Reply to Small business owners- when do you "fire" a client?

Forum Index » Jobs and Careers

Reply to "Small business owners- when do you "fire" a client?"

Subject:

Emoticons





More smilies

Text Color: Font: Close Marks

[quote=Anonymous]I own a small business that provides consulting services in a very niche field (trying to keep this general and vague). By virtue of the demographics of the population that I am serving, and the fact that I am expensive to hire, I get a lot of difficult clients. Some just need a lot of handholding and I am truly fine with that. I very often stay up late at night answering emails/providing advice, going above and beyond to be extremely thorough. I know that if it were not for these people that need more hand holding than most, I would not have a job. I also know that the work I do is associated with a lot of deep emotions for my clients- high expectations, anxiety, etc.. And I really try to be sensitive to that every day.

Sometimes, though, I have clients who just push it over the top and really take their anxieties out on me because they are looking for someone to blame when things do not work out as they had hoped. They are impossible to please and are looking for someone to work miracles, which no one can do. I am feeling more and more like I just can't take these people on as clients, even if my bottom line suffers and I lose revenue.

I'm trying to figure out how to differentiate from clients who are going to be a problem between the ones who have a normal amount of stress/anxiety. Part of me looks back at past clients and sees that the ones who I thought would be really impossible from the get go were not so bad and vice versa. I don't want to be TOO quick to refuse to work with people that seem overly difficult, because then I'd have no clients.  I'm also trying to figure out at what point do I tell a client that things are just not working out between us without hurting my reputation. Obviously, someone who has a volatile personality from the get go is not someone that I want to set off- don't want to get trashed on the Internet, etc.

I guess this turned into a bit of stream of consciousness, but I am interested in any thoughts from others in my position.[/quote]

Options

	Disable HTML in this message
	Disable BB Code in this message
	Disable smilies in this message

Review message

Search Recent Topics Hottest Topics