It’s feedback time on a project and they come back with:
"it's just not us"
"something's off, but I can't put my finger on it"
“This doesn’t feel right…”
You want the client to be happy, but what the hell are you supposed to do with THAT???
And thus begins endless rounds of revisions…
It might feel like the client is trying to be difficult, but something probably is off.
And it’s up to you to get to the bottom of it.
The problem:
Vague feedback from a client doesn’t help you fix it.
You can revise forever and still not land on a “fix” because neither of you actually knows what’s at the heart of the problem (yet).
The benefit of solving it:
You turn a conversation that was going nowhere into a 5-minute diagnostic and know exactly what to adjust.
Why what you've tried has failed:
You don’t actually know what to fix, so you either jump into revisions and hope you get it “right” the second time, or you ask the client to explain and end up in an endless revision loop.
Here's how to solve it:
Before you ask the client anything, go back to your discovery call notes and your brief.
A lot of those "doesn't feel like our brand" moments are due to the fact that the brief never got specific enough in the first place…
Check whether the direction you worked from was actually pinned down, or whether you were filling in gaps with your own judgment.
This can help guide where the conversation needs to go.
Then, instead of asking an open question the client can't answer, hand them a short menu of specific dimensions to point at.
Say something like:
"I want to make sure I'm fixing the right thing here. Let me give you a few areas to look at, just tell me which one feels closest to the issue..."
With more specifics coming from you, most clients will land on one or two pretty quickly.
Follow up with:
"Can you point me to anything, a competitor, a campaign you liked, even something totally unrelated, that has more of that quality?"
Now you have a direction and a reference point you can actually work from.
The client is usually right that something's off, but they're definitely not the one who should be diagnosing how to fix it…
That's your job.
When you go back in to edit, make one targeted adjustment to the dimension they pointed out and check back in with the client, telling them what you changed and why.
Show them you listened, explain the logic, and give them something specific to react to instead of yet another open-ended “gut check”.
And it makes getting to the final product (and a happy client) a whole lot easier.
Knowing how to move through these types of situations with clients is what separates where you are now from the pro you're becoming.
Join the freelancers inside The Freelancing Program who are handling conversations like this, hitting their income goals, and building the kind of client relationships that don't depend on luck.
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Best,
Jamie
P.S. The menu of dimensions you use in that script is worth saving and refining over time.
Every time a client points at one and you fix it cleanly, you're learning something about how to brief the next project better.
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