The Five Ps”:

• 1. Positioning: Is there something about this client or project that will enhance and leverage our portfolio so we may attract more, similar and better work in-line with our emphasis on serving professional services firms?
• 2. Profit: Is there inherent potential to make enough money with the initial project to contribute to a healthy bottom line and sustain the business? Is this a high risk start up with clients spending their own personal money? Has the client allocated appropriate budgets and is being forthright about those parameters?
• 3. Purpose: Is this client doing meaningful work we can be proud of? Is this client/product/service something we can endorse and believe in, or at the very least not compromise our ethics or doing harm to people, communities or the environment?
• 4. People: Will we enjoy working with them? Are these people experienced working with a strategy-driven brand consulting firm like ours and respect our team and processes, is there a point of contact with authority to make decisions, will we be able to access the key stakeholders and leadership in the organization, and will they trust us to do our best work?
• 5. Perception: Are there any other factors beyond the above that we need to consider? What does our instinct tell us? Can we determine why this client needs a new design firm? Does it feel like they terminated their previous creative partnership for good reasons?

We find we do our best work when all five Ps are aligned, but if the answer to these questions isn’t yes to at least three of them, for whatever reason, including gut feeling, we decline the work. Every time. Sometimes this has meant missing out on tens of thousands of dollars of revenue. But by doing this, we better understand who we are as a design firm, as a company, as individuals, and as a brand. Our integrity is intact and our reputation is unsullied. Well, mostly.

How do you choose clients? How often do you decline work?