What do you do when they won't do what you tell them to do?

How do you help a client that thinks they know more than you? This has been a major frustration in my career.  They may literally tell me how to plan, that they don't think they aren't going to pay certain fees vendors are charging, they don't think vendor or venue policies are fair, and they were under the impression...

I wish I was the person who could say, I told you so.  I guess I am the type that would rather steep quietly inside instead of making them feel the embarrassment. 

Even I have created policies and processes to reduce or limit these problems and some of my clients don't even want to follow them.  They feel their way of planning is better, then sure enough a few months later, they are frustrated and it feels like they blame me for it. 

Recently this happened and I guess, I had just had enough. I had a 1-hour Zoom meeting where the client and I went back and forth with their frustration about the budget being more than they wanted to spend.  I continued to remind them, this would not have happened if they would have followed my advice. I reminded them how many times I told them if they proceed the way they want to go, I couldn't control certain aspects.  They continued to tell me their frustration and as I look back, I now see, what they wanted was for me to take the blame.  Now, this client is a particular push person, was actually the mother of the bride and I will admit, I knew this was going to be a challenging client going into it.  Why did I take them you may be wondering?  They happen to be a service provider that we had know for years so, I really felt on a personal/professional level, I really couldn't refuse. Of course, that isn't true, sometimes we all go against our gut. So, fairly I did know I would face some type of issues. On top of it all, we gave a generous discount, and in the end, our company actually lost money. 

So after about an hour both of us saw neither was going to give in.  We discontinued the conversation. We were able to get back on track and the wedding turned out amazing and they loved everything. 

For me, the most important part of every challenging situation is to always reflect on the situation and ask myself, what did I learn? 

It can be easy to put the blame on the client and in fact, it could be their fault, but we can't always control other people. We can only control what we do, so I ask myself, what could I have done differently or how can I reduce the chance of that happening in the future. - Well, it turns out I just happened to create something years ago to stop this very thing from happening, but I chose not to have them sign the addendum stating they chose not to follow my advice. However, I have a current client who is wanted to skip the very same step. I have a meeting with them today, so guess what am I going to do? She will need to sign the same addendum I created previously. Did I learn my lesson? I guess we will see. ;)

 

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