Kristie T’s Home Business Blog Fun, mom-geared work-at-home tips and advice on making money on the net.

Have you ever had a time when you really needed to make a tough client communication? Today I had one of those days. I had done some work on trade before with a friend. I put together a quick website for him, he in turn gave me some mentoring.

Well, recently, my friend/client asked for a huge chunk of work that I felt was above and beyond our trade agreement. I was in a panic. I knew I needed to communicate with him that I couldn’t do it for free and didn’t have the words to say it.

Here’s an outline of what a dear coaching friend of mine had to say. Keep this in mind next time you need to make a difficult client communication. My coaching friend said, make it like an Oreo cookie, say something nice (the chocolate), then in the middle, put the communication you need to say (the filling), and then on the outside close with a reassurement of the nice sentiment (the other chocolate).

Here’s the gist of what I said:

I really appreciate all have you done to help each other. And although when we started, I did your website for you basically on trade for , I think that current scope of work you need goes outside our trade.

I’m sure you can understand that it’s my responsibility to let you know if something you need is outside of the realms of our barter agreement.

I want to continue to support you. I hope you will consider a fee based arrangement for your current “chunk” of service needs.

After talking with you, I can give you a quote for the estimated amount of hours on the project at my current rate. And since you are a friend, I would be happy to discount that of $10 per hour off of that.

I really respect, like, and enjoy working with you and truly hope you will understand the nature of the situation.

I am happy to discuss this in person (or on the phone) if you would like.

In the future, if you have 5 minute quick updates of just pasting on something new or whatever, I am happy to help you with that. But I have the feeling this project will take several hours to complete. And I really do need to bill for a project of that size.

Or, if you have bigger jobs (more than 5 minutes) I will need to bill that work out.

Let me know how you’d like to proceed!

Kristie T

So, I hope that if you get in a pickle and need to say something difficult to a client, that the Oreo technique helps you to uphold your boundaries and needs while preserving the client relationship.

Have you ever had a tough client situation like that? Share your client story here.