Dont Work with Jerks: How to Recognize a Difficult Client Early

Five minutes into the call I knew this client was going to make my life miserable. The problem was, I already said "Yes."

Into every professional practice falls a little rain, or better said...walks in a nightmare client. You start losing sleep by a couple of hours every night, you keep thinking about her project during your lunch time, and you feel like your life has been taken over by this client.

What a nightmare! Didn't we go into the business for ourselves to enjoy it? Do we not have the choice of who to work with? Of course, we do! The challenge is in recognizing a difficult client early enough to say "No."

So how do you do that? First, determine what "difficult" means to you. It may mean different things to different people. For example, while some professionals will be happy to take a phone call from a client between 9 and 5, others may have a special time set aside for phone calls. While some business owners love getting detailed specifications for a project, others may feel trapped and limited in their creativity.

1. What is a difficult client

To help you decide what things may be important to you, here are some of the most common traits of difficult clients:

- They do not respect your time

- They tell you how to do your work

- They always check up on you

- They constantly change their mind about a project

- They knit pick over every detail

- They try to intimidate you into doing things you haven't agreed to

- They treat you as if they're the boss and you are the employee

- They have little respect for your expertise

- They call you at a non-scheduled time

- They frequently e-mail you with questions, requiring long replies

- They ask you to throw in a few extras without offering to pay extra

- They keep reminding you how high your fees are

- They are frequently disappointed with your work

- They won't pay on time, but ask you to continue working with them

- They frequently cancel or reschedule your meetings

- They believe they're your only client, & demand your full attention

You can complete this list by adding a few other traits that you find annoying or unacceptable in your business, or to your life style.

2. Red flags: Early warnings of a difficult client

Once you know what's important to you, how do you look for signs that this may be a difficult client? First of all, listen to your intuition. It's easy to ignore the red flags, especially if you're hungry for business.

"Your gut is never wrong," one IT consultant said. "Whenever I've ended up with a nightmare client, it's because I didn't listen to my instinct and I went for the zeroes."

Listen to your instinct. Additionally, do your best to avoid clients that:

- Don't want to sign a contract

- Are in a rush

- Are looking for the cheapest provider

- Are your friends and relatives

Create a profile of your ideal client, and check every prospect against it before taking them on. "This is crazy!" you may be thinking. "Won't choosing clients so carefully cost me business?" Not really.

Usually, you will spend more time on a difficult client (time that you could spend prospecting, working with other clients, or simply taking a break), your mood and personal life may become affected by this project, and you may even end up not being paid at all!

Screen your prospects carefully, and instantly improve the quality of your business life.

3. Assessments - your best friend in screening clients

After reading this, you may be thinking that screening takes too much work and time. Bear with me, because this task has just become as easy as 1-2-3.

You can completely automate the screening process, by asking your prospects to complete an assessment before you take them on.

The questions you ask should include the things that are important to you as a business owner, and as a person. You may ask them about how they worked with professionals in the past, what their style of communication is, how much time they plan to devote to this project, what their deadline is, how committed they are to completing it, and so on. Refer to your ideal client profile when putting together a list of questions.

The fact that they're willing to spend time answering an extensive list of questions already shows that this is a serious prospect, and helps you weed out as many "time-wasters" as possible.

4. Automating your screening process

So how do you actually automate the screening process? Very simple. You can use AssessmentGenerator.com, a tool that allows you to create your own forms and assessments, and have them on your web site within minutes. Whenever you get a new prospect, send them a link to your online assessment and ask them to complete it before your first call.

AssessmentGenerator does not require you to know any HTML or install any scripts. Simply enter your questions and the e-mail address, where you want to receive completed assessments, and it's ready to be added to your site.

You can also create self-scoring assessments, where you and your prospect can see a score based on how they answered questions. Self-scoring assessments are great when you want to work only with clients who reached a certain level of readiness in something. For example, you may only want to work with business owners who understand the importance of marketing. Their assessment score will show you how ready they are to work with you.

Conclusion

Many professionals already conduct assessments when they first meet their clients. The problem is, they do it over the telephone, which means they have to set aside a half-hour or more to determine if this prospect is their ideal client. If he or she is not, then they have just wasted their precious time, which could've been spent on a more productive activity.

Automating the screening process with AssessmentGenerator.com will make your life easier and business more enjoyable. Here's to ideal clients and a stress-free business!

You may reproduce this article in your electronic or print newsletter (opt-in publications only), or on your web site, as long as the byline and full credit are included with the article and all hyperlinks remain intact. A courtesy copy of your publication is appreciated.

About The Author

Milana Leshinsky is the founder of ACCPOW, Association of Coaching & Consulting Professionals on the Web.

