Exercises: Client Management

Difficulty guide: ⭐ Foundational (5–10 min) · ⭐⭐ Intermediate (10–20 min) · ⭐⭐⭐ Challenging (20–40 min) · ⭐⭐⭐⭐ Advanced (40+ min)

Several of these require saying things out loud. Do them out loud. The words behave differently in your mouth than on the page, and the ones you cannot say aloud in an empty room you will certainly not say to a client.

Part A: Conceptual Understanding ⭐

A.1. Explain why the consultation places services and price at minute 60 rather than minute 10. Give two distinct reasons.

A.2. Distinguish the payer, the decider, and the person being pleased. Give an example of one person holding all three roles, and one where all three are different people.

A.3. A colleague says: "The decision-rights map is over-engineering. You figure out who's in charge within two meetings anyway." Give the strongest version of their argument, then explain what the chapter says they are missing.

A.4. In your own words: what does it mean that "almost every anxious question is a proxy"? Why does answering only the literal question fail?

A.5. Why does the chapter say to ask for a budget total rather than a range, and to plan to the number the client names rather than the middle?

A.6. Explain the mechanism by which writing down decision rights prevents conflict, given that the information was never hidden from anyone.

A.7. Define without looking back: the third conversation, escalation path, communication cadence, the fear beneath the question, the bad-news promise.

A.8. Why does the chapter recommend visible note-taking on paper rather than a laptop?

Part B: Applied Analysis ⭐⭐

B.1. Translate the proxies. For each client statement, write (a) what they are actually asking, and (b) your three-part response — literal answer, fear named, next concrete step with a date.

• (i) "Is it weird that we're not doing a first dance?"
• (ii) "My future mother-in-law asked if she could invite six of her friends."
• (iii) "Everyone keeps asking what our colors are and we don't have colors."
• (iv) "Do you think we should just elope?"
• (v) "Sam doesn't really seem to care about any of this."

B.2. Build three decision-rights maps. For each, produce the full table and identify the single most likely source of month-nine conflict.

• (a) Two partners in their late thirties paying entirely themselves, no family contribution, both sets of parents deceased or estranged.
• (b) A couple where one partner's family is paying for everything and has said so repeatedly, and the other partner's family is contributing nothing and has not mentioned it.
• (c) A couple where both sets of parents are contributing equally, the couple is contributing nothing, and one mother has already booked a venue deposit.

B.3. Fix the consultation. Here is a real-shaped consultation agenda from a new planner. Rewrite it, and explain each change.

"1. Introduce myself and my company (10 min). 2. Show portfolio (15 min). 3. Explain my packages (15 min). 4. Ask about their wedding (10 min). 5. Answer questions (10 min). 6. Discuss pricing (5 min)."

B.4. The excluded budget. A client says their budget is $50,000. Write the follow-up questions that would establish what it excludes, and estimate — using Chapter 1 §1.2 proportions — how much of a typical wedding's real cost sits in the categories couples most often omit.

B.5. Write the payer conversation. Sam's parents are giving $6,000. Write all three branches of the conversation from §3.4 in your own words: the gift case, the strings case, and the "we don't want to bring it up" case. Then write the version you would use at month six if nothing had changed.

B.6. Diagnose the silence. In the chapter's opening, both partners glanced at the mother before every answer. List five other observable behaviors in a consultation that would tell you decision rights are not where they appear to be.

B.7. Cadence design. Build a full 14-month communication calendar for the Reyes–Whitfield engagement: every scheduled call, its length, and its agenda. Mark where the cadence tightens and why.

Part C: Real-World Application ⭐⭐–⭐⭐⭐

C.1. Run a real consultation. ⭐⭐⭐⭐ Find someone planning any event — a wedding, a milestone birthday, a work party, a fundraiser — and run the 75-minute structure on them for free. Take notes. Afterward, write up the diagnosis, decision-rights map, and the fear. Then ask them: what did the conversation feel like? Write down their answer verbatim.

This is the single most valuable exercise in Part I.

C.2. Rehearse the money segment. ⭐⭐ Say the ten questions in §3.3 aloud, in order, twenty times, until questions 1–5 sound as unremarkable as asking someone's date. Record yourself once. Listen for the flinch — most people have one, usually at question 4.

