# How to get rid of a client?



## ButtermilkJa (20 Jul 2008)

Has anybody ever had the need to stop working with a client for whatever reason? If so, how did you go about it?

I have one particular client who is really starting to wear down my patience and to be honest I would rather see the back of them.


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## S.L.F (20 Jul 2008)

When you work for yourself you have to be hard nosed.

If you don't like the way someone is treating you, tell them.

Stand up and be counted it's all about respect for yourself.

There are moments where I have to be as blunt as an axe with customers when they are wearing me down.

I always feel better for airing my views.


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## rmelly (20 Jul 2008)

Don't know what you do, but have you considered increasing your rates for this client, or making yourself unavailable i.e. you have a heavy workload for the next few months, or revoke credit - make the account cash only etc.

You need to be careful that whatever you do doesn't cause the ex-client to bad mouth you etc, so don't give a poor service or ignore communications from the client etc.

Have you considered honesty? Sit down with him/her explain your concerns and see what they say.

Having said all that, I'm assuming that you are happy to lose the revenue given the current economic climate?


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## ButtermilkJa (20 Jul 2008)

Thanks for the replies.

I suppose to be fair I should really just speak out and tell them exactly what's what and give them a chance, but to be honest from day one it's been bad and I really don't have the patience anymore to deal with them. Not when there are more rewarding clients on the books.

The amount of money involved is quite low, no more than €200 per month so I definitely won't starve if I stop working with them.

They left a voicemail for me on Friday afternoon complaining about the last two invoices so I need to respond to that in the morning. I'll say my piece and see how they react.


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## z103 (20 Jul 2008)

It's easy. Just ring them up and tell them that you are no longer in a position to offer them a service/product.
If they ask why (which they probably will) tell them that you can no longer afford to support them.
Suggest alternatives to them - let your competition have the stress.


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## Calebs Dad (20 Jul 2008)

Last time it happened to me, I was up front and honest about it. From the tone of the previous conversations, it would appear that you have either lost confidence in my ability or have quite serious reservations about my ability to perform the tasks allocated. If either is the case then I suggest you might want to look elsewhere.

To my surprise, there was a complete change of attitude, and they are still a client. I think in every client relationship there are times when the client likes to let you know who pays the invoice and pushes to see where the boundaries are. On this occassion he found out exactly where they are and now knows for future reference


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## S.L.F (20 Jul 2008)

leghorn said:


> It's easy. Just ring them up and tell them that you are no longer in a position to offer them a service/product.
> If they ask why (which they probably will) tell them that you can no longer afford to support them.
> Suggest alternatives to them - let your competition have the stress.



leghorn I don't agree with you at all on this issue.
It does not make good business sense to get rid of customers whether it be a celtic tiger or a celtic donkey.
Every customer you have is not just the person but also who they tell about your business.
Remember you don't have to like your customers to do business with them.

Mind you €200 a month would not have me begging this customer to come back if they moved to someone else.



Calebs Dad said:


> Last time it happened to me, I was up front and honest about it. From the tone of the previous conversations, it would appear that you have either lost confidence in my ability or have quite serious reservations about my ability to perform the tasks allocated. If either is the case then I suggest you might want to look elsewhere.
> 
> To my surprise, there was a complete change of attitude, and they are still a client. I think in every client relationship there are times when the client likes to let you know who pays the invoice and pushes to see where the boundaries are. On this occassion he found out exactly where it is and now knows for future reference



Had the same thing myself.

Its about them respecting you as a person.


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## z103 (20 Jul 2008)

> leghorn I don't agree with you at all on this issue.
> It does not make good business sense to get rid of customers whether it be a celtic tiger or a celtic donkey.


We found that qualifying our customers made sense for us. Sometimes 'customers' can lose you money.


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## S.L.F (20 Jul 2008)

leghorn said:


> We found that qualifying our customers made sense for us. Sometimes 'customers' can lose you money.



leghorn not everybody has the luxury of being able to choose who they do business with.

