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Ask HN: Advice on client negotiation / process?

3 points by andrewcooke ↗ HN
I am part of a small company (< 10 people) that does bespoke software development. We're having an internal discussion on how best to work with our clients.

In some cases we have a lot of success with an agile approach, involving the client in the development process, allowing them to change requirements, releasing often, and generally getting strong "buy in". Typically, these clients are happy with what we do, and understand "where the money went".

But we have problems with other clients - either they want to micromanage technical details, or demand compliance with contracts after we've spent time accommodating their changing requirements in other areas.

So I was tasked with finding possible resources that might help us deal with the more challenging clients. Unfortunately it's not clear what the problem is. Are we negotiating poorly? Or failing to involve them in the process? Or failing to adapt our process to what they want?

Any advice, or pointers to possible resources, would be appreciated... I realise the above isn't much to go on, so perhaps a good answer would teach us how to fish - how to go about diagnosing our problems better (rather than giving a simple solution as a fish - please forgive the tortured analogy).

3 comments

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mooreds
Fire the difficult clients. That is, finish your current project as best you can and don't take on new work with them.

There are a lot of good clients out there hungry for good work and working relationships--don't spend more time with bad clients than you have to.

andrewcooke
that's tempting (well, in some ways - there have also been good times, with these people, they're not monsters...), but we're in a fairly small niche. maybe we need to expand. in which case, i guess maybe we're looking for resources on how to shift into other areas of development, get new clients, etc?
mooreds
I would look at characteristics of the clients you like working with and see if you can find other clients like them.

Are they technical? Non technical? Focused on a certain aspect of the niche? What kinds of problems do they have?

Anything that will act as a filter so you take work from clients that have a high chance of being good ones.

As far as expanding to other areas of development, if there are adjacent areas available (for example, using CakePHP if you are already using Symphony, or trying Alfresco if you already do Documentum) it might make sense to investigate and do a trial project in them.

Looking at your profile, it looks like you do interesting stuff. Not sure what industries you target (because it isn't outlined on your site), but you could definitely evaluate industries that have 'hard problems' (and money--don't forget the money).