
Saying "NO" - fogus
http://blog.objectmentor.com/articles/2009/12/04/saying-no
======
jon_dahl
Four techniques for saying "No" without your client knowing it:

1\. Tell them how much something will cost. "Great idea! A live chat widget
will cost another $20,000. What do you think?"

2\. Make them prioritize. Pick things that you know are more important. "How
should we prioritize that change compared to paid subscriptions and the Help
system?"

3\. Make them remember. Put it on the backlog and don't start it until they
ask for it again.

4\. Offer them alternatives. We once had a client who wanted native Excel
exports of reports. We suggested either CSV exports or HTML table exports,
which Excel can read.

(This is more "no" to features than to design decisions, but the principal is
similar.)

~~~
jhancock
Absolutely!! The answer is always yes, sometimes qualified. The only no is
when you decide you don't want them as a client and you find a reason to not
do further work.

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edw519
This is interesting, the comic makes it kinda cute, but OP's conclusion is
exactly the opposite of what I firmly believe. I have learned over the years
that the best way to win and keep quality business is to find a way to say
"YES".

Buyers of software products, like small children, hear one word more than any
other: "no". "No, it can't be done." "No we don't do that." "No, if you did
that it would screw up everything else." "No, that's stupid" It doesn't matter
if you're right, all that matters is that you're just another person saying
"no".

You differentiate yourself from others by giving the exact same answer, but
with the word "yes" instead of "no".

"Yes, in order to do that, we'd also want to look at..."

"Yes, let's make it 'pop' using some of the things we bring to the table..."

"Yes, no one even thought about that, and we should now before we get any
further into this thing..."

or even the extreme:

"Yes, there's a way to do that. No one has ever done that before, so now is
the time for someone to be first..."

As I've told my customers many times, "The answer is always 'Yes'. You may not
want to do it once you understand what it will take, but the answer is still
'yes'."

No other word has helped me more to find myself and do my best work for
others.

~~~
lsc
huh. I guess I am more 'product oriented' than you are, but I tell people 'no'
when they want passwords rather than ssh keys to access their out of band
console. I imagine it would be different if I was charging by the hour, but
I'm not.

But this is part of why I like being a product company. I do my R&D on my own
time, without an angry customer if it fails or if I take longer than I
thought. "Here" I say, "are the products I've sold to hundreds of other
people. I can sell these to you, too." Then I add "If you want something else,
suggest it, I might add that as a product as well, then I will sell it to you
and others who want it at a low cost, but I'm not going to make it just for
you."

(of course, being a product company, if I screw up production, I have many,
many angry customers.)

For me, this has largely solved the problem of not estimating correctly and/or
managing customer expectations. Here is what I have. you don't like it? Oh,
I'm sorry. would you like a refund?

~~~
DougBTX
On the other hand, if you can convince them that ssh keys are better than
passwords, you might never get to the point where you have to say no.

~~~
lsc
mostly it's a filter. If you can't make an OpenSSH public key, you should
probably not be managing your own VPS, and you should certainly not sign up
with me, as all my interfaces are command-line only, and I don't have a nice
GUI web control panel like many competitors do, and my support is email-only.
go, pay the extra bucks, pay slicehost, and get someone to talk you through it
on the phone. I don't charge enough to deal with that sort of thing.

If you wanted to hire me by the hour, that'd be different, but we're talking
about people giving me $8/month.

~~~
DougBTX
Your line makes more sense now, since you're talking about a different
situation from the article. It's a different relationship; since anything you
do would have to benefit the many of your users at once to be worthwhile, it
makes sense to have users who are similar to each other, ie, to say no to the
outliers.

~~~
lsc
Yeah. a successful product business involves a whole lot more 'no' than a
consulting business.

However, I think even when working by the hour, when I charge what I seem to
be able to charge lately, I try to say "No, that's outside of my area of
competence" because really, they are paying me way too much for me to 'figure
it out.'

When it is in my area of competence, I think it's just as important to say
"No, I think that's a bad idea, and here's why" - They are paying me silly
rates, presumably because I know more than they do about what we are trying to
get done; Sure, sometimes you need to translate the technical choice into a
business decision and push it up the chain, but sometimes it's a purely
technical decision, and within your realm of knowledge, and in that case, I am
not doing my job unless I say "Don't do that" when the customer asks me to do
something that is clearly incorrect.

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city41
In a previous lifetime, I was a graphic designer working at the Field Museum
in Chicago. Fresh out of college and my first task was to design a logo for a
client. I was eager to please, and I came up with about 10 logo ideas. I
showed them to the client and all hell broke loose. They basically wanted a
"super" logo that combined all 10 ideas, plus their own ideas, and I found
myself in a very awkward situation of trying to figure out how to tell them
that's a really bad idea. After the ordeal was done, my boss said "Yeah, next
time, only show them two."

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jsdalton
The comic referenced at the top of the article was good for a laugh or two:
<http://theoatmeal.com/comics/design_hell>

~~~
markpercival
I think it also illustrates where this article goes wrong. You don't say NO to
the client, you say NO to a potential customer before they become the client.

Citing the second part of the comic - Client: "Our last designer was an
IDIOT". Then the next appropriate question is - What idiot hired/managed him?

You're about to become the 'last designer'

~~~
RyanMcGreal
> You don't say NO to the client, you say NO to a potential customer before
> they become the client.

This is critical, and it's fairly easy to recognize potential 'problem
clients' when there's still time to escape.

~~~
TravisLS
Or just make sure you have an escape clause in your contract. Maybe the last
designer actually was an idiot. I've found that if you behave like the doctor
(in the article) it's often quite easy to steer the course of projects with
even very difficult clients.

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j_baker
I wish I could vote this up 100 times. The first rule of requirements
gathering: the customer doesn't know what they want. You have to tell them.

~~~
run4yourlives
While I'm not disagreeing with needing to say no to a client, the moment you
figure you know everything they want or more importantly, need, YOU are the
one with the problem.

There are numerous examples of programmers/providers figuring that they know
what the customer needs. They're called enterprise software.

~~~
j_baker
There's a difference between telling people what they want and telling people
that they want something that they don't want. You have to listen to them. But
bear in mind that if they

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amix
I think designers have this problem since anyone can have opinions about
design. It's also hard to argue objectively why one design should be better
than another, since design is subjective (for most parts).

Maybe the design process should be more "Google like" and include more design
patterns that are field tested. The basic principle should be to use data to
back up claims instead of subjective arguments. An example, if the customer
wants an "intro page", then point to a "anti pattern" that argues against
intro pages. Etc.

~~~
dschobel
Couldn't you just defer to functionality when pressed on a design decision?

If you can't justify your decisions then I'd say having to humor the client is
fair-game.

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holdenc
If you find yourself saying no a lot you need new clients, or a new line of
work. Being a designer is hard, and so is finding good clients.

As an aside -- nightmare clients tend to crop up more on projects with thin
margins. If you are taking on a new client, make sure the margins are not
thin.

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Raphael_Amiard
The problem with his rationale regarding the very comic he's talking about, is
that every body and their mothers think they got a clue about design, and that
they know what is beautiful better than you . Most of us think that way, and
that's what makes designing web sites such a painful job

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byrneseyeview
Part of this is just diplomacy. Don't say "No," just figure out what results
they want, not just what actions they've asked you to take;

[http://www.byrnehobart.com/blog/how-not-to-say-no-to-a-
clien...](http://www.byrnehobart.com/blog/how-not-to-say-no-to-a-client/)

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gsiener
I thought this was a review of <http://islostarepeat.com>

