“Yes, when I worked with her before, I increased her company’s engagement by 5000%.” The second those words left my mouth in a prospective social media client meeting I wanted to pluck them from the air and stuff them back in as quickly as possible. But I said it. The prospect heard it. And now I’d have to deal with the consequences of it.

Am I saying huge numbers aren’t possible? No, they totally are. But you can’t know how to do them until you are in the thick of it, knowing intimately what the audience and the client are both capable and whether they can get to that level where big numbers live. So basically, if I’m talking big numbers in a prospective meeting, I have no idea what I’m walking into.

And if we are talking a new business meeting, it’s particularly important to start off on the right foot with the right kind of expectations. Too many people walk into meetings like this thinking social media will solve all of their problems. I work in social media and I know how limited its scope can be, but not everyone does. So coming in as if you are not their savior will help you in the long run.

Let’s talk about what that looks like.

Limit how much you say you will increase engagement and reach

I had the perfect community. They were willing to do anything I asked and gave me amazing things in return. The problem? The client was terrible. They had promised a budget for ads, but every time we started talking about ads, I’d ask for what my budget was. Silence. And then somewhere down the line, I realized they were doing ads with goals like getting more messages. So I had to spend a lot of time dealing with that instead of working with this community who wanted to do something incredible. All the variables had looked so promising, but now I couldn’t make anything happen.

What ended up being the biggest problem here was that I was then compared against the numbers I said I was capable of doing for this particular client. I couldn’t do it, because I had promised too much. The client had been so great during the prospective process, and even though I have lots of filters up, some bad clients do still get through.

I know you have to give some goals to a new social media client, but make them extremely modest. In fact, I now tell clients to expect a decrease in engagement as we make the switch over but that it should balance out as we get going in earnest. Will I let a client have a decrease? I will throw everything at it to prevent that. But if the client starts working against me or the community needs more than I had budgeted to give them, at least I have a cushion.

Think of what you can do under the worst circumstances and leave that as your goal. When you beat those numbers, the client is surprised and delighted. There is nothing better than a surprised and delighted client.

Limit how often you tell a social media client you are online

I am online an endless amount of time. I’m an addict. I can’t help it. But when a social media client asks, I’m online for them nine in the morning and five in the afternoon, Monday through Friday. It’s a lie, and they know it’s a lie.

So why do I tell it?

I used to have no balance between my work and personal life. I’d work every possible moment, because it was the only place I found joy. I was drained but happy.

Then my personal life started bringing me joy, and I wanted to spend a reasonable amount of time there as well. But I had given my clients the expectation that I would be online for them all day, every day. Most understood that I was overworking their contracts and knew that I was giving them better quality when I had a good balance to my life. The ones that did not ended up having to go, because they couldn’t comprehend the change. Setting the expectation of your schedule in the first place and keeping to it will save you from the heartache of having your time end with a client prematurely.

Limit your scope of work

Like I said above, I have a tendency to overwork for my clients. I honestly now have a little overwork is factored into my fees, because I know myself. But this is probably my worst habit.

You see once your scope of work creeps a little, it tends to start creeping and creeping until you lose track of where you originally started. There’s just no coming back from that.

The best thing you can do is to set the ground rules clearly at the beginning. When you do think it’s fair to step out just a little bit from that scope, make it clear that it’s outside of your scope but you are willing to do it this one time. When you don’t think it’s fair, ask if your client would like you to price out the change in scope.

If that scares you, think of what will happen to your business if you constantly overwork. Your time will slowly be eaten away and you will have less time for work from other clients. That can create real problems that can cause resentment toward your client and affect the quality of work you are giving them. Eventually all of this will kill your business. It’s better for you, your business and client if you just set expectations from the beginning and price services out when they start going into scope creep.

Clients are always going to try to get more out of you than they are paying for. Just make sure you have clear boundaries and communication. Then you can continually set correct expectations and keep that client-consultant relationship healthy.

How are you managing client expectations?