Would your clients gush about you?
Earlier in the week I had an interesting meeting with a new potential client who we’ll call Bob for argument’s sake. Bob and I were discussing how he found Evoluted and one thing he said really surprised me.
“Some people I called for referrals refused to talk to me, apparently the relationship with their web developer is confidential”
Now let me clarify, Bob found a number of web development companies who he thought were suitable for his project and made a shortlist of to investigate further. Bob is no stranger to web development projects and after some bad experiences he was keen to get recommendations from existing clients of the companies on the shortlist.
Bob called clients of the companies on the shortlist to find out more about them, how they worked and crucially if the client would recommend the web development company.
Naturally all of our clients that Bob called responded positively and we were added to the final shortlist. Some of the other companies didn’t fare as well but not for the reason you might think. Some clients refused to talk about their relationship with their web developer, as they saw it as confidential.
I find this very odd indeed. It’s hard to imagine that any significant competitive advantage can be gained through your choice of web developer. What’s even stranger is that in these cases the relationship was already common knowledge. Did the client think that their web developer might ditch them if they got too popular? Clients are strange animals!
This does however raise one very important point – you’ve got to be very careful about the clients and projects listed in your portfolio. Not only do you have to list your best, most appealing work but you’ve also got to consider which clients will gush about you when asked. It’s no good to list clients that were perfectly happy with the service provided but will refuse to talk about your relationship. In Bob’s case this was enough to get the web development company taken off the shortlist.
So next time you’re considering which items to include in your portfolio, think, will this client gush about me? If not then consider leaving it out.
