Firing Clients

This is the written script of Halftime, episode 41 of the Makers of Sport® podcast. Halftime was a short show on the off weeks between interviews where I wrote and read on topics in professionalism, entrepreneurship and business for creatives in sport. The episode aired June 22, 2015; the audio is on SoundCloud and the show notes live at makersofsport.com. The show's opening and closing announcements are trimmed here.

I’m going to be discussing firing clients. When is a good time to do it? How does one go about doing it? How much should we put up with before enough is enough?

First of all, let me just say that losing a client sucks any way you look at it. Specifically those of us in the services industry, meaning that someone pays us to perform some creative task for them and be a strategic partner, it can be really tough. Clients are the lifeblood of what we do. Unless we create our own products to sell, which I also highly encourage everyone to do, clients are our revenue stream.

In some cases though, clients can actually hold us back in our businesses and careers. It’s no secret that many of us take on whatever work we can find when we start out freelancing, no matter the industry. When you first begin, you are ecstatic that someone is paying you money so you can do what you love in being creative. Perhaps before that first client, you had a crappy grocery store job or worked construction during hot summers to get by during college. So it’s all relative. After all, many school design, marketing or art programs don’t teach us a lot of about commerce, entrepreneurship and pricing. So we tend to sort of fly by the seat of our pants so to to speak. And that's probably actually a southern euphemism so for those that don’t follow or comprehend that phrase, basically in the beginning you are most likely just faking it, faking until you make it so to speak.

There seems to be a trend among many in the creative industry where people are saying there are no bad clients. Only bad service providers who didn’t do their due diligence and research before working with said client. And I believe some of that to be true. But let’s be honest, that would be a perfect world and we do not live in a perfect world. People will take on whatever work they can get and that’s the unfortunately reality.

I do however firmly believe that we are professionals and we should act as professionals. Which means having a have voice and respected opinion in our projects. If you only want to do what people tell you to do and not voice your own opinions, even if ultimately they other directions are chosen, then I consider you a technician and this may not be the podcast for you. Professionals work hard to continue learning about our industry and our expertise is important in the world of any business, so we must approach our relationships that way.

We should however shoulder as much responsibility as possible for relationships gone bad. But within reason. Sometimes, the really kind person you initially dealt with may leave the company or move onto another project handing you off to another point of contact. They also may have been putting on a mask in your initial meetings and have eventually revealed their true needy self throughout your project or time together. There are many reasons why you should fire a client, but here a few common ones that can be bothersome.

The Client micromanages your work and doesn’t listen to you

We are creative people, sometimes blessed with natural abilities and if not, we have worked hard to gain the abilities we do have. Clients hire us based on previous work they’ve seen, word of mouth referrals or simply because of our likable personalities (I’m giving everyone the benefit of the doubt here). They hire us because they need help with something. They have a problem that needs solved. Sometimes that might be a simple layout for some print piece, other times it might be helping them get their organization on the same page brand-wise with a new visual identity and marketing strategy.

We as creative people have taste. We merge tangible skills of making things with our taste and create solutions to problems. The problem is, every human being has taste, be it bad or good. Every human being can give a subjective opinion based on their own personal tastes. Now sometimes you may have to pick your battles as with every human relationship, but if the micromanaging is a constant thing that happens every single time you work with said client, it may be time to let them go. In the instance a client with bad taste is forcing your and micromanaging you to come up with something that you are embarrassed to claim ownership of, or they are never satisfied with anything that you make. You can be sure that they do not trust your opinion as professional and seem to view you as a set of digital hands there to make whatever they tell you to make based on their own personal tastes. This is wrong on all levels. We must educate clients and keep in mind that we are not creating for them, personally, we are creating for their users, their customer base, their fans. Fire them.

Clients Don’t Respect Your Time

If you have a client that is consistently missing phone calls, never responding to emails or consistently late for meetings. Not to mention they are always in a rush to get you do something, making unreasonable demands. It is time to let them go. I once had a client that wasn’t paying me on retainer send me content for an ad due that was needed “yesterday” at 5pm, then expect to see something in the morning. This is a clear case when my time was not respected. They had no problem shooting out the door at 5pm to live their life, but apparently I was expected to pull nighters to get work done. After a few times of this, I had to let them go. This is not how life works. I have a family, I’m not a 24-hour service shop. Now if there is a strong deadline and I have a strong client relationship, I have no problem staying up late or pulling an all-nighter to come through with on a big win. But this should not be expected on every single project. They’ve gotta go or at the very least, be educated that that you will do it this one time to help them out, but don’t plan on making it a habit.

Another case of not respecting your time is when the client wanting the thing due yesterday tomorrow doesn’t respond to your the project you send them for weeks, later asking for revisions to it. They clearly made up a fake deadline so you would get the work over to them, yet, it was inconvenient for them to look at it so they waited until it was convenient for them on their time. Gotta go.

Clients show you a lack of respect as human being

Clients, specifically those with very low budgets, or even those with high budgets and huge egos have a tendency to treat service providers bad and loop them all in the same category, a person to take abuse from because they are paying you. They may call their phone company wheeling and dealing on dollars and cents, or curse out a customer service rep who had nothing specifically to do with a problem they may be having. These types of people have a general lack of respect for everyone.

