Another waste of time...

A few days ago, I got assigned to a client who requested for a pretty last minute consultation session, and initially I wasn't too keen on the idea of meeting a new client because I am just really lazy af, but since no one else in the office was available, I decided to take it and just see how it goes, if the client is nice and we click, then I will follow up, if he or she is a piece of work, then the consultation will be all they get.



My HR then sends over the client's details and when I read through the requirements, it just felt like such a waste of time because the budget the client had set aside was not realistic at all. I have been in this line long enough to know of a rough estimate and running the project at her budget will incur huge losses on my end, but since the appointment has been set and I have been assigned to deal with this, I thought let's just get the consultation over and done with.



So 6 pm rolls around and the client finally arrives, she strolls into the office with her husband and when I saw the husband, I immediately got a bit worried because he was Caucasian, and the last time I spoke to a Caucasian homeowner, that old fart was just really unpleasant to deal with, so I was a little worried that this client's husband might be the same because they also look to be around the same age.



As I introduce myself to the wife, she immediately apologize for being a little late and also requesting for a consultation so last minute, I waved off her apologies and told her it wasn't a problem and she then introduces her husband to me and he was really nothing like that old fart I had to deal with early last year.




We started the consultation and they were a really lovely couple, very pleasant to talk to and it just made me feel better about this potential waste of time because the very first thing I ask the wife was how much she was willing to stretch her budget and she told me...

"$25,000 is the maximum we will go."

.... which is still extremely unrealistic and I really don't like it when a client gives me a maximum figure and that figure is still way too low to do what they are planning to do. So I told her that her budget is simply not realistic and then gave her a much more realistic budget, which was about $40,000.



I told them that I will prepare a quotation based on their requirements and then brought up the budget issue once again to mentally prepare them for the final figure, they both thanked me for my time and I honestly felt really hopeful.



Normally I will ask a client to give me 7 days to prepare a quotation for them, but since I like hopeful about this couple, I told them I will prepare one for them within the next 3 days, and I did. The final figure came up to about $40,000, which was exactly what I had predicted and told them about, so I send that quotation to the wife via email and then drop her a text to let her know that the quote has been send out.




Every time I send a message to a potential client about the emailed quotation, a client I have met, they will respond back with...

"Great, will take a look and revert back to you!"

... and they never revert back because their pants are on fire. From time to time, I would get ingrates some who wouldn't reply, like that "mini celebrity" I met a few weeks ago, I mean I also really wasn't expecting that celebrity to respond back because we did not click at all, but it would have been nice to at least send a courtesy reply back to me, I would have liked her a little more if she did that.



But anyways, I was fully expecting this client to send me a courtesy reply, but she did not, she read my text, it was double blue ticked, but there wasn't any "Thanks for the quotation", just left me hanging.



I am disappointed because in the end, she and her husband did ended up becoming a waste of time.