Have you ever had one of those customers? The client who after you sold them, you really wished you hadn’t. The customer who quickly earned the PITA designation (pain in the …). Would it help if I told you it was OK to fire a few customers now and again?
With all the emphasis placed on growing your bottom line and acquiring customers, it seems counterintuitive to consider releasing any clients to go torture your competition. Although it’s true that the goal in business is to make cash flow and that adding to your customer base is the most logical way to do that, it’s certainly not the only way. When you’re struggling to make payroll, you feel the need to take on anybody and everybody. Firing customers now and again can be liberating. For you and your team, it will save time, money and stress.
Customers who should be vetted include the Know-It-All. These customers believe they know more about how to run your business and price your products or services than you do. They’re experts because their brother’s wife’s uncle did it for a living, and that gives Know-It-Alls license to tell you what to do and how to do it.
Then there are the Nickel-and-Dimers who simply want everything and don’t want to have to pay for it. They typically show no appreciation for your efforts and want an overly detailed and itemized account of everything you do. They want a free this or a discounted that. You might go in with an effort to appease them — free shipping perhaps. But soon, like with a petulant child, these demands become the norm. They’re typically accompanied by a thinly veiled threat to take their business elsewhere.
The Change Order customers suck the time, effort and energy out of a staff that is working hard to please them. A distant cousin to the Nickel-and-Dimer, their requests can seem innocuous at first, with a change here and a modification there. They’re masters at scope creep. Before long, they’ve added, changed and deleted orders until your head spins. They’re shocked or angry when you have to charge them for the changes. You move mountains for them and at the end feel drained both physically and emotionally.
And finally, the Hide-and-Go-Seek customers are chronic time wasters. Often, successful completion of projects is dependent on the client doing his or her part. Hide-And-Go-Seekers will disappear, not do what they said they would, miss deadlines and throw your team into a frenzy trying to keep a job on target.
Happier employees are more productive and take a greater sense of ownership in their work. Staff members who are continually subjected to berating customers who don’t value the services they provide begin to feel powerless. When employees see you stand up for them, they will reciprocate. It’s like walking around all day with a pebble in your shoe. It’s not a big deal at first perhaps, but when left alone, it will blister and cause you to limp. A limping company isn’t a productive company. Your responsibility as a manager or owner is to remove the pebble. Keep the pathway clear for your team to succeed.
This comes with a hefty disclaimer, though. Make sure these are isolated customers. If you are consistently and repeatedly runninginto these issues, it could be an indication of a larger systemic problem with your business processes that should be addressed. Make sure that’s not the case. Perhaps it’s a wakeup call to refocus your business. Perhaps you need to grow a spine and stand up for yourself, your employees, your prices and your payment terms. Get better at clearly communicating expectations up front about what it means to do business with you, establish boundaries early and clearly and set deadlines. Often these situations can be repaired with a little moxie, a frank conversation and a few carefully selected alternatives. If it is necessary to hand a client the pink slip, do it with tact and professionalism.
You have the right to be treated with respect. You have the right to be paid for your services. If your prices are too high, overall market demand will fix that problem, not the whining of one particular customer with a bad money concept. You have the right to make a profit. You even have the right to occasionally make a mistake.
And yes, you do have the right to choose your customers.
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of  Sandler Training. Visit www.savant.sandler.com or e-mail at catkins@sandler.com.