As a busi­ness owner, par­tic­u­larly when you’re the owner of a new busi­ness, it can be pretty hard to say no to a cus­tomer or client’s request. You need the work, they’re will­ing to pay you to do it, so why would you say no?

“A ‘no’ uttered from deep­est con­vic­tion is bet­ter and greater than a ‘yes’ merely uttered to please, or what is worse, to avoid trouble.”

Mahatma Ghandi

What­ever your area of work, you are likely pas­sion­ate about it. You prob­a­bly have some edu­ca­tion or expe­ri­ence in your cho­sen pro­fes­sion. And you’ve likely devel­oped some strong opin­ions along the way. Mixed in with all of that is your own per­sonal pref­er­ences that make you another unique human being on this planet.

Make My Logo Bigger!

And so what hap­pens when a cus­tomer asks you to do some­thing and you disagree?

Per­haps, if you paint houses for a liv­ing, they think their house should be painted black and they’ve come to you to paint it black for them. You, how­ever, believe that an all black house doesn’t do much for resale (Unless you live in New Zealand) nor does it help with heat in the sum­mer. Telling them no, that you dis­agree with the colour choice, might cost you the job.

Or per­haps a client is ask­ing you, their graphic designer, to design a poster to look a cer­tain way because “every­one else in my indus­try has a poster like that!” Do you fol­low their request or do you push back and try and get the client to see the ben­e­fit of hav­ing their own, unique design that may cost a bit more in time to cre­ate but will help set them apart? Tell them no and they might leave and go hire that design firm down the street.

I would argue that the cus­tomer came to you because they saw you as an expert in your par­tic­u­lar area. You are doing nei­ther of you any favours if you go along with all the ideas the cus­tomer has, par­tic­u­larly if they run counter to what you know to be true as a result of your train­ing, edu­ca­tion and expe­ri­ence. The cus­tomer ends up with a poorly painted house and you end up look­ing bad because you painted it for them.

No One Noes

In her arti­cle for A List Apart enti­tled “No One Noes: Learn­ing to Say No to Bad Ideas”, Whit­ney Hess makes a great case for say­ing no to bad ideas as well as tact­ful ways to han­dle dif­fi­cult sit­u­a­tions when a no might be nec­es­sary, including:

• By cit­ing best prac­tices, par­tic­u­larly when talk­ing about web design. If a change in design will cause less acces­si­bilit, frus­trated users or com­pat­i­bil­ity with com­mon devices then you might need to say no.
• Using data to backup your argu­ment. User test­ing & inde­pen­dent indus­try research can go a long way to con­vinc­ing a client of the cor­rect path to take.
• You can price your­self out of con­tention. By show­ing the real cost of doing what the cus­tomer wants you to attempt, you can hope­fully show the cus­tomer it’s not worth your time or their money.

How to Say No

Whit­ney quotes a pas­sage from “The Power of a Positive No" by William Ury that helped her move forward from a plain 'no' to something she calls a 'positive no':

The struc­ture of a pos­i­tive no is a “Yes! No. Yes? state­ment.” In Ury’s words: The first Yes! expresses your inter­est; the No asserts your power; and the sec­ond Yes? fur­thers your rela­tion­ship. For exam­ple, you might say “I, too, want prospec­tive cus­tomers to see our com­pany as cur­rent and approach­able, but I don’t feel that a dozen social media badges at the top of the page will help us achieve that. What if we came up with a few alter­na­tive approaches and chose the most effec­tive one together?”

No One Noes by Whit­ney Hess

How can you help your cus­tomers by say­ing no? Remem­ber, you are the expert and they came to you for your advice not for you to be their ser­vant to do their bidding.

Get in touch with me if you have any thoughts, ques­tions or sug­ges­tions for how you can say no to cus­tomers — and keep them as clients.