Council Post: Some Dissatisfied Clients Just Don’t Fit The Way You Do Business

President, USA Express Legal and Investigative Services and Secure Background Check. Licensed private investigator.

As a business owner and entrepreneur, I provide a valuable service to help others achieve success. My team helps employers avoid costly hiring mistakes. We uncover evidence attorneys need to accomplish justice for their clients. We assist insurance adjusters in gathering information necessary to make informed claims decisions.

As a fact-based business — that is, a business that uncovers facts — with decades of experience working with thousands of clients, we are in a unique position to help companies determine essential factors to use in recognizing good clients, and to avoid the occasional bad ones.

Attract The Good

First, identify your ideal clients. What qualities are you looking for? How can you bring value to their businesses? I have a few concepts I’ve developed over the past 30 years of forming, building and running my business.

Good clients are authentic. They accept who you are. You have a natural connection in conversation. Ease of communication is important because you need to be on the same page. They want you as part of their team.

Good clients focus on results at a fair price. They recognize the value your business provides. They depend on your experience and expertise and help you attain useful results for them. They define and quantify what success means to them.

Good clients foster mutual respect. This starts with extending their trust to you to help them create clear goals and a road map of how you can realize their objectives. Just as it takes time to establish your business, you build a relationship with clients one success after another.

Of course, you’ll do your own part in building a successful client base, and that starts with delivering on your promises. I once worked on a case for about 16 hours. It was a fatal auto accident. I canvassed the entire area and found security camera footage from a supermarket that captured the incident. While the video didn’t capture the color of the signal from that angle, I could figure out the traffic flow and proved to the insurance carrier that its insured ran the red light. The carrier eventually paid $2.5 million; the attorney who hired me insisted on offering me a bonus.

That sure beats a client who calls and starts arguing to get a $25 discount, which I’ve also had (and I’m sure many of you have, as well.)

Vet Some Clients

Have you ever received a call out of the blue from a potential client who planned to dump a competitor’s service and move the business to you? These calls require lengthy conversations and rely on you keeping up to date on news about others in your market. In these instances, I might check the clients’ backgrounds to determine if they pay their bills. Weed out nonpaying clients before you need to invoice them.

In addition to keeping up with news in your own industry, you should keep abreast of news in clients’ industries and about your clients. People move. Companies fall apart and file bankruptcy. Protect yourself.

Let’s say there’s a reasonable explanation for the client suddenly wanting to switch to you. I still require a credit card on file because the individual or their fledgling firm has no credit history with us.

Even with existing clients, you should be cautious about extending credit. You do the work, and you have to make sure you get paid. But life throws curveballs — like a worldwide pandemic, for instance — and you should always consider a client’s payment history. In most instances, I’m comfortable extending credit for 90 days.

When A Client Should Leave

In the best scenario, you’d never have a client you just couldn’t work with. But people are people, after all. We all hear stories about clients who don’t pay their bills, which seems to be the biggest reason for parting ways. Other circumstances that might make you consider saying goodbye include changing the terms of the contract, endless grinding on price or nitpicking.

For me, the worst client behavior is when someone is disrespectful to my staff. It’s rare, but one experience has stuck with me all these years. We had a client who would give us a call every other week complaining about the same things we’d done for 1,000 other firms with no problems. He would start out saying, “I’m not going to pay, and here’s why,” and then explain why he thought the staff was inept.

Each time, we would review our process and ensure that we hadn’t erred somewhere in the engagement. We hadn’t. What’s more, we hadn’t received any other complaints about this service from any of our other clients.

After a while, we realized the complaining was some sort of game for the client, or maybe just his way of conducting business. It certainly wasn’t ours. One day I got on the phone with the client, pointed out that his complaints were taken seriously and investigated, and that there was nothing out of the ordinary in our service. After an extensive review of the complaint, we had learned it was not a valid complaint. The reason for the complaint was simply to get a reduction on our invoice.

“Maybe our firm is not for you,” I told him. “You should explore other alternatives. After this month we will no longer work with your firm.” I dislike “firing” clients, but I had to protect my staff, who were becoming discouraged and overwhelmed by his nonsense.

In the end, sometimes finding your balance with a client can take time. Clients hire you for a reason: They want you to help them grow their business, or they need help finding the right employees. When you do your best possible job for them, you build your reputation, and that helps you grow your own business. You may at some point need to let go of a problematic client. Just remember they have no right to hold you or your other clients back. So don’t let them.

Forbes Business Council is the foremost growth and networking organization for business owners and leaders. Do I qualify?