How to manage difficult clients, with help from DesignStudio, How&How and An Open Understanding

Working with clients, at its core, is about a relationship working towards a shared goal. We’re not here to call out toxic behaviour or industry practices, however, like many professional interpersonal relationships, there can be tricky situations to manoeuvre from time to time. To find out more, we spoke to three practices of varying sizes and structures to see what rules and agreements they implement to keep projects and payments running smoothly. Nobody ever enjoys having to chase up an overdue payment, especially with bills and salaries to pay. How can we best optimise the process to ensure all work is fairly, timely and accurately compensated? “At DS,” Vinay Mistry and Elise Santangelo-Rous, Executive Creative Directors of DesignStudio in London tell us, “we try to ensure that from the outset we are transparent with expectations of payment at each stage of the process.” With a clear timeline of both deliverables and expectations, they find that this ensures “everyone is on the same page before a project starts and is a commitment for everyone to stick to.” For branding agency How&How, located in Lisbon, LA, and London, the rare few instances of a client’s late payment will usually be sorted with “a gentle, then a slightly sterner” reminder. “Usually it’s due to the finance team needing a nudge from a project manager on the client side,” Co-founder Rog How tells us.