As a professional services small business owner since 2009, I've had some great clients. I've also had some really bad ones that drained the life out of me. As any small or medium business (SMB) owner knows, bad clients take up far more time and energy than the good ones.

Late payments, constant unreasonable demands and complaints, shaky corporate structure with routine turnover that derails projects and budgets. It can be a nightmare.

Red flags are always obvious in hindsight, and I wished for a way to do a proper client risk assessment before I signed anything. But, in-depth client research takes forever and pulls me away from providing a quality service to my existing clients.

So, I developed an algorithm to do the deep hunting for me. When some friends and colleagues saw what I had produced, they all strongly recommended making it available to SMBs around the world.

And, that's FlyingFrog. Our SMB client screening service helps small and medium businesses research potential clients, avoiding bad deals, payment issues, and legal risks. If it's publically available information, we'll find it.

SMB Client Screening FAQ

Q - How does it work?
A - You send an email to FlyingFrog with the information you have about the prospective client (company name and city, at least), and the algorithm replies a few minutes later with a summarized report containing anything we can find about the client, including any potential issues that you might consider before signing a deal.

The issues can include legal problems, insolvency concerns, bad customer reviews, regulatory issues, employee complaints, complaints from previous vendors, etc.

Q - Where do you find your information?
A - That's FlyingFrog's secret sauce, but we only use publically available resources including regulatory records, legal databases, and review platforms, to uncover key insights. We can't promise to hunt down every crumb of corporate dirt that only the owner knows. But, if it's out there in the wild, we'll find it.

And, the prospective client will have no idea that you're snooping around.

Q - Does the report provide recommendations?
A - Yes! We use an in-house AI bot to summarize the research findings and to provide you with a client risk rating from 1 (very low risk) to 10 (very high risk).

Even if no red flags appear, our report still provides useful insights about the client's reputation, financial stability, and business history.

Obviously, we can't guarantee a beautiful relationship between you and the client for a large number of reasons, but the recommendations and risk rating give you a good start. And, you can use the risk rating and recommendations to tailor your pricing and contract terms. Information is power!

Q - When will FlyingFrog be live?
A - Full transparency - Most of the infrastructure already exists behind the scenes, and I'm gauging interest to determine if there's enough desire for a public, subscription-based product.

Assuming that the interest is there, FlyingFrog will go live in Q2 2025.

Q - Can I ask more questions?
A - Sure! Send an email to webcontact at flyingfrog.co.