How to Handle Difficult Freelance Clients
Freelancing is supposed to be, well, freeing. It’s a step towards creating the work-life balance that truly works for you and building a purposeful career on your own terms. In short: it’s supposed to be immensely enjoyable. As a career choice, freelancing is often popped on a pedestal, with friends and family alike cooing about how envious they are and how they ‘wish they could do it too’.
This is not to say that when all is going well, freelancing isn’t like this, but it is a subtle reminder that freelancing comes with it’s own selection of difficulties too.
I’m sharing this because when I began wading into the freelance pool, I let myself stride into the deep end without much care. I trusted that I, my work and my time, would be respected. I thought there was an unspoken acknowledgement that as a freelancer, businesses and clients would work to ensure I was ‘looked after’.
My naivety, unfortunately, was quickly uncovered when I found I’d waded too far out in the deep end. When a difficult client reared their head, I was left adrift without a life jacket, wondering where it went wrong and how I could have been so stupid.
I wasn’t stupid. I just hadn’t prepared for things to go wrong, and facing a difficult client without preparation left me feeling inadequate and emotionally stressed.
Defining Difficult
‘Difficult’ can be tricky to define. In my office-based roles, there were all kinds of difficult clients, management or colleagues that drifted in and out of my working days. In this case, I had a few office friends to vent things through with, a regular paycheck that didn’t necessarily rely on these difficult individuals, and the ability to head home at 5pm and forget about the whole thing.
When freelancing, none of these things come into play. When a difficult client can lead to delays in my invoice getting paid, inappropriate feedback or comments about my work, and nobody to chat it all through with - lots of things that I’d normally smile politely through can begin to feel difficult and challenging.
In my experience so far, ‘difficult’ has taken shape in a few different ways:
Lack of clarity around desired outcomes/deliverables, including poor instructions and guidance and an unwillingness to pin things down. This puts a lot of weight on my shoulders to do all the guesswork.
Vague and overly critical feedback that isn’t actionable when a piece of work doesn’t meet expectations (you can see how this and the first point usually go hand-in-hand).
Reluctance to agree to or sign off on my standard freelance contract terms.
Changing project deliverables part way through a piece of work, or adding in ‘extras’ - essentially trying to get me to do more work that should have been agreed at the start.
Unreasonable communication demands - calling, emailing, or messaging me at unusual hours, demanding updates or that I send through half-completed work. This signifies a lack of trust, which makes any working relationship very difficult.
Delays in acknowledging invoices and paying invoices - even after several reminders.
Tips for Handling Difficult Clients
When the fall-out (loss of work, and as a result income, a ‘black mark’ against your freelance good name, a dip in resilience and confidence) of mismanaging a difficult client feels even more stressful than putting up with them, it can lead to a hell of a lot of discomfort. I’ve continued working with clients for far longer than I should have because I was worried I wouldn’t find a new client, or stressed about money, or thought ‘well, this is part of the freelance package, right?’
You can put all the right measures in place through contracts and agreed deliverables, and still have a client become difficult. The worst ones I’ve come across are those who start out like a dream, but dissolve into tantrum-throwing toddlers the moment you let them know your invoice hasn’t been paid for over a month. Handling these personalities is challenging, but a few things I’ve learned:
Give the Benefit of the Doubt
This might sound counterintuitive, but it’s really easy to jump to conclusions when dealing with someone who’s being difficult. Giving them the benefit of the doubt, means you approach them from a place of empathy and can offer an easy out to move things along. In the case of a client who hadn’t paid my invoice for a couple of months and who ignored a reminder, I reached out again saying I’d noticed an error on the original invoice and that this was perhaps why payroll hadn’t managed to pay it. The client jumped on the excuse and got to be the ‘hero’ who fixed things with payroll for me, rather than the slowpoke who’d ignored my emails.
Wait to Respond
When someone is being difficult and we don’t feel they're behaving fairly, it quickly puts our backs up and corners us into a space of defensiveness. I am the worst for wanting to respond straight away to emails or criticism, because I feel this burning need to get my point in the discussion. Two people conversing from places of heightened emotions never works out well in my experience, so instead of jumping straight in, I take my time. Whether it's half a day or a whole day, I wait to reply to difficult emails, requests or feedback, so I can approach it calmly and openly, rather than emotionally.
Talk to Them on the Phone
It’s easy to be a keyboard warrior, fearlessly sending out communications without knowing how they’re ‘landing’. I’ve received more than my fair share of such emails. When I start to get a feeling that a client is being difficult, I sometimes like to speak to them on the phone over replying via email. It’s not the same as face to face, but a phone call means we can hear tone of voice, verbal nods, and feel better connected to the person we’re talking to. If I need to pull up a client on a difficult issue, a phone call often leads to a better outcome as we’re two people talking properly instead of hashing it out on a keyboard.
Refer Back to Your Agreement
If the client still isn’t playing ball, refer back to your original agreement. Ideally, you put in place a contract that set out what you were going to deliver, by when and for how much. Make sure you include whether your fee includes edits and how many rounds. I got caught out early on when I didn’t take making edits into account. Four rounds in and I was slowly losing the will to live with a client who clearly had perfectionist compulsions. It was eating up my time and I wasn’t getting paid for it. Now, I stipulate two rounds of edits maximum in the fees I quote, with an additional fee per edit requested on top of that.
And Always...
Know when to walk away.
Wrap up the project, get paid, and reflect.
If the whole process went well, you felt valued and respected, and you got paid on time - great! Let the client know and tell them you’d be happy to work with them again in the future.
If it didn’t go quite so well, you don’t need to say anything. Make a mental note and if they reach out to you again in the future just let them know you’ve got other work and no availability for their project at this time. Don’t burn bridges completely, but make sure you act from a space of professionalism and maturity.
Just because they may have been difficult doesn’t mean you should let it impact your own integrity.