I suspect the main reason the OP is posting is because they can't deal with the stress of this particular customer.

€200 a month is not worth stress but supposing it was €2,000 or €20,000 a month would it be worth the stress?

the answer is NO.

All people in business have to deal with customers and everybody needs to know where they stand.
If someone is getting up your nose they need to be told to respect you.


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## MandaC (20 Jul 2008)

Agree with Leghorn on this.  We had to do a similar exercise on customers who were losing us money and were awkward to deal with. We ended up having to do a "cull" on our customer list a couple of years back and concentrate on a smaller number to allow us give the proper service to genuine customers.  There were a quite a few who could be obnoxious, argued over every invoice, and expected replies to their queries immediately, even if they only turned up every six months or so.  We then had to get wait months to get paid, and I ended up having to call and call, statements, 7 day letters, etc.

We waited until they "turned up" for something again, and said that due to our current work schedule, we have to concentrate on a core group of customers who have paid retainers and that it would be at least six weeks until anyone would be able to get back to them and that in the meantime, they might be better going elsewhere.  Would you believe some of them still waited six weeks and then started tormenting us.

One guy used not to pay one invoice until he wanted something further done.  We got wise to the fact that once a cheque came in that he would be on next week for something new and then you might have to wait months again until he wanted something else.   I actually told him that we would not be in a position to do any more work for him as collecting the fee was taking up too much time, effort and expense.


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## rabbit (21 Jul 2008)

MandaC said:


> We then had to get wait months to get paid, and I ended up having to call and call, statements, 7 day letters, etc.
> 
> We waited until they "turned up" for something again, and said that due to our current work schedule, we have to concentrate on a core group of customers who have paid retainers and that it would be at least six weeks until anyone would be able to get back to them and that in the meantime, they might be better going elsewhere.


 
Would it not have been more honest / ethical to just insist for COD payment in future / payment in advance ? 

Is'nt  lack of competitition not an awful thing. In todays world, those suppliers who expect "retainers" just to give service / be available to sell future orders are indeed rare.   Celtic tiger Ireland how are ye.


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## MandaC (21 Jul 2008)

rabbit said:


> Would it not have been more honest / ethical to just insist for COD payment in future / payment in advance ?
> 
> Is'nt  lack of competitition not an awful thing. In todays world, those suppliers who expect "retainers" just to give service / be available to sell future orders are indeed rare.   Celtic tiger Ireland how are ye.



C.O.D. not relevant to our company as we give advice. Not the kind of thing you do C.O.D.  

There is nothing ethical about having to constantly chase people for money. Celtic Tiger or no,  it also makes good sense to  concentrate on the clients who pay bills on time without fuss and give them the service they expect.  Every hour I spend debt collecting is an hour I am not working on someone's file charging out time. It is a business we are running after all.  When clients start costing you money, it can be time to sever that business relationship.


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## DavyJones (22 Jul 2008)

MandaC said:


> There is nothing ethical about having to constantly chase people for money. Celtic Tiger or no,  it also makes good sense to  concentrate on the clients who pay bills on time without fuss and give them the service they expect.  Every hour I spend debt collecting is an hour I am not working on someone's file charging out time. It is a business we are running after all.  When clients start costing you money, it can be time to server that business relationship.




In mt opinion your spot on. Sometimes you have to cut clients and how you do it is very important.


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## ButtermilkJa (22 Jul 2008)

Some great responses there, cheers. I ended up having a chat about the invoices and explaining my corner and it seemed to go well. I'll wait and see what happens on the next job before making any rash decisions.


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## simplyjoe (22 Jul 2008)

A few years ago I asked the top ten messers I had to leave - basically each time they missed an appointment, deadline, was insulting to staff, etc. I asked each to leave. Since then my firm has become away more efficient and I have much happier staff and much happier clients. I find that these messers ruined our efficiency, the flow of the work and caused far too much stress. Rather than hindering our work or sending out a bad message it actually made us look stronger. Also these messers opinions are rarely valued. On a continuous basis we advise clients that if they get into serious arrears, miss appointments, etc they will need to get their accounting services elsewhere.


