Negotiate, be flexible, make the deal, do not let the client go. Or, better, these are friends, relatives, colleagues of your biggest client. If you want to impress the real client, best to take care of these associations.
Amateur hour.
Why? Because amateurs have not done the work of understanding who they actually are as artists and creative business owners. Their story is a permutation of the same story every other amateur is telling: I do pretty (and easy, stress-free, customer-service oriented, blah, blah, buh blah). Professionals, on the other hand, know that on which they stand. Professionals know who their art is for and, more importantly, who it is not. Professionals align everything to signal to the right client that this is their home: price, process, budget. Price is a reflection not just of value but relative scarcity — how many projects will it take to earn what is necessary. To the client, how big is their group matters more than just about anything. Do you have the time to give me the attention I require? Process is the idea that there is never a time you do not know where you have been, where you are and where you are going. Oh, and why. Budget is knowing that it can ALWAYS be done for less, just not by your creative business AND that it can ALWAYS be done for more, just not by your business.
If you can appreciate the foundation above, how exactly would you compromise that foundation and still expect it to be structurally sound? Of course, you cannot. That said, compromise is not flexibility. Flexibility is like a slinky. You can stretch it, twist it, smush a slinky. It looks completely different each way you move it, however, it is the same toy. So too with your creative business. You can complete projects in record time or extended time, work at the top of your budget range or the bottom, this style or that, but the structure, the ribs of the slinky never change. Bend or break a rib and you destroy the toy and your creative business.
All of which leads me to a situation I see all too often. You have a fantastic client who values and appreciates everything about you, your art and your creative business. An association of the client — relative, friend, colleague — shows up and trades on the relationship you have with your amazing client. You assume (wrongly) that assisting these associations will serve your relationship with your amazing client. So you go down the road of doing what you do not do in the name of supporting your client. It almost never works out.
Unless associations are clients who, themselves, care and value what you and your creative business offer, they will never give you what you need to be remarkable for them. Simply, they do not care about what you (and your amazing client) care about. And because they do not care about what you do, they cannot appreciate what you built (ahem, you did not build it for them). You will then be caught in the middle — trying to serve your amazing client through their association, which association is working with you because of the amazing client but is not, in fact, an amazing client. A disaster waiting to happen since you will likely fail with the association and alienate your amazing client because of that failure, all in spite of the fact that you were doing what you were to impress them. Complete backfire.
The solution? Evaluate each client on their own merits. If the potential client does not fit — budget, style, sophistication, etc. — then simply allow them to go and acknowledge that any anger that may come from your amazing client will quickly dissipate as they remember why THEY love you. The frustration of failing their association, however, will linger for a very long time. Understand that not serving the association creates exactly zero risk that the amazing client will go to those that would. And if they would, a) they were not so amazing to begin with; and/or b) they will be back when they realize how much THEY do not fit with the association’s selected creative business.
Being ever more true to you, your art and your creative business is its own reward. Leave compromise and accommodation to the amateurs.
