The top 5 email openers from clients about to pull a “Can you just?

In at number 5, it’s the classic, “Hi Mark, hope you’re well.”

It’s a statement, not a question, as they don’t actually want you to answer whether you’re well or not - they want your focus to be on the “Can you just...” that’s about to follow.

At 4, we have, “Hi Mark, how was your holiday? Are your kids back at school now?”

This is the next level - they’ve made it personal. So now you feel like they’re your friend, and you’d always help out a friend, wouldn’t you?

An oldie but a goodie at number 3 “Hi Mark, we’ve looked at the designs and think they’re great.”

Immediate red flag. Nobody gives positive feedback. Ever. How many times have you gone on Trip Advisor to leave a positive review? You haven’t - you only leave reviews when the food is shit but you might start by saying how attentive the waitress was. That’s exactly what this is - they’re buttering you up to drop a “CYJ” that will see you redesigning every last detail of the thing they think is great.

A new entry at number 2: “Hi Mark, I spent 3 hours doing something on our LMS and now it’s disappeared.”

First things first - they haven’t spent more than 3 minutes on the LMS before realising they’ve forgotten everything you taught them in that handover training session 6 months back. So now they’re going to blame the technology that you built in order to guilt you into doing their job for them. Stay strong and just email them a link to the recording of their training session that you made.

And still holding on at number 1, it’s: “Hi Mark, our boss, Director X has taken a look at the project and had a few ideas...”

This one always comes once you think a project is signed, sealed and delivered. Up until this point, you’ve never heard of the mysterious Director Xan eleventh-hour spanner in the works who may not even be a real person. Is it just a clever ploy for the client to squeeze last-minute work out of you whilst absolving themselves of any blame? Probably. Whip out your contract that shows who on the client-side is responsible for final sign-off. If the named contact has signed the project off, Director X can do one.