Occasionally, you acquire a new client who turns out to be one you cannot continue working with. Your sales conversation was fine, and there were no signs you would not be compatible, as the contacts were all polite and professional. But now, you must fire your client.
One large client was spending more money with the company than any other client in their portfolio. However, this client was also not paying the company, treating the operations team poorly, and making things difficult for everyone who had to deal with them. To make matters worse, the senior leader of this company had built a toxic culture, and even his team was petrified of their leader. When asked to pay the company’s invoices, the leader told the salesperson never to ask for payment or they would be fired.
The Nature of a Nightmare Client
A nightmare client doesn’t treat their suppliers as an important part of their company. They treat people poorly, except for a few insiders who are safe because they align with the toxic leader. Your run-of-the-mill nightmare client will show no appreciation for the work your company does. Your desperate competitor is likely to endure the poor treatment the leader doles out. You, on the other hand, should fire the nightmare client. Here are a few signs that your client is a nightmare:
Not paying their invoices: Cash flow is important to any and every sales organization. Once you have delivered the results you promised your client, you should be paid within the number of days stated in the contract they signed. This goes for the large clients that stretch your payment terms, even though they have more money than Buffett or Bezos. Not being paid is a reason to fire your client, especially if you’ve addressed it multiple times with no improvement.
Poor treatment of you and your team: Any client that treats you or your team poorly is a problem. Neither you nor anyone on your team signed up for hazing. Nor did they agree to be treated poorly by a person who does so to everyone. You must protect your team from being bullied, cursed at, or chastised. Any bad treatment of you or your team is a deal-breaker.
Difficult personalities: At the top of the organizational chart, you find the toxic leader. As you move down a step or two, you encounter a set of brutes you might find in a high school locker room. Because you must work with the people in these roles, consider whether anyone on your team deserves to interact with these difficult personalities.
Adversarial instead of collaborative: Generally, there are two types of clients. The first type sits down with you to discuss the problems you are having executing for them. These clients work with you to improve things. The second type tells you must solve your problems and rejects any talk about making a change on their side.
Commands the lowest price: What’s wrong with cheap people? They’re cheap. Now, while we can’t blame people for the model they employ, we must make enough money to provide the strategic outcomes we promised them. In any scenario where you may not capture the value you deserve by creating the better result the client needed, you should reconsider.
Vendor status: When treated as a vendor instead of a strategic partner, it means you will not be treated as important. Much of the time, the leader is responsible for this poor treatment, even though you are doing good work for them. When you are not appreciated, you should work hard to replace this client with one who will appreciate your effort and your results.
A Hungry Sales Leader and Bad Clients
In the third decade of the 21st century, sales leaders and managers demand excessive coverage in their sales pipeline. This demand means accepting any and every prospective client into the pipeline. When you put quantity over quality, you are almost certain to end up with clients that are not what you wanted or expected. To a starving person, anything looks like a meal.
Even worse, acquiring bad clients means your sales team must handle the nightmare client. That means less time for creating and winning new deals, hopefully ones that are mature, professional, and collaborative. There is no reason to accept a client you must fire in a few weeks or months.
When to Fire a Nightmare Client
The right answer is “before you acquire them.” The second-best answer is as soon as you recognize they will be more trouble than they are worth. You need not worry about their opinion of you firing them, but you will still have to follow your contract regarding how much notice you must give them.
Some sales rep from a starving sales organization will be happy to listen to your contact confess your sins and seduce the salesperson into believing that, as the new kid, they will do a much better job than you did. This poor rep will learn this was a mistake only after they sign the contract.
When your client doesn’t pay, doesn’t collaborate, treats you and your team poorly, and surrounds you with people who don’t appreciate your effort to take care of their needs better than any other company in your industry.
Release these nightmare clients as soon as you recognize that neither you nor they enjoys working together, even if it means a difficult conversation. You will only need to have the conversation once. Replace this client with one that has a different, and better, set of attributes, as this is important for retaining and growing with the client.
.jpg?width=768&height=994&name=salescall-planner-ebook-v3-1-cover%20(1).jpg)
