Keeping Projects On Schedule
There are those times when you work with a client when you quickly realize you’re going to have to hold their hand and walk them through every little thing. They may not be familiar with the process or what you need from them, and often they don’t understand why you need certain things from them at all. This can be pretty frustrating. There are times in a project when all you need from the client is feedback, a yes or no on a simple decision. I often run into this at LooseKeys, since I’m typically the one overseeing the projects and working with the clients. I do my best to make sure my team has a plan for the week for every project we’re working on. In order to complete a successful project from beginning to end, I do everything I can to make sure it runs as smoothly as possible.
When I’m having issues with clients not getting back or needing feedback from them and they don’t respond to my requests, sometimes for days or even weeks, I can get irritated. I know it throws off my schedule for my team and can cause issues with other projects because when the client does get back to me after delaying the schedule, we could be busy on another project. Even though this can be challenging at times, I’ve learned to take a breath and make a list of exactly what I need from the client. From there I continue to check in with them daily until we are back on track or in a worst case scenario, the project is cancelled.
I understand there are a lot of reasons why clients don’t respond to me right away. Sometimes they have others that they need to run things by before decisions can be made. Sometimes the video for their company takes the back burner to other pressing matters for their business. I definitely try to be understanding and accommodating to a certain point. However, I’ve also learned not to be scared to make demands on the client. Sometimes clients truly don’t understand that at a certain point, no more progress can be made on their project when we can’t get feedback from them. So I step up and let them know what we need from them in order to reach our goal. Someone has to take control of your project. So be the one in charge and help the client understand that they are instrumental in reaching our goal of them being excited and pleased with the finished project.
