Clients that make you SCREAM

It happened again. The Friday POW-POW, WAM-BAM, One-Two, Hit-n-run. We were wrapping up a long, hard week then the phones start ringing. Various clients at the same company started calling us. It’s budget cut time.

It actually ticked me off, so I decided not to immediately write about it. Instead I pushed it out of my head for the weekend and waited until Monday to think about it again. We started 2006 planning in 3Q last year. By November, all the budgets should’ve been approved. Then one nutty thing after another happened and most of the budget wasn’t approved until late March. Now we’ve been waiting for the past two months for some remaining portions of the budget to get approved, but they are on hold again.

The clients had very specific goals for this year, but they’ve caused so many problems that I don’t expect they will achieve their targets.

In my experience, budget cuts with annual clients usually start in Q3, around July/August. To get a call suspending Q3 in mid May is unusual. But this particular company is so screwed up right now in it’s marketing execution I’m not surprised. Just frustrated.

I recognize that sometimes a company needs to stop, step back and re-align, but it is frustrating when all the active work has to crawl to a halt. Deadlines are tight and in some cases are past due.

I have several clients that excel in creating chaos. We’ll always try to give them the best advice and counsel, but inevitably, these people just cause one frustrating situation after another.

Tell me about your worst clients. Please post a comment.
-Roland

Roland Reinhart is an interactive marketing professional. His observations can be found at Chaos365.com and AdMadMan.com.

©2006 Roland Reinhart. All Rights Reserved.