Ask HN: How to handle clients asking for a design document before hiring.

My $0.02 - free advice is often worth what you pay for it - caveat emptor ...

Tell him you'd love the job, and can provide a portfolio to show that you've done this sort of work before.

Then quote a price to provide the broad outline, and make that a deliverable. Then quote for any given solution to a problem. Make sure that you get paid for each piece of work before you do the next. Make it clear that you always do this until you have a history with a client - it's a clean, clear and professional way of working, especially remotely.

Provide your work in small, valuable deliverables. You're doing work - charge for it. Make it clear that at any point he can take what you've done and go elsewhere, and then charge at a rate where you'd be happy if he did so.

Make it clear that you're doing work, you're spending time, you're using your expertise, and you're happy to do so and get paid for it.

Be cheerful, constructive and helpful.

Thanks, this should really help.

Excellent advice. But from the description of the OP I doubt this will ever go anywhere.

Is this a company or an individual? If it's an individual I would suggest to run. If it's a company then maybe there's a little more hope...?

  > ... from the description of the OP
  > I doubt this will ever go anywhere.

I agree entirely. In some ways this is a strategy to appear (and in fact be) professional, while at the same time avoiding the death-spiral. The point is that you don't want this kind of client - you want clients who will

* specify clearly

* let you do the work

* pay promptly

There is always some give-and-take when you first start out, but this kind of client sounds like a complete pain, and a waste of time. You need to train him, or lose him.

From your description they will never pay, regardless. Remain resolute - you are saving your time and there is no money to be lost, because they would never pay anyway.

Unless they do, in which case you've established a new relationship.

The real epiphany comes when you realize you don't want these types of exchanges to go anywhere. If your intent is to be paid for your work then you have to develop strategies to separate paying and non-paying clients very early in the relationship.

This same thought process works for job interviews, too. Let's say that failure to disclose your current salary means you won't be considered for the job. Would you have enjoyed working for that organization anyway? Time saved up front for both parties.

No, absolutely not.

1) Unless the client has already signed a contract (and I hope you require a down payment) don't give away the farm. Meaning, don't give him planning, architecture, design, etc. things that hey should be paying for before you are in a contractual relationship that requires him to pay you. You have to protect yourself.

2) Don't work on spec (speculation), ever. That means that if the client wants to see a design before deciding to work with you, walk away and don't look back. No exceptions. This is a giant blinking red signal telling you that this client will not and does not respect the skill that goes into your work, and will be a pain in the ass for you. These people are almost never worth your time or what they are paying you - if they pay you at all.

Respectfully tell this client that your policy doesn’t permit spec work. Check out http://no-spec.com for resources and details on how to explain this to your client.

Not sure if this will help, but this is how we operate at the web design company I manage:

1) Prospect gets in touch with us via email or phone.

2) We send them a "Project Planner". This is a questionnaire with key questions (i.e. "What's the goal of your project?") that we've put together.

3) We quickly review the project and send the prospect an estimate of how much it will cost to develop and an estimated timeline. We make sure to make the prospect know the quote and timeline is based on the ideal that it doesn't includes revisions. Something like: Each revision will extend the delivery date by XX days.

5) If the prospect accepts we send them a contract and ask for a 50% payment before we do any work. If they are not comfortable with that, or the project is too big, we ask for 25% and then setup several payment deadlines as the project moves forward.

6) After the retainer has been paid, we send the (now) client a new questionnaire, called "Client Worksheet". Here we get specific to get to know the client better.

6) Once we receive payment, we make some research on the project and provide some wireframes along with simple explanations on how we think the goal can be achieved.

7) After the client is happy with the final wireframe and signs it off, we proceed to design the mockups. We already know what he likes so usually a couple of revisions is good enough to get final approval.

8) Once the design has been approved we start coding. Most of the "how will it work" has been already discussed through the wireframes, so it's pretty easy at this point.

9) Testing, final payment and launch :-)

Hope this helps!

that sounds like a good workflow, thanks for the comment

i am just curious about the "Project Planner" and "Client Worksheet" you have mentioned in the comment. that's a good way to collect prospect's idea of the project. Any pointers that'd guide us build such questionnaire ? thanks.

Hey,

Sure. It depends on which kinds of projects you usually get though (most of the time we develop WordPress sites). We try to keep the questionnaires as short as possible, while gathering all the info we need.

