We all have them, those clients who no matter what you do, are never happy. Get them 50 leads last month and they want to know why it wasn’t 60 leads. Finish their website a week early and they want to know why it wasn’t done two weeks early. Double their website visitors in two months and they want to know why it was ONLY double and not triple.
Then there are the clients who don’t give you approvals for two weeks but expect your schedule to remain intact or they call you at 5PM with a request that absolutely has to be done by 9AM tomorrow morning. What about the clients who don’t want to pay you because your deliverables are behind schedule (or at least that’s what they think) even though you’re right on schedule?
If you’re all in on inbound, then you’re all in on dealing with challenging clients like this. It’s not that they’re bad people or they have unrealistic expectations. In most cases, we’re letting them get away with bad behavior because we never asked to be treated differently.
Worse, most of these clients are costing you more money than you probably even know. They’re tough and unprofitable—the sooner you get them back on track, the more money you’ll make and the happier you and your team will be at work.
Here are a handful of tried and true tactics to turn a client’s roar into a soft little purr.
Choose Your Words Wisely
Communication is at the core of almost everything we do. We’re marketers so our communication better be top notch. Whether it’s email or on the phone—you better be on your game. For instance, if you’re having trouble with clients who make too many edits to your copy, look at the emails your team is sending with the content copy. Are you asking them to edit it?
Here’s a line for one of our actual emails, paraphrasing of course.
“Here’s the copy for your new whitepaper. Take a look and let us know if you have any changes.”
Nooo! We were asking them to edit it. So they did. They got out their red pen and gave us changes. Here’s what we say today, paraphrasing again.
“Here’s the copy for your new whitepaper, we’re sending to design in 48 hours. Let us know if you see any technical inaccuracies before it goes to our designer, once we get it back you’ll we’ll have a final design review on Friday.”
See the difference? The second language gives them an aggressive deadline. One that they’ll probably miss anyway. We asked for only technical changes, not grammar or language changes and we let them know when they’ll see it again. Big difference. Remember, you don’t want them to edit it, so making it easy is not helping you.
Give Your Clients Options
I like giving clients options. “If you approve this by end of day today, we can have the page live by end of the day tomorrow. If you don’t get it back today, it will be ready next week.” Now they have a decision to make. Get it back today or wait and see the page live next week. It’s up to them. I know this might seem a little harsh. What if they can’t get to it today? That’s actually fine because again, you want them to simply approve it without reviewing it. You’re trying to train them to stop reviewing everything and give you the authority to move their marketing forward more expeditiously.
Another option has to do with paying you for extra work or not. Most clients left to their own devices will edit, review, and make changes over and over again. Why? Well, it’s safer to simply work internally and make something “perfect” instead of making it live. So going back and forth with you is better, in their minds, then approving it.
Giving them limits on revisions puts the control back in you court.
“We’ve had one round of revisions on this, but I see you asked for more. Our agreement clearly states you only get one round, so if we do this extra round, which based on our review didn’t appear to change the essence of the article, we’ll have to charge you $200. Would you like us to make the revisions or simply post it as is?"
Client responds 95% of the time with—Post it! Yes, we got what we wanted and they didn’t have to pay anything extra. Mission accomplished. Pushing the client out of their comfort zone is your job!
Make Sure They Understand Consequences
Just like options, consequences come in handy with challenging clients. Client wants her website live in 30 days. No problem, we can deliver but they have to approve everything we send over in 24 hours. Once they agree—you’re in the driver’s seat.
You send over their design comps and you remind them of the 24-hour turnaround. One day comes, two days come, it’s now day three. You have to let them know that they missed the deadline and the extra time is going to push back the launch at least two days, assuming they get the approvals back today. You clearly told them of the consequences, they tested you and you either fold or stand by your original policies. My suggestion is stand up and demand to be treated like a partner, not a vendor.
Unfortunately, most of our clients are used to treating their agencies like vendors and most agencies take it. My suggestion to you is—stop taking it.
Train Them Early and Often
I got a new puppy a few weeks ago and we’re in the middle of training him. It’s arduous. It never stops. He needs constant reminding and encouragement, even the occasional scolding. You’re training your clients too. Most of them have never worked with an agency before and if they have, they’ve probably been trained to abuse their agency. You have to reset those expectations and retrain your clients. They will test you just like my puppy tests me, every time they get a chance.
Start in the sales process. We tell every prospect we are NOT a vendor. If they want a vendor, keep looking. We expect to be treated respectfully and that’s the only way clients get the results we’re promising. Follow our advice, respect our team, take advantage of our experience, respond to our requests and the results will follow. Tell us what you want us to do and you’re likely to get fired.
Yes, clients who cannot or do not want to work with us in the way we know gets the best results are asked to leave. You have to take a similar approach. You can’t do your best work if you’re clients are dictating what you do, when you do it and how you do it.
Start Today Tip – Most of you know what you need to do, it’s just a question of doing it. It’s hard to tell a client they need to work with you differently or that you can’t do what they want simply because they want it. Reset expectations with all your challenging clients. Those that respect you will get in line and those that don’t probably need to go anyway. For those clients that continue to be trouble consider raising their retainers, now if they leave—they’re leaving on their own and if they stay you double your profit margin on the challenging clients. If you’re going to work with difficult people, at least you should get paid handsomely for it.
Agencies 2 Inbound – Helping Owners Go ALL IN ON Inbound!
