5 Simple Steps To Manage Client Feedback As A Ghostwriter

The client hates your work — now what?

It’s every ghostwriter’s worst nightmare:

The client hates what you’ve written.

It doesn’t matter how good you think your work is, some clients will come back to you with negative feedback. How you respond will set the tone of the client relationship and either be constructive or lead to a negative outcome for you (and your client).

Here are two ways I wouldn’t recommend handling feedback:

1. Being too reactive and doing everything the client wants. This trains clients to think they know what’s best (not you) and that they need to manage you. This erodes the perceived value of your service. You become just another freelancer rather than a valued consultant.
2. Not meeting the client halfway. If you stubbornly stick to your guns and don’t compromise with their suggestions, you become difficult to work with and they might fire you.

Instead, you should approach feedback from this angle:

It’s your responsibility to tell the client what you recommend, but ultimately it’s their decision.

Client feedback can come in many different forms:

• They think the piece doesn’t sound like them
• They aren’t happy with the topic you’ve chosen for a piece, even if you know it will perform well
• They don’t want to share a certain story or piece of information, even if you know it will resonate with readers
• The client wants to use a different headline/subject line/hook for the piece, even though you know from experience the one you chose will work the best

So, how do you handle this kind of feedback?

After years of dealing with client feedback, here is my 5 Step process for handling client feedback to make every client happy:

Step #1: Don’t Get Emotional (And Don’t Respond Right Away)

This is critical — and I cannot stress this enough.

When a client comes back and says, “This is wrong” or “This doesn’t sound like me,” they…