When building websites, I’ve come to realize that there are very critical ways in which you need to qualify your prospects. If you’re a developer who’s just getting your feet wet, this can be a much more difficult challenge, as you’re no doubt hungry for any work you can get your hands on.

Still, even in the depths of my lowest financial points (which there has been no shortage of), I still feel I would be happier paying the rent late, rather than dealing with a business owner who doesn’t meet certain criteria.

That may sound arrogant, but truth be told, there needs to be qualifications from both sides. Ever feel like business owners are often polling developers or taking bids for a job? Like their price-shopping versus shopping for value or thinking of their long term ROI? Of course they are. That’s not uncommon.

I could break down what client qualifications I look for into several different posts (and probably eventually will) but for now I’m going to focus on one of my favorite (read: painstakingly annoying) ones. It goes like this:

“Trust me, it’s super easy.”

Any time I hear this from a business owner, I want to take a running leap toward the nearest cliff. It’s like nails on a chalkboard. It pains me.

For one, if the job is super easy, why aren’t you doing it yourself?

Okay, maybe I’m overreacting. It may be an innocent enough statement, but to me, it comes off as if the client is already dictating the project. They’re already putting very little value in hiring me, which is generally not the way any business relationship should be started.

Yes, there are certainly many times when a one-off job will be easy. Updating a typo is not difficult. But to me, it seems more often than not that the “easy” requests often involve deep structural changes, trying to trace someone else’s hack job, or one of my favorites: converting a website from one CMS to another…

After all, all you need to do is run the one-click Worpress installation and then import the Joomla data – trust me, it’s easy.

The Bottom Line:

Don’t make assumptions. What can easily move around in your Powerpoint presentation doesn’t always translate to web.

Further, business relationships will not be healthy if you’re undermining someone that you’re hiring. When I bring my car to get serviced, I go to a mechanic who I trust. Since I know as much about cars as I do about brain surgery, I don’t tell my mechanic when a job is easy or not.

A second opinion never hurts, but make sure you know what you’re talking about before you become a red flag to your developer.