Stop Complaining That You Have Clients

Your customer is difficult. The challenges they provide you are extremely hard to overcome. Many of the problems stem from the changes they need to make, and making those changes would help you help them. You can be unhappy about that fact, or your can be grateful that this is your client.

Your client expects you to respond to their needs quicker than you believe you should have to. What they want is something you can and will provide them—with or without the conversation they seem to need. You can work yourself up about having to hold their hand, or you can be grateful they have asked for your help at all.

Your client makes a lot of changes. Once you figure out how to execute, they move the goal post, and you have to start over again. This takes time and energy, and it means you repeat the same work over again. You can wish you didn’t have to do this work, or you can be grateful that you are the one doing it.

One of the contacts at a client is super needy. They take more time than any other contact you deal with—even at much larger clients. You can resent that you get their phone calls and emails, or you can be thankful that you have a relationship all locked up, free from a competitive displacement.

Here’s the rub. The client you believe is a burden is the very client your competitors are trying to take from you right now. What you perceive as problems, challenges, and obstacles, they see as opportunities. Your competitors would be happy to relieve you of the burden of having to work with challenging clients. They would be overjoyed by the opportunity to respond to their needs in your stead. They would make the changes needed to execute, even if wasn’t easy. Right now, one of your competitors is hoping that you don’t pick up the phone when your client calls, and they hope your absence creates an opportunity for them to be there for your client.

Complacency kills. Neglect kills. Entitlement kills even faster.

If you don’t like your clients, you don’t have to keep them. Someone else will gladly take them off your hands. You don’t have an absolute right to keep their business. Stop complaining that you have clients.