When Client Enthusiasm is All Talk, No Action
The Polite Brush-Off: When Client 'Love It!' Leads to Radio Silence (And What To Do)
Ever had that nagging feeling when what a client says just doesn't feel right? They’re all sunshine and "Absolutelys!" on the surface, but there’s a pit in your stomach suggesting the reality is... well, less absolute. If that dissonance sounds familiar, you've encountered the charming world of performative promises. It’s precisely this kind of infuriating gap – words painting one picture, gut feeling another – that I was recently exploring (read: ranting about) on TikTok. You see it when you pour your heart into a proposal, or here at Knee Coal Web Design, craft a stunning site concept, only for their enthusiastic "Love it!" to be followed by an echoing silence. For your SMB, this isn't just an intuitive niggle; it's a red flag that can signal wasted resources and a serious drain on your sanity.
The Client "Absolutely!" Symphony (Often a Prelude to Deafening Silence)
Ever spent weeks crafting the perfect website proposal, detailing every glorious pixel and elegant line of code, only for the potential client to gush, "Absolutely! This is exactly what we've been searching for! We're so excited!" You mentally pop the champagne, maybe even update your LinkedIn to "Basically a Web Design God." And then… crickets. Crickets so loud you start to wonder if they’ve accidentally CC'd an entire entomology department.
Or the old chestnut: "Absolutely, I’ll have that content/those images/that vital piece of information over to you by COB Friday!" And Friday comes and goes, leisurely morphing into the following Tuesday, then sometime next fiscal year. You start to suspect their calendar is powered by Mayan prophecies rather than, say, Google. "Absolutely, we're ready to sign on the dotted line!" they declare with gusto, before disappearing faster than free donuts in the Knee Coal office.
It's enough to make you consider a career change to something less reliant on human follow-through, like professional cloud gazing. I once had a client "absolutely" adore a homepage mock-up. "Perfection!" they emailed, with enough exclamation marks to suggest genuine, possibly alarming, levels of excitement. Weeks of tumbleweeds later, I stumbled upon their new live site... which bore a suspicious resemblance to a GeoCities page from 1997, clearly cobbled together after a panicked late-night template purchase. I didn’t cry. I just stared into the middle distance and wondered if it was too late to become a lighthouse keeper.
The "Sciencey" Bit: Let's Talk "Affirmative Lying" (Or As I Call It, "Polite Evaporation")
Now, as I rather brilliantly (if I do say so myself, and I do) laid out in that TikTok video of mine – filmed, by the way, somewhere between wrestling with a particularly stubborn bit of CSS and my third coffee of the morning – this whole charade has a fancy psychological name. It's "affirmative lying." Teeny-tiny "pro-social lies." Bless our complex little human hearts. We’d rather tie ourselves in conversational knots than just spit out, "Look, Brenda, your idea is terrible, and I’ve got the attention span of a gnat on espresso right now."
People, it seems, engage in this verbal gymnastics not (always) out of pure, unadulterated malice. They do it to sidestep the awkwardness, to "keep the peace" (mostly their own), or to try and cushion a blow that feels like rejection. They're desperately trying to maintain their self-image as a "good, agreeable person," even if that means their words are about as substantial as candyfloss in a monsoon. They sound warm, but there's no actual heat coming off them.
The real zinger? For those of us who are even vaguely emotionally attuned – and if you're trying to run a business, deciphering client needs, and generally not lose your marbles, you're probably more attuned than a bat in a belfry – these feathery little lies don't soothe. They grate. We sense the chasm, the void between the enthusiastic "Absolutely!" and the subsequent black hole where action ought to be. It's like someone promising to bring a banquet and showing up with a single, slightly sad olive.
Your Business is Suffocating in "Absolutelys"? My Unsolicited (But Probably Golden) Advice:
So, your client list is a veritable orchestra of "absolutelys" that lead precisely nowhere. What's a dedicated, caffeine-fueled owner of Knee Coal Web Design (or any other awesome SMB) to do? Well, pull up a chair, because I’ve got a few thoughts, fresh from the trenches.
Ditch the "Absolutely" Chase. Hunt for Action Instead. Let's be brutally honest: "Absolutely" is the junk food of commitment. It’s cheap, easy, and ultimately unsatisfying. What you crave, what your business needs, is the solid, nutritious meal of actual, tangible action. If they say, "Absolutely, we want this website package!" your immediate, breezy follow-up should be, "Fantastic! So excited to get started. I’ll send over the contract and initial invoice now; once that’s settled by [clear, reasonable date], we can schedule our kickoff call." Their actions, or lack thereof, will tell you everything you need to know. Chasing verbal affirmations is like trying to knit fog – a pastime I may have considered during particularly frustrating debugging sessions.
Become a "Vibe Shift" Detective – And Name It (Gently!). When that effusive "Absolutely!" is followed by an eerie silence usually reserved for deep space, don’t just let it hang there like a bad smell in an elevator (or a poorly optimized image slowing down a homepage). A gentle, non-accusatory poke can be surprisingly effective. Try something like: "Hi [Client Name], just wanted to touch base on [Project Amazingness]. I remember you being really excited about [specific aspect] when we last chatted, but I've sensed a bit of a slowdown. No worries at all if your priorities have shifted, just wanted to see where things are at from your end." This does a few wonderful things: it shows you’re not a doormat, it gives them an elegant escape route if they genuinely need one, and it reinforces that your time and expertise (and sanity) are valuable. It creates space for real talk, not just performative pleasantries. Resist the urge to email in all caps: "YOU SAID ABSOLUTELY! I HAVE SCREENSHOTS!" While cathartic, it’s generally frowned upon.
Redesign Your Own Processes: Stop Being the Designated Overfunctioner. This is a big one, especially in service businesses like web design. If your entire workflow depends on you dragging clients, kicking and "absolutely-ing," over every single milestone, you’re going to burn out faster than a cheap sparkler. It’s simply not sustainable. Clarify your processes. Make your client onboarding so smooth it’s practically self-buttering. Establish clear boundaries and dependencies. If you need X from them before you can proceed with Y, make that a friendly but firm checkpoint. Your services, your expertise – your awesome Knee Coal Web Design magic – should be compelling enough that they’re motivated to hold up their end of the bargain. You're a business owner, not an emotional sherpa for indecisive clients (unless that's a niche you're carving out, in which case, more power to you, and please send brochures).
So, there you have it. The "affirmative lie" – just another delightful quirk in the grand, bewildering opera of human communication that can turn the already wild ride of running an SMB into a psychedelic rollercoaster.
Don’t let the phantom "absolutelys" haunt your waking hours. Focus on the doing, not just the saying. Call out the weird silences (with kindness!), and for the love of well-structured code and timely payments, ensure you’re not the only one paddling the canoe. You’ve got a business to build, brilliant websites to design (if you're us!), and maybe, just maybe, a TikTok career to reluctantly nurture.
The struggle, my friends, is absolutely… well, you know.
Got your own spectacular tales of client "absolutelys" leading to absolutely nothing? Spill the beans in the comments below. Here at Knee Coal Web Design, we’ve practically got a dedicated server for storing them.