For the Project Planner we ask things such as (In parenthesis how this helps us):

- What do you need a website for? (The GOAL)

- Do you need dynamic content? How often? (CMS or not?)

- What action(s) should the user perform when visiting your site? (Which CMS? Are there plugins for this?)

- How many sections will your website have? (How many screens we'll need to design)

- What's your budget? (Is the client a fit?)

As for the client worksheet:

- In which market does your business operate? (Helps with research)

- What sets you apart from the competition? Please provide competitor URLs. (What can we focus in to make it stand out)

- Briefly describe the need you seek to solve. (What we'll focus on)

- Color preferences (We also suggest using colourlovers.com to send us a palette if they want to. Otherwise we pick the colors)

- List two or three sites that you like, either how they look or the way they work (Usually they'll like a certain format or UX)

---

LMK if you have any other questions. Hope this helps!

this will really help, we will add few more questions to suite our client base. thanks for making this clear..

It is possible he is using you to learn. Dealing with that is very common in consulting.

There are a few things you can do.

- Find out who will be making the decision. Insist that you will provide more information as you meet the decision makers. - Find out what alternatives they are considering. Use this knowledge to better position yourself. - Explain that are many important details still to be considering that will be addressed as you continue the project.

I am very rusty. But read about Solution Selling. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solution_selling

You can tell him WHAT you are going to do but not HOW. I used to have a client who would keep asking me for solution with the lure of a project coming up, but then said thanks, problem solved. I had to jokingly say I need to start charging for consultation for providing solution, but eventually had to fire the client.

But on the other hand, I have clients whom I gave detail proposal on WHAT to be done in the projects and the projects were awarded.

i ended my day concluding the same line : >> You can tell him WHAT you are going to do but not HOW.

here is what happened:

my bid was accepted, job poster selected me for interview, he sent me 3 emails straight in last seven hours via private messaging on the bidding site. i asked him to share his contact, asked him to join me in skype, got no response. he continued asking "how would you scale", "how would you fix database..", "how would you speed up the app..", "what is preferred framework for such large project.." i was more concerned about getting my first job via such freelance market, i replied all his queries, spent my day goggling around the questions. when i hit the reply button to his 3rd email, there came a notification in my email inbox "you job application was declined." 3rd email was about preferred mvc framework for his web site.

my bad, this thread was not here yesterday.

RiderOfGiraffes is absolutely correct. I often do quite a bit of documentation upfront to make sure the client knows exactly what they are going to get. From wireframes to technical summaries, each is a step in the overall project process (and completely billable). Don't be afraid to shoot down something you think is considered "spec" work such as a bit of UI demonstration or data modeling. They either see your previous experience and trust you or not. Otherwise run away - could be a shitty client.

In answer to your specific case - explain to him that the first deliverable is a "project brief" which summarizes the project and proposed "high-level" solutions. Again - totally billable.

Been there done that.

The key is he wants all this detail before committing. This guy is never going to pay you anything, why should he, he is getting you to do everything for free. I have been there hundreds of times and not once has it lead to anything. For all you know, he is another freelancer who is having you do the design work for HIS client by asking these questions. That has happened to me before.

Detailed work requires a retainer paid in advance. Treat this as a lawyer or any other such professional would. Clients get a 30 minute free consultation wher eyou come to understand their problem and if you can help them. Then they make a decision to to hire you or not. If they want you, based on the interview and your reputation, they start by writing you a $5,000 check and you start billing off it. If there is money left over or they change their mind they get a full refund of the amount not spent.

Why not charge him for the consulting? You are providing him a service solving these problems (or proposing solutions to them). Make it fair to you and him. If he's not satisfied, you can both walk away. If the project continues, you'll be starting from a pretty good position.

There's no such thing as a client you have never worked with before until there is a signed contract. In other words, the person is a potential client, not an actual client.

In my opinion, you just write up a proposal that covers your interests and see what happens - try not to spend more than 1/2 a day on the proposal per $10,000 in revenue.

Thank you very much, everyone :) Your comments have given me a lot of clarity on how to filter good clients and how not to fall for spec work.

Sounds exactly like what you're afraid of. He's milking you for free consulting. Tell him no designs will be forthcoming until he signs a legally binding contract and/or the first payment is made, depending on how you operate. I would assume that if you give him everything for free, he won't turn around and pay you after the fact.

Never do spec work. Never.

Show him your portfolio and examples of solutions you have solved that are similar. Unless a contract is signed, don't do anything more than a nice proposal.