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## Towger (22 Jul 2008)

Several years ago we had a number of unrelated clients in Cork (one in large multinational in particular) what were nothing but problems of their own making. We though that all the toxins from the chemical factories in the area was effecting their intelligence. Since proved right by the looks of things . They were on the phone every day, taking up over 50-60% of our resources and well under 5% of our income. We upped our prices until they went to our main competitor. Oh the rejoicing we had the day they told us.


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## ClubMan (22 Jul 2008)

simplyjoe said:


> A few years ago I asked the top ten messers I had to leave - basically each time they missed an appointment, deadline, was insulting to staff, etc. I asked each to leave. Since then my firm has become away more efficient and I have much happier staff and much happier clients.


That is a staffing/human resources issue. The original query here is about dealing with allegedly time wasting or otherwise problematic *clients*.


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## Purple (22 Jul 2008)

ClubMan said:


> That is a staffing/human resources issue. The original query here is about dealing with allegedly time wasting or otherwise problematic *clients*.


simplyjoe is also referring to clients.


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## rabbit (22 Jul 2008)

Purple said:


> simplyjoe is also referring to clients.


 
True, and clients are also customers at the end of the day.   Ask many foreigners how us Irish treat our customers and if you get an honest answer, you will not always be impressed with the  answer.  It is much better to be honest with your clients / customers than give poor service or ignore communications or charge eratically high prices etc


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## ClubMan (22 Jul 2008)

rabbit said:


> True, and clients are also customers at the end of the day.   Ask many foreigners how us Irish treat our customers and if you get an honest answer, you will not always be impressed with the  answer.


What have "foreigners" got to do with this and since when did "they" become the arbiters of what is right and wrong in this context?! 


> eratically high prices etc


Eh!?!


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## MandaC (22 Jul 2008)

I don't  think the OP mentioned anything about seeking to cancel a contract because of the client's nationality.


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## ButtermilkJa (22 Jul 2008)

This is getting a bit crazy.

Just to clarify, it is just one particular client who keeps querying everything in the hope that they will catch me out and so they can get a reduction on their invoice. It's insulting, frustrating and time wasting to have to constantly reply to emails and respond to phone calls all the time.


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## MandaC (22 Jul 2008)

ButtermilkJa said:


> This is getting a bit crazy.
> 
> Just to clarify, it is just one particular client who keeps querying everything in the hope that they will catch me out and so they can get a reduction on their invoice. It's insulting, frustrating and time wasting to have to constantly reply to emails and respond to phone calls all the time.



Know exactly what you are talking about.   Glad you were able to discuss it and hopefully they might see things a bit clearer.  We had some like that, and once spoken to were great for a while, but slowly and surely reverted back to type!  I think it's more frustrating when you feel you are wasting time responding to e-mails/calls when you are trying to move forward and get work done for other more positive clients.


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## Genghis Khan (22 Jul 2008)

I would say that it is beter to just be honest with this client, but also to be polite when you tell them . Also I make all new trade clients deal C.O.D for a honeymoon period before I will open a 1 month credit account , unless of course they have a few trade references . This will reduce much financial exsposure  when dealing with new clients .  I have had to tell two trade clients to take a walk because they were putting bad pressure on the business with bounced cheques and generally rude attitude , once gone you can put more energy into providing beter service to good clients.


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## simplyjoe (25 Jul 2008)

Trust me guys -  get rid of the time wasters say hello to extra profit.


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## rabbit (25 Jul 2008)

simplyjoe said:


> get rid of the time wasters


If the people in question are existing customers / clients then there is something wrong.  As another poster wrote " It does not make good business sense to get rid of customers whether it be a celtic tiger or a celtic donkey".


