Zombie Clients

I received a call a while ago from a prospective client we did some preliminary design work for a concierge assisted living facility years ago.

It did not go well as a lot of these fliers we take in pursuit of work go often do. We have experience in this building type and tried, in vain, to educate our potential client not only about what we do but about the subtleties of the building type. The client would have none of it, coming from a family of contractors and developers imbibed with the “we know more than you about building gene”. Forget about “architecture”, they clearly weren’t interested.

Fast forward four years. The phone rings and it’s the client. “How are you? Do you remember me? For the past four years we’ve gone ’round and ’round with our property. We can’t find a buyer so we’re going to try to resurrect the ALF. We we’re looking at the concepts you did for us and we were shocked. They were very good! We should have listened to you back then!

My interest is piqued, but my radar is up because this is most likely not a good client. And then they drop the hammer.

“We did some sketches over your drawings and we’d like to send them to you to see what you think. Maybe you can give us a price for “doing” the architecture.”

Zombie clients.

Some things should remain forever dead.

Robert Vecchione is an architect/designer and principal of the multidisciplinary firm Cobrooke Ideas-Architecture-Design (www.cobrooke.com)