Client Red Flag Scorecard

Why Score A Prospect Before You Quote

A bad client costs more than the project is worth. The scope creeps, the invoices age, the feedback arrives late and blames you for the delay, and your best people spend their week on the account that pays the least. Almost every one of those problems was visible on the discovery call. The budget was vague, the person who signs was not there, they wanted free mockups, or they spent ten minutes on how useless their last three agencies were.

This scorecard turns those signs into a decision you make before you spend hours on a proposal. It does not judge whether the prospect is a good person. It judges whether you can price and deliver the work safely.

How The Score Works

Answer eleven questions from what you saw on the call and in their emails. Each answer awards points; the maximums add up to 100, so a fully answered scorecard reads as points out of 100. Higher means a cleaner prospect. The weights are our design, drawn from what goes wrong on agency projects, and here they are in full:

• Money: payment terms acceptance 12, budget clarity 11, discount pressure 7.
• Decision and timing: decision maker on the call 10, timeline realism 8, responsiveness 7.
• Scope and fit: fit with your services 11, scope clarity 10, asset readiness 7.
• Behaviour: free spec work demands 9, previous agency history 8.

The verdict appears once eight of the eleven questions are answered. Unanswered questions are left out of the score rather than counted against the prospect.

Deal Breakers

Two answers override the total. A prospect who refuses any deposit is Walk Away, because you would be financing their project. Work outside what you deliver is Walk Away, because the risk sits with you whatever the client is like. A demand for free mockups or a free trial cannot score Take It; the best it gets is Take With Conditions, with a paid discovery as the condition.

How To Read The Verdict

• Take It, 70 to 100. Quote on your standard terms.
• Take With Conditions, 40 to 69. Take the work only with the conditions listed under the result. Each flag you answered produces one, plus change order terms.
• Walk Away, 0 to 39, or a deal breaker. Decline politely. If you take it anyway, the conditions list is your minimum protection.

The red, amber and clear counts show how the answers fell. The biggest red flags are listed by points lost, each with what to do about it.

Turning Flags Into Conditions

Most prospects are not perfect, and most flags can be priced or contracted away. The tool maps each flag to a specific condition:

• Payment pushback: a deposit before work starts and the balance on milestones.
• Vague scope: a paid scope document signed off before the build is quoted.
• Unrealistic timeline: a written schedule with client deadlines, where late inputs move the launch.
• Slow replies: a feedback window and a pause clause.
• Discount pressure: any price change comes with a written scope reduction.
• Every conditional deal: change order terms, so new requests are quoted before they are done.

Present the conditions as how you work, not as suspicion. Good clients accept them without a second thought. Clients who fight every one have told you what the project will be like.

Mistakes To Avoid

• Scoring after you have fallen for the project. Score straight after the first call, before you start designing it in your head.
• Letting a big budget override everything. A large budget with no deposit is a large unpaid invoice waiting to happen.
• Treating free spec work as marketing. Free mockups train the prospect to value your thinking at zero.
• Dropping conditions to win the deal. The conditions are the price of the risk you scored.

The Agency Angle

Agencies rarely fail from too few leads. They stall from the wrong clients absorbing the time the right ones deserve. A two minute score after every discovery call protects margin, morale and cash. Wise Media runs a prospect through these same questions before any proposal goes out, and the conditions it produces go straight into the contract.