The thing that good clients and bad clients have in common is that they both pay, but at some point, the drain these clients take on your relationships, time management, and even employee churn, means they have to go. In the podcast episode, Scaling Isn’t Hard—You’re Just Too Tolerant , co-hosts Laura and Julia discuss how letting bad clients go is key to growing your business. Today, let’s talk about how.
Let Clients Self-Select to Leave Your Business
One of the best ways to get clients to leave is to make it their idea. This way, you don’t have the same negative impact as firing them (though you still have some). These actions can also offset negative clients or help remove the issues in the first place.
- Raising Rates: The most common approach is to raise rates—either for these specific clients or across the board—as some of the most problematic clients are those who spend the least but consume the most of your time.
- Altering Services: Changes to existing services, either to clearly state what you will or will not do for clients, or to remove services you no longer wish to provide to the client and the broader market.
- Changes to Communication/Availability: Setting firm guidelines on proper communication, including how and when customer service or client leads are available for communication.
- Switching Contacts: If a client is making one of your employees miserable, it might be time to change the client lead. A good employee is hard to find, and employee retention is critical to business success.
Bake In Their Departure into Your Business Plan
Alternatively, or in addition to the above tactic, you should be including firing bad clients as part of your business plan. The temptation to hold onto problematic customers almost always boils down to financial considerations, so you need to plan for that loss as part of your strategic business planning. You know how much this problem client is worth, so set a funding goal after which it’s financially possible to let them go, and then—the important part here—do it when you reach that goal.
About the enVisioning Success Podcast
This article is based on topics discussed in enVisioning Success, our weekly podcast hosted by Vision Advertising CEO Laura DiBenedetto and COO Julia Becker Collins. In it, they discuss all things business and marketing, from lead generation to leadership. Find us on PodBean to download from your platform of choice, or subscribe to our mailing list to get new episodes and other news delivered directly to your inbox. Interested in working with Vision Advertising? Learn more about our services and contact us today.