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## MandaC (25 Jul 2008)

rabbit said:


> If the people in question are existing customers / clients then there is something wrong.  As another poster wrote " It does not make good business sense to get rid of customers whether it be a celtic tiger or a celtic donkey".



That is incorrect.  When clients start costing a company money, it makes perfect business sense not to deal with them any more!


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## S.L.F (25 Jul 2008)

all of my customers are one offs so I don't like losing them, if the situation arises where a customer is wasting my time I tell them you are wasting my time.

If a customer is being a complete pain I'd double my prices to get rid of them.

I think the OP should put his or her prices up for that particular customer for the extra time it takes to deal with them but tell them the reason their price is rising.

Or send e-mails, letters and phone calls to them every 5 seconds until their bills are paid.


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## rabbit (26 Jul 2008)

MandaC said:


> That is incorrect. When clients start costing a company money, it makes perfect business sense not to deal with them any more!


 
Rubbish.   Customers should always make a company money, not cost it. 
If a customer is costing a company money, it would make better sense to make money out of that customer than lose that customer completely. 

As another poster correctly wrote "not everybody has the luxury of being able to choose who they do business with."


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## DavyJones (26 Jul 2008)

rabbit said:


> Rubbish.   Customers should always make a company money, not cost it.
> If a customer is costing a company money, it would make better sense to make money out of that customer than lose that customer completely.
> 
> As another poster correctly wrote "not everybody has the luxury of being able to choose who they do business with."




In my experiance I have had some clients who are very testing.

Alot of my clients have my personal mobile number as I would need to be contacted if there was an urgent matter while a project was on going. One guy would ring me on a sunday evening for matters that were far from urgent. I had to tell him he could only ring me between 7am and 8pm mon to fri unless there was a major emergency. (we also have an out of hours service which I rarely work)
Some clients think that they are your only client. I can understand the need to let clients go. Some projects, I have been more than happy to finish and have swore never to work for that person again.

There are some peoples business I can do without, and its foolish to think otherwise. some clients do cost businesses much more resources than others while expecting to pay the same.

Rabbit, Do you offer a service or are you a customer?


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## z103 (26 Jul 2008)

> Rubbish.   Customers should always make a company money, not cost it.
> If a customer is costing a company money, it would make better sense to make money out of that customer than lose that customer completely.


Here's a simple example.
Widgets Ltd sell a product to its customers for €100. This is also what the competition charge. It will cost widgets ltd about €60 in overheads and cost of sales and support, so they expect to make €40 per unit.
Frank Spencer has bought the product but uses €150 worth of resources.
How can you make money out of Frank Spencer? - if you raise the price of the product, many of your customers will go off to the competition.
A better solution would be to get rid of Frank, and continue selling to qualified customers that actually make you money.

It's just maths.

(Rabbit, I once thought the worst thing that could happen would be to lose a customer. I was wrong.)


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## Brianne (26 Jul 2008)

From experience of dealing,  in a service role ,with people who wear you out, and whom you can't get rid of, and about whom your conscience as regards your service to them is completely clear, here's what is done........a bit of passive agression.In other words, disengage gradually, continue to do the job but be unavailable at times as people like this in my job use up valuable time that should be given to others. 
Slow anwering of emails and nofication to the person that such delays will occur do to heavy workload but will be attended to in due course,use of appointments and scheduling of times that calls will be attended to, these are usually effective. In other words, you retrain the person as to your availability. If your service continues to be good, the person will stay with you, if they are prima donnas who are not worth it , they will leave.
In my experience, sometimes with people like this, if you don't realise it at the start of the relationship and you are an efficient person, you can easily make a rod for your own back. However by putting a price on your professionalism and being a little bit more assertive, chances are you will resolve this
Obviously if this doesn't work, well then it comes down to economics versus mental health.
Unfortunately in my work, we can't get rid of our 'customers' but we try to keep them under control!!!


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