---
layout: post
title: Tear up your client's proposal in half!
tags:
- Design
- Personal improvement
status: publish
type: post
published: true
meta:
  _edit_last: '1'
---
<img class="alignleft" title="Picture of a teared up contract" src="http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3626/3357161527_fabbb28d52.jpg" alt="" width="121" height="151" />Just picture it: you are about to welcome your client into your office for a first meeting. You are excited to know what he wants. He brings his suitcase. Both of you happily sit down and he takes the project briefing out of the suitcase and hands it to you. <q>This is what I want. Please take a look.</q>, the client happily states, confident in his effort to provide a solid brief for you to work on.
<h3>Take the briefing and <em>tear it up in half!</em></h3>
<!--more-->You heard me! Excuse yourself to him and just rip it apart. Let the client watch (you might wanna tell him that the experience of working with you would be quite different).
<h3>What the hell! Are you serious?</h3>
Yes! Ask yourself: what would you feel if you started reading a pile of rubbish? What would you feel about reading dozens of pages that might not even be what the client really wants in the end? Well, you can start on the right foot and reset the entire system.

Tearing the briefing up in front of the client will force a chemical reaction inside his body. <em>It is the perfect time for you to teach him your method: the method of emotion</em>.
<h3>The method of emotion</h3>
Building experiences is what I want to do because it envolves passion and emotion from other people. Good emotions, that is. Bad emotions are supposed to be secondary and/or should help realize which emotions are the good ones. In the end, you should be glad for having fulfilled a client's need.

Businesses are run by people; they are the materialization of the emotion that drives their creators to actually do it. Nothing more satisfying for a client than knowing he is being <em>heard</em>, not read. So why not start listening to his heart instead of both looking to a computer screen and/or a briefing? Let them explain to you the emotion they want to feel when they use what you're about to create.

Briefings, paper, a screen, all of these limit our creativity. If you can reduce the load, do it from the very beginning.
<h3>Obviously you don't need to tear <em>his </em>papers</h3>
If you're scared of what his reaction might be, you can always pretend it. Get some bad paper the size of the brief, tear it up in front of the client, experience the feeling and then explain it was an exercise to test both yours and your client's creativity.