Thank you for your comments.

It does seem, as you said, that one knows almost immediately whether the client-designer relationship is going to work, and, in most cases, nothing's going to change that. But who knows– every so often there might be a case where the designer asking the right questions might garner enough client trust to push a gig into the Win column. Nice post, thanks.

One thing I find helpful is reinforcing the notion that good design is a process and the client is just as important to a project’s success as the designer is. This usually helps alleviate any initial apprehensiveness because it makes the client a partner and demonstrates that the work is done in phases so there shouldn't be any “surprises”.