You can fire your clients

Firing a client

I’ve met a lot of business owners who insist that letting go of client is bad for business and they would never do it. Much as I understand the rationale behind it, I don’t think it’s a good idea to risk putting yourself and your business under intense strain and incurring loses to please such clients.

It would seem the wiser choice to let them go without any bad blood between you and get back to more agreeable clients, who may be difficult in their own way but not bad for your business.

Letting go of a client (also known as firing a client) does not have to be messy and horrible. You can calmly and plainly inform them in a meeting or via email that your want to end the business relationship you have with them.

As I often say, you cannot make a client do the right thing, speak maturely or act properly but you can and you should. If you see a need to end a business relationship, do so and move on without any abuse, mockery, attacks or any other form of bad behaviour. Your reputation matters, even with this. If they lie about this, you will have the evidence that you conducted yourself professionally.

One way to ensure that the proper kind of conduct occurs between you and your client, is to ensure that there exists a working document with your Terms And Conditions. This documentation is very important and should be forwarded and agreed to by your clients.

This way, they are aware what is required of both parties for any project or work. This will not eliminate all forms of conflict but it helps make things easier and is worth looking into.