Since the beginning of time, the bad client has always plagued the business community. Awareness of these behaviours, being solid with your boundaries as well as having a proactive plan in place (including the option to delete them) will be the key to your survival. Managing bad clients is also a crucial part of TIME MANAGEMENT as you are about to see.
As time=$$, there are common behaviors from bad clients that eat up more of your time and resources with actions that you just cannot invoice. It may further frustrate you to realize that this specific client's annual worth to you may tally up as your SMALLEST payer - while bringing you the most stress and the most amount of demands. They're no stranger to cutting you down, breaking down your confidence,
eating up your time and chewing your ear off knowing THEY CAN... or so
they think. In the end, putting more attention to satisfying this
individual drives DOWN
your hourly value (keeping you from servicing other clients, marketing
or performing your service altogether). Here are telltale signs of a poorly managed client- or one that is fated to ruin your bottom line.
- DEMANDING YOU TO PHYSICALLY BE IN THEIR OFFICE OFTEN (when we are now in the era of emails, text and phone). This costs gas, time, traffic and physical drag.
- COMPLAINER & YELLER: When clients bring their emotions to the table, they're begging you to coddle them. They use this tactic to seek out your limits.
- TOO MANY MEETINGS / OVERLY FREQUENT & LENGTHY PHONE CALLS: you never realize that one phone call can eat up over an hour of prime work time- but they don't care... it's your money!
- PROFUSE EMAILS OVER THE SILLIEST THINGS: You think emails are safe to time-manage? If emails are more than 3 sentences, that's abuse of your time.
- PLAYS THE "NEVER SATISFIED x SEEKING DISCOUNT" GAME: this is a very expensive way to work, and after you're done with this, the adding machine will tell you you just made $1/hour.
- UNNECESSARY DO-OVERS, FEATURE CREEP and EXTREME "TWEEKS": another game to bring you into the poor-house
- LOCKING PRICES: Once they know you're contracted at a capped price, there's no need to respect your time!
- PARTIAL PAYMENTS x CRYING POOR: To this client, vendors are replaceable. Getting you to lower your prices is a disease that many people in positions of power like to flex. This includes "getting over" on as many people as they can.
- GROWING DELAYED PAYMENTS: Everyone pays fast in the beginning- but what separates the good from bad client is that over time, they'll drag out paying you because they know you won't complain.
In an economy like ours, survival tells us to hold on to every income source we can find. As entrepreneurs, we are often slaves to our own vision that we are willing to put up with just about anything and anyone par for the course of maintaining our businesses. But if numbers in fact do not lie, accounting will tell you to look at your roster of clients carefully for those who eat up an unusual amount of your time. Analyze them in terms of PROFIT vs. EFFORT SPENT and you may find a very large gap in your books... a very wide grey area where unaccountable "bleeding" of your resources makes for some serious income loss.