If every time you see an email from a client or the client’s number calling your phone, your heart sinks and you feel a sickly in your stomach, then why waste your time on them? Life is too short to be feeling that way. We are in control of our own destiny’s in our businesses. Otherwise we wouldn’t have went into business for ourselves.

I was once working a client and clearly specified in my contract that I would be handing over print-ready files as deliverables and the client would not be getting my source files. At the end of the project, the client requested my source files so he could take them to another designer he was using for something simultaneously. Essentially taking the work I created and giving it to a competitor for free so they could continue making tons of other things based off my visual assets. In some cases, this wouldn’t be a problem, (handing off visual assets for others to use that is), such as a branding job where it is imperative to hand over source files, or a web design job where you need to hand of layered Photoshop files to a developer. But this is why branding costs so much and web design cost so much, or should at least. And also why deliverables should be specified in a contract. In this particular case, the client had been quite unreasonable throughout the whole project. He tried to bump the deadline, attempted to make excessive and pointless revisions, and then finally tried to request my source files after I had given the final print-ready deliverable PDFs. When I told him no, he wasn’t getting my source files, he threatened to sue me. Now this is scare for anyone, especially when at the time, I think I was around 24 years old. But I carefully reviewed the terms of my contract and stuck to my guns asking him to review the contract. We eventually worked something out where I sold him the source files but I did so letting him know that I had no intentions on working with him again.

Don’t ever let a client curse you out, put you down personally or treat you as a lesser human being. This is flat out wrong and not worth the time.

They’ve gotta go.

You’re Stuck at one Rate

When we begin working with a client, we may quote them a rate and come to an agreement that is reasonable for both of us at that time. The relationship may be great, the work may even be fun, but after a few years you have grown. And most likely your client has gotten raise or two at their company. Raising rates is necessary because as we progress, we get better at what we do, faster at what we do and become more in demand. Experiment with new rates with new clients before attempting to adjust rates with the long-term relationship. Once you have a few bites and can justify this new rate, you can seek to have the conversation with the client. If you have a good relationship, you can call them or meet with them explaining that you are raising your rates and hope to have a human to human discussion about it. However, if you are not super close to your client or find them hard to talk to, you may want to send a form letter via email or snail mail letting them know that as of X date you will be raising your rates X% of X dollars. If they have a problem with it and are not willing to have a conversation, they do not truly value what you do and it is time to move on and seek up-market for better paying clients. In my experience, clients that pay better tend to respect you more as a consultant and partner. There will always be headaches in human-to-human relationship, but they are much more minimal and worth it when you are getting paid accordingly.

Related to this particle reason are the clients that are always nickeling and diming. Some people just like to negotiate and find it fun. I personally find it annoying. When I bought my current house, the guy I was buying it off of tried to go back and forth so many times that it drove me nuts. Eventually I walked away because I was annoyed. I didn’t want to play the game, I wanted to buy the house. He came back to me about a week after walking away meeting me in the middle where I originally intended. Once I signed the contact on the house bid I still had an opportunity to walk away pending a house inspection. Because of his annoying negotiation tactics I deliberately waited until the last day of my available walk-away date because he kept calling my real estate agent wanting to talk to me and “sell me” some more on why I should take the house. It was highly annoying and this happens in client form all of the time. There is no difference between $3500 and $4000. There is a difference between $4000 and $30,000. If they are nickeling and diming and constantly scope creeping, decide for yourself if it is worth the time.

Lastly I want to touch how to let a client go. The best way is always to be as professional as possible and let them know that it just isn’t working out. This can be done through email or by phone call. Determine if you will finish a project, give them back a portion of their fee or not to keep things chill. I’ve done it both ways, giving some of the fee back and keeping the upfront fee because it was specified in my contract that I would be getting paid for work performed. Letting a client go is s tough, but chances are, they will forget about it when they move on, especially since they seem to be so “me-focused”. They’ll find another person to bother that may suffer through. Also, you will be very relieved and feel a weight off your shoulders once you get rid of the pesky business relationships that just doesn’t seem to be working.

Finally, I’ll end this Halftime with a disclaimer. Humans often do not agree with one another. This is true in personal relationships and professional ones. I do not believe that just because you have a disagreement with a client, that they should be fired. I believe what we are as creative consultants to clients are partners. Disagreements and debates are a healthy part of the creative process and business relationships. No one truly needs a “yes man” to do whatever they say. Not everyone is going to agree on everything, if so it is very rare. Be sure to communicate clearly with clients in both email and in audible form. If there is something written you take wrongly or snarky, pick up the phone and call them. Often times an email or written communication can come off as short or rude, but in reality it was not intended that way. There is no context in email communication. Do what you can to salvage business relationships you enjoy and try to never burn bridges. Just because you fire a client, does not mean you have burned a bridge. If you handle it professionally, you are just letting them know that the relationship is not a good fit and you can opt to help them find someone that can better serve them. Sometimes personalities do not blend well. A bad client for you could be a good one for someone else. But beware of clients that do not respect others. These are a problem.

Value yourself and your work. Be professional and don’t waste time on things that eat away at you internally.