All clients are stupid. It's a well known fact in the corporate world. A fact that you can verify almost every day when you deal with clients. And if you don't (you lucky one), please go ask the people in your company that have to handle them.

If you doubt what I am saying just remember these few situations :

- Someone asking a price for a service or product your company sells without giving any information about what he really wants, how he wants it and for when.

- Someone having a huge problem to solve on Friday 6 pm, and leaving for a nice week end in an unreachable place in Marbella just after having had explained you his misfortune by email.

- Someone changing his mind ten times on the project and when all is done and validated, asking to start again from the beginning because his boss didn't appreciate the result.

- Someone not willing to pay his bill because he finally disagrees 3 months after signing the quotation with the perimeter of the task he hired you for.

- Someone asking hundred times the same silly question about a technical problem which has nothing to do with the project.

- Someone demanding you to cope with an intolerable planning and who can't give you the information you need in time (whereas you asked for them since the start)

- Someone pretending to perfectly understand a technical point you are talking about for months, and you had been working on for days and nights and who finally dares to ask the meaning, just to realize it he doesn't need it at all.

Yes. All the "someone" are clients. I bet you can put names on some of them.

So, do you see what I mean now ? Aren't they just stupid ? Can you find any excuse to them ? No, you can't. They are just what they are and always will be : stupid clients. You have to get use to it.

But the real question is why ?

Yes. There must be a reason to this common law of the universe. Something beneath. Why are all clients stupid ?

Why a guy working in a consulting cabinet and being recruited by one of his clients suddenly becomes stupid ? And why on the contratry a former client who decides to join one of his suppliers immediatly ceases being an total idiot ?

Why can't they learn from their mistakes or misunderstandings ?

Let me advance an explanation.

I believe the stupidness of clients lays in their status itself. Being a client means having the power. If you are the client, you are the one who rules the relationship. You pay, he obeys. That's the fondation of the commercial relationship (especially seen from the client's point of view)

The thing is most people don't know what to do if you give them any sort of power on their kind. Still they firmly believe that this power has to be used. Otherwise they could loose it or waste it. So they'd rather do something stupid than do nothing. Moreover, as a provider you have to understand who has got the power (it's not unimaginable that clients could think that providers are stupids). So the more they use this power, the more you can feel it. Undeniable isn't it ?

Can you propose other explanations on your side ?