Consultant’s Dilemma — Firing Bad Clients

business thumb

I must admit I rarely miss the consultant’s lifestyle I lived for so many years. Being one’s own boss has many rewards, but dealing with bad clients was too often not one of them. WebWorkerDaily has a great article about how to deal with clients that are firmly in the problem client category. It is a great read for those who are self-employed.

I was fortunate in my past life in that most of my primary clients were big corporations. While the bureaucracy of the big company could be a trial to navigate when things needed to get done, I rarely had to worry about getting paid. These companies deal with freelance consultants a lot, and they knew how to handle them.

The smaller companies were a different matter altogether. Over the years I dealt with so many of them I got pretty good at feeling out which were going to be problems. This made it a lot easier to deal with them. Some of the warning signs that a potential client may be one of those problem children:

Insisting on “per job” pricing. In my consulting world jobs were always priced per hour. This made sense as clients were paying me for my time invested on their behalf. Occasionally I would run into a small client who insisted on paying for the entire job at a price negotiated before the project began. When I first began consulting I was desperate for work and I took in a few of these jobs. Big mistake. These clients ended up taking far more of my time than actually required, and I lost money on every one of these jobs. Reasonable clients understand that they are paying the consultant for his/her time, and should be charged accordingly.

Want to be your only client. There are some clients out there who may not insist that you only work for them, but in essence do so by their actions once work has begun. You probably know the type — they insist you always be available whenever they want you, no matter what. They don’t want to hear that you were tied up when they tried to call, they insist you stop whatever you’re doing and handle them. This basically has you working primarily for them, at the expense of your other clients. Don’t fall into this trap, make it clear from the beginning that you respond as quickly as you can, but that you handle other clients. My experience with these types shows they are often the ones who complain about your billable hours, when you charge them for each of these calls.

Inconsistent payers. You know this kind of client — every single payment to you is delayed for a poor reason (if any reason at all). You find yourself constantly asking for payment, only to be told that it must be hung up in accounting. Or sitting on someone’s desk. Or because the moon phase is not right. The fact is these clients don’t care about the hardship this creates for you. They are playing a game, and the game is to hang on to their money as long as possible.

This list of bad clients is by no means complete, but they are the types I ran into most often. It took me a while to learn how best to deal with them; I fired them. Oh, I finished up projects for which I committed, then I never worked for them again. My mental health improved immensely when I did this.

I know quite a few of you live the consultant’s life, and as I did for years you find yourself running from client to client. How do you handle your own bad clients?

loading

Comments have been disabled for this post