In continuing the theme from yesterday, your clients are like your children.
As a parent, you quickly learn everything is a type of negotiation. Whatever you give your children, they’ll want more of it or a bigger version or to keep it for longer. More ice cream, a bigger balloon or to stay at their friend’s house for longer.
One way to mitigate this is to make them believe they have a choice in the matter. You provide them a question with only two answers, and these are answers of your choice. Thus, you could ask, “Do you want peas or carrots with your meal?” When they select one, they believe the choice was theirs to make freely.
This approach also works really well with clients.
Your clients, just like children, will often want more of it, bigger things or things for longer. More features, bigger implementations, and longer hours of your time.
Manage this by offering them two choices:
- Will users need access to this feature or can we hide it from them?
- Do you want to hear the good news first or the bad news?
- Should we stay with out-of-the-box functionality or buy this 3rd party addon?
The takeaway
Controlling outcomes is important to managing clients and preventing runaway projects. Using the two choices method is a great hack to make the client feel free and in control when in fact you are in control.