Stop giving away your time! Give away FRE/E assessments instead! Create custom online assessments in 5 minutes http://www.AssessmentGenerator.com

More Resources

Unable to open RSS Feed $XMLfilename with error HTTP ERROR: 404, exiting

More Customer Service Information:

Related Articles

Automating Your Help Desk Workflow
Do you know you can open, answer, close and report help desk information without human intervention?Automation is a powerful feature provided by most enterprise level help desk products; however, most organizations rarely take advantage of these features. Based on a survey conducted by RightStar Systems, only 5% of the help desk managers interviewed were using automation to its fullest capacity.
The Logic of Emotion!
Homebuyers are an interesting study. Watching people make their home buying decisions has brought me to the conclusion that every decision that every one of us makes is based in emotion.
Customer Service For Huge Profits
Customer service is the most vital asset for Businesseither it is online or offline. It's the critical factorwhich determines if your business has a future or not.
How Do You Create Customer Loyalty?
Another sad fact of life is that these days, very few customers are loyal. Most of their loyalties lie with their bank accounts, and you can't blame people for watching their shrinking dollars.
Are You Giving Your Customers Enough Reasons To Return To Your Business?
Good customer service just isn't enough anymore in the marketplace in which we live. Times are changing and business owners are learning that they need to create such an awesome customer loyalty program that they are always at the forefront of their customers' minds on a regular basis.
Top 10 customer service tips
1. Hire people who have a service attitude.
Aint We Wonderful!
It may come as a surprise to you to discover that customers don't buy your products or services because they feel that you have a right to make a profit. In other words, their motive for doing business with you is not to help you buy the latest Jaguar or put your children through college.
Losing Angry Customers
This article offers five ways to help you deal with angry customers. While the goal of all businesses is to have only happy customers, we also have to be realistic and realize sometimes we are going to anger a customer.
Restaurant Owners - How Important are People Skills?
You are serving great food. Your establishment is new, spotless and inviting and yet you are not getting the repeat visits that you expect.
Add Value - And Kill Mediocrity in Customer Service
There are two kinds of customer service we all experience occasionally, outstanding customer service, and bad customer service. What we experience most of the time is mediocre customer service.
Doesnt Anybody Work Here? Nametags Impact Employee Communication
Walmart was the first business to require all its employees to wear nametags. (There's a surprise!) Sam Walton created this initiative because he wanted his customers to "get to know the people they bought from.
Whats Love Got To Do With It?
Customer Loyalty, we all want it. Don't we?Some people say it's dead - they say that customers are fickle, that they don't want loyalty, that they just want the lowest price and the fastest way to get it.
CEM Can Improve Customer Loyalty
'A 5 percent increase in customer retention increases profits by 25 to 95 percent.''The greater the loyalty of customers, employees, suppliers, and shareholders, the greater the profits reaped .
Complaining Consumers
The salesman's job is to be well informed; extremely well informed. For this information is how he earns his bread.
Proofs of Delivery and Logistics: Speeding Throughput and Avoiding Pitfalls
It should be a straightforward business scenario: making sure that the delivery documentation from the supplier or haulier matches up with the documentation at the target destination.However life is rarely straightforward, and if problems do arise, order completion times and cash flow will inevitably suffer as a result.
Take Care of Yourself Before You Take Care of Your Customer
One of the most important questions people ask when they are focused on improving their quantity and quality of business is: "What is my competitive advantage? What makes me unique, memorable, special? what truly sets me apart from the rest?" While there are no definitively right answers to that question, most people come to some conclusion that customer service is a critical component of your competitive advantage. For most businesses, the service they offer can vary from exceptional to not so hot, depending upon circumstances.
Call Center Software - Your Tool of Choice in Customer Relations
The call center represents your first line of communication with customers and potential customers. Whether you choose to outsource this service or to establish an in-company call center, this is one area in which quality is paramount and cannot be compromised.
From Disgruntled to Champion - How to Turn an Unhappy Client Into Your Best Customer
It's a salesperson's worst nightmare- the phone call that comes in from a disgruntled customer. Not only does it create extra work for you, but it cuts into your valuable selling time.
Creating the Right 'Viral Reputation'
Unless you are brand new to business, or have been under a rock for quite some time - one key marketing technique (which isn't new) - is called 'Viral'.Based on the word 'virus' - viral marketing or viral business simply means it 'spreads' like a virus.
How Not to Get Stiffed, Improving Your Collection Procedures
Some businesses have slow paying customers or past due balances because they didn't "train" their customers in the beginning.It is important that your customers know your credit policy and/or terms of payment, BEFORE they become a customer.