C.3. The awkward-question audit. ⭐⭐ Ask three people who work in any client-facing service: "What's the question you know you should ask clients early and don't?" Write down all three answers and what it costs them.

C.4. Build the blank map. ⭐ Produce the reusable decision-rights template you will actually use. Include the notes column, and a "confidence" marker for entries you are guessing at.

C.5. Write your bad-news promise. ⭐ In your own words. Then find a person who has hired any professional service and read it to them. Ask whether they have ever received a promise like it. Note the answer.

C.6. Second-channel drill. ⭐⭐ Write the redirect email for four different second-channel scenarios: a mother sending vendor suggestions, a maid of honor asking about the timeline, a father asking about the budget, and a partner's sibling offering to "help coordinate."

Part D: Synthesis and Critical Thinking ⭐⭐⭐

D.1. Cross-chapter integration. Chapter 2's scope document and Chapter 3's decision-rights map do the same structural work. Write the combined one-page document you would send a client in week one that accomplishes both. Then explain what you lost by merging them, and whether it was worth it.

D.2. Critique the threshold concept. "You are managing a family system, not a client" is presented as liberating. Construct the case that it is dangerous — that it licenses planners to over-involve themselves in family dynamics they are unqualified to touch, and that the professional posture should be narrower. Then respond. Where exactly is the boundary between mapping a system and meddling in it?

D.3. The disqualification problem. The chapter recommends telling clients up front that you might conclude you are not the right fit. Argue that this is a sales technique dressed as honesty — a disarming move whose real function is to lower the client's guard. Then argue it is genuinely honest. Can it be both? Does it matter?

D.4. Transfer. Apply the payer / decider / pleased framework to a domain that is not events: a family choosing a nursing home, a company selecting enterprise software, a couple hiring a contractor. What does the framework reveal? Where does it break down?

D.5. The 10:41 problem. The chapter says not to answer non-urgent late-night messages immediately. But Chapter 1 says the product is calm, and a client who is anxious at 10:40 p.m. would be calmed by a reply at 10:41. Resolve the contradiction. Under what circumstances, if any, do you reply?

Part M: Mixed Practice (Interleaved) ⭐⭐–⭐⭐⭐

M.1. (Ch.2 + Ch.3) At the consultation, a client asks you to also "keep an eye on" the rehearsal dinner her aunt is hosting. It is minute 63 and you have not yet quoted. What do you say, and which chapter's framework governs?

M.2. (Ch.1) A client says the barn was $4,800 and asks whether you think it was a good decision. It is month one. Reconstruct what you would say — and note that this is simultaneously a Chapter 1 cost question and a Chapter 3 proxy question. Which do you answer first?

M.3. (Ch.2) You quoted month-of coordination. At the consultation you discover nine vendors, four contracts, a tent, and a 2 p.m. load-in. You have not sent the proposal yet. Write what you say at minute 60.

M.4. (Looks like one thing, is another) A client emails: "Can you send me a list of everything you've done so far?" Is this a status request, an anxiety proxy, or a warning sign? Argue all three readings and say how you would find out which it is.

M.5. (Ch.1 + Ch.2 + Ch.3) Compute: a full-service engagement at $5,200, 194 hours. Of those, 30 are client communication. If mapping decision rights in month one prevents 12 hours of month-nine conflict management, what is the return on the fifteen seconds it takes to ask question 9? Then explain why that calculation, while correct, is not the reason to do it.

Part E: Research and Extension ⭐⭐⭐⭐

E.1. Read Never Split the Difference (Voss) or Crucial Conversations (Patterson et al.). Identify three techniques not named in this chapter that would improve one of its scripts. Rewrite the script.

E.2. Interview two planners with five or more years of experience about the worst client relationship they have had. Ask specifically: when did you first know? What was the earliest signal? What would you ask now that you did not ask then? Write a 700-word brief, and add their answers to your own consultation questions.

E.3. Investigate how decision-making authority in weddings varies across cultures and family structures. The payer/decider/pleased framework in §3.4 is implicitly built on a Western, couple-centric model where the couple is presumed to be the client. Find at least two contexts where that presumption is wrong. What would the framework need to become? (Chapter 21 will return to this; your answer here is the draft.)

Solutions

Selected solutions: appendices/answers-to-selected.md. Rubrics for open-ended items: instructor-guide/additional-assessments/all-assessments.md.