Three days ago, after I announced that I’d let Arnold Schwarzenegger shortcut his way into my coaching program, I got an reply from a long-time reader and customer, with a sad but familiar story:
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I was lucky with a sales letter I wrote. I made a proposal. Their board loved it. When I actually wrote the piece the attorneys tore it apart. Can’t do this. Can’t say that…
I felt like walking away from it because I knew their ideas wouldn’t work. But they were still excited. I should have walked away, but it paid pretty good, and if it sold this gig would bring a lot more work. I didn’t walk away. I needed the money. It bombed. Not one response.
Fortunately for me, my contact said, “At least we know this type of advertising won’t work for us.”
I thought, “No. Your attorneys won’t let it work for you.” But I said, “You’re right, who would have thought it would have done so badly?”
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I say this story is sad but familiar because in the past all those things happened to me as well.
I got to working with clients I should never have worked with. I stayed with bad clients because I needed the money and because of the promise that it would bring future work. I had clients, or people working for them, rip up my copy, replace it with their own, and then tell me that what I wrote didn’t work.
The guy who wrote me the above message wanted to know if I had ever had business insurance as a copywriter. You know, to protect myself in these kinds of situations, when my copy produces zero sales, and the client has a team of lawyers.
The fact is, I never did have business insurance as a copywriter.
What’s more, I figure the way to deal with above situations is not after the fact, with insurance, but proactively, by choosing the right clients and by setting the right expectations.
It’s not an easy thing to do. But it’s not immensely difficult either. There are different ways you can go about it. But if you ask me how, my recommendation is to check out Steve Raju’s ClientRaker.
Steve’s process will help you both 1) choose the right clients, and 2) set the right expectations with those clients.
You can think of it as an investment — insurance against any bad clients you have now, or might be tempted to take on in the future.
Registration for ClientRaker closes in just 8 short hours, at 8pm CET/11am PST. And in fact, the first ClientRaker training will happen later today. If you’d like to get in while there’s still time: