How to Avoid Problem Clients

I'm having trouble getting past the fact that this guy was, basically, running a spam business. Email marketing is spam, to a first approximation, and while there are ethical email marketers out there, I don't know enough to be sure that this guy was one of them. Which means I'm getting good advice from someone whose ethics are under a cloud; it colours my view of the whole article.

<i>I wanted more customers who were focused on results, instead of price.</i><p>... and also trust you to provide the right solution. Good clients tend to know what the want at a high level and trust you to take care of the rest. Problem clients tend to micro-manage and are looking more for a robot. Usually those projects are unsuccessful for the same reason telling a heart surgeon how to perform surgery is disastrous.

Don&#x27;t oversell what you can offer. It&#x27;s amazing how perfectly reasonable customers become &quot;problem clients&quot; when you can&#x27;t deliver what they bought.

I agree with setting high prices.<p>Back when i was selling realtime data backup software I was wondering how come the highest priced package pulled the biggest total number of sales. Today I realize i should of set price 10x more and I&#x27;d probably sell more.<p>I also recommend attitude &quot;there are no problematic clients&quot; vs &quot;how to avoid something&quot;. Quite often in my experience the &quot;problematic&quot; and complaining client suddenly spent large amount of money on order.

Setting your prices high is alleviating the symptoms without understanding the root cause.<p>Most companies get troublesome clients because they’ve miscommunicated their value preposition and didn’t set out clear rules that govern their business relationship.<p>People tend to believe in the same fallacy about employees by saying you have to hire the absolute best. I think it’s a sign of laziness of management who rely on their employees to know what they’re supposed to do without every being clearly explained what you want them to do. When you make your expectations explicit, most people raise up to the challenge and perform beyond wildest imaginations.<p>Unfortunately, that’s hard work on your (employer’s part).<p>We’ve taken the same approach to qualifying clients—there are certain criteria that we look for and certain rules that we make expressly clear to every client before they agree to work with us. These have absolutely nothing to do with the depth of your wallet and yet, we get absolutely delightful clients time after time.

Great article.<p>I don&#x27;t agree that you should focus on anything less than the &quot;Give me results&quot; clients. First off, you know what they say is the problem with goals? You&#x27;ll probably reach them. Meaning, you&#x27;re setting your ceiling. I&#x27;ve found that if you hand pick your clients, you can make certain that you have clients who focus on results. Most consultants talk about word of mouth as the main way that they get new clients, but I dislike that approach. The reason is that you&#x27;re letting clients choose you. My best client is a client that I picked and cold called. I knew they were making lots of money and I knew they needed what I was selling. Selling something as a consultant is about specialization. Specialization doesn&#x27;t necessarily mean that your experience is focused in one area. It means that you can present yourself as an expert in one area.<p>Here&#x27;s something counterintuitive that I&#x27;ve found that goes along with this article: Clients who pay the least are usually the most demanding. I used to lower my price when people complained, but I quickly realized that my price was a filter blocking bad clients. Plus accepting a lower price really led to likely bad outcomes because when the going got tough, the voice in the back of my head said, &quot;These guys are paying you less than your other jobs&quot;, then I suddenly felt completely unmotivated to work hard for them.<p>Here&#x27;s a really good book about consulting that helped me. Not focused on software consulting, but a lot of the concepts are the same: <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Million-Dollar-Consulting-Alan-Weiss/dp/0071622101/" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.amazon.com&#x2F;Million-Dollar-Consulting-Alan-Weiss&#x2F;d...</a>

I would add only a single thing to this list: make sure to do your due diligence on potential clients. Look them up and see who they are before you accept work with them.

The other point of clients is not that they&#x27;re inherently good or bad, but that handling them determines the dynamic of the relationship. If a consultant appears eager and willing to do something for nothing, they can&#x27;t blame the client. Never offer something that would lead to resentment; say &quot;no&quot; instead.<p>On the otherside, the value of hot to crazy (money to bullshit) has to be there.

There&#x27;s an excellent book that goes into depth around this subject: Implementing Value Pricing by Ronald J Baker. Highly recommend it to any business owner who deals with clients.

In business, the simple way to get rid of problem customers and maybe to avoid taking them on in the first place, is to ensure you have per customer pricing and agreements. For example, client A is a good customer, so a support ticket for them costs just $150, but client B is a right royal pain in the backside and so their support ticket cost is $550. Similar scaling for development etc. Keep raising prices till they go or stop calling so much, as required.