When they see some cleanly designed draft printed out (or worse: on the screen), most people cannot see that it is a draft, even if you tell them.

I firmly believe that communicating the right thing in a strategic way to the customer giving them what they need and making them realize that they want it, is what seperates a good designer from a bad one.

Another way than actually drawing is to give them many drafts, so they focus on the differences. This however depends on the job (sometimes multiple drafts are not a thing you can afford time wise).

When I got started in marketing the best designers I had the pleasure of working with educated me as to the different kinds of decisions design needs to make.

The finished product is the amalgamation of many different, distinct, decisions. Those decisions include things like: what is the objective of this page? If there's more than one objective which one is more important? If there are several objectives how do they compare in terms of importance to the end user? How does that contrast with the goals of the business? How do we want the user to feel? What do we want them to think? What action do we want them to take?

Some of these questions require high fidelity design while others do not. The lower fidelity designs typically help answer the strategic questions that the higher fidelity designs will build upon and execute. Using sketches and wireframes facilitates separating these conversations.

If a client is looking for a 'wow' factor with the first mockup then they've confused themself with the end user.

This kind of approach should also apply to good requirements gathering in my opinion.

Yes, a lot of "craft" oriented people don't realize that until they have a few painful experiences with clients. They spend hours and hours poring over every single pixel, and then do not spend anywhere near the same amount of effort on communicating with and presenting to the client.

The article is correct that designing without color at first can be a fine approach, encouraging you to focus on weight, layout, etc. But showing these intermediary, exploratory outputs to the client is just asking for wasted time at best, and trouble at worst.

I understand that focusing on pleasing your client is the easiest way to gain acceptance and possibly business, but if it's at the expense of delivering a product that actually serves your client (which pandering to clients on purely aesthetic grounds very often is), you're effectively selling snake-oil. It may be lucrative, but it's bad design. Doing good design requires managing your clients' expectations and selling them on